Elika's back.

Yep, she's baaaaack with hair stuffs. The question is...can she take back the mindshare and customers she lost (mostly to Truth, Analog Dog, and Damselfly) by being away/shut down for so long? We'll see. Personally, I think she'll get back some customers but not be as dominant as she was in the old days.

Here's the gist, new textures, more modern primwork. There are fairly nice browns...but....the reds need more work. She simply doesn't have a dark enough red to replace the old ETD Mahogany, the color I based my entire look around.

The good things:

Color numbers: This could let her add new colors, say she could do a dark brown with red highlights and simply call it 10RH. She could do colors inbetween colors and call it say 9.5. It also helps the customer, knowing a 5 is darker than a 1. Pop quiz, which is darker...sienna or chocolate. :-)

The prices: L$200 for 5 colors. Brilliant, a fair good price at the sweet spot in pricing. Most sales of stuffs in SL are of items L$200 or below. More hair makers should adopt the pricing.

The Bad:

The textures...welllllll....she could use more colors, and the reds could use more work I think, or some darker chocolatey reds. A la Clawtooth Hot Chocolate or Truth Blood. The browns seem a touch mousey and faded and not as vibrant and rich as I expected them to be, but she does have a color that could replace the old ETD Chestnut.

The Branding: Elika had a perfectly good brand...ETD. It was simple, it was easy to remember and referenced her name, Elikapeka Tiramisu Designs. It was also fast to find with an inventory search. Why she went with "[e]" and Elikatira is beyond me. Everyone is just going to call it ETD anyway, and slap her new hair in their ETD folder. Never rebrand unless you absolutely have to! (I was opposed to Dazzle rebranding as Last Call too! The name Dazzle had cachet and flair!) And if you do, the new name should be snappier and easier to remember. Frankly...IMHO she should just go back to using ETD.

That said, it's Elika hair, at good prices, and you really can't go wrong with it. She's also going to be doing other stuffs like shoes again, that'll be good. I can't tell if it's Willow modelling the hair in the displays, but she doesn't call the Willow Packs, Willow Packs anymore. :-(

SLURL to ETD Main Store...I mean Elikatira

UPDATED: The Quad sims, aka Ginny, Starley, Elika, Canimal.

UPDATED: They're baaaaaack. With this enigmatic phrase: "it was something we simply had to do." Again, IMHO, it wasn't. Except for new content, the businesses run themselves for the most part. Need to take a break, fine, but there's no need to shut down the entire sim for a short break. And frankly RL businesses couldn't get away with shutting down without some good reason stated publicly.


Original Post:

The quad sims are closed, no reason given, no hints on how long, nothing except for a "respect our decision" Well I can respect their decision to do so while still being of the mindset to say.....It's a dumb decision.

Yes, that's right, it's dumb, and not necessary at all.

Suppose I was a designer, and I needed to take a break for some RL reason, why with automated payments for sims and the like I wouldn't have to shut down at all. Just say, hey, going on vacation no customer service for two weeks. I wouldn't even have to do that if I did one thing that designers in SL do not do enough of:

Delegate.

Who needs to shut down if one has trusted managers/assistants that can handle customer requests. In particular, doesn't Dazzle have "design associates" now?

As an example, I could give my bosses at Linden Lifestyles, one of whom is still on hiatus.(Come back, Sabrina!) During their hiatus, did they shut down their sims? Nope, Did they shut down their businesses? Nope. I could log into SL and be in a fully in business Chez Petite in Calla, in two shakes of a lambs tail.

And if the shutdown is for a branding/image/store rebuild, then why shut down totally at all. Invite your customers to kibbitz and perhaps lend advice during the build ie. "No Ginny, don't drop the Dazzle branding, yes I know how you want to change the image built you've built up brand equity and people are still going to call your store Dazzle anyway."

And one final thing, when you shut down, you're giving free money to your competitors. Remember Ginny's hiatus when she shut down Dazzle? Remember all those new designers that showed up and got blogged? It would have been harder for those people to break into the SL fashion market if Ginny had still been putting out hordes of stuffage. Her absence created opportunity.

Now, I doubt that all four of the Quad sim folks are having RL issues at the same time. Odds are they're going to do some kind of joint "Ginny, Starley, Elika, Cani 2.0" thing, god forbid. IMHO personal opinion it was a bad idea to move those four busy (and often laggy) sims right next to each other anyway It could be possible that one is having RL issues an dthe others are closed in solidarity. That would be nice for a few hours or a day, but perhaps not very business savvy for days on end.

Boots

I love boots! I've been wanting lots of boots in RL, but SL boots are cheaper:

ETD's ankle boots, the perfect high heeled ankle boot. I can buy similar ones in RL!



Tesla's Analise suede calf boot. I'm not a big fan of calf boots, but I like these with their medium conish heel and slight platform. (the hard thing about calf boots is they're too long for pants but too short for most skirts)



The Oh What a Neat Boutique's 80's style slouch boots, very Molly Ringwald Brat Pack era.



Adam n Eve's heeled riding boot, very Eddie Bauer dressy casual



And my favorite boots in SL that took me forever to find, the enkythings Pinson, high heeled pointy toed sleek, but classy boot. I have boots very similar to these in RL