Closing thoughts on HG&P Expo

Visit Organica this week at the Home, Garden and Patio Expo!

Organica at the Home, Garden and Patio Expo. The show closed May 10.

It’s been a busy for me this week.  On top of keeping up with work stuff and taking a few days to do RL errands and the like, keeping an eye on the Home, Garden and Patio Expo has been an interesting and educational experience.
 

There have been comments here and there about lack of publicity and a slow expo overall.  I can’t say I disagree – I really didn’t see much advertising for the event until at least a couple days in, and would never have joined had i not seen one very small listing about a month back on the SLU forums.  Things seemed rather low key for the whole period between registration and show, so I really have to wonder how much attention promotions got.  I don’t mean to slam the team that organized the event, however, beyond a few forum postings and a little plurking here and there, I saw very little chatter about the event outside of the few home & garden blogs I keep an eye on.

Merchants did not recieve any official promo material beforehand to put in their stores or post to their blogs. Posters carrying landmarks for the event were sent out a couple days after the event began. If there were any banner ads taken out on Xstreet SL  or SLU, i never saw them.  I’m told someone did eventually see a link to the event on the tip of the day dialogue – never actually saw that myself, unfortunately. It is also unclear to me whether there was ever a central blog of any sort announcing changes, new merchants, or whatever – not essential, but would have been nice, since so many people seem to take to SL-related RSS feeds so well.

While there were many live music and DJed events held at the four corners of the Expo sims and they certainly seemed to draw in traffic, it didn’t seem like a lot of that traffic stayed around to circulate around the show.  This is the sort of thing I refer to when I say traffic doesn’t necessarily do a lot if you’re relying on a single traffic draw to transfer interest to other things – IE: Traffic doesn’t necessarily equate to success.  That said, ultimately I’m sure the goal of the All-Stars RFL group was to generate donations to RFL – and ultimately if judged by donations at the Live Music stage alone, I’m sure they did well.

***

Overall, the sims were laid out reasonably and the sims were, for the most part, not too laggy (for me at least).  Surprising, considering builds and scripts were the biggest complaints at last year’s Hair Expo.  In any case, I saw a decent variety of content – prefab, furniture and landscape content were all fairly well represented, though surprisingly to me, there seemed to be a larger contingent of content makers I was not familiar with.  Kind of the point, really, but i was surprised not to see contenders like Trompe D’Eoile, Maximum Minimum, Melino Style etc.  

Instead what I noticed was that there is an active creator community centered around lower prim, more economical solutions, tailored for landowners with limited space and prim alottment.  Quality varied considerably.  Sculpted solutions were of course rampant throughout the four sims, however it was surprising to find a number of overly simplistic furniture solutions that I can recall seeing (and even myself making at some point) many years ago. 

In this respect, I found (and have often found) that the home, garden & patio market has always been significantly less competitive than other markets, such as the hair, clothing and jewellry markets.  While it’s true that there’s likely less demand for these items since many Residents choose to adorn their avatars before even thinking about owning land, I think it’s still very important for makers of home, garden and patio content to be a little more competitive and strive towards higher standards.  This would serve to improve demand for items in their market overall. As SL continues to grow, it will be abundantly more important for content creators to recognize what customers are looking for and carve a niche for themselves, becoming the best at what they do.

***

As an individual merchant, I had a good experience.  Things weren’t *crazy*, but Organica did reasonably well and saw a fair jump in sales this week.  Late last week, merchants were given an updated map for their assigned lots, and that sorta set me in a tailspin about how to make my design work a bit better for the space.  After some consternation, I was able to fix things and package the whole shabang Saturday night, dropping in vendors late night Sunday.  I found the busiest day to be the first, subsequent days wavering somewhat, but I still saw traffic each day.

I was able to make back my registration fee and a bit besides.  L$6,700 were raised through the RFL item vendors, and the silent auction donation for landscaping I last saw was bidded up to L$18,100 (*woot*).  I really look forward to connecting with the winning bidder and getting things rolling for their landscaping project.

In any case, I was glad to be there, regardless of the fact that things were a bit slower than Expos for other markets.  It was cool to see new and old visitors drop by and provide feedback, and I think I would certainly join in next year given the chance.  I would just hope promotions for future events would be a bit more active.

 

HG&P Expo booth open, Silent Auction info, old product updates

 

Visit Organica this week at the Home, Garden and Patio Expo!
Visit Organica this week at the Home, Garden and Patio Expo!

Everything is set up and fixed – and as of 5AM SLT this morning, the Home Garden &Patio Expo is officially open!

Visit Organica’s booth at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Iridium/67/71/61 , and explore the whole 4 sim exhibition, spanning Iridium, Platinum, Rhodium, and Palladium sims.

As part of the expo, I’ve released the following product that will remain exclusive to the Expo for its duration, then be moved to the main store when the Expo is completed.

I’ve also made available one certificate for 3hrs of landscape design and implimentation as a silent auction prize.  It includes three sketch layouts of the land to be developed, terraforming, as well as mod/copy editions of all Organica materials used in the project.  The service may be used by the winning bidder or gifted to an individual of their choosing, however said individual must be able to bestow building priveleges on the parcel of land in order for the design to be installed.  The offer is valued at $75USD, so bid wisely and generously and you could still come out on top with a great landscaping deal!  You can bid on the silent auction, all proceeds going to RFL, here:  http://slurl.com/secondlife/Iridium/248/157/60

tsukubai-vendor-sml
Japanese zen wash basin

Finally, I have one last tidbit that is unrelated to the HG&P Expo, though the changes have already been proliferated to the vendors there;

I’m beginning a series of updates to some older products so that they are a bit less primmy.  So far, I’ve updated the Ficus 1, and Dogwoods 1&2.  I will send out updates to all existing owners of these trees this week, once I can compile a proper list to send out to.  Additionally, look out for more landscaping content and trees shortly!

Home, Garden and Patio Expo

This weekend, amidst a bunch of activities afk, I’ll be setting up a build at the HG&P Expo, which will be running from May 4th thru May 10th, 2009.  The show features 4 sims full of prefab, furniture, landscaping, and more, with charity items collecting donations for Relay for Life.  There will be a number of silent auction items as well as ongoing classes all week for those who are interested. More info to come.

For those who’d like to catch up with what Organica is doing at the Expo, I will be located in the south-west corner of the Iridium sim.  There isn’t much there just yet, but hopefully I’ll be ready in time for the opening on Monday.  More info on new releases to come very soon!