Is it time to coin the term "freebism"?

I don't know if any of you have seen this around lately, the thought of freebies being harmful for SL economics has spread out a lot, and is now something nearly everyone talks about.
You can find it on various blogs by content creators and fashion bloggers: many are disappointed by the new trend of expecting freebies and expecting them to be 'nice'.

I have followed the threads a bit, and thought I would share my opinion as a designer.

I was VERY lucky with all those who came to my shops for freebies... cause I cannot recall anyone being rude about something being 1L$ instead of 0L$, nor I had anyone pointing out seams were not perfect or prims did not move properly.
This is maybe because, even those freebies I have had for ages (which are actually items I created before starting my business!) are things I made with care. Obviously they are not the quality of my latest creations, but they are free, and people have always appreciated them, and I consider it something nice to give out samples of my very first creative steps.

Then I have started giving out for free some items I did dedicate long hours/days to.
The most famous example is my Jacqueline gown in Tobacco... that gown I had released after 2 weeks of work on the dress, when I thought textures were ok but was still figuring out the prim skirt.
I got a load of "Thank you"s from customers, got bloggers interested, got a huge number of teleports to my main store.
And a week or so later, when I had finally finished the prim part -and could release the gown in its full price and many colours- I still got a great satisfaction from it.
People would buy the freebie and then some other colour to show appreciation, or maybe just cause they liked the second colour better.
That freebie has been my only VERY HIGH (lol, hey, at least in my lil universe) QUALITY freebie stable in my store since January... and I still sell many copies of it every day!

After that, since I liked the idea, I released a couple of 'work-in-progress' dresses that were for free in my store for a limited time, and I often make 1 more colour of my new release to hand out for 0L$ (always for a limited time).
This is just a little courtesy I do to show the quality of the design in a non-demo way (although I have demos available for almost all my items...).

What has been happening for a few months, though, is that people got so used to receiving freebies that they no longer show appreciation for them, nor do they accept the gift as it is.
I have heard a lot of designers have been down because people would "expect" the freebies to be FREE (as 0L$), or complain cause the freebie was not "good enough".
This means designers keep spending hours/days/weeks in creating something to give out as a gift, and people are not even thankful.

Why do we do that, then?
The way I release freebies is harmless to me, anyways... cause it doesn't cost TOO MUCH to make 1 more colour when I have the range ready, and I don't need to pay for the cloth I use.
But I think that if it ever happened to me to be treated badly by someone who just picked up something I hand out as a gift in my shop, then "Hey, let's stop it here!".

Now that "It’s unsustainable for business owners if there are thousands of high quality freebies on the grid, as it leads to a culture where a large number of users refuse to buy anything and live off freebies. If content creators aren’t making any money, then there’s no incentive to release freebies." (from Prad Prathivi's blog), then maybe the time has come to start talking about "freebism", as this phenomenon seems a bit too negative to be called "freebie culture".

Clio

Embrace gown: NEW colours!

Here they are!
As I promised, not the ordinary colours I am used to.
Apart from the black and white, I went totally crazy, overwhelmed by RL stuff and on the verge of exploding.
Antique, Memoires and Shock are my way of saying 'Help! I wanna get out of here!' and 'I still remember the good old times...'.
If you want to read more about what brought me to design the Embrace line, have a peep at my past post about it.

These gowns are as always available at my main store, and to shoot the pictures I wore a Crys skin by PXL Creations.

And, let me announce to you all an event that will be starting tomorrow. I had to organise some event to attract people to a cool new SIM, inspired by Sicily, Italy.
And as I was thinking about it, I came up with the idea for a gift hunt!
So, let me introduce to you my very first "Cookie Quest" on Nuova Sicilia!

The event will start tomorrow italian morning. You can visit the place and go cookie-hunting here!

With love,
Clio

Almost back from a BUSY time:)

Hello my dears,
as most of you might have noticed, Clio has been absent and hideous for a while.
I will be back soon, my RL has been hell for many many weeks(acually for a couple months, we could say), and I had no time to design nor to be on SL as much as I used to.

I am now at RL work, one of the last hyper-busy days for now. Then back home for a little vacation till next week, so maybe I will still be hard to get in touch with, but hopefully a bit less stressed :) And I will try and get back on designing between the rest of this week and next week.

Just to let you all know: the Passions of Black Swan event came to an end on the last day of February, and the dresses I had made (Embrace) are now available at my main store, as usual.

Then, right now there's a super expo running, for another couple weeks, the Glamour Expo. I was lucky enough to get a spot at this awesome showcase, and have a little shop there with some of my most recent creations displayed.

Also, a shocking news is: I will be trying to work out some basic reselling program, using Hippo technologies to let resellers sell my products at a percentage and get directly the product they want.
This is something I will still keep limited to a few people (ie: you wil not see Clio sold just anywhere), and anyways not yet up, as I only have 1 actual reseller at the moment, and at her place I am not using the easy Hippo system, but had to place the boxes myself.
For anyone who might be interested, leave me an IM inworld:)

Last but not least, let me leave you with some little forecast of what you will be seeing at Clio 'soon':
I am going to make new colours for the Embrace, to make the range a bit wider, and among these I can already tell you: GET READY FOR CRAZY! I am working with really out-of-ordinary colours lol.
Then, time allowing, I want to obviously release some males clothes. And people, trust me, learning the whole new set of shades and cuts for guys' clothing is not something I can come up with at my first try:)
AAAnd, whenever I get some very free time I want to make a new line that will definitely please many on SL... hehe, won't tell you more, cause this idea is very far from happening, but I want to make you curious ;)

Ok, well... I should get back to RL work...

Sorry for being so away all this time, I will make up for it as soon as I can!
With love,
Clio