Resellers?
Is there a point to resellers in SL other than making money off creators work? There has been a lot of buzz about this sort of thing and I’ve recieved an annoyingly high amount IMs from these people. I’m not talking about the people stealing but the “legit” kinds. Where they want to buy (at a discount) in bulk then resell at a mark up.
In RL the point of a reseller is so people who can not get to your area can buy the items you make. They buy in bulk, with a discount, then mark up the items. With that markup they cover the costs of advertising, property, and running the store. RL stores cost a lot more money and time to run then those in SL. They have to hire all sorts of people like managers, cashiers, sales reps, security, customer service, ect depending on how large of a store it is. Running a shop in SL is quite simple. Get some land, build a store, place out your items, possibly hire some customer service people, and then advertise. It is nothing near the commintment of time and resources it takes to run a RL store.
For instance, you make a film. You look for a distributer who gets a cut of the profit. Then they pay for the prints to be made and advertising, sell the prints at a mark up to cinemas who then advertise a bit more and mark up the tickets + sell overly priced snacks and drinks. Then the distrubuters make DvDs and sell them at a mark up to rental stores and shops. The stores then mark it up even further. While there are people making a lot more money off the constant mark ups then I’d personally like, at least it makes sense. In SL it just doesn’t.
In a place where the proximity of location doesn’t matter what’s really the point? When things are working correctly, if I want new hair I just pop over to ETD. There is no need to worry that Elika’s sim and my sim are technically far apart on the grid map.
The problem is and always has been, is that the advertising in SL is shit and more importantly finding anything in SL that is what you are looking for is probably one of the most frustrating experiences ever. Too many stores, too many people making crap, too much to choose from without much direction of where to go. How the bloody hell is resellers helping that?
Logic says that if you have 2 locations, you have 2x the chance for people to find you, but my experience counters it. In my almost 4 years of SL the only additional shop that has done any amount of good is the animation warehouse. Because that place makes bloody sense and works. Laggy for sure but has the largest selection of animators in SL.
But why would Joe Reseller’s location be of any more use than your permanant main store? Advertising in SL is still 90% via word of mouth or blog because of the crap shoot that is the quality of items.
Maybe I’m just jaded and lucky enough to have been noticed by enough people, but this make just no sense. Anyone have an opinion?
