um, yeah, right.  women are just biologically predisposed to like clothes.  it has nothing at all to do with marketing and socialization.

if all the forces marshalled to marketing to women were used on men, yeah, the demand would be there.   but since all the marketing forces (including hollywood and mtv) won't, it won't happen.

again, it's about quality and popularity.  someone comes out with something well designed that looks good, and people want it. from designer clothes for babies to silly little scooters to pet rocks for god's sake.  or ipods.   if only the people who had had walkmen or other portable music players in the first place (people with the demand) had bought ipods, apple wouldn't have made much money.  most people bought not only the ipod, but as was pointed out to me in a talk on marketing, but the nano, a smaller, less functional version of the ipod.  existing ipod users lined up around the block to buy them.   because they existed and were deemed "cool." 

everything i've ever read of marketing, in fact or in fiction, has focused on the fact that it's about creating demand and convincing people they need something.  not passively waiting for someone to want something, then giving that to them. 

in poserdom, demand is caused by availability, product quality and decent marketing.  if it weren't, and people only bought what they wanted before the items came out and what they could (and will) use, the markets would close due to lack of income.   poser users in this community consume far more than they use.  hence the common problem of buying an item twice and that of finding that something had been purchased but never installed and then forgotten.  if there was a true initial demand, people wouldn't forget about something as soon as they acquire it so frequently.

and tons of merchants did make stuff for apollo.  and anton said he sold over a thousand  copies.  since i've heard the active poser community's numbers as only a couple or so thousand (though i don't know where that comes from, people have stated it with authority) and assuming that's true, that's a huge saturation for an independent party male product.

i stand by my statement.  if those merchants all support a figure, i'd be willing to bet that the figure will do well.  if in addition, another 20 of the most popular merchants support a figure, it's a slam dunk.  but only if all of them do it.  otherwise, people will become hopeful and only a few will buy the cool new  stuff for the cool new figure.   and then when they see support drop off, everyone will lose interest.

actually it's probably just a bias that keeps marketers from hitting men hard in the area of clothes.  when the tobacco industry saturated the asian male market but had almost none of the female market, they deliberately poured money into creating the demand among women.  they did the same in this country, but much earlier. both campaigns were highly successful.  but those foolish marketers, they tried to sell what they wanted to sell instead of what was demanded.  if they followed your advice, they would have been billions poorer but so much more wise.  someone should tell them what a mistake they made.