Is Xstreet out of control?

Sorry, but just how serious should I take a talking vulva? I seldom say something about peoples names, but this one was too good to pass. And seriously, when you registered did you think: this name will help me with being taken seriously???

And Marianne, wacht it or I will AR you for talking to talking vulvas as well

I believe you are talking about one of my competitor. As far as i know he have no more time for SL so decided to almost give away every thing he has (deciding to do so for free or for 20L$ is just a choice). I'm not sure if i would have done the same, i would have probably sold my full asset and branding if forced to leave SL, but again it's a choice.
Anyway returning on how he (or anyone else) would affect the market, since i would be "involved" i can say that it doesn't affect the rest of the market (because i can count my market).
I think that it would happens if you are really near there: very very very very similar products (that you can't even compare) would be affected, because (indeed) you would pay LESS to have the same; but as along you are on a different route (for quality, for support, for branding name), you can face 100000 competitors giving away free (or cheap) stuff, but your sales wouldn't be affected at all (or i am just lucky).

It's a matter of target: if your target is someway higher than average (ie: experienced users) they would know the difference; if you sell things for the occasional player, so you wanna face that kind of competition, because that user won't understand the difference between a product and another and he would decides only because of the (lower) price.

PS: and about support.. i've based almost everything on it, i can say that without a constant support i wouldn't sell 1/10 of my products in the time.

Cheap stuff quickly becomes common stuff.

People don't want common stuff.

There's a contradiction in your words: how a common stuff may become common if people won't common stuff? :°D So we may say that something that isn't common will become common because it's not yet common, but after being common isn't wanted anymore so it become uncommon and people will start to desire it again so it becomes common again.

Cool, we can all return to living in mud huts and paying homage to the strong man who leads the village. Of course we will have to face times of famine and all those "women's rights" will have to go by the wayside. Of course with life spans falling to the late 30s we won't have to live as long under the conditions.

Capitalism is the best thing that ever happened to the human race.

Yes, I hate my common washing machine, my common stove and my common refrigerator. Better to beat my clothes with a rock, cook over an open flame and eat spoiled food.

So there's hope for Britney Spears after all.

I'll beat you with a rock!

Yes, it happened for 60's clothings as well.

Just woke up and noticed that my post caused a little stir,not least by Vulgar(to the)Core...shame.
I must confess in the light of a new day I still feel the same.
I thought "the man in the white suit" might explain my view.

Somebody invents a material ,it's white,cheap,lasts forever and never gets dirty .Is this a good thing?

If in every category the top creators give their stuff away,is that a good thing?

How long would SL last as we know it?

Off to refill my coffee mug.

Never heard of loss leaders? Underpriced or sale items deliiberately underpriced to entice you to look at everything else for sale. Some will only come for the loss leaders, but many will say 'hey, that looks good!' and buy the more expensive items too.

It goes in cycles too... vendors will over do it on the sale items for a while, and people will come only for the sales and not buy anything regularly priced, so the vendors will cut back on the cheap items, and fewer will come until they decide to start using them again.

Can you say Walmart?

Not at the moment.

As long as it matches....oh wait. You said "rock". Nevermind.

Really i didn't even got what was your concern (if any) neither what's the argument of this thread, but i've replied to spam.

I haven't checked out XStreet today, but, since Gibson Guitars entered SL last year and started giving away beautifully crafted (think 170ish prims) guitars that match their RL models it's probably been hard for other guitar makers (except those who make limited edition beauties) to compete.

Yes, but loss leaders are typically inexpensive, so the seller only has to sell one or two of the really expensive items to break even on dozens of loss leaders sold.

This person is not selling anything else more expensive on SLX for people to buy; nor is the $10 item some gimme cheap freebie guitar. It seems to be a single pack composed of his entire product range. To quote from the ad,



...said items featuring no sculpties or alpha textures, and some of the best prim and microprim work I've ever seen in SL -ever-.

Yes, this seems to be somewhat odd, and if I were to guess I'd say there's more behind this than somebody simply not going to be inworld anymore.

On the other hand, I don't know what the OP means when he says this sort of thing should be regulated. On what grounds would or should the Lindens disallow this ad, or others like it? I've heard of the notion of price caps on things like land, but...a minimum price requirement? How on earth would such be calculated for an item?

I have to say, I went on Xstreet after seeing this thread and bought one. It looks nice and is a great deal for what it is. Now, I also bought it to see if there is an underlying issue or deviant activity... I'll check it out when i get home and in world. For 10L's I couldn't say no.

Now to say that items like this will ruin it for everyone... that's just crazy talk. There are sales all the time at Walmart and such where they take a loss on 1 item to just get the person in the door. Once in, they look around and say "Hey. I really need this too! And I saved so much on Item X that i can afford to get this other thing!"

It's a basic sales plan.

Dollar stores never hurt Prada or Louis Vuitton RL.

JMO.

Maybe the answer is to implement a better results finder in SLX? I always appreciate sites that have a "price low to high" or "high to low" option for example. SLX's search/keyword/results apparatus is very awkward, which is why I do not shop SLX.

Ye i was "scared" initially, but after it changed anything (at least to me). I'm not sure about the reason, i think it is because i diversificate the products from the start, prolly partially because of the hud (and anims) and def about the customer support. Anyway i recognize that it had a certain impact on some vendors.
Hey they actually called me to ask to stop using the sentence "based on" .. eheh (it's fair i would say ).

Two different problems.

First, Linden Lab would be wise to police listings more, to make them more valuable to use. Making them more valuable means making more profit from them in the long-term (the more valuable a product, the more consumers are willing to pay for it, simple economics). Linden Lab, however, has never made a long-term financial decision. All Linden Lab sees is that policing listings requires a paying someone to do it. Linden Lab hates paying staff to do anything that isn't technical.

Your second concern though is flooding the market with cheap products. I don't see that as a problem. I see it as healthy capitalism.

The only problems that Linden Lab should be fixing are problems in confusion, difficultly-of-use, fraud, and illegality. Having some sort of mechanism for consumer information is vastly needed- there needs to be a way for a consumer to know what is being bought before buying it. But, when it comes to price-setting- Linden Lab needs to leave that alone and let the market fairly decide.

I agree with Marianne, though. I think Linden Lab's number one concern- for their own good- is all the blatant copyright and trademark infringement. They are just extending open invitations to be sued into oblivion. And now that infringement isn't hidden within the hard-to-find bowels of SL sims, now it's openly advertised on the world wide web for anyone to see.

I don't see a problem. I have bought several musical instruments and all are fun for a little while but you always want more. All I see is just one product and once I finish enjoying it I will go back to the other stores. Part of the fun is pulling out instruments to show and if everyone has the same thing that is a huge incentive to buy something different.

Who was it who said "Nobody goes there any more, it's too popular."

I fail to see even a ghost of a problem here.

If someone wants to sell their quality products cheaply, that's fine with me. And why blame XStreet for it? There's no sense in that: XStreet is merely the broker and does not establish prices.

Yogi Berra