Hey there everyone.

Many of you may have noticed that ER has been awfully quiet lately. That’s because I’ve been busy… really really busy! For those of you who don’t follow my blog, a lot of this will come as a bit of a surprise to you, so let me break down all the changes at Eclectic Randomness.

The New Look of ER

House Demo & Fishing

Structural Changes

I’ve massively remodeled the main store at Kloimar . The new store makes heavy use of MESH, so be sure to use a mesh capable viewer when you visit. If you can’t view mesh, the store at Healy still uses traditional prims and prim vendors. I’ve also redesigned my vendors to hopefully be more intuitive and easier to use, while at the same time allowing me to sell more products using fewer prims for vendors. I’ve also installed a “Demo Rezzer” area for the houses, which allows customers to examine the houses in person, without having to guess how my teleporters worked.

Group Freebies & Lucky Chair

Policy/Infrastructure changes

Giftcards- The ER Gift Cards are no longer being sold. All ER products are now listed on the SL Marketplace (with the exception of the eyes, coming soon). The Marketplace has a really nice “buy as gift” feature, and I encourage you all to use it. I realize that some of you prefer giftcards for the “act of giving a gift”, but the simple fact is that my new vendors wouldn’t allow people to redeem their giftcards even if I were selling them, so I’ve been forced to discontinue them. – If you still have any ER Gift Cards, they can be redeemed at the Healy location.

Newsletter/Group – The “Newsletter Mailing List” is not going to be actively promoted into the future. Instead, I’d like you all to consider joining the “Eclectic Randomness” group (there’s sign up boards in the shops at Kloimar and Kitzbuhel ). While I agree that “Groups” are an imperfect solution for making store announcements, they do come with a built-in recent notice history, and a very easy way to do things based on group tag.. like…

Group Freebies – Going forward, freebies will be offered to group members. Both Kloimar and Kitzbuhel feature Group Freebie vendors. Simply wear your group tag, and click the vendor, and you’ll receive the group freebie. Freebies will generally be available for 2 weeks, after which time they will move to…

Lucky Chair – ER now has Lucky Chairs! One in Kloimar and one in Kitzbuhel. Each day, a new item will be picked from the available pool of past freebies. For the moment, they’re loaded with the Holiday bears. That’s right.. missing some bears from your collection? Drop by Kloimar and Kitzbuhel each day to see if the freebie you’re after is available! Items will cycle out at approximately midnight(pacific) each day. But that’s not the only way to get freebies..

Go Fish! – ER now also hosts 7Seas fishing in a small pond just outside the store entrance. 7Seas players can sit and fish for the standard array of 7Seas collectible fish and crafting items. In addition, each time you catch an item, you’ll have a chance to win a random pull from the same freebie pool that the lucky chair uses! That’s right.. take your chances fishing, and you could win any item in the freebie pool.

Holiday Freebies – certain other freebies will probably remain publicly accessible. The christmas freebies for example, I’d still like to make available to everyone. I’ll probably deal similarly with any “ER Swag” and general public service freebies (like the Basic Female AO).

ER’s new, mesh-based Multivend vendors make it much easier to sell clothes and other wearables

Future Plans

I’ve always been a bit tight-lipped when it comes to “what am I planning?” Mostly because I so often miss my own deadlines. Over the last 2 months, I’ve had lots of great ideas for new items, and upgrades to older projects, but I’m really just one person, and there’s only so much I can do in a day. There are definitely new products coming, and I’ll be focusing on fetish items, clothing, and avatar accessories. The new vendors really open up the limitations that I had on selling latex clothing items, eyes, skins, etc.

The frivolous, fun stuff (jetpacks, landscaping, barbecues) is certainly fun to make, but truth be told, it just doesn’t sell that well. So when I develop items like that, if they’re reasonably simple, I’ll most likely be releasing those items as group freebies. There will still be items like that from time to time that I’ll release for sale… but my focus is going to be where most of you seem willing to put your money. The upside is, there will be more than just bears in the freebie system!

To Celebrate ER’s new Freebie system, I’d like to announce the first Group Freebie!

Relax and fish by the water, with the ER Fishing Pond

When it was decided to use 7Seas fishing as part of the new freebie plan, I realized I’d need a “fishing area” to make fishing fun.

This little pond is just 14 prims (with the chairs), and includes splash-able prim water and a sun-tracking environmental FX script that makes the noises of chirping birds, cicadas, crickets, etc. Depending on the time of day. 5 single-prim fishing chairs are included as well.

This freebie will be exclusively available to “Eclectic Randomness” group members for approximately 2 weeks, after which time it will be added to to the Lucky Chair/Fishing pool. To access the group freebie, simply visit our Kloimar or Kitzbuhel location (landmarks below) and click on the group freebie vendor. If you’re not yet a member of the ER update group, simply search for the “Eclectic Randomness” group, and join today

Check out our Locations Page for where to go!

•  Join the Eclectic Randomness update group: secondlife:///app/group/56d847d2-31c2-f2ee-d426-e3668d6ffba8/about
• Visit us on the Web: http://www.eclectic-randomness.com
• Subscribe to our RSS feed: http://www.eclectic-randomness.com/feed/
• Follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/WinterVentura