The Stardoll Stores

Hello!

This is somewhat my own little rant in some way or another on the starplaza. I personally love vintage fashion! My stardoll medoll may not always express that but outside the virtual world I wear that style as often as I can. I've always been somewhat of a Decades fan, the whole style and air of the place excites me; I love it! I have always wanted to create a new medoll and style her only in this sort of clothing (although I never have due to the fact, I would have to pay for superstar all over again..) Another issue is that this store hardly ever gets in any new merchandise and when it does it looks like this:

The *new* decades items are circled. The coat is decades too but an original item

These items really are not my cup of tea. It's been ages since there were any new clothes in Decades.

Why I bring this up is because of the fact that this store is often neglected while other stores like Bizou and Stardoll have page after page of new items. Let’s also not forget about Fudge, do you remember the last time it had an update? I don't even think I do, even though I've been a proud stardoll patron for years. These are not the only two stores that are often forgotten when new items are added Tingeling, Voile, Evil Panda and Folk hardly see the addition of new items. What stores does this leave? Not many, I can tell you that. 4 to be exact; Stardoll, Bonjour Bisou, Pretty N'Love and Rio seem to be the stores constantly being favoured by the stardoll staff.

 Now, I do understand each store represents and sells a certain, let's say genre of clothing but easily some of the new clothing in Bonjour Bizou for example could easily be sold in stores such as Decade and Folk or any of the other forgotten stores .It's ridiculous the ratio of pages in these stores. Stardoll contains 10, Bonjour Bizou has whopping 16, Rio 12 and Pretty N'Love has 9.Out of these a good 1 or 2 page are new items (within a month or two) Now compare this to the other stores Fudge 5, Decades has 3 pages, Voile 3 as well, Evil Panda 6, Tingeling 5 and lastly Folk has the oh so popular amount of 3 pages. Out of these pages I can only name an average of 5 or 6 new items on the first page.

I personally believe stardoll should try and even out the distribution of clothing to the different stores, mainly to represent the likes of each individual on the site. You may be a member who loves to dress up in a "rocker" sort of style meaning you would typically relate on Evil Panda, Fudge and Fallen Angel for your source of clothing. With few clothes being added to these stores you may become bored with the site and could very well leave. Stardoll would be losing their business not to mention the fact that over 60 or 70 percent of the clothing in these stores are Superstar only items. Stardoll really should think towards pleasing everyone, which is another one of its many problems. They tend to do things to please the majority of the people on the site and the elite members such as superstars and royalty (I am both myself, but royalty was because of how long I have been on stardoll and the combination of my superstar package)

 Let’s face it, Stardoll is not a fun place to be when there are no clothes you like, or there are no clothes you can even buy. With my Item of the Week posts I know how frustrating it can be to create outfits using all non superstar items and I tend to forget that being a superstar member who can virtually buy anything. Stardoll needs to work on appealing to all its members not only by updating these forgotten stores for those who enjoy those styles, but also add more items for non superstars. I will admit they are getting better with the starcoin priced items then they were with the old system (the one with the stars beside superstar items) they now have substantially more items then they used to but it is still not enough to keep everyone happy. You've heard it a thousand times about how people complain about the non superstar membership and even several of the entries here for our contest talk of this inequality between those who pay and those who do not.

Stardoll has many a fault with their system aside from these points I make and I personally would like the old Stardoll back, when it was about dressing up and having fun not a big popularity contest based on looks and status.

I would love to hear your own opinions on the starplaza and other issues around Stardoll, so why not leave them in the comment below. I would love to know you are reading the posts and more than glad to write back to you.

Just a reminder to those who have not posted their entries for this week please get to it ASAP as eliminations per usual will take place on Sunday. Good luck to entrants.

Ciana