Saturation -- Too many events -- Survey of sorts

[Ceka Cianci]

The thing I like about events is being able to see newer creators..

I don't go to a lot of events, but I browse the event sites like Seraphim.. If I see something I like I'll drop in the event and grab a demo.. Then if it really ends up being something I want to buy, A lot of times I'll get the LM to their store and go there and see what else they have..

I love finding new creators.. I think for them events are a much better place to be found than the MP, which that search can keep a new good creator covered up..

There is a lot of sorting to do though, through the ones that buy someone else's mesh and just throw a color on it..There is a lot of that.. hehehe

 

[LittleMe Jewell]

23 minutes ago, Polenth Yue said:

I found the Shop and Hop was okay for profit, but the community side is not great. People constantly complain that all the shops are terrible and the gifts are trash. I know some people did like the gifts I made, as I've seen them in people's gardens, but at the event itself it was mainly complaints.

My feeling is that people only really want giftcards from the big brands. Offering an actual item as a gift is not a fun experience.

I much prefer a gift that truly represents the store as opposed to a gift card or something that someone just tossed in a box without thought because they had to give a gift.

[Prokofy Neva]

1 hour ago, Chris Nova said:

We talking about too many shopping events, not feminism. Both of you stop it and stay on topic. I like this thread and don't wanna see it closed.

They actually more interconnected than maybe they realize but I've already said they can have the last word because it's not a topic that can be debated properly in the forums context.

[Prokofy Neva]

36 minutes ago, Polenth Yue said:

I found the Shop and Hop was okay for profit, but the community side is not great. People constantly complain that all the shops are terrible and the gifts are trash. I know some people did like the gifts I made, as I've seen them in people's gardens, but at the event itself it was mainly complaints.

My feeling is that people only really want giftcards from the big brands. Offering an actual item as a gift is not a fun experience.

@Chic I don't feel the quality has gone down. There are more furniture type stores and for me that's better. The build is not as laggy as it used to be, perhaps they heard the detailed complains of me and others.

@Polenth I am baffled why anyone could complain about your gifts which are always great.

What I absolutely love about Shop & Hop is that every single merchant is forced to provide a gift. And it's not like some events where you go and you see some obvious top designers who think they are too cool for school and don't have to give a gift. And I always find that insulting when others have made one -- it's insulting to them and insulting to me. At Shop & Hop the Lindens require a gift -- and it's not true they are poor quality. There are some very good ones from the good artists. Yes, some are overworked and do the usual shtick with candles in a cage, pillows, and balloons. I wish they would stop all of that. But at least it's something, and I remember that.

If more than the usual top designers featured on Seraphim can get into Shop & Hop, great! Because the dividing line is "makes original mesh" versus "works in prim/sculpty or uses full-perm models and textures". And I find this very snobbish and contrary to a free market. There are times when sculpty items work better with nature and are not high prim when expanded like mesh and that's a good thing for landscaping.

Not everyone shops for clothes and not everything is fashion; a good deal of it is still houses, furniture, landscaping and Shop & Hop has gotten better with this.

But I do wonder what kind of income versus outlay of effort/expense in terms of models/textures/time spent merchants get out of this.

Edited January 20, 2022 by Prokofy Neva

[Prokofy Neva]

13 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

The thing I like about events is being able to see newer creators..

I don't go to a lot of events, but I browse the event sites like Seraphim.. If I see something I like I'll drop in the event and grab a demo.. Then if it really ends up being something I want to buy, A lot of times I'll get the LM to their store and go there and see what else they have..

I love finding new creators.. I think for them events are a much better place to be found than the MP, which that search can keep a new good creator covered up..

There is a lot of sorting to do though, through the ones that buy someone else's mesh and just throw a color on it..There is a lot of that.. hehehe

 

Are there new creators? I always suspect when I see someone with high quality mesh offerings and a brand-new avatar and new store-bought name that they are an old creator looking to revive or branch out from their brand. How do they get into these events??? It's not merely about the cash for the booth fee. They have to be in with the organizers, so the organizers must know their original avatars. That's my theory. Some of these new wunderkind are flashes in the pan and disappear almost as fast as they appeared. Because they went to make another name and brand. That's my theory anyway.

[TheVeryFirst]

 

I can’t say I remember the last event I went to, I know I’ve been to a couple now and again.

I know I have heard of Shop & Hop but don’t think I have ever been to that one. Most of the events I have been to are so laggie I just leave.

Do you go looking for events? I don’t so that must be it, why I don’t see this Saturation your talking about.

 

[Prokofy Neva]

9 minutes ago, TheVeryFirst said:

 

I can’t say I remember the last event I went to, I know I’ve been to a couple now and again.

I know I have heard of Shop & Hop but don’t think I have ever been to that one. Most of the events I have been to are so laggie I just leave.

Do you go looking for events? I don’t so that must be it, why I don’t see this Saturation your talking about.

 

Well go on the resident blog section of this web site, type "fashion blogs" into Google, there is a feed of them, and SeraphSL.com of course, where you see streams of them constantly, which is why there is this feeling of saturation.

[TheVeryFirst]

13 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Well go on the resident blog section of this web site, type "fashion blogs" into Google, there is a feed of them, and SeraphSL.com of course, where you see streams of them constantly, which is why there is this feeling of saturation.

 

I'm good, I think I'll pass on that.

[Lewis Luminos]

5 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

 How do they get into these events??? It's not merely about the cash for the booth fee. They have to be in with the organizers, so the organizers must know their original avatars. 

Haha nope.  Neither I nor any of my alts have ever had a shop before but one of them (who no-one knows except Madison) opened a clothes shop on the MP not long ago. Nothing original, just a handful of fullperm kits with my own textures. Hadn't been up on the MP more than a month before i started getting swamped with invites to participate shopping events. I had to decline because there's no way the sales of my one or two little items at L$100 each would ever cover the L$5000+ fee. In the end I had to put something on my alts profile to tell them to stop it.

So they are trawling the MP looking for new sellers, and doing it because they are greedy, and want as many people as possible to pay the entry fee, regardless of quality.

[Prokofy Neva]

1 hour ago, Lewis Luminos said:

Haha nope.  Neither I nor any of my alts have ever had a shop before but one of them (who no-one knows except Madison) opened a clothes shop on the MP not long ago. Nothing original, just a handful of fullperm kits with my own textures. Hadn't been up on the MP more than a month before i started getting swamped with invites to participate shopping events. I had to decline because there's no way the sales of my one or two little items at L$100 each would ever cover the L$5000+ fee. In the end I had to put something on my alts profile to tell them to stop it.

So they are trawling the MP looking for new sellers, and doing it because they are greedy, and want as many people as possible to pay the entry fee, regardless of quality.

Well, that's quite the interesting experience and I take that on board. I still think that when a creator springs full blown into an event with absolutely stunning mesh, everything arranged "just so" in the usual SL manner, that they weren't born yesterday. You don't see a history there. They just appear suddenly fully developed at an event. So I think some of them have to be alts, and if you study them you see certain patterns emerging. 

It seems through this thread, the image of the event managers are emerging as evil middlemen. And I totally agree with Charlette that yes, some kids just say, oh, 100 x 2500  -- bank! 

But if you have ever gotten to know any of these organizers, they put up with an incredible amount of flak, it's like herding cats. They are constantly badgering the creators, even those who already forked over hefty sums, to get there on time and in full, to put out the blogger's packets, etc. Then they go around policing prims and dealing with content sometimes that is annoying like music players that don't get turned off, etc. 

Yet it is getting so that even the events that call themselves "alternative" or "off-beat" are all so predictable. It's getting so that if you go in a store, and a creator made a thing and called it -- gasp! -- "new release" -- with no Saturday sale as a preview, with no event where it is launched, but just a new thing in her store -- you are in shock. You hastily join the group to make sure you never miss a surprise like that again!

 

[Maryanne Solo]

It's just like RL.
*Ding! -> E-mail invite from the most lavish, posh, hoity toity, bubbly toting, well attended, exclusive clientele dahhling, incredibly expensive fees, Street Market in the whole country.
"We'd love to have you exhibit your beautiful works at Mc Streetstalls 2022"!
"Please provide ultra high quality pictures of your items so we can determine the suitability of your products for this esteemed event".
"Strictly limited places are available for exhibitors! Hurry and pay your deposit NOW"!  
My reply is the same as always - no response whatsoever.  

Edited January 20, 2022 by Maryanne Solo

[Blush Bravin]

Someone else may have already offered this perspective, but I've not read the entire thread. So hope I'm not being redundant. 

I've pretty much stopped shopping in SL. For years, I looked forward to my favorite events every 1st, 8th, 15th, and 25th of the month. I typically spent quite a few lindens shopping those events. Those events also gave me exposure to creators I had not heard of before, so quite often I would end up in their store to see what else they had to offer. My problem with shopping isn't the number of events but the fact that EVERYTHING looks the same. I love fashion! But in SL fashion has been reduced to dresses that show the bottom of your butt cheeks or V necks cut to the waist with one of both shoulders falling off onto the upper arms. I'm tired of fashion that seems to be designed to show the most skin instead of actually being creative and stylish. I understand the limitations of mesh and the consequent clipping, but I'm at the point that I'd go back to flexi to get skirts that don't look like belts and dresses that don't look like a longish top. 

About the only thing I still spend lindens on is rigged earrings for my lelo head and really well done furnishings that have good LODs. But, just like jeans and thinking how many pairs do I need, I've come to ask myself how many couches or clutter items do I need? So with furnishings and fashion the real missing ingredient for me is creativity and uniqueness.

So, for events, I like them! I like being able to get a sampling of stores all located in one spot. Again, my problem isn't the number of events but the sameness of all the products being sold. Give me a reason to shop more and I'll be spending my lindens and visiting more events.

[Silent Mistwalker]

6 hours ago, Lewis Luminos said:

he L$5000+ fee

That is just insane. Now I am really happy I never supported such greed.

[Blaise Glendevon]

43 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

That is just insane. Now I am really happy I never supported such greed.

Event venues don't pay for themselves. It's a business expense.

[Lysistrata Szapira]

18 hours ago, Blaise Glendevon said:

But have you considered tending to your own knitting? If you don't like the aesthetic, the simple answer is to not purchase it. 

I do have the right to express my opinion of fashion in SL, so no. I will not be "tending to my own knitting." 

[LittleMe Jewell]

16 minutes ago, Blaise Glendevon said:

Event venues don't pay for themselves.

True, but at L$5000 per booth, that is still a healthy profit for the organizer.  Just for 50 booths, that is $1000.  That is quite a bit over the monthly fee for a full region - and events that actually use an entire region have far more than just 50 booths.

[Lysistrata Szapira]

12 hours ago, Polenth Yue said:

My feeling is that people only really want giftcards from the big brands. Offering an actual item as a gift is not a fun experience.

I guess I'm a contrarian.  I really don't much care for the S&H gift card or credit gifts.  9 times out of 10 they'll barely pay for one item (and in many cases they don't even do that).  Most stores at S&H don't let us use those credits at their S&H displays either. Then there's the matter of me having already purchased everything I like at whatever store. If the credits expire, then I can't wait until the store releases something new that I'll like.  I've lost track of credits at stores because I can't find anything.  Gifts have been the way I find the stores I like, so I'd rather just have a clothing or jewelry item gift.   If I don't like the item, I just toss it. 

[Blaise Glendevon]

12 minutes ago, Lysistrata Szapira said:

I do have the right to express my opinion of fashion in SL, so no. I will not be "tending to my own knitting." 

Your opinions are judgements on how other people choose to present themselves, though. 

[Pamela Galli]

On 1/17/2022 at 10:56 PM, Nick0678 said:

I rarely use the MP, it's filled with low quality garbage and also old creations,  

Is it? I put pretty much all my products on both marketplace and inworld. Only a very few — older but good sellers — are only on the marketplace. Marketplace charges me 10% but it’s convenient for customers, who can browse marketplace and locate the inworld demo, plus can redeliver copyable things to themselves.

[Nalates Urriah]

20 hours ago, Chris Nova said:

Even a free market is self regulated. It just doesn't exist in SL which is why there's problems with over saturation.

You are funny. Yes, a free market is self regulating. A completely free market has no regulating authority imposing restrictions on sellers or consumers. Sellers do what they want and consumers decide what they want to consume and it works amazingly well. When thieves and fraudsters attempt to corrupt the market and abuse people society steps in and prosecutes the abusers.

Your thinking the SL market is totally unregulated ignores that the SL market consists of SL sellers and SL buyers, the people that make free markets self regulating.

[Lysistrata Szapira]

3 minutes ago, Blaise Glendevon said:

Your opinions are judgements on how other people choose to present themselves, though. 

Yes, and we all judge each other, in both SL and RL.  I get judged for my looks every time I leave my house because I am a middle-aged plump woman, and I get judged if I go to the grocery in my gym wear because I'm not going home to change before I go pick up milk, toilet paper & bread for the next snowmageddon.   And sometimes it's said OUT LOUD. 

If people didn't judge, People of Walmart dot com wouldn't exist. The difference here is that I don't vocalize my judgments of tacky SL avatars, I don't name & shame, and I don't post photos or videos of them like some people do. My judgment remains in my head (and in my generalized comments here on this board).  

I'm sure others in SL would probably find my avatar too mainstream while I find theirs tacky.  As long as we don't go around saying, "Hey (name), your avatar is boring" or "Hey (name), your avatar looks like a tramp" there's no problem.   

I'm ceasing comments on this particular derail of the discussion before the powers that be lock it. 

 

[Lysistrata Szapira]

As for Marketplace, I rarely use it.  As others have said, a lot of it is garbage from 2008 (or earlier).  I've noticed some stores will repeatedly remove and repost items for sale so that they show up as more recent additions, even when they're obviously really OLD things.  As has also been mentioned, the search terms are such a complete failure that I can type in "Verne add-ons" for my Belli home and wind up with 2008 sex beds and flexi-hair on the list that pops up.   

Sometimes I will use MP to search and then go in-world to look and purchase.  You can't tell LOD from MP.  Sometimes you don't even get a prim count or land impact count on MP.  I'm not spending my money on something I can't see when there's no demo. 

 

[Lysistrata Szapira]

My thoughts on Shop & Hop events in general: I like them, and if I have time I will usually cruise the entire mall, pick up gifts, make a list of items I want to buy, and then I'll come back a few days later to make purchases.  If I don't have time, I will find the SLURLs to the stores I want to visit and ignore the rest.   

My only real complaint is that I wish they would create sections specifically for clothing stores, furniture stores, etc.   This was particularly the case for Christmas.   I think the Christmas decor stores should have had their own region(s).  While I can see the logic of making it a mixed bag so people would be exposed to the decor stores while they were looking for clothing bargains, I just find it kind of irritating to wait for the stalls to rez only to find out it's stuff I don't want to buy.  If clothing/jewelry (or just avatar-related items in general) were in a particular wing, and decor/buildings/vehicles/plants/landscaping were in another, I'd find that a lot more user-friendly.  

 

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

There's a lot but they make me aware of creators that i'd never heard of before. 

[Silent Mistwalker]

1 hour ago, Blaise Glendevon said:

Event venues don't pay for themselves. It's a business expense.

Yes, it's a business expense. That was not the point. The point was the expense (5000Ls) is ridiculously too high for the creator.

The number one reason I had to stop setting up my booth in real life at powwows was because the booth fees had gotten to the point where I could no longer afford them. I should have stopped long before the booth fees went from $100 for 3/4 days to over $200 USD. Last I knew a 10x20 booth would cost $500 and the land was owned by the tribe, so no taxes had to be covered, just the additional expenses for water, sewer, electricity, etc. OF course, the people who organize, setup and run the powwows need to be paid so that is where most of the booth fees go. Anything left over is put back into the tribe after setting aside funds for the next powwow.