Chic at Ebbe's Place

December retail in SL.

Snow and Santa; Advent and Naughty 'n Nice bags. 

When something shifts, I want to figure out why. Postulations  and suppositions come into play and sometimes the actual answer is found. Sometimes not.

Retail in SL is different this holiday season. While the big name venues go on as before with the top notch folks, the second tier events have taken a hit. Some of those second tier folks (Chic waves her hand here) have apparently decided not to partake. There can be plenty of reasons. Mine is simply that I am overbooked in about five areas in SL and still want to keep a hand in the other worlds I visit and live in.

Annual retail celebrations are just as large as before -- some larger. But the quality of the offerings has diminished markedly.  This isn't just one event, this is several -- and the month is just beginning. Some very new and or not too talented folks have entered the game.

While everyone needs to start somewhere, a venue full of  2006 goods is not going to do well -- at least not with the folks that have been around awhile. For the most part, they are knowledgeable shoppers and do know the difference.

I can't imagine the folks in the themed holiday areas are going to do well. A few well known retailers simply put out the items they were required to (not an unheard of plan, just not the norm with "these" sellers) leaving the rest of their stores in minimalist decoration.  

Advent is always fun and while my fashion blog briefly announced a plan to showcase the best gifts each day, a midnight run as the season began was enough to sound the alarm. Not going to work. There ARE a handful of places giving out very nice gifts, just not enough to make cohesive posts. Workloads diminishing is an OK thing, but it is a little worrisome too.  The story is the same, plenty of content -- not enough quality.

Note December 3rd: The good news is that a lot of folks were just LATE, not absent. And there are still some with inactive calendars :D, but not as dire as it seemed. 



AT THE SAME TIME -- and also very interesting -- the Arcade yardsale items are flying off the racks. I was up early on December 1, headed over to my favorite sale yard (and got a tip from someone about another) and purchased the items I was looking for at the regular machine price. There were folks at the sales, but it wasn't super crowded.

An early evening trip found BOTH of the areas almost empty of goods. One is very large, the other more boutique. Folks were shopping ... 

Just in different places :D.