LapGirl Remixed

*gulp* - has it really been more than a month since I updated this thing? Oops.

So... what have I been up to? Well, I totally re-built LapGirl Boutique, due to the fact that one of my neighbours parked a butt-ugly barrage of advertising hoardings right outside my front door. (nice? not!). I guess she did me a favour really - it's been more than a year since my last rebuild, and things have moved on a little in terms of SL store design since then. As such, the new store goes for a more realistic look than the previous version. Well... realistic to a point; I've got lots of funky themed areas in there...

The front cash desk. My new pet theory is that the more you make your store look like a real store - in terms of furnishings, ambiance, structure, etc - the more likely you are to tap into people's real-life conditioning to want to buy something when they find themselves in an environment like that. Of course, I've got no way to really prove this great piece of thinking unless I build a control copy of this store somewhere else, sans cash desk.... but nevertheless, it's a great cod-psychology excuse when people ask me why I wasted so many prims on a cash register.

(oh, yeah... about that cash register... Iris recently pointed out that the display panel makes it look like I stole it from a gas station. Oops. That'll teach me to examine the goods more closely next time...)

Nutterfly's "Ink Fairy" tattoo range now has its own store-within-a-store. I had a lot of fun theming this area. And before you ask... that's a tattoo gun on the counter top, not a sex toy!!

Are we the only Lingerie store with a built-in dungeon?

(the vampire hot-tub was one of the first things I ever built in SL. It's got a pretty neat particle effect if you hop onto the "virgin" pose-ball. Try it!)

Test-drive area, complete with stripper pole.

Go on.

You know you want to.

Now... this is interesting (pay attention!) - I'm field testing my new "micro auction" system in this corner. It's simple - just pay the relevant box to make a bid. The box holds onto your payment until either (a) somebody else makes a higher bid (in which case you instantly get your money back),  or (b) you win! ... in which case you get the contents of the box. Auctions recycle every few hours - the idea is to have a constant stream of short, low-price "micro auctions". So far, it's proving really popular :)

Expect to see retail version of this system in the Lucky Chair store very soon....