Second Life as a design outlet
February 27th, 2008
A number of graphic designers have successfully converted their expertise into Second Life businesses. Everything made in Second Life relies on textures… pictures made in an image program like Photoshop… to not only make it look like what the creator wants it to be but to give it depth and reality. So an orb becomes a basketball and an undershirt becomes a tattoo.
Because of the ease of entry (software-Gimp is free, upload fees-10L each, 400L for $1, and time), Second Life has a thriving home-grown fashion market. There are people making a living just making virtual doll-clothes and accessories.
Real world fashion businesses are taking notice of the money and interest being spent by this circle of fans and are coming into Second Life to create a presence for advertising purposes- and are not doing well.
The most memorable of these is none other than Armani. When Armani announced that they were building an in world store there was great deal of anticipation. They hired a good, experienced builder and got a nice store but apparently left the creation of their items (only 10) to their regular designers who presumably didn’t have the time to really learn the built-in Second Life tools. The result is a too small collection that the very people Armani was hoping to attract took one look at and said I can get twice the quality at a third of the price.
They aren’t the only ones though. A famous athletic shoe retailer created a “build your own” factory that doesn’t see much use because the resulting shoes take up too much computer and server resources to render.
American Apparel has a store as well. They at least have more than 10 items and what they have is ok but when you’re options include a leather trench coat and being a dalek, very plain colored t-shirts and khakis don’t have much appeal. It’s also a well-documented effect that you have to release new items regularly to keep traffic (and sales) up, which American Apparel has never done.
Doing it Right
There have been successful transitions. Most notable is a canadian couture designer named Nyla who has a set of shops where she has taken her real creations and remade them in Second Life. Because she took the time to learn the tools and the customer base her products are excellent quality and well-priced while still remaining in her style.
The japanese also have good ideas about in-world advertising. Treasure hunts for freebies are always popular and the word of mouth affect is very strong in Second Life.
Now that IBM has given a demonstration at the National Retail Federation on using Second Life for prototyping, there may be more mainstream fashion companies coming into Second Life but independents who can devote the time to learning the environment will still have the advantage for quite a while.
Help on learning to use the Second Life templates, scripting language and building blocks can be found on the forums. Marketing guidance can be found here.
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 11:31 am and is filed under Business, Design.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Stumble it!
