This one is of real interest to me obviously. The above image is from the virtual store for American Apparel. After reading about this over on the 3pointD weblog (Link) a few days back, I thought I’d take a peek for myself and found some time early this morning to see it (the opening was last night so I wasn’t stuck with using someone else’s images).

There are plenty of interesting things to discuss but much of what I’d have to say on the subject of real brands inside virtual worlds I’ve said before in older posts. The one thing that struck me about this particular case was that this virtual store is on its own island away from the Second Life mainland. What’s worse, I had difficulty finding it. In an expanding world, one little store on an isolated outpost is going to need some method(s) for generating traffic. They are, after all, competing with virtual products from virtual businesses. The playing field has changed. I hope American Apparel has given that some serious thought. For now the novelty will attract some people. But novelty in a place like Second Life evaporates rather quickly.

The interior was also interesting in that I didn’t test to see if I could buy anything. I just plain forgot. That’s because it wasn’t obvious to me I could. Most Second Life stores make it obvious what’s for sale and what’s for decoration (something I’d not really, seriously considered – there is that issue in virtuality: no one confuses a poster in reality for the product or the vending machine). I suspect there will be the announced sales soon if they’re not now already in place.

What would be exciting is if they have some thoughts about or have read an earlier post of mine on how their virtual sales could tie into manufacturing (reLink). They might give that a whirl as well; easier to do for garments than hard products.

All-in-all, I’m impressed. At least something other than a media company is taking the plunge. That’s good news for a product designer like me. For other coverage on this virtual+meat development, both C|Net (Link) and Forbes (Link) are running stories. I expect BusinessWeek and others will write articles as well, so I’ll update this entry with links as I find them.