Owning a Store

I'm thinking about opening a store, and I had a few questions. I'm really new to the idea, so I need to get some things covered before I actually buy the area, etc.

1. How do you make the little titles to put above your store? Do you have to buy some sort of a template to put in the texture you want? Where might I be able to buy one?

2. I have purchased some vendors to display my clothes, but I'm not really sure how to put in the clothes and set a price for them, can anyone right a short tutorial? I've read some stuff but I still don't understand.

3. Any other tips/information would be happily accepted.

If you can answer any of these, please reply, because I'm in desperate need of help!

Thanks!
-Elle

1: I'm not sure what you mean by little titles, could you elaborate?

2: That varies from vendor to vendor, most come with instructions.. The clothes may have to be boxed, and usually there is a notecard to edit to put in the details..

3: Make sure you list in find.. Having an open air shop is a big advantage, not crashing into walls, but with P2P teleporting this issue may go away.. I'd advise renting land in a commercial sim..

1. Like you know, those banners with thee store names on them on the top of the store?

1.Titles on your store? Well you can just make a photoshop texture of it and upload it. Make a rectangular prim and stick your texture in it (fix the tiling to make the texture fit). Well that's how I did mine.

2.Most vendors will have a notecard inside it that would explain how to use them. The simplest vendors I've ever used (and still do) not to mention easier to customize belong to Hiro Pendragon. Not to mention they're free.

3. You need land to own your own store and have it listed. If you don't own land, renting a stall in the malls is another good alternative.

Good luck on your business!

They're probably just textures created by the shop owner, uploaded, and put onto a prim in world, and stretched to the appropriate size

how do you do that?

What were you planning to sell?

How do I know what? And what ARE you planning to sell?

hey there,

1. do you have paintshop pro or Photoshop?


Okies,

To make the title thing your talking about, you need to have an "Art program"

Gimp, Paintshop, Photoshop or any other art that at least saves in JPG so you can upload it to the game. ( i suggest you get photoshop or paintshop, its a lil hard but you get used to it, and its saves "Transparencies" and alpha hehe)

alright, To upload something into SL costs L$10
File-Upload- and select what you like.

Then, Just make a prim, and drop that texture into it.

I suggest you take some building classes, and try to get a nice art program so you can do better things!

Good luck! and have some fun!

You can also use online banner makes like.. 3D Text Maker

Oh and about the land,

I suggest you start to "REnt" lands in commercial sims.

Good things:
1. You dont have to buy the land
2. Its easier and you can just leave if you dont want it anymore.
3. you can pay by RL money or SL money.
4. You can control radio, movie and you can name the property and sell your stuff there.

Bad Things:
1. They have some rules
2. Its not your land (paying for something that is not yours)


Ppl that i rent commercial sims from:

* Hiro Queso
* Anshe Chung

There might be others, but those are the ones that i rent from, might give them a call and maybe they can help you out.

WOW! Cool banner maker! Thanks, Zapoteth!

coco

Lol no problem, just searched google for it, didn't even test it lol, it seems pretty cool

I'm making a women's clothing store, and yes, I own adobe photoshop, and I'm great at using it, but I'm just curious how to make sign templates on photoshop? Btw, thanks for all the help, I appreciate it.

that is a cool one, i made one see my signature.. LOL

I just made a store about a week ago...my first one!! Im selling guys shirts, they're pretty basic so Im just doing it for practice. Dont really care if any sell, although it would be nice : ) but yea, I figure it took me around $1,000 to get everything setup.

33 shirts @ $10 per upload = $330
33 pictures of the shirts @ $10 per upload = $330
Rent per month = $180
Classified Listing = $250

I used Paint Shop Pro for the shirts. And then went old school and used Paint for my store signs saved it, opened it in Paint Shop, saved it as a TGA, and then uploaded into SL.

I also found a whole freebee box of vendors at Oddfellow Mall Telea (213, 197) they're kinda hard to get the hang of filling with your products but they all come with instructions and there's a whole bunch of different ones...basic, complex, low prim.

Owning a store can be a lot of fun and a lot of work & expense to start up. Sounds like your very new I would suggest same as wuvme rent a few places to start out before investing in buying land for a store and make sure you enjoy it.

How do you make a sign for your store? A sign is just a flat texture (no alpha layers or anything required) that you place on one side of a flat square prim. At least, that's your basic store sign... it can get more complicated from there.

To make a very basic sign... just open a new window in photoshop (or your graphics program of choice) and then use the text editor to type the name of your store. At the most basic, let's just say you type black letters in a times new roman script on a white background. Once you have the text set to the size you like and positioned where you want it, you flatten the image (collapse all the layers) and save it... I'd reccomend as a targa image (.tga) with 24 channels (32 channels is for when you're saving with an alpha layer). But you could save it as a .jpg or .bmp or several other file types too, if you really wanted to. I forget which other ones the game will actually upload.

Now, if you want your sign to be more interesting, you can use various filters or layer options to do such things as drop shadows, produce an outer glow around the letters, etc. You can also pick more interesting fonts. Finally, you can include any image that you like that you'd want to be part of your store sign. For my store, I found a picture that I thought would work, I cropped it and put my store name to one side in a brush script that I liked, and then did an outer glow on the text so that the lettering wasn't lost against the picture background... then I flattened it, saved it as a targa file, uploaded the texture into SL, and slapped it on the side of a flat retangular prim. Instant store sign! It's not as fancy or as well-crafted or as well-thought-out as other store signs, but for now it's what I got, and it looks okay. Someday my friend Jennifer will actually draw the picture I requested of her, and then I'll make a new and better and more original store sign. ^_^

Really though, you can get just about as complicated as you'd like in designing your own store sign, just as long as the results please you and do what you want the sign to do.

Making a sign seems simple to me, so I'm not actually sure if I understand what about it is confusing you, or if I'm explaining it in a way that makes sense.

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More really simple obvious stuff that I didn't figure out right away:

Any box you create on the ground can be turned into a single-item vendor, just by clicking the "for sale" box in edit and setting a price. This allows someone to click on the box or object and purchase whatever it is you're selling for the price you've set.

There are three options below this: Original, Copy, and Contents.

Copy: This is the default setting. It means when a person clicks on your object to purchase they will get an exact copy of the object placed in their inventory. This is good if you're selling the box itself as an actual item -- for example, the box is a flat rectangle with a texture on one side and is meant to be a picture you place on your wall at home. But if you're selling just an article or articles of clothing, people will have to remove the box from their inventory, place it on the ground, then edit it to remove what's in it.

Content: This means On the other hand, if you click "content" then someone who clicks on your object to purchase will get everything in the box placed in a new folder in their inventory, but will not get the box itself. I love it when sellers use this option. ^_^

Original: I assume this means that only that copy of the box/item is for sale, and when someone buys it, it goes into their inventory and nothing is left behind.


Anyway the above is nice for a simple vendor, but if you have a lot of items to sell it doesn't make sense to place each one in a seperate vendor.

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A few more things to consider when deciding what vendors to use: how many prims does it use, and how much lag does it create?

For example, vendors that have buttons to click on or smaller windows with previews of preceeding and upcoming items are nice... but these vendors are at least 3 prims each, sometimes more depending on how they're built. If you don't have a lot of prim space to waste, this might be a problem. If you're renting a place then there is usually a prim limit, which is usually pretty low -- 20 to 25 prims or so is pretty typical for a small store or stall. In a 20 prim space you can put up 6 vendors that take up 3 prims each -- or you can place 20 vendors that take one prim each. ^_^ There's one free vendor out there (I found it at the Furnation Skymall) that has buttons on the side of the box that give you all sorts of stats on your sales and such when you click on it -- it was very cool and was billed as "low lag" which was absolutely true -- but the vendor box was 9 prims!

I really like Hiro's free vendors and I still use the 1-prim vendors in my own store, but each of these has a script that listens for your typed instructions at all times... meaning they can cause lag. That's something to consider as well. I just haven't found a better freebie 1-prim vendor just yet. I use Moaku's freebie vendor in the area outside of The Forest store. It's also a very nice low-lag vendor, easy to set up, but it's several prims too.

Anyway hope that helps!

if u need any help setting up your venders or anything feel free to im me in world id be happy to help u out that goes to anyone who needs help good luck

Opton 5

No, but I'm thinking about it.

Actually, when you buy an object with Original checked, it stays where it is - just the owner changes. It does not go into your inventory. Useful when you've built a house for someone on their land, and you want them to take ownership of it.

There's been a few times I've bought furniture on display in a store, and then couldn't find it in my inventory. Went back later, found I owned the display model!

oh definetly, I'd never buy land.

Thanks Jalia Oz, it helped a lot. I was wondering, do you buy prims from stores..?

Yes I do have a store and it's a lot of fun if you like people and creating. Creating is important - but you really need to be a good people person. Customer Service is a very important part in owning a store in SL just as it is in RL. Good luck though. I hope you do well!

Oh one more thing, if anyone has an extra rectangular prim, I'd love one, since i really don't know where to get one. And if you want me to pay, then we can set a price!