Welcome to the the Rules for Notices page.
You may have come here for general information, or you may have been directed here if you got a cautionary notecard saying that one of your notices violated a Fashion Consolidated rule. It’s ok, mistakes do happen. Just try to take a breath before you post and double check to make sure you have all of your elements in that notecard in the future.
There are four main rules to FashCon:
Rule No.1: no more than 1 notice per week
Rule No 2: only new releases (i.e., not just sales, hunts, and no repeated content)
Rule No.3: only retail fashion and av-related items
Rule No.4: always send pictures
These rules are summarise on this page in other languages.
Check below for more detail about each rule.
Rule Number 1: Only post once per week
Fashion Consolidated only allows posting your new releases once a week. This gives each designer in the group a turn.
Some designers have trouble remembering when they last posted. We suggest one of the following systems:
- Pick one day of the week to post and then stick to it, even if you have a new release that comes before then.
- Label your Fashion Consolidated notecards with the date in the title so you can see from your inventory when you last posted. Allow 7 days between posts.
There is a flex policy for notices: if you need to borrow a day or two from the next week because you have a new release that you want to post about now, you are allowed to do that if you then don’t post again for a full 7 days. Please don’t abuse the flex policy. FashCon staff do chart the days and are alert to such bending of rules.
Do not send out notices that say, “Sorry I forgot the landmark, oops.” See Rule number 4 below.
Sometimes Second Life is unstable and resends are necessary if the notice did not go out. Please exercise discretion in this. Wait some time. Go to a low-lag sim to send. Staff will notice if resending becomes a habit.
Rule Number 2: Only New Releases
Fashion Consolidated is for new releases, and only new releases. It is the group’s raison d’etre: to bring shoppers into your store for your stunning new designs. It is not for the advertisment of sales. This is done to try to keep the notice volume from thousands of designers to a reasonable level that shoppers will actually look at, be able to digest, and help them to remain eager happy customers for you.
Having said that, FashCon does have a loophole that allows you to present other events, openings, fashion shows, etc. to the buying public: you are allowed to mention these things in the notecard underneath the notice and picture of the new product. Stand alone notices about sales, model searches and the like are considered content violations. Yes, sales events drive traffic and most shoppers do love sales and want to know about them. But we must keep the notice volume down to a manageable level or people will simply click the notices to the trash. So that’s the deal for balance: new release, sale beneath.
Once you have described your new release in your notecard, you have flexibility with the rest of the notecard. You can talk about your fun hunt, mention that your sale ends tomorrow, why you like or don’t like the color purple, your brother’s emergency appendectomy, why we need to save the polar bears, and the list of djs who are working your grand opening. If you begin to hawk sofas and real estate FashCon staff will act, as FashCon is a fashion group concerned with what an avatar can wear: every group needs a focus to keep members happy.
Please note that a short-term dollarbie or freebie is not considered a new release. Earnestly ask yourself if the freebie is going to be part of your permanent collection and reflects the quality of your permanent collection before touting it on Fashion Consolidated. Loss-leader freebies just to draw traffic is highly frowned upon and likely to not help your business long-term anyway.
Finally, with many of the notices staff see, it is not clear if there is a new release or not. Some designers report back that there was indeed a new release but they did not highlight it in the notecard. Always include a picture of the new release, and mention it as such. Just showing a skirt does not let anyone know if it is new or is a previous item on sale, and it avoids any confusion if you always identify new releases.
Rule Number 3: Only retail fashion and av-related items
Do not advertise for a piece of furniture, decor, or a building, or real estate. One of the requirements for notice-posting in FashCon is that the special new release that you are debuting be “avatar-wear” for the appearance of your avatar (i.e. does not include gadgets, and many HUDs).
We understand that many designers in SL make things other than clothes, hair, or shoes etc, but Fashion Consolidated is meant to be a entirely fashion-centered group and must not morph into a giant advertise-everything group. Please focus on things that avatars can wear. It is permissible to mention that you sell other things in a notecard under your new fashion release.
Please also note that FashCon is a retail group, not a wholesale group. Everything you advertise should be ready to wear. Items aimed principally at other designers such as full perm sculpties, alpha textures, or other items for making clothes, shoes, etc. are not acceptable material for notices to the general buyer; indeed anything offered full perm is disallowed.
If you have any question about what is considered to be appropriate content, please inquire from staff in a notecard.
Rule Number 4: Always send pictures
You may get a warning notecard if you:
- sent out a landmark-only notice or
- send a notice with no attachment at all to FashCon in the last week, or
- put the landmark in a notecard but with no picture, or
- sent out a second notice for the sole purpose of adding a landmark.
Pictures are required by FashCon, landmarks are not. A number of you send out second notices that say, “oops, forgot the landmark.” Fashion Consolidated considers landmarks optional. Certainly in the best case you would have a landmark in the notecard you send out, but if you forget, it really does not warrant a second notice. You may wish to consider doing a template for all of your FashCon notices that contains a SLurl for your store.
Why are pictures required? Because when FashCon was established, its aim was to be a content-rich immediate medium for new releases. Pictures are your best main way to get across what you sell to your audience – they are your best ads (and the better your photography, the better a draw you will get). If you can’t be bothered to put a picture in, shoppers may not be bothered to come to your store for unknown items from experience.
More and more new designers do not seem to know that the notices attachment box will only accept one attachment. This means that if you put in a picture and then a landmark, only the landmark will stay with notice – it will bump the texture out of the attachment box. This is why most designers prepare notecards with the textures and landmark enclosed in that and attach the notecard.
Enforcement Procedure
There are three stages of enforcement for notice violations:
- Upon a first notice violation a warning notecard is sent.
- Upon a second notice violation a two week suspension is imposed.
- Upon a third violation the designer will be removed from Fashion Consolidated.
Kiosks are non-refundable and the application of these procedures is at the discretion of the FashCon owner, Honey Fairweather.
It is in the interest of the many thousands of members of FashCon that notices sent conform to a certain standard to ensure that the group remains useful and readable to all, and not in the interest of the hundreds of conscientious designers who post careful notices that members be lost through the few who consistently ignore group rules. Designers were asked to read and ensure they were happy to abide by these rules before joining, and sent them after joining. The group’s only recourse after a third violation is to remove the offending designer to preserve group sanity.
Thank you for your participation in Fashion Consolidated. Staff work hard to try to make it a better place for promoting the wonderful things that our designers make. We wish all of you the very best for your business.
