The richly successful, much reviled, and hotly debated Anshe Chung is farming for ideas. Virtual world ‘farming’ is big business.

Typically, it means a low-lit room in China where shifts of low-paid workers hunt in worlds like Everquest or World of Warcraft, selling the accumulated “booty” on third party currency or exchange sites such as SwagVault (to name but one of many).

Now, Anshe Chung, who made its fortune (in real money, not virtual) by buying up, undercutting, developing, and monopolizing huge swaths of real estate in Second Life (with forays into IMVU), then branching out into other assets, continues its move to leverage its cheap labour pool and, perhaps, to become the “Wal*Mart* of virtual worlds, by farming for ideas.

The news of Anshe Chung becoming a factory for low-priced merchandise isn’t a surprise. (See a previous summary here, for example, of the response to her 10 linden product lines).

Why would Second Life be any different from the real world? Cheap Asian produced goods make the world go ’round. That’s the way the global economy works. In Second Life and other virtual worlds there are no tarrifs, borders, or government policies to restrict the freeflow of goods and services – so in a way, SL becomes a giant lab for concepts of free trade (or choose whatever other term you like depending on your political bent – I’m a Canadian, living next door to the US, and our trade policies help protect our cultural amongst other industries, so I’m hardly an advocate – we’re all socialists up this way, afterall).

What surprised me (perhaps because I hadn’t followed this story very carefully, feeling at the time like it was a case of “sooner or later and it looks like its sooner”) was the following post on SLExchange:

10LINDENS Furniture (50 Copies) and Sponsorship Voucher

What’s intriguing about this is the model. Basically, you purchase a sponsorship voucher for 10,000 Lindens and you send it to Anshe Chung who will create the piece to your specifications. Once you have reviewed and approved the object:

Once we are done (usually within one or two weeks), we will send you a copy for review. After your review and possible adjustments by us we will send you 50 copies of the furniture for yourself and your friends. Copyright remains with us, but in every copy we sell or distribute we will include your name as product sponsor to honor your creative input and sponsorship contribution. We also plan to make the furniture piece very affordable for people, so that more Second Life users can obtain a copy.

OK, now….this seems like a rather weird model at first glance. First, with a price tag of 10,000 Linens, you’re either doing this because you really, really WANT an object and don’t know how to make it yourself, or you want to take your great idea, have someone else make it, and then sell it for a tidy profit. With 50 copies at your disposal, whatever it is you would need to sell it for 200 Lindens a piece to break-even (not including the time to think up your brilliant idea). But there’s a problem – the people you paid 10,000 Lindens to reserve the right to sell it themselves (at a “very affordable” price i.e. 10 Lindens) which would mean – hmmm…well, that would mean you’re paying someone else to undercut you! Oh….but you DO get your name on the idea.

I’ve been trying to run through the scenarios where this makes sense. The actual price of the furniture that their “…developers, who all hold university degrees in art, design and related majors, (and) use sculptured prims and professional texture rendering for extremely realistic results” is about $37 USD. Now, for a corporate player this might make sense – instead of finding a talented SL developer, or a local Maya sculptor, they can outsource a project to our friends at Anshe Chung – and who really cares about the competition, this is all just ‘play money’ anyways.

So that leaves a few options:
- A newbie who doesn’t know any better and who calculates that they can sell their great idea for 1,000 Lindens without needing to do any work, and thus make a tidy profit who
- Also doesn’t realize that setting up a store (even a small one), driving traffic, or even the hassle of rezzing, uploading, tagging and placing an SLE Magic Box is a pain in the butt
- Also doesn’t realize that Anshe Chung will immediately tend to suck off the buyers ED: See comment below. for which the newbie originally intended the ‘brilliant new furniture item’ and, MOST IMPORTANT…
- Who doesn’t realize that if you get to know some people, if you take a feeble attempt at rezzing a prim to show you care about your SL world, that you can probably have the item created for FREE (with maybe a tip or a small commission thrown in) by another resident!

Now, having cut into this particular business model, there’s something deeper at play here. And that deeper thing that the EXECUTION of a good idea is a valuable thing. God know there are lots of good ideas. But turning the pipeline ideas into executable realities will be what separates the haves from the have nots – and Anshe Chung is demonstrating that it continues to be a “Have”.

Note to Anshe: Our talented team of writers and editors would be pleased to provide assistance with the proofing and copywriting of your English postings. We charge 5,000 Lindens per SLE listing.

Postscript: Shop and compare. Which of the following LOOKS like it came from Wal*Mart? You live in SECOND LIFE! YOU DO NOT NEED TO SHOP AT WAL*MART!

Wal*Mart Sofa Set (AKA Anshe Chung):

Baron Grayson’s Version of Seating: