I’ve received a letter from one of my regular readers with a heartfelt plea:
Dear Prim Perfect,
I love the blog, love the magazine, and appreciate the guidance you provide for my sl shopping. I’ve become rather frustrated by furniture designers who sell their items through ads instead of floor models, but who forget to add a prim count to the ad. I won’t buy a piece, even if I love it, if I can’t find out the prim count. If you feel it is appropriate to speak of this from the Prim Perfect platform, could you remind designers how important this information is to buyers?
Signed,
The Prim Floozy (aka Kghia Gherardi)
I’m more than happy to do this, Kghia. No matter how much we all love high-end pieces (our prim porn), most of us are limited in the number of prims we can use and have to be careful with our prim budgets. I myself trimmed back on office furniture so that I could have a lovely Sue Stonebender (of Serendipity Studios) clock in my office (38 prims, and worth every one of them). But I knew I had to keep a close watch on other pieces as a result.
But storeholders don’t always help us here – especially newbies, who need guidance most of all. I’ve been to a store that boasted of its quality low prim design, and saw a rather nice bed that was forty prims. Now, I’m sorry, but to me 40 prims is a mid-range bed. I’m looking at 20 prims and below for a low prim bed – and I’m expecting something rather nice for the upper end of that outlay too.
Sculpties, we are promised, are going to make a huge difference – but that’s going to take some time to filter through the system. And I believe that sculpties will, in fact, just ensure that we allow indulge in a little more prim porn and acquire the pieces that we fall in love with, and STILL budget on the rest.
But it would be a huge help if, as Kghia says, designers did display the prim counts. The trade through sites like SL-Boutique and SL-Exchange is significant can can form a meaty part of any designer’s sales. But those sales will take a nasty knock if the designer ISN’T displaying the prim count.
And you know what I’m going to do? Well, first I’m going to make sure that the prim counts for the magazines are there on SL-Boutique and SL-Exchange (she says sheepishly). But then I’m going to ask you all to join in this Prim Perfect Campaign to persuade designers to display prim counts.
What should you do?
1) Follow Kghia’s example and DON’T buy where the prim count isn’t shown! (that’s the stick)
2) IM the designer or send them a notecard, pointing out that you LOVE their furniture, but won’t consider buying buy unless they display the prim count (that’s the carrot).
And write to the blog to share your thoughts on this – and the advantages and disadvantages of buying through websites as opposed to in-world.
Hmmmm … I feel another article coming on.
Prim Perfect 