Too Many Malls

Okay - I admit that I'm a vendor. One thing I notice is that there are too many malls (kind of like the real world!) Most of the occupants of these malls are chains (just like RL). I do not begrudge anyone from having a chain of stores, or even building a mall. I am just noticing that a lot of the stalls are empty, and I was able to get one that was very cheap per week because of that. I have heard people talk about zoning in these fora, and I am for a certain level of community control over such things. Short of joining a group that creates simulated RL environments (albeit void of avatars), how could that be done and still allow people to have the freedom (a key concept here in SL) to create what their heart desires?

Maybe we are doomed to a world of clutter and excessive commercialism, just like RL in the United States. I post this so that we can discuss this and maybe come up with some creative solutions without having to shatter the creative dreams of others.

Discuss, if you please . . .

Hi Alain.



As far as I can tell, in my brief experience here, the only ways to formalize "community control" are either through the consensus of your neighbors or by establishing a formal community (i.e., a group), deeding the land to the group, and then having some agreed mechanism for expelling a person from the group if they color outside the zoning regulations on which the group has agreed. Of course, they might then just go ahead and build the thing you didn't want them to build in the first place on the land they originally brought into the group, so you might want an exit clause whereby the land remained with the group, but the group was forced to buy out the expellee at market rates. And of course lots of bylaws.

I certainly think a zoning experiment wouldn't be a bad thing, and might even be interested in participating, especially since I seem to have such fine neighbors (for the most part). Buying out a neighboring club or Tringo game might test people's financial capacity, though.

Most of the malls I see in SL are clustered around the telehubs, not surprisingly. (Location, location, location.) What's surprising is that the Linden zone of control immediately around the telehubs is very small. Pretty much any time you tp to anyplace central or longstanding in the grid you're assaulted with big ugly builds, blazing colors, revolving banners, noise, lag and the ubiquitous 'for rent' signs. I doubt there's a mechanism to expand the Linden land around existing telehubs at this point, but it might be nice to see future telehubs given a bit more breathing room in future. Some of them you can hardly even walk out of. And I like to walk.

It would also be interesting to know which establishments actually sell more items than others and if telehub placement is the deciding factor. My guess is that good quality and word of mouth is what puts people over the top, and that most of the telehub malls are actually middling performers.

As to the 'for rent' signs, you should be heartened by them. They're an indication that malls have indeed grown past their sustainable level. Presumably, if you can't rent space you can't support your tier fees and you'll eventually sell out to someone who either wants to put up a small, self-sustaining shop, or someone who has another idea in mind. Of course, that depends on there being a critical mass of residents, and on the rest of the economic factors being in the right balance, but no one knows yet just what that critical mass is nor what the best indicators of economic balance are. The Lindens are clearly trying to figure these things out, but with the relatively spare economic and usage information they release, it's hard to get a good sense of what the situation really is.

I must agree with M. Spaight, in that the only real way to enforce zoning, is through owning all the land you want to control. The most feasible means for this is in group land, and the most successful groups are the discerning ones. The London sim was a prime example of what can happen when like minded people get together and pool their efforts and follow the rules of the group.

Malls have grown in SL. That´s a fact. Leads to a kind of inflation of attraction in my oppinion.
Nice example for this inflation is the mall (and lag) madness around the Zuni telehub.
Just go there and enjoy how 3 titanic malls collide around one Telehub LOL.
It´s not much joy to be honest with drawdistance down to minimum.
For my personal use...if I want to buy something, the least place u find me to fullfill my needs is a mall.
I just go to SL exchange.
So, how effecient are all these malls accumulated around a telehub in the end ?
Zoning would be an interesting approach. But right now it seems as far away as human colonisation of Mars with the current regulations.

Since I have started in real estate and mall business I have consistently done two things:

1. Shut down old malls in residential areas
2. Open up decently designed malls at telehub areas

If there is anything like zoning in SL, then it is that telehub area is commercial and remote areas are, well, lets say: mostly residential. Unless somebody makes bad business decision and builds mall at the end of world which happens sometimes, unfortunately.

I still agree that there are too many malls and markets overall. And most actually loose money and close once mall owner is no longer willing to subsidice the place.

The reason is that many people like to play mall owner. Simple as that. I would say at least half the malls that exist are there because mall owner enjoys playing mall owner. This means when owner gets bored those malls shut down. Then somebody else decide he/she wants play mall owner and opens new mall etc.

Those malls that are actually driven by real demand and not loosing money are few and between.

As for Zuni and similar locations: It is shoppers and retailers who vote with their money which mall should remain. If you want Pyramid Mall to stay you should go there to shop or to rent store. If you want the other places at Zuni stay or grow you take your money there *shrugs* The same applies to Ross where there is more than one mall/market in the area. Demand decides

As the creator of the infamous Rent-O-Matic (yes, I've been negged for it, several times ), I've followed the development with more interest than most.

The last few months has certainly saturated the world with malls. While I earlier jumped on every chance to get a mall spot for my products, I've now become quite picky. Im still at over 40 malls, but I don't think that number will go up much the next few months.

There is no doubt that many mall owners now have a hard time to fill up all their spots. compared to how it was just a couple of months ago. And I think it will get harder.

I think we'll see that the mall market matures over time, as merchants gets wiser about where to place their products. The non-profitable ones will close, and those that stays for a longer time will be the profitable ones. By profitable, I mean those that gives the merchants enough sales to justify the rent by a good margin.

My best malls are some of the private island malls, and it's hard to know which will work and which will not, so I still experiment there, since I have to be early to get the good spots. The hub malls are usually also good performers, IF i can get a visible spot. I now generally don't go for hub malls unless i can get an excellent placement, or I can make an exception if the rent is real cheap. Being hidden somewhere in a Megamall usually dont give me a profit.

As Anshe says, I highly doubt that malls far from hubs will stand a chance in the long run, except if they belong to a popular place with good visibility to the mall area. But that opens for smaller, more expensive malls.

I also believe that there will come a market for more specialized malls with niche products, as the number of products and creators within each niche increases. But that requires some good marketing skills from the mall owners and possibly from the merchants present there, since they won't have natural traffic coming from the hubs.

I'll just round up by saying that I make most of my money from sales coming from my own properties in world. I can put all my important keywords in the property description, and that counts for a lot of targeted customers from the Find button. I don't need many visitors before i get a sale, compared to the number random shoppers i need at a hub mall.

The best way to zone the land is for LL to prevent the transfering of Goods and payments between players outside of retail areas. In otherwords, the coding that exist for "Buying" Objects would only be available in selected areas.

The reasoning is sound, but being able to determine between Retail and Industrial might be an issue. For example, what is the difference between buying a Tshirt and Buying a Dice Roll at a Casino? Obviously you don't want Casinos taking up limited Retail space.


Maybe Zoning isn't the issue, but licensing. Players must buy either a single license to allow them to buy/sell goods or a multi-use license if they want to operate a Hotel, Mall Outlets, etc... Then LL can control the number of licenses, which in turn limit the number of malls and such. Maybe even setup the licenses in such a way that players can inter-exchange them on an outside market like GOM. Then the market can price those licenses based on supply and demand. LL could also charge a similar tiering fee for a license so they also make money on people.

I decided that I will add this feature for the larger stores (stand alone buildings) in most Centre Ville Network locations. If you have full stand alone store rented you can send me notecard with the following:

- Store name
- Description with keywords etc
- Texture/screenshot

and location of store(s). I will then add entry to the store listings so people can use FIND function and are guided to the proper area where your store is

The reason why there are so many malls is because they are needed. Advertising does not work well cause most don't read or use the sl website or forms. Exposer and location is key to getting your item out and purchased. Hense the importance of a telehub. In addtion a huge majority of SL players are social players who enjoy buying the creations of another. Its a cycle that is in SL as much as it is in RL the only difference is your av's feet will never get tired and you dont have to say things like does this come in size 7? The sky is the limit so most become shop-a-holics.

While I agree with what Anshe and Moonshine said so far, I do not like Alby suggestion about adding another cost for people wanting to have fun creating things and selling them.

Getting 'license value' on open market (with bidding) would make it really hard for new comers to sell their own stuff and fill SL with new and more original goods.

Even worse would be to maybe add to the current tier fees to own the rights to sell your creations... One of SL selling point is that creative people can come here, create stuff and own full rights to what they create and generate an in-game L$ income if that's what they want. For newbies it is already difficult to buy a good plot in high traffic areas because they start the game thinking they can do all of that by simply paying the monthly fee. Then they realise that to buy a good plot or rent in a nice place they need to BUY more Lindens injecting more real cash into their accounts...

I'm sure I'm not the only one that has already helped many newbies and heared the usual comments (usual to me as I heared them often) about how impossible was for them to afford a good piece of land going for 8/10 L$ per m2. And as they were reluctant to have to add more money into the game on top of the $9.95 per month fee.

It is ok to try and balance economy, malls quantity and placement etc... but making things simply more expensive it is not always the best way. Usually increasing costs simply cuts off the hands and wings from new comers and makes very little impact on veterans players with a fat linden bank balance.

Well just a quick thought for discussion sake

Nice, creative ideas, Alby. It's great to see people actually *thinking* around here. (And of course you realize that with an introductory sentence like that, I'm now going to go ahead and say why I don't think your ideas would work.)



This would actually kill Second Life, I think, though there's the germ of a possibly good idea or three in there. Firstly, we can't limit private transactions between avatars. That would seem to me to fly in the face of what SL is all about. That said, it might be possible to zone Residential areas in which you were not able to effect an exchange of goods for L$ between an avatar and an *object*, thus eliminating ghostlike malls in those areas. But I think this would throw land values so out of whack that the effects would be overwhelming. Just introducing the system would be well nigh impossible. Do you rezone the entire grid at once, leaving lots of people unhappy with where they bought their land and scrambling to swap for Retail or Residential plots? Or do you slowly introduce Residential and Retail zoning, a sim or two at a time -- creating much the same situation. (And, in both cases, giving the advantage to people who've already figured out how to make money in SL and don't need the help anyway.)

I have a feeling the best way to accomplish a similar step would be what I mentioned above, community boards, with good bylaws, that pool their land. This is probably also the solution to the player government question (grow it from the bottom up, as RL 'player' government originally began eons ago, rather than establishing it at one fell swoop), though that's a question for another thread.


Licenses: Don't work for New York's taxicab fleet or the NY Stock Exchange, won't work for SL. In both these RL cases, demand for the limited number of licenses is such that inflation has pushed their value sky-high and they are controlled by market forces that can already afford them. In the case of seats on the stock exchange it's the big investment banks and brokerages (which has led to the NYSE's rapidly progressing obsolescence in the face of electronic trading). In the case of taxi licenses (called medallions) it's medallion brokerages which soak the drivers until they can hardly support themselves, despite the fact that medallion prices are well over $200,000 each.

If Residents want more control over their environment, they're going to have to have the courage to take it.

(Oops, slipped Hokuto, with whom I agree.)

I had 3 malls but only have one left at the Ross telehub. Its true people are not selling at malls like they once were. It seems less people are interested in making quality products. There is a definate gap in between the quality of products for a few well established businesses and the rest of the croud. The main reason for me keeping my mall is not to try to earn alot in rent (not gonna happen)- but to have a great place to sell my products in a shopping setting. Dont have to pay rent and get the premium mall spots.

DNA

I have to disagree with this. I think alot of people are interested in making quality products but are dissinterested in renting a bland looking stall for 400lindens a week (yes, that was the going rate when I looked into it a while back). Instead, you can buy a small plot and design your own store and give it some personality.

Or L$50 a week at mine.

Hehehehe... Nobody loves my ideas cause they lead to wealth... ' Unless your poor. Heh... Then you just get poorer..

Maybe its the fault of Advertising and the growing vastness of SL.. Here is the obviously problem that I see.. You buy a plot and put up your store front on maybe 1024/m2 of land. Since SL has millions of meters of land throughout hundreds of Sims, the chance of anybody just stumbling into your store is few and far between.

There is no vast radio/television network, so you can't get the word out about your store to generate the foot traffic to make money. As such, the only other option left to most is to replicate their stores in as many locations as possible so the percentage of foottraffic is increased.

There is a resolution to the problem, but somebody's toes will get smashed in the process. Do we zone land and force retailers into certain areas? Do we license retailing so that the supply of licenses keeps down the number of retail outlets? Do we keep up business as usual so that porn shops get rooted next to your quiet home?

There is a solution, but at what expense?

Have to agree with Moonshine that a good description in your land property re. your shop and products is already half the rent. I am very picky when I go shopping....And god gave us the Find button.
I dislike malls cause the performance goes down when I get trapped in them LOL
But that´s just a personal preference. I cannot speak for others.

I agree with Anshe that this inflation sooner or later will solve itself thru demand and supply.
Albeit I wonder how the Zuni example stays effecient enough? ...the traffic there is comparatively low. Plush Shops as of 7:40AM PST has 189 traffic, Anshe´s Pyramid mall has 400 (The Giga´s sandbox in Sami has 348 btw. and my hideout in SL has 207! ROFL...hey I should open a mall there...LOL).
But seriously I´m very thankful for this thread and the discussion cause I´d like to learn more about the dynamics of malls in SL and where it goes to in the future. Just out of curiosity.

Ingrid, there are people who build huge custom stores at telehubs on my market/mall property. As for the "bland" stalls, they go around 100 L$ per week, some place as low as 50 L$ per week

As for sales slow down because of websites: I doubt. I think most people still shop in world for same reason they hold parties in world instead of #irc chat room: because it simply is more fun and more immersive. This is also good thing! When you shop in world you support Second Life infrastructure. When you go to website to shop you support some website. Thus if people would stop shop in world and all go to website this would not help SL grow. Fortunately I believe website rather attract many people who were not big shopper before, growing overall commerce rather than take away much from normal shopping.

So, malls and markets will always be there and there will be plenty But I am optimistic that quality of places and architecture keeps improving

I have several low dwell locations that fluctuate between 500 and 1000 dwell since months and retailers have sales there. Shopping does not create much dwell, especially spontaneous shopping near telehubs. People don't stay two hours like at Bingo, but usually move on after they buy something. Even the big main malls/markets like Nuba, Centre Ville or some big shopping island sims drop to around 2000 dwell on days without events.

Having said this: I am hiring event hosts for Pyramid Mall stage. Can apply here

personally selling in malls has never worked well, many of the fountains i sell are big and a small image on a vender doesn't really show them off very well. after opening my own shop sales have gone way up, and i have found that people are much more likely to come to me at my store than they were likely to find one of my venders in a big mall. does that mean that putting venders in malls across SL wont help my sales? not necessarily, but i dont think that after paying rent it would be worthwhile.


as a shopper i feel the same way, if i know what i want ill do a search in find and go to a store owned by the merchant rather than a mall. i hate spending 5 minutes standing around as textures load in a mall. i would much rather go to a website and buy there.


jester

the underlying problem is that people think they can own a mall and not manage the place. build a few shops and people will automatically rent them and shop in them. serious business considerations, such as location and roi, are never added to the mix. people do this with web stores as well. we're just not forced to look at them if we don't browse that link.



yes if all those people that complained about all those malls would close their rentals and start shopping only in specialty stores and nice attractive places, we wouldn't have this problem at all.



this is simply not true. We have FIND. Ads there are highly effective if you have a good graphic and use proper keywords in your land name and description. newbies browse the telehub ad boards as well. i do wish that people would use smaller graphics for them though so the poor soul doesn't get so quickly bored waiting for rendering.

it's a mistake for most businesses to scatter all over the map. It's far less expensive and more productive to maintain a single large site and using the builtin features to let people know where and what it is.

There is one rental spot at Clunn telehub, specifically for selling fountains. You might want check that out (teleport to Clunn, then TOUCH that rento that is located right at the end of the little allee of palm trees on south side of hub)

very nice fountains by the way. I think I will pay u a visit soon! or just buy on SL exchange...LOL that´s sooooo relaxing.

i forgot to reply to the zoning statements.

buy the sim and zone it yourself. if you can't afford it, form a group to buy the sim and zone it yourselves.

Let's say, if they would stop shopping in ugly place and go to nice place instead. Some of malls I run look way better than some specialty stores I have seen around Second Life. There are the beautiful and the ugly in both categories