Hello Everyone,

I wish that I could have been online over the weekend to help the DAZ moderators address this as the topic began, but that just wasn't possible for me this last weekend. I have to say that all of us at DAZ have learned after much hardship :) that it is not in our best interest to make Friday releases, so we have not for quite some time. This last Screamdesign email that everyone's talking about was actually the second in a series that we've prepared for that particular list of web surfers. The first was sent out on Thursday, March 18th.

DAZ has never offered any third party images to anyone, the only images that have been offered to the Screamdesign users are those on the DAZ|Original product pages (btw, Mehndi, your Stephanie 1.0 popup images were removed ages ago last I heard, so no worries there ;) ), we also excluded any and all gallery images.

Here's an overview as to why DAZ is giving the public permission to grab DAZ|Original product page images and do as they please with them. The prime reason being to serve as an incentive to bring in new customers to our online store. Most people in business know that it's easier to make a current customer base more active than it is to find new customers. Well, DAZ has been working hard over the past few quarters to get all of you a bit more active, but we're also working hard at enlarging our community. Creating a LightWave compatible version of DAZ|Mimic is part of the latter. And so is beginning to get a new base of image-fanatics familiar with images that can be created with DAZ products. We have seen many posts that said we didnt have permission to give PA images away. It's important to understand that DAZ has never assumed permission and that we would never do anything of this magnitude with products that we didn't own 100%.

We do realize that the Screamdesign newsletter had a bad typo and that one part of the newsletter was mislinked. We've corrected this for our next ScreamDesign newsletter, and are making the distinction between DAZ and third party products much more clear. We'll also be activating a "Clip-Art" category tomorrow that we've been preparing which will be where all Screamdesign traffic will be directed. DAZ will make it very clear that any other images taken without permission is not allowed and that they do so at their own legal risk.

Another thing that we've shared with several of our PA's (Published Artists) is just how successful this little campaign has been even after it's only just begun. The DAZ servers hit some of their highest traffic stats ever this past week. It's been made clear to us that lots of people are interested in what's available on the DAZ site. Of course, we would never force any of our artists to participate in this vertical strategy, but we will do our part to help share how successful this campaign turns out to be with them. We'd be surprised if not more merchants see the advantage of this idea and join those who become a part of this and gain the extra exposure for their products.

Most of our Published Artists sell their items through DAZ because we are able to produce higher revenue per product than many of our competitors. Recently, our marketing efforts have concentrated on increasing awareness as much as sales. This is in order to begin preparing new customers to place purchases at DAZ. Marketing to new customers is a long and often tricky process. Many companies start relationships with potential customers by giving out a sample of their products; Mrs. Fields gives bits of cookies, attorneys offer free initial consultations, and we even offer a free model each week. Somebody that has never used Poser is not going to immediately go out and buy Victoria and another $50 worth of accessories just from seeing one colorful newsletter. We have to develop a relationship with these potential customers and we feel that this strategy greatly aids us in this challenge.

We all know that the images used in our products are a just a fraction of the images that can be produced using the 3D items. We feel that these images are also good samples to give away to potential customers. By getting these people in the habit of using DAZ images, it's hoped that they will eventually find themselves wishing they could just modify the pose slightly, or adjust the perspective, or expression, etc. Once they get to this point, DAZ|Studio will allow them to easily make the leap from being a simple clip-art user to becoming a fledgling 3D-artist.

Anyway, I hope that this helps clarify the campaign that many of you are just hearing about second hand, once we have our next Screamdesign newsletter finished, I'll reply to this thread with a link to it so that all interested can see first hand just how we're conducting this campaign.

Thanks for your time, sorry if I was too long-winded. :)

Steve Kondris
DAZ Productions, Inc.