Where would you rather do your shopping?

Where would you rather do your shopping, in a shop selling only one designers items or a big mall with many different vendors?

Vale

Hee hee, well I kept it unanimous so far - I think a shop with a single creator has much more personal appeal. I'm drawn by the individuals flair and creativity much like RL. It's cosier.

A mall just blinds me with choice ... and lag??

I'm not a big fan of malls, and I tend to avoid them whenever possible for one simple reason: lag.

Okay, not all malls are laggy, it's true. But without a mall owner who understands what does and does not generate lag, who tightly controls content in the mall to avoid lag--an owner who actively manages the mall, in other words--lag is frequently the result.

Then again, there are lag free malls that are so badly laid out that I have to wander around looking for the store I'm trying to shop in. This was a problem for me last night when I went looking for hair. I had a specific place in mind and checked the designer's profile to TP to her store. I landed in the middle of a shopping district with no indication of where the store I was looking for might be located, and this shopping area was HUGE--sprawling across two sims (as far as I could tell, I didn't explore the whole thing). As beautiful as this place was (and it was very nicely done and laid out), after 15 minutes it still hadn't finished rezzing (and was still actively downloading). All the prims were there. All the textures were there. The buildings looked great. But the signs were unreadable, the content in the stores was blurry, and no where was there a map or any other form of direction to the store I was looking for. (And the landmark for the store in the mall directed me back to the main landing point. I couldn't even find the store in the vacinity of that landing point because, again, nothing had rezzed fully.) So I wandered around for 15 minutes in hopes of finding something that looked like it might sell hair--never found it. So I left and went to a standalone shop of one of this designer's competitors.

One of the basic rules of building is to keep the textures small, and to use as few of them as possible. More textures means more downloads, and with concurrency crossing 35000 regularly, network lag is becoming a greater consideration than in the past. The problem with malls (and in particular, the type of mall I visited last night) is that in striving for realism, every building gets slapped with a different texture to create that "downtown" feeling. Add to that the sheer volume of textures necessary for a store to advertise and display its products and the situation can rapidly get out of hand. The mall I visited last night looked great--but I had neither the time, nor the patience, to wait around for it to rez into useability.

Kam

I'm with Bilbo on this one, a store dedicated to a single designer IMO is neater, more structured and more av-friendly.

Less lag - generally.

Depends.... mostly I would go for a shop with things from one designer... but there are exceptions... Bare Rose as example (I blattery assume that Bare Rose has more designers when I look at the huge amount of clothes and that all is not made by Jane Dion... or am I wrong here?)...

I love Bare Rose...


Morwen.

As a shop owner myself I can only confirm the results of this poll so far match my sales exactly (with a couple of exceptions). Malls are good for exposure, but don't plan to do more than break even.

The only malls which work well in there own right as those that are product themed with a public feature that fits the theme. Malls next to clubs never work, neither to malls with camping chairs. (if someone is cheating the traffic numbers, the only thing they have is a high traffic number)

I prefer designers shops, if I browse a mall its just that, I will usually look up the creator / home store before buying.

I run my furniture store from a mall at the moment.....

.... and I must admit, I don't think I'm going to continue the rent after this week.

95% (if not more) of my sales come through SLB and SLE. My store maybe makes about 10% of the lindens needed to rent it each week (Rent is quite high I guess because I need need many prims to try and show of at least one item of each type of furniture/lighting). So if I don't have a store in a mall in world and just stick to SLB and SLE then I will make a lot more profit to pump back in to making new items.

Eventually I would like to buy my own land to run my store from, but the problem with furniture and lighting is that if I want to show all my stock and lay it out nicely then I need lots of prims available, so ideally I would want 8092sqm for plenty of space to grow the business. But thats a fair whack of money to put down just buy land and then to try and make enough to cover the $40 tier it would cost each month (although if I have space to lay out all the furniture and display it properly then I dare say I would certainly get close to making enough for the tier).

It seems daft at the moment though... paying rent for a store in a mall which doesn't pay for itself, when I could earn more by not having one!

Anyway.... sorry.. got slightly off topic...

but if/when I can afford it I would much rather my own shop than rent in a mall. Mainly because I would truly feel to be giving back and creating something for SL....

and yes I prefer to shop in stores dedicated to one seller.

In the beginnig I hit all the malls. But now I have a handful of favorite designers.Once ina while I'l still go to a mall, but malls are a pain, for reasons mentioned above.

I prefer the single designer approach, frankly. If I want a mall like experience without the lag, I'd go to SLB or SLX, where at least the images rezz quickly!

Malls drive me crazy... even smaller ones. There's never a really good list of what stores are present, what type of wares they sell, and where in the mall they're located.
Then again, I do 99% of my shopping by TPing directly to the shop. I almost never just enter a mall looking to browse. If I do happen to shop at a store in a mall, I will look for a LM to the main store and TP there to avoid lag.

I have been finding this topic very interesting.
Could you please gice examples of the malls that work well?
i would like to visit these themed malls and see what makes them special.

Can any product share with us which malls have actually been successful for them?

Which malls are in the highest demand for thier spaces? why is this?


Cool thread whoever started it

Chalk me up as agreeing with all of the above -- plus I find that I get irretrievably lost in most of these malls, so that even if should happen to see something that I like, if I comparison shop prior to purchase (which I feel is a good practice) I may never be able to find the item again!

I much prefer a stand-alone, 4-walls-and-some-merchandise kind of shop.

I checked the single store, but my actual preference is a small mall, where I have some choice in merchandise, but where the lag and texture overload doesn't kill me. If I am just shopping in general, I'll choose a small to medium sized mall over a huge one. What is ideal for me is a cluster of smaller stores, where I can see a decent selection from each designer, but can still shop for a variety of products.

In my own experience, for my clothing and furniture sales, my mall locations do better than the store that I tried running for three months. I suppose if a designer gets a large enough following, then a single-designer store will work out better. Some of my favorite shopping places are dedicated stores. But for a newer merchant or someone with a small product line, malls are more cost-effective. The overhead on running a store that just has my stuff in it is killing me, and I am closing that store at the end of this month, after three months of losing money on it.

As a merchant, my best sales come from the textures I sell at TRU, which essentially is a huge mall dedicated to texture sales by various artists, though in practice it is a single store. That is also where I have the widest range of products for sale - far more than I have of any non-texture items. But as a customer, I usually avoid such large places because they tend to be laggy and the huge variety of vendor textures take forever to rez.

I like smaller malls as well. Even the 'one store - one merchant' option is lost on me if the place is simply too big. It's hard to define of course, but basically I feel some places leave me spoiled for choice -- there are too many products, too many options, the vendor devices have too many pages of products... Without a decent search engine or directory I might poke around at a few things before I get bored or frustrated.

Like needing to buy a half dozen small nails to hang a picture... do I go to the corner ma and pa hardware store in the strip mall, or do I go to the home depot? The former might cost me a dollar more, but the latter will take an extra 15 or 20 minutes just to find the blasted nails amongst the acres and acres of stuff. The SL equivalent of course being dozens and dozens of identical grey posters and vendor devices because nothing has rezzed / textured. Then when it finaly does come into focus, you have to page through 20 things on the vendor to find what you want. There is literally nothing I want bad enough in SL that I would willingly wait through all that.

On the other hand, a smaller mall with perhaps a wider selection of 'categories', even if there's a poorer selection of choices within those 'categories'.. I'm more likely to spend my L$ there because I'm more likely to buy not just what I was looking for, but anything else that catches my eye as interesting.

-Atashi

p.s. the corner ma and pa hardware store had to close Enough people would rather save a few cents at the home depot it seems.

I can't even do big shops like Bare Rose...simply too much to see - and I get overwhelmed. I am like that in RL though too - can't go bargain hunting because aesthetically, I just can't do it. Weird.

Just about verything in the main BareRose store is designed by June Dion; she's an incredibly prolific designer. (She's not the only one; look at the incredible number of creations by Simone Stern or Six Kennedy, to name two examples.) But when BareRose moved to its own sim, it did open a small mall of stores that feature things made by other designers, some of whom also happen to be BareRose employees.

Often times the fact that people like a sellers main store can be hard for new and upcoming sellers to get their product 'out there.' With the way the traffic (sry, camping) system is today you just dont see a lot of Main stores if you are searching for something specific (but I do like just typing in Main to see what I can find).

I like the smaller malls...however, and I see this in my OWN small mall *shakes head* the sad thing is that you end up with the same few sellers over and over which can get boring. There are certain sellers that are in just about every single mall you go to. Why would you go to another mall that has the same thing? I hope to be finding new renters that are not as widely exposed to help them get a good space. My own mall isnt big in store numbers, but is big in space as its spread out, and is around my own main store. Not sure if its going to get left that way or not, Im an obnoxious always changing things kinda sim owner lol

I do not at all understand how clubs with huge traffic (and high vender space prices) make it so their sellers make money. When I have ever gone to one of said sims it was so laggy I couldnt even walk TO the club or store let alone buy anything. They have to be making money some how, they keep renting and renting so, must just be my lag.

Single designer shops for me...you named it already...one reason is the lag but most times you waste to much time with searching what you are looking for and then you dont like it and dont buy something...or you gave up early because you are tired of searching.
Id rather tele around to 5 single designer shops than to one huge mall.

Very interesting points Atashi. There's an opportunity for a further poll, fixed posters or vending machines? No, I shall kill that in the bud and stick to topic lol. Methinks I'll start a poll though
I revisited an old favourite last night which used to be laid out as separate stalls in a landscaped PI. I was quite taken aback and confused for a time thinking I'd gone to the wrong place but the owner has flattened the place and built a single, multi-story building. It's still in development I think and has a lot of vacant display space but I'm wondering just what a lagmill it may become when more populated by goods and customers

Two things I really dislike about malls is the stall layout, and the way most of them are basically anonymous rentals where some merchant plopped down some vendors and crossed his/her fingers. Customers have to find whatever they're looking for through rows and rows of stalls that are cramped and difficult to navigate.

When I wear my small business owner hat, these sorts of places really annoy me as well. I would pay a premium to rent in a mall that was well laid out, organized coherently, and that had better a marketing support system to help draw customers in - and I don't mean camping chairs.

Can't remember how I voted on this one now LOL
Comments on direction are very good. I tp-ed in from the search more than once to find a plethora of stalls around the place with nothing to guide me. On the other hand, a browse through a mall if I'm not after something specific is cool .. window shopping if you like.