I have spoken to a lot of bloggers and several store owners lately about the balance between shopping events and mainstores. It seems that most feel the same as I do…that events are like chocolate…we love them, we want them but we know ultimately that too many of them are bad for us.

I have written now a few times on the subject or alluded to it in other posts. The rise of the shopping event, while being great and convenient for shoppers, is eventually going to be the death knell of a vast number of mainstores. There is, after all, only a limited number of spaces in most events and there are hundreds, if not thousands of stores in SL that never get into the ‘main’ events for varying reasons.

I really do not want to be seen as anti-events because I am assuredly not. You will find me at almost all events at some point or another and I enjoy them immensely. Equally though I enjoy visiting a mainstore, checking out past releases I may have missed, new in-store releases and seeing the creativity of the designers in putting together there sim and sales areas.

I often make the note of store names I have never visited while I am at events and visit them afterwards and I have found some real gems and fabulous items when I have done so.

This brings me to the purpose of this blog and what follows is directly aimed at my fellow bloggers.

Events get a huge amount of coverage in blogs as do hunts…there are even blogs and resources specifically for those event types. There is very little for plain, good, old-fashioned, bread and butter mainstores. I would like us to redress the balance a little and start a new blogging meme…Mainstore Mondays.

Each Monday I will post a blog featuring a minimum of 2 items from 2 mainstores I have visited. I will also blog about the mainstore, including pictures of the store, a brief description and slurls. I would love if other bloggers did the same and started a Mainstore revitalization.

Bloggers…here are the benefits for you:

• You can feature the mainstores of your sponsors meaning you will be fulfilling your responsibilities
• You can feature stores you would like to blog for…many stores expect you to have blogged them at least once when you apply.
• You can feature stores that you just damn well like instead of having to blog for
• Mainstore owners will appreciate their stores being blogged and getting coverage and see increased traffic in their mainstores
• This doesn’t need to just be fashion bloggers….these stores can be anything but also this is open to destination bloggers as many mainstores go to a lot of effort to make their sims/parcels inviting, attractive and photogenic…
• You may find new places to take photos for your blogs (see above point)
• You may find great new stores you didn’t know of.
• You could work with other bloggers to do joint Mainstore Monday blogs – opening up your blog to new readers and followers.

I have started a new group on Flickr called Mainstore Mondays for us to share our MM posts and it’s also open to designers and store owners to post their stores with slurls for bloggers looking for inspiration and new stores.

Tag your posts with Mainstore Monday and let’s share all those amazing mainstores out there together!

My pictures for this post were taken at Dead Dollz Mainstore 🙂

Credits:

Body – Maitreya Lara

Head – Lelutka Stella

Appliers – Lara Hurley Maitreya Appliers and Iza Head Applier

Eyes – IKON – Ascension Eyes

Hair – Exile – Quiet Afterthought

Dress – Dead Dollz – Felina – Limited Edition

Shoes – fri.day – Veronica Platforms

Bracelets – Lazuri – Stone Bracelet

Cigarette – Nikotin – Classic

Pose – Posesion