Merchant Guilds

(Disclaimer: I am not power hungry and have zero interest in leading, running, and/or being responsible for any of the below in anyway. Just looking for a way to cooperate and increase the collective demand for all our products.)

Hi Everyone,

I would like to propose an idea I have regarding the cooperation of merchants in increasing the collective demand of all our products. This idea has probably been proposed in different forms before at different times, however I strongly believe it is well worth repeating and bringing back into the minds of the community that is SL.

The idea is basically the formation of informal or formal merchant guilds. The goal of these guilds is to cooperate in terms of events, marketing and infrastructure in order to increase demand in a synergistic way for the products of its members.

I believe we could have Merchant Guilds for many different product areas, such as a Tailor Guild, a Munitions Guild, a Casino Guild, a Club Guild, and a Land Guild.

These guilds would hold events; attempt general marketing; build scripting protocols and host sim infrastructure in a way that would encourage incoming residents of SecondLife to purchase and utilize the services of the merchant guild members.

For example, I believe that the Munitions makers would profit well to get together and organize an ongoing game of grid-wide assassin, complete with fun rules and prizes. The idea would be that in order to participate in assassin you'll probably want to purchase weapons or munitions which will give you a 'leg up' in the game. Obviously, not everyone would have to participate in such a game and rules would have to be written to limit the fallout on civilians.

Another example: the tailor guild would be well to host fashion shows, fancy dress parties, masquerade balls, and other events which encourage people to visit the numerous shops and purchase (for reasonable prices) outfits which will increase their enjoyment at these events.

Yet another example: The casino guild could create a world wide poker tournament and in order to play in the game you have to win 'tickets' at various casinos spread around SecondLife. For example, on your 100th blackjack bet, you might get a ticket which is good for 1000 L$ in the world wide poker tournament. If you get enough casinos involved you could have a pretty good pot for that game..

One final example: a land developer guild could make a concerted effort at educating people on the added value of renting and purchasing parcels which already have content prebuilt for new users.

Other ideas, in general: billboards which encourage people in general to dress up or play games or generally enjoy SL could be made and purchased. Merchant guild members would be responsible for answering new users queries and educating them (in a general way) of the unlimited possibilities of enjoying the creative products and services that the guilds provide.

From RL experience let me tell you how much your credibility rises when you talk about a product sector rather than doing the hard sell for your own particular company and product lines.

Participation in the guilds would always be completely voluntary and should always be to everyone's benefit. It would only take a gathering of once a month or so. People can get together and brainstorm about the various possibilities of what they can reasonably achieve.

Such guilds should be mainly (hopefully, only) for increasing demand for the products and services of their members. I personally would not like to these things as organized attempts at alienating and isolating unpopular residents who do not conform to mainstream ideals of how things should be done. Not only does such things generate lasting ill will, the ROI of such actions is pretty meagre.

But I suspect such things will not be an issue as there is a very large group of positive, creator oriented individuals in SL who will enjoy working together and focusing on win-win solutions in order to ensure that 'all boats will rise'.

If you are a merchant in SL (or an interested consumer) please post in this thread, and let us know if you have any further ideas, comments or suggestions and how you might be able to help.


Iron Perth.

A wide-reaching collective of merchants is an interesting idea. I think that what we see a lot of now in SL are loosely-organized "regional" groups of merchants who all sell in the same general location, and most of these are organized by a landowner who rents land to merchants for their stores. The nature of shopping in SL seems to be that people will frequent certain shopping areas on a regular basis, driving the dwell up and making it seem like a more desireable location to shop for potential buyers who are searching for the item(s) sold by that store. The more dwell a store has, the higher it appears on the list in the Find menu.

It appears to me that a lot of the merchants in SL are a disparate and diverse group who don't collaborate/cooperate so much with sellers of similar goods as they do with their sim neighbors. I've just jumped back into the fray of selling clothing, but I'm now selling men's stuff (I sold women's clothing before). If anybody thinks that other sellers of similar SL goods could benefit from a guild or association, I'd be willing to talk about it.

I have a line of weapons I would like to produce so I would happily donate some funds as a prize for a world wide game of assassin.

Right now, there really are not a lot of reasons to purchase weapons in SL and I would like to help change that.

I am also interested in Renting zoned Land (similar to what Anshe is doing so well with the A'ksha sims).

If someone wants to help brainstorm a marketing approach to educate new users on the renting of land in a zoned sim, I'd happily participate in such a discussion. I think the key thing is not to talk about your own land, but rather talk about renting zoned land in general.

If you talk about it in general rather than specifically it goes a long way to increasing your credibility when talking with new users.