Does SecondLife "Retail" actually work

I oftentimes see a lot of "reseller" type objects claiming how easy it is to set up your own shop reselling other people's product for a cut. I know it works in real life, see Walmart for an example, but with virtual land so available, and products costing nothing to recreate, does the "Retail" side of SecondLife succeed? Or rather, if I were to hypothetically drop a bunch of reseller vendors on a 512sq plot, and buy some advertising space, would people actually buy things there?

I can't image this being successful in any way, but I thought I would ask and see what y'all say.

A lot of the kind of things you are seeing are Business In A Box type things. These are all complete scams. The only people buying these are people that don't realize they can find it for free somewhere else, or people that think they can plop them down on a 512 and get others to buy. (and the occasional person that realizes they can get it for free but doesn't feel like searching)

There are some legitimate split profit vendors that allow you to sell other people's products for part of the profits, but with those you do not get a full permission copy of the object being sold. Those would work best if you had a store or area that was similarly themed with the objects being sold.

99% of the reason reselling at retail works in the real world is because of transportation. Not everyone can drive to the factory to buy that Tickle Me Elmo

In a world with instantaneous transport to any place for goods and people, there's no need to bring the goods to the consumer. Therefore the same production and distribution chain will never work in SL.

UK Couture is one type of split commision vendor type thing i can think of that seems to work...but even thats getting a bit flooded now.

Awesome designs also offers a vendor with split commision...

If its a good brand...it might work...im not a big fan of it though and if i land anywhere with BBIAB items...im out of there fast.

Well it doesn't work as great as RL anyway, but I still think there's something to be said for having a store plus 200 vendors spread across SL, compareed to just one store, that only gets visited by direct advertising. Also having you product next to competing products can work wellin themed locations providing your quality can compete or you can offer slightly different products.

I was thinking of a way to do that. This might work. Or not.

1. Create or find a scripted vendor that could split the profit between you and the creator.

2. Give that vendor to the creator so they could fill it with their product. This is to avoid the need for them to give you a copy/transfer product.

3. Allow them to set that vendor in your store via group. Do this with several other creators.

4. Profit!


But seriously you could try opening a store that only sells one type of product like... red evening gowns. You'd then approach different creators to allow selling their red evening gowns at your store using the method above. You would end up with a unique store in SL that actually has choice of different creators and styles of red evening gowns. Who knows? Maybe this would create a whole new subset of stores in SL.

I'd drive to the factory to buy the Punch Me Repeatedly in the Face Elmo, though.

The easy way never works. But serious retail seems to work fine.

The big "department stores" in-world do this--some with splitting vendors, and some with less automated means of sharing revenue with their teams of designers.

But to make it work, the products really pretty much *must* be exclusive to one individual retailer (however many outlets that retailer opens). In contrast, if the retailer is buying full perms items with the hopes of reselling them at a profit: not a chance. Those items are freebies or, at best, freebies waiting to happen.

QFT

Virtually all the malls in SL are one example of how retail CAN work in SL. Independent merchants renting space in a larger retail site, benefitting from the walk-through traffic and advertising there. Each selling their unique brand of content.

While there are several vendor systems like APEZ and JEVN that can allow one merchant to profit share with another person, these are usually situations where the content creator gets some extra exposure and gives a cut to a specific reseller who provides advertising and sales space.

But this is only profitable when it is a fairly limited offer, or where there is a natural synergy between the things that reseller already offers, and the other person's goods. For example, a large furniture store reselling a unique line of furnishings from a smaller content creator, that offers similar quality in a niche that the main store doesn't offer - Like French antiques, rather then a generic style.

When thousands of people are potentially reselling the same stuff, no one makes much in the way of sales. It gets too diluted, and the perceived value, even if it is high-quality goods and not freebies, goes down the toilet.

I'm an affiliate reseller for many of the "big names" among reseller businesses...and right now, it's slow going (but that's true for everyone).

Two of my sellers are very expensive to buy into and maintain, because you have to pay money up front. If you're not in a high traffic area, it's simply not cost effective.

Other sellers, however, give you their vendors and you receive a percentage of the sale. Some are as low as 15%, some are as high as 50%.

I own my own sim, so I can afford to operate at a loss - anything I get from my businesses just helps me pay for the sim.

Be careful of any affiliate program you may get into. Some have glutted the market with resellers, and you find the product on any corner - but some unscrupled resellers charge more than the main store.

Actually this is how I sell my avatars in-world. I don't know about #4. You'd have to ask the store owner about that. It certainly is convenient.

The SL permissions system doesn't really accommodate value-added resellers or distributors. Yes, you can do it, but it requires the manufacturer to completely trust the distributer/reseller, both ethically and technically.

There would be a lot more SL commerce if it were easier for manufacturers to take advantage of distributors/resellers, without needing so much trust.

There's a JIRA entry that addresses this, but JIRA seems down at the moment. I'll post the entry number when I can.

In the not-so-forseeable future, there will be models where you can build a widget, set a 'distribution price' on it. Anyone will be able to include this widget in their build, and on each sale, you'll get your distribution price. If that subsequent build also has a distribution price set, then builders of bigger things will be able to play the same trick, and both you and your customer get paid when the bigger item is sold. Obviously, the price of an object with contents with distribution prices can't be less than the cost of all the goods it contains -- but it can be the same, so folks can offer their services for free.

For example, you make a great pillow. Someone builds it into a bed. Someone else builds it into a house. Someone down the line builds the house into a residential sim. At each point, each builder gets paid the price they set (per owner or per copy, as they choose, though mixing models would complicate things). Yes, there are tricky technical details to work out.

This kind of system would encourage people to focus on what they excel at, and use the efforts of others, knowing exactly what the resulting costs per item would be. A "buyout" option could even be set, so that a builder could pay one lump sum allowing him to use any number of the bought thing in his builds.

Whether this ever happens in SL is questionable, but I'm sure it will happen in the future of virtual worlds with user-created content. I'm dreaming, but I'm confident that this dream will eventually come true. Probably within 10 years. If I were to set up a competitor to SL, it would be high on my list of ways to make the quality inworld content grow even faster than it does in SL.

This is probably the best model that SL currently allows, requiring a minimum of trust on the part of the creator (and of course, random testing).

Closest I have seen something I wish was more marketed to consumer who doesn't want to go to laggy sim to shop is Metamart vendor and SLexchange their is probably more out there.
There are reseller vendors like Apez systems but the issue with it is it's not very clear that it is Apez vendor when stumbling on it.
I thought one of my friend's products had been stolen, but he told me it was Apez vendor.
There is limited way that I know of as far as reselling programs that I know of.
I hate personally dealing with business of content creating, but love creating I wish there was better way to release products then what is available currently.
For those of us who want to shop in privacy of our homes or land we can shop via metamart hud or on web and have items delivered as far for goods.
Unfortunately I wish it work that way with finding friends, services and connections in regards to discussions or information about personal experiences with products, social activities or support groups or information about places one might visit.
There is some stuff out there but no real universal all connect place to find information,etc

One reason to have retail is that the content creator isn't necessarily an expert at marketing. Another reason is that the content creator is not necessarily interested in doing things like managing stores and employees.

The reason that retail fails in Second Life is because there is absolutely no mechanism available to enforce contracts between residents. Linden Lab expressly does not get involved in resident disputes. Suing is possible in theory but not a reasonable alternative in practice (too much time and expense to be worthwhile).

I'm seriously considering doing more work as a "wholesaler" rather than "retailer" mainly because I love to create but not so much on the marketing. (Case in point - I've been fixin-to-get-ready-to-get-started on a little shop for ages but just seem to never get around to it because I'm busy taking classes to learn how to make more items, researching, creating classes, etc.)

I've recently teamed up with a collaborator and thus far it is working beautifully. My collaboration partner purchases one of my items and sets it in her store. She has MUCH better business acumen and marketing skills than I, not to mention a large store and established clientele. When my items sells, she contacts me for another, etc.

It allows us both to concentrate on our strengths and interests instead of us both trying to "do it all."

If you're in the market for another "collaborator", let me know. I'd be very much interested.

Good for you Czari, its hard to find the right group or partner that will encourage you.
My friend for example she really talented and our shop gave her lot of exposure, new clients even though we couldn't afford to continue doing the shop any more.
Me I make things for guys and texture related arts, very few people bought things even the things we worked on together.
Yet she sold more hand drawn dresses then I did shirts,etc.
It easy to get discouraged when you're just the artist or content maker but with no real business sense.

I have an affiliate vendor system that allows others to sell my products and split the profits. It works very well for all parties involved, I think. I get extra exposure and my affiliates can make money with very little effort and no risk. Win-win.

I'm not sure that just dropping a bunch of affiliate vendors in an empty shop and hoping for the best would be a good business model, but I know for a fact that it is possible to make money using affiliate vendors.

Bree's idea of a themed store with products from many creators would probably be a better idea. Or you could look for affiliate products that compliment the items that you already sell. Or create an interesting build that uses some of the affiliate products and include a space to sell the products that you used. Get a bit creative and put some effort into the marketing and I think you could make a decent profit.

It's not easy, you need to work at it. Some people use affiliate vendors or wholesale products to pad out their stores whilst they develop their own line of items.

Some people are better at marketing than they are at desiging, there's no reason why someone who is astute can't make a profit, but remember that there will be plenty of other people believing they are equally as astute.

However the biggest problem with resale and affiliate items comes in terms of customer support, someone buys something from you but there's an issue with the item. The retailer isn't the creator, so you direct the customer to the creator, who do you think the customer will purchase from next time?

Would love to chat with you HoneyBear and see what we could work out