Tuesday, February 20, 2007

The Fat Tuesday Wish List for all Hair Designers.

Maybe it is something about the florist screwing up my Valentine’s Day by not delivering my damn roses and then trying to charge the hubby for them or maybe it is having to pay for a $1000 car repair but it got me in a pissy mood. The pissy mood got me sounding off with Laynie Link about little pet peeves that I have had since starting this blog. I came up with a list of things I wish that all designers did. This is not to say that all designers do these things and, in fact, I don’t think this list applies to all shops either but call it my Fat Tuesday Wish List for Hair Designers.

1. Have demos for all styles in the shop. There is nothing more annoying them seeing a style you like, having no idea how it will look on you, and there is no demo to try.

2. Put an identifier in hair demos. People do not always have the money at the time they try on the demo and want to come back to that style when they can afford it. If the demo is only called “braids” then the potential buyer has no clue what shop that demo came from. Good idea would be to include a landmark in the demo box. I cannot tell you how many styles at the Hair Affair had no landmarks in them.

3. Please put your shop in your profile picks. If you have no identifier with your demo and the buyer has to search for the creator’s name it would be nice if the shop was listed in the picks for a quick teleport.

4. Put landmarks in all things: demos, hair, freebies, specials, everything.

5. Any "catches" or “special conditions” need to be revealed in a notecard with the demo like “this style really has fans attached to it but the demo doesn’t show that”, “you need to resize your head if you cannot adjust hair properly”, or “you will quack like a duck if you wear the yellow texture”.

6. If you say you have a freebie, then it should cost L$0 aka free. If it costs L$1 then this is no longer free and should be called something else like dollarbie.

7. And most important, for God’s sake, if you make a dollarbie or freebie hairstyle make sure that the quality reflects what you sell in your shop. This is how newbies will be judging if they are going to be repeat customers when they have real money so do not blow this opportunity to make a first impression.


From here on all L$1 styles will be called dollarbies. :)

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I *love* dollarbie! And I agree .. I understand *why* some designers charge $1, but it isn't FREE which makes it disappointing when you point newbies to a shop. Great post!!

Anonymous said...

Noooo no landmarks everywhere... my poor inventory.....I spend hours on deleting all excessive landmarks... Instead... put a picture of each hairstyle (not for every colour.. just the designer's fave) in the folders and put the name and coordinates on there.. (that should enable all of us to find the shoppes), and give us the possibility to check on the hairstyle... If you own more than a reasonable amount of hair... just from the cute names you won't remember what it looks like... at least silly me doesn't. For the rest.. great suggestions... keep up the good work :-)
Another thing that would make things earier for the clients, especially those nbot handy in adjusting prims... is to include a notecard with the main sizes of the model head.. not just head size, but for instance also the slope or the roundness of the skull. Way easier to adjust that instead of juggling the prims.

Teagan Blackthorne said...

Katicus, nothing I hated more as a new player then to go to a shop that advertised a freebie only to find out it was a dollarbie when I got there.

Grazia, with the landmarks, if I know the shop already I discard the landmark as soon as a receive it but when I did the post on the Hair Affair some booths had no indication of any kind who they were and where their shop was. A few friends of mine helped me to play detective to find them. The pic is a great idea. I find that Gurl 6 gives this. It is very helpful.

Tigerlily Koi said...

I have to say, it bugs me to no end when freebies are not actually free! I swore I'd never do that. It just bugs me to death.

We throw landmarks in everything, and pictures too. Cause yeah, we have 5 billion landmarks, but we can get places when search is broken. ;) I'm a huge fan of pictures in things. I adore designers who add a picture of their outfit, or shoes, or whatever. I can look at the picture/ad before I put it on to see if that's what I'm actually looking for. And with an inventory of over 25k items now, I love, love, love pictures in my folders.

Teagan Blackthorne said...

Tigerlily, yours was my first hair because it was freebie that was free. When someone asks me I send them your way. Congratz on the new island.

Kalia Meiklejohn said...

$1L demos are okay, until you want to try all the demos from a store you just found and end up spending 50L just to decide which $200L hairstyles you'll buy, dropping a couple k on those...it really irks me!

Tigerlily Koi said...

You know, when I was a noob I didn't have the 1L to spend on a demo. Maybe I'm just cheap, but I really didn't have it. So to have to buy demos and keep trying things till I decided what I liked, there was just no way I could afford to do that. Besides, how much fun is it to go in and pick up a free demo and try them all on and play dress up!

We've got some new FREE newbie hair coming with our island opening. So we'll have more choices for the new players that are actually 0L. :)

Teagan, thanks for the congrats! We're super excited. We're doing something really extra special for our group too, cause we love you guys!

Teagan Blackthorne said...

Well, I was surprised when I found that little extra style at Free Dove.

Anonymous said...

Mkay, I have a gripe. Yes I know this post is old, but DARN it this ticks me off.
You spend your 1L on a demo you put it on, and find out that it's this bright green atrocity with no texture, just DEMO printed all over the hair.
Well... okay, now I know how I look if I wanted the word DEMO printed all over my head, but I still have NO idea what the hair style is going to look like if I purchase it. I mean part of what a demo is suppose to do is show you how the texture looks!
Surely... SURELY there has to be a better way to do this. Mkay... I feel better now.
/end rant.