I had a dream...

... but it's a strange dream, I warn you!

The other night I dreamed of something strange. I was logging on a site which was an online store, it looked really big and powerful, like Eluts let's say, but it was owned by members of this site and all the things you could buy (clothes, eyes, and even dolls) were made by us.

This said, I won't say which dolls were or were not sold there, but it was really cool because you could go there to get infos on one of them and then see another artist's dolls, maybe not as well known. Marketing-wise, it looked great.

Of course, I already see some flaws in the system. But overall, wouldn't that be great? I think so.

I took the liberty to post it in the workshop because I think it might interest crafty people, but feel free to move... or else.

 

Of course, many things would be to consider, I aknowledge that.

I think yes, it should link to the artist. Let's say as a link on the product page, for a start, and also the orders should be sent to the right person. Before I ordered my Tiffee, I checked if I could get her somewhere else. But I believe those other stores don't cast them themselves, they send the orders to Souldoll, so it could work the same way.

On second thought, what I think could make it very interesting is the collaboration part. Let's say a fictional character, Georgette, makes heads. She's excellent at it and she decides to sell some under the name of Atelier Georgette. She opens a website on a free host, but nobody comes, and of course nobody orders. She joins the community and gets some visibility. But her customers would like to be able to purchase eyes with the heads. Unfortunately, when it comes to making eyes, Georgette has no clue! She checks the pages of the community and finds someone who's very good at making eyes and who agrees on making some for her. And maybe there's someone else, who's good at making bodies who will ask for a collaboration? And so on, and so forth? Why not? The possibilities are theorically endless.

Of course, every community needs to be based on respect. If every artist has access to adding and removing their items, it has to be done in a respectfull way, nobody would like to see their stuff removed by a newbie. But I believe if every person comes with a talent and joins efforts, the website itself could be fairly easy to build? I don't know, I know nothing about hosting or anything like that, I'm just guessing.

 

I'm not crazy about auction sites either. They're so easy to scam.

But both could be possible, so let's keep the suggestion.