Wednesday, November 28, 2007

There is No Underwear Fairy


Bringing new underwear to all the good men and boys in the land.....

[I had suggested an article on this topic to the men over at the Y Me blog, but they may not have had time to tackle this yet...or they hated my idea...sigh. In any case, patience is not my strong suit. So, with the holidays quickly approaching I felt a responsibility to bring the issue up now. I am going to quote myself a couple of times from the comment I left on their blog – those quotes will be in italics. ]

In my own personal experience with SL, there is one thing that separates male and female Avatars.
No, not Xcite! accessories.
No, not profiles full of group memberships to the Big Bottom Beach Club and Nasty Slut Lovers VIPs.
What separates men from women is the size of their clothing inventories! Occasionally you might run into a man who cherishes clothes as much as I do, but I haven’t personally met many.
The great majority of men are not spending all their time trolling fashion blogs and chasing new items. But many women do. I often find great things that I think would be adorable on my BF. Meantime he’s busy building.
Think about – apologies in advance – your dad’s underwear. (See? Sorry.) How does it get into his top dresser drawer? Does the Underwear Fairy put it there? Probably not. For most of his life, the majority of his clothing has been purchased by your grandmother or your mom. Ask them. Go on. Seriously. I’ll wait.
See? I told you. Really, if you think about it, our fathers would still be wearing the same underwear they had in 1969, if it weren’t for our mothers. And they would be as happy as clams about it, too. So, my thought is that if women had an easier time buying items that they could then easily transfer to the male Avatars in their SLives, men’s clothing sales would increase dramatically.
Therein lies the challenge. I have tried to buy gifts for people in SL. And let me tell you – it is not easy. More often than not, the item I adore for a gift turns out to be no transfer. (Ummmm….except that for some reason, Second Life has tons of undies that have transfer permissions. But at a certain point, I simply cannot give a SL friend yet another pair of Superman Underoos…it sends the wrong message, you know?)

Jedi night Underoos ...

Now, sure I could go through the steps of IMing or sending a note card to the designer with an order. And then waiting for several IM exchanges occur until an item can finally be delivered to a gift recipient. Add in that you now have to warn the recipient that a gift is on its way from X person or X store and NOT TO DELETE IT when it arrives. Whew. Exhausting. And I don’t get the fun of making up gift boxes and leaving them for recipients to find or the fun of giving gifts at a special time or event.
Some, shops have vendors that allows gifts to be sent directly – which would be great, except for the umpteen times my recipient has declined the inventory offer because he did not recognize the sender. Sometimes the items get sent before I have a chance to let him know a gift would be arriving.

Maybe he'll have to settle for this for Christmas...
And, do not even get me started on the OnRez vendors. True story - I tried to set up an account and went to a kiosk to activate my membership. The kiosk told me very politely that I needed to find a kiosk to activate my membership. When I informed the kiosk that it was, in fact, a kiosk, it burst into tears and ran off. OK, it didn’t really run off, but the kiosks have some serious self-esteem issues.

It's O.K. – I believe you – you are an ATM…there, there….
Successful merchants in RL and SL make it easy for customers to buy. They make it easy for impulse purchases to occur. They give the $Lindens the path of least resistance out of my purse. It certainly happens for women’s clothing. I impulse buy all the time. If I didn’t, I would not have approximately 75,452 pairs of black high heels in my inventory folder.
So, I would really, truly appreciate the choice of permissions for items: C/M/NT or NC/NM/T. Then, I can choose which version I need.
Because while there is no Underwear Fairy, Santa is real and needs to get some SL shopping done.


Yes, Santa, he has been very, very naughty…*wink*…he deserves something wonderful.

© 2007 All Rights Reserved.

Posted by Tymmerie Thorne at 1:15 PM
Labels: , , , ,

20 comments:

  1. I used to have all my stuff as mod/trans until I read something some where that said that if you sell this way you are basically an idiot. So, I conformed and turned no trans...

    Oh BTW you look super cute as a Christmas gift!
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  2. Tymmerie, I have been working on an article from your suggested topic. It's 1150 words so far. I swear!
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  3. Oh - I didn't know there were security and intellectual property issues with that. If it was no mod/ no copy/trans is that a risk for you?

    BTW - I truly appreciate any insight into this...I am just a shopper with no real knowledge of behind the scenes SL commerce.

    Thanks so much! I got that gift costume on SLExchange!
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  4. OMG, I'm glad you brought this subject up! Especially with Christmas coming, I have hunted all over looking for great clothes for my guy, and I would like them transfer to put under our Christmas tree~

    I'm exhausted of asking designers if they would be willing to change permissions or work something out with me, and not a single one has been helpful. *Sigh*

    I agree - It would be great to be able to chose permissions. Especially during the holidays.
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  5. Gorgeous Catero - oh no...my impatience has come back to bite me yet again!

    Just don't copy me by posing for pics in your Underoos. :-P

    Sai! Did you hear? The boyyyyyzzzzz are also going to weigh in soon! [gestures toward Catero]

    I am going to have an article very soon where I will try to get people to share non-clothing gift ideas in SL.
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  6. Permissions, the perennial pain in the butt for most designers. As a buyer I want mod/trans, so as a designer this is how I make my clothes. But with SL eating purchases all the time, it can be a support nightmare if you don't take a hard line and say "No Replacements". And I have no intention of taking that line, so even more work for me - yeah! This is one reason why a lot of designers are going copy/mod.

    Another reason, of course, is the number of buyers who insist they wont buy anything but mod/copy.

    Then there's those outfits that come on multiple layers for flexibility. The designer has to decide if it should be mod/copy and therefore cannot be given as a gift or to a newbie when its not wanted anymore. Or trans, meaning people can give away pieces and yet still have a complete outfit.

    ::wimpers in a corner::

    Now to offer both... well think of the prims woman! And that doesn't even take into consideration the amount of time it would take to package most items as both perms sets (think of how complex some womans outfits are!) and set them up for sale.

    Having said all that :) I would *love* to be able to offer both, but I just don't have the time or the prims. So I sell mod/trans and hope for the best

    Don't know if all that helped at all ... :)
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  8. Thank you, Cattrina!
    Your insight did help. I can only imagine the amount of work that is necessary to run a SL shop and design the clothes. Oh - and I forgot about the prims. [hits palm against forehead]Always...always the prims.

    I have been know to buy several pairs of the same non-copy item just so I could have them to use in separate outfit folders. Is that a potential new niche market - Desperate Spendthrift Fashionistas? LOL.

    I have often found it puzzling that people go back to the designers for replacements when SL eats inventory. I think of it like when a dry cleaner ruins a shirt. Not the store's fault.
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  9. One of the things that bothers me about the no transfer option that I am stuck with for almost all of my purchases is that this type of permission means what I have purchased now has no value whereas something that I can later give away or sell continues to be an asset.

    I've gotten to the point where I am picky about what stays in my inventory, and I'm tired of deleting thousands of Lindens worth of stuff at a time. I used to pass clothes that didn't really work for me but were from some of the best designers on to noobs or friends all the time, but now I'm stuck with just deleting stuff. I'm sure that kind of thing helped a lot with brand awareness as well

    In my opinion, items that are no transfer should cost much less than items that are still assets.
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  10. I did ask my dad, and he did confirm that a lot of his pants in fact are from 1969 and that is why they are full of holes.

    On that disturbing insight, I have decided to join your campaign immediately.

    Re: non-clothing gifts, if it has buttons, levers or something to faff about with and break, they will love it.

    p.s. The kiosk story has given me quite serious giggles. How I love your blog <3
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  11. Awwww! Thank you, Willow!

    Want really disturbing?...try shopping for Underoos...finding them in a little boy's avatar clothing shop and then wondering why they include a "crumpled pair for the floor..." [runs over to the phone to contact the authorities]
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  12. From a consumer point of view, I prefer no transfer items so they can be put into different folders. If I was more spendthrift I guess I could buy more than one copy, but I can barely talk myself into paying 300L for an outfit in the first place, let alone buying it twice.

    As far as asking for replacements, I never have any problem sending replacements to people on no transfer items. I keep records of everyone who's bought everything in my store; I'm anal like that :P Whether or not it's my fault they lost it, I'd be pretty heartbroken if my one of favorite outfits disappeared, even more so if it had been retired or something.

    Holiday gifting can be a pain as far as perms, for sure. If someone wanted to be accommodating without taking up more prims, they could get a 1-prim vendor that you click to change items and let the shopper click it to choose which of the two permissions they prefer. I abhor scripted vendors myself, though. I've had nothing but problems with them in the past and won't use them in my store if I can help it. :P

    Hope that wasn't too all-over-the-place. I've just woken up and need some caffeine yet ^_^
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  13. Maegen, I like your explanation of why you give replacement copies. You are sweet.

    The 1-prim vendors are the bane of my existence....I run from them. I am just not good at using them [glances over at the multiple copies of items I accidentally bought using them]. But, I suppose they are a necessary evil sometimes.
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  14. Love love love love love this blog! It keeps me in stitches. :D

    cattrina pretty much summed everything up. A lot of our stuff is still transferable but we are slowly working towards no transfer for these exact reasons. SL seems to eat a lot of items....and while that may not be the designers fault I would feel awful not replacing the item. The unfortunate thing though is that you just simply can't trust people. My personal inventory is rediculous and I spend waaay too much L but through all of the L I have spent I have never EVER come across a transaction that didn't actual come through. All of my items have been delivered. And so you become a bit skeptical with all of the 'my item was never delivered' requests you get and unfortunately I often wonder if those requests are genuine or if the replacement is being passed to a friend/alt. Might be a negative way to think but unfortunately it happens. With no transfer you can simply verify the transaction and pass on the replacement with no torment at all.

    The other thing to add is that a lot of designers have unfortunately become victims of theft. People purchase your items, pass them to an alt and either reconstruct it prim for prim or copybot it.....although I suppose they could just bring the alt into the store too. I did hear that, and good lawdy correct me if I'm wrong please, if you make your items no mod and no treansfer the bots that rip your textures cannot be used. This of course sucks for jewelry and boots and such because you absolutely need to be able to mod those. But because of the bad people out there and the lack of cooperation from LL we are also considering making a lot of our stuff no mod and finding workarounds to resizing. :/

    And the prims..good lawdy the prims.

    A lot of stores do offer giftcards however. Unfortunately its not as personable a gift as actually picking out that special gift, but its something. We thought about going to that card system that everyone seems to be using. It makes it much easier than passing giftcards to the store owner and waiting for them to fill them.

    And there you have a ramble from me. Dunno if it made much sense. lol. :D
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  15. LOL - it did, Zoey! Thanks for weighing in. I wish gift cards were an option. But the people I need to buy for really hate shopping and would not use them. :-(
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  16. Cal here to comment since I spotted my store name on Catero's blog :)

    I'll have to agree with Zoey's comment above, though I do change perms to no copy/trans on request for special gifts - had quite a few over the months since I decided to make my items no trans, and I've obliged each one (I just need them to ask).

    Re: the deliveries, you're not alone - I've had people IMing or dropping me a notecard telling me that the recipient(s) had busy mode on or kept declining items (one woman had busy mode on almost all the time, and I had to get hold of her when she wasn't afk, which proved rather difficult, and took almost a week :P). But it should be all right to IM the creator you need a replacement sent after you've informed the recipient :)

    (BTW, is it only in some viewers that declined items end up in your Trash? I did experience this with the viewer I'm currently using; if so, it would probably save you a lot of hassle if the guy were to just restore the declined item, though I'm not 100% sure this works all the time.)
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  17. Hi, Caliah - thank you for weighing in, also. I am not sure about the different viewers - I'll have to ask my friends which viewers they are on if that happens again.

    I do like the 'gift sending vendors' in your lovely shops - now that I have learned to use them properly. The first time though, my BF declined the delivery. When I realized he had done this, I did have him check his trash to see if it had landed there - but no luck. I eventually had to tie him to a prim tree in his yard and told him not to move or speak while I went to repurchase. Then, I returned to him, told him to click "accept" or he would get no nookie for a week, untied his right hand...and tah dah! It worked. I learned my lesson - I now tell giftees to expect a delivery and share the name of the person who will send it BEFORE I buy something. Unfortunately, that takes all of the romance and fun out of it. But it does get the job done.
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  18. Wow, I recently discovered this blog. You are quite talented and love the attention to detail you go through to match the pictures with the blog. Very sexy shots of you in the underwear and with the whipped cream in the previous blog. It's good to see a woman who knows what to really do with desert toppings :-P I am always amazed to see what someone has re-created in SL. Each blog entry seems to hit upon a good subject for the denizens of Second Life. I have used SL Exchange to buy items as gifts for people, but then you do have the who - when do I notify them - will they accept it - etc. I look forward to your next blog. Keep up the good work :-)
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  19. Thank you so much, Jerremy! :-P Mmmmmwwwwwgggggfffffff
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  20. Apologies, my dear, but I gave in to temptation and tagged you, purely to see what you would put. Details are upon my blog, you may kill me later...
    ReplyDelete

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