Anyway, I was a customer an I am a blogger. I'll wear what I've bought as the occasion suits. I paid for it, it doesn't hurt him for me to trash it. But I'll never blog their clothes again or buy anything else from them. I used to love their shoes, but there are other designers who are better (Kalnins and House of Curios come to mind) who don't charge nearly as much, include color change scripts so you have many options, and don't defraud and insult their customers.

If you start a competition you are obligated to select and *pay* a winner, regardless of how poor you perceive the entries to be. The contest did not state there was a specific standard to be adhered to, no benchmark was set. Say goodbye to your customers, I can see them running toward the competition LMAO

Ansor, while you are entitled to run your contest however you see fit, do you honestly not see why a statement like this would upset people? You could have very easily avoided this drama and got the results that you wanted. All you had to do is make a short statement: "We are extending our contest to allow more people to enter." A statement like that would not have generated any hurt feelings, and would have gotten more entries to your contest. By telling your customers that their entries are "too common" you are offending a lot of people. Not everyone reads the blogs, but people *do* talk- and people are finding out about your poor customer service.

I know that the stylist for a MUCH larger SL company than Hoorenbeek entered. And I know of several bloggers and fashionistas that were in it too, male and female. There's only so far you can polish a turd. If some of the most innovative and stylish people in SL arent good enough, what do you want? Its YOUR CLOTHES they are working with. You can only make something special if you have a good base to work from. And there is nothing special about your jeans and tee shirts all on the one layer.

and you keep saying that you could have given the prize to one of your friends. How very very big of you to not be dirty cheats. I still think you will in the end.

We know we could have handled this in a better way, so we are sorry if
we made some mistakes. We don´t have the experience in these kind of
things (it's our first contest) and we always have a lot to do both in
SL and RL.
It´s not easy to deal with all our customers to give them a
proper care. Making some of the best products in SL is not easy either.
We are always working a lot and sometimes, priorities are hard to
organize and things may get a little bit confusing.

We are the only ones to blame here, the jury has nothing to do we this.

For those who doubt about our good will or think we didn't want to give
the prize, think about this: we could have "given" the prize to one of
our many friends and nobody would have noticed the difference. Problem solved.
But we didn´t want to do that.
That wasn´t right.
So, here we are, as we said, trying to do our best.
On one hand, we only received less than 20 entries. And we need you to
understand this: we have a database of more than 13000 customers in SL, so we expected another response from them.
On the other hand, we were looking for new looks, new styles, something special.
And as we said before, these few entries were not what we were looking
for. No offense, but the truth is that they are very common, there is
nothing special about them.
We NEVER said that the outfits were crap or something like that, but if
you want to win a L$100,000 prize, you need to try harder, working with
our products to create something unique.

Please, try to see it this way: We NEED winners. We sell more than 200
outfits a month, and every outfit costs almost L$ 1,000, so do the math
and you will see that the money is not an issue here.
We WANT new styles and stylists to create new and cool outfits that will
sell good at the store, not just pick the less worst outfit of 20 entries.

Because of this, we decided to extend the contest until November 6th.
So, feel free to participate, encourage your friends to do it and send
us your creations.
And please, BE CREATIVE, do something NEW and DIFFERENT.

We are aware that is IMPOSSIBLE to please everyone, and is obvious to us that some of you LOVES drama. Well, we can´t do ANYTHING about that.
When you do something out of the box, impressive and with a big prize
like this, there will be people trying to critize or giving personal
opinions.
But remember, we are one of the biggest brands in the grid, we have some of the best products you can find and more than 13000 avatars support
our group.
That´s not luck. That´s dedication and hard GOOD work.

Our customers KNOW what kind of business we have. We always try to do the right thing. And if we made a mistake we always try to compensate.
Yes, sometimes we have some unsatisfied customers, but mostly when they are the ones who made a mistake in a purchase. But again, our customers know that we ALWAYS do our best to help them and make them happy.

And by the way… You don´t NEED to buy our products to participate. The
idea is, if you are a customer and bought our products, well, you can
create some new styles.
If you are buying our products only to participate, it's also valid, but
remember this is not a raffle. You will have to do a VERY cool outfit to
win. So don't waste your time or money if you don´t think you have what
it takes to win.

it seems like a bad situation & handled poorly… but one thing that stands out to me over & over is an attitude of entitlement.

hoorenbeek announced the contest but never forced anyone to buy the clothes or enter! it's annoying for sure, & i understand how much time it can take to make your entries. but i really wish people would remember to view SL and RL a bit less seriously.

Well, isn’t that lovely. No time for SL, but time enough to suck people dry of their money.

I may not spend as much time in the game as I used to, but I still make my stuff for the joy of creating, not to profit from it.
At least they could’ve put their response in a less demeaning way.
What’s wrong with being polite to your costumers.

Sigh.

Bah… snobbery.

Yeah, stick to what you’re good at.

Communicating to your customers is more productive than to people who would laugh at your statement anyway.

Totally agree with you Jordan I should shut up – if intelligence of this discussion is on the level of you and business-in-your-box, I am back to sharpening my pencils for a while.

See ya!

or did he write a statement and i missed it?

and maybe maddox can shut is head for a while and let ansor clear this…? but well you will always find someone for the “dirty” things … indeedos? ;D

Name one controversy that I have been responsible for that is not tied to me by association with another designer.

I can not help that I know lot of designers, been here for a while – what they do and what I do does not mean it necessarily reflects same values or the way I like to do my business.

I am completely in agreement with you that this particular situation could have been handled differently and I have said that to Ansor as well.

So how can that be tied to me?

Hm. You are full of shit!

Everything in SL with the Maddox DuPont ‘seal of approval’ seems to have some kind of controversy attached to it.

[5:24] Ansor Hoorenbeek: I didnt say crap at any time… [...] The whole point of the contest is to find some great stylist, like Ben, Takeshi or Oscar.

seriously?

after 18 of july i went to store and check about the contest to may see winners or something,… and there were the outfits by takeshi and oscar i think… and first i thought that they are the winners and that i missed something… but than i was like nah… the outfits are really lame and that they are extremly boring and that the creativitiy is missing…

you talk about creativity? and really i can’t find any creativity at the store outfits,..
i dont want to say that the stylist did not do a good job… but if you say(about the entries) that there isnt creativitiy in it judging them by your store outfits… than i have to say shame on you… the entries i see so far,… are same level or better not worst like ansor said…

and i really like to thank sawyer for speaking up as one of the jury members and for not being polite and loyal about that because of buisness.

and a little tip in the end for the contest makers… if you want creativitiy in the entries than do it first on your clothes,… and than if you want something with creativitiy ( in your mind what ever this will look like)… than use some of your stylist or ask some of the amazing stylist ( and hell yeah i know some amazing ones) personally and dont expect that they would maybe join ( i can imagine why they wont do that)lol ? lol.

and after all if anything goes wrong… you should be honest to your customers about this stuff… if someone had never ask… i think we all had never known this.

oh btw… sorry for the english ;}

god and so on blaaaah.

I did acknowledge that this could have been handled differently and I did urge Ansor to let people know when initial inquiries were made by Krise. RL issues prevented this I am sure as well as what to do with the situation, since contest did not quite turn out as expected in terms of response and quality of entries. But you should have been kept in loop thats for sure.

The good thing is contest is still on and people would get understanding from this discussion what to do to win the contest.

Being civil about it and having the right “look” will certainly aid you in this.

Too bad HOORENBEEK didnt get what they are looking for, but this still looks like changing the rules halfway the game.

“Yeah this could have been handled differently but you need to give people opportunity to correct the situation before bashing their brand and creating these situations.”

Yes indeed, Ansor hasnt been very open about this all and people who have been asking about were not treaten in a very nice way.

Most of us certainly dont bash people or their brand, we just were looking for answers why we never heard a thing anymore. Asking for answers isnt creating drama, but clearity.

The Contest is not a scam – the reason why Hoorenbeek did not select anyone is because styles did not capture their brand – which was the whole point of running the competition and therefore the extension.

If you really want to win this reward then you need to come up with an outfit that will please Hoorenbeek and us the judges.

I suggest perhaps visiting some male blogs for inspiration on art of mix and match – which often involves in combining old and new items from same or different brands.

Being bitter about it and trying to bitch about it on judge’s plurk when I actually gave you the answers privately already is not going to help your situation nor will make you a winner.

Only the whiner.

“Nowhere does it say that you have to BUY products to enter. It is actually presumed that you have HOORENBEEK products already.”

Maddox, do you seriously believe what you write there? Especially when stating it is about to find a new look, you dont do it with items you already HAVE!

also you say:

“Yeah this could have been handled differently but you need to give people opportunity to correct the situation before bashing their brand and creating these situations.”

It was a lot of time to actually correct the situation. the images where there since the 1st of July. Of course by now the style isnt a new look anymore

The statements from you and Ansor actually make me laugh, it is pathetic and shows what it really was : “scam”!

And its not drama to point this out

HAHAHHAHHAHAHAAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAH

Does anyone seriously not understand why I am cramping from laughing so hard?”

Can I just be bold to suggest that there is difference between style and clothing you wear. Hoorenbeek are looking for style created with their outfits and let’s face it clothes can be great and style can still SUCK.

Just by wearing PRADA does not make you stylish. It is what you do with clothes that matters.

Nowhere does it say that you have to BUY products to enter. It is actually presumed that you have HOORENBEEK products already.

This is HOORENBEEK style competition therefore you have to use their products to enter. HOORENBEEK should have gone to elaborate that their plan was to use competition to find styles/stylists that best represent Hoorenbeek as a brand, which would be then used to promote them (advertising)

Therefore, Hoorenbeek has a right to judge (they do not need jury for this btw) if the outfits they have received DO represent them as a brand. I certainly personally would not give 100K to someone if I did not find images I needed for that money.

Why would you even think about contacting jury and waste their time if what you have received was not what you are looking for and you would not use to advertise your product?

Now what Hoorenbeek should have done is keep the contestants informed about the reasons for delay and future plans. Speaking to Ansor he is quite aware of this but his RL commitments stood in the way.

If Ansor has mentioned showing entries to other judges it was probably me, as I received private plurk from Krise on this and contacted him to find out on reasons for delay. It was not my place to make announcement and in Ansor’s defense he has legitimate reasons why his RL has prevented him from doing this earlier (and possibly still does).

Before some of you start creating drama out of nothing and bashing yet another creator for mistakes that could be easily be made by anyone, consider this:

- we all try to do the best that we can with time that we have in the game
- personal/family issues can sometimes be more important than SL or RL work (this is why people take time off work in RL)
- we are all human – we make mistakes – in RL so in SL – creators are the same

Now in regards to:
“[8:55] Ansor Hoorenbeek: Yes, and consider you lucky… We are very busy and hardly have time for SL”

I think there is loss in translation. English is second language for Ansor and me, but I have more experience to know what he meant but not actually use it myself to express that I have been flat out that “you are lucky you could catch me”.

Working with Ansor in joint project all I can say is that they are descent people who are trying to do right by customer and people they work with. If I did not trust them I would not associate with them.

Yeah this could have been handled differently but you need to give people opportunity to correct the situation before bashing their brand and creating these situations.

i am really relieved you stated something here because i could not imagine that you would give your name for something like this.

what you said was what i guessed and i was really irritated by what Ansor said about that there was an agreement about the whole thing, and when i read his first reply to di again here it just says, that its going to happen again…

greetings
krise

He’s rude and has shit customer service. Give your money to someone who can offer both support and appreciation to you as a customer

But now the whole thing gets even more strange, now that we know you never seen a picture yet.
Especially when Ansor states: “[5:24] Ansor Hoorenbeek: I didnt say crap at any time… We (and Im including the jury) are all agree that the outfits, most of them, are not good enough…”.

Maybe it’s a good idea to ask the rest of the jury if they have been asked to judge anything and maybe want to do something against this. I know I wouldnt be so happy if it was my name that was used for this crap.

Thanks again, Sawyer.

Anyway, I want to report this to LL. But I dont have a pro account or anything. Not sure I can.

And I would love to see more people reporting this. Otherwise it will all be forgetten and burried within a month. And that’s exactly what Ansor Hoorenbeek is hoping for.

So please, report this! I’m sure it would help.

All in all, it is quite obvious he really doesnt care… end of story.