HiveWire 3D announces that we will publish our original animal products exclusively through the DAZ 3D store.
With that said, here is the back story, the reasoning, and enough details to inform everyone as to why we came to this very important decision, for the strength and future of HiveWire 3D.
HiveWire has a history from our beginning, of trying to make our content available to many stores in this DAZ Studio and Poser community. When we introduced Dawn, we contacted Renderosity, Runtime DNA, YURdigital, Poser World, Reality 3D, and yes even DAZ 3D, to invite these stores to support our Dawn release. Everyone we asked to support Dawn, by way of a Dawn Community Bundle and supporting contest, did indeed jump in excitedly... with the exception of DAZ. Throughout the years we would still invite DAZ to support contests, and HiveWire Community Content Bundles with no positive response. But, this last April, DAZ reached out to us by way of an email to me.
Lisa, myself, and our team, were surprised to see DAZ move in our direction. This started out as an open discussion to consider ways that HiveWire and DAZ could work together for the benefit of both companies. This discussion was never about DAZ wanting to purchase HiveWire, just to make that clear. But other options were very much considered.
Over these last several months, several lunch meetings, Skype meetings, phone calls, and extensive dialog exchanged in a lengthy email chain, we've reached this mutually beneficial decision. What DAZ has is an intense interest in publishing our quality original animals. So this is the area we kept coming back to and the one that would make the most sense for us.
This is what we've agreed to that I can share that is not confidential. HiveWire will publish our existing and future original animals exclusively with DAZ, in both DAZ Studio AND Poser formats. They are in fact adding to their product base of Poser products and want to make our animals available in both formats.
We are starting with our HW3D Big Cat, Cougar, House Cat, and Kitten at DAZ. Laurie Prindle/CWRW is tied in to most of our animals, by way of her gorgeous texture map work, and product imagery. After talking things over with her, these were the products requiring the least amount of updating to prepare for upload. Then we'll move to our HW3D Horse, associated breeds and on from there. Laurie will move some of her additional supportive map and pose products to DAZ to enlarge the product offering. She'll start with her Panther, and Tabby maps.
HiveWire 3D will not use our full company name as a vendor at DAZ. We've agreed to abbreviate our name to HW3D both on those products published at DAZ, and as our vendor name at DAZ. There is concern that customers at DAZ who don't know about HiveWire (which is most of them), might do some internet searching and find our site and store, and we'll gain further traction from those searches. Our company name is not changing, only our vendor name that will show up on our products at DAZ.
Our full company name is currently all over our own products so our animal product imagery is being redone. Laurie has been, and will continue to do product image updates to match the DAZ requirements. She is also making material and texture updates for Iray and Superfly as well as updates for 3Delight and Firefly where needed.
So you can anticipate a very limited time table for all HW3D animals being available in our store. When we get word from DAZ that one of our submitted animal products will be set live on their store, we will then deactivate that product on our store, and point (link) that product to the DAZ store. Any updates made to the products for the DAZ store will also be updated for those of you who have already purchased the products at the HiveWire store. You can watch the product updates thread here for details.
This is the delicate part, but it's important for all who want to know, and those who care about us, that we're doing this to keep the HiveWire site and store strong. We view this as a means of increasing our revenue base, that will ensure that HiveWire is here, and healthy for years to come. You can call it offering up our sacrificial lamb for the good of the whole company. Call it whatever you want. But please know that we view this as a necessary business decision.
Will there be some concerns for us for having made this decision? Most certainly yes! But... we strongly feel that the benefit of moving our original animals over to DAZ, will outweigh any negatives by doing so. HiveWire will still exist, HiveWire will still produce for our Human figure line, and our animals as well. We will still be happy to publish your supporting content to our HW3D animals, and whatever else you as an artist would like to publish that is of value.
On behalf of Lisa, Paul, Alisa, and the HiveWire team, we thank you all for your understanding. As always, we are grateful to you, our friends, artists, allies, and community members, for your strong support and confidence in us. We have not abandoned you. It's just that some of you who wish to acquire our animals from here forward will have to make those acquisitions via our new publishing partner, through the DAZ store. We move ahead with excitement for this new way of expanding our audience. We move ahead with excitement to work closely and in partnership with DAZ in a way that benefits both companies.
With that said, here is the back story, the reasoning, and enough details to inform everyone as to why we came to this very important decision, for the strength and future of HiveWire 3D.
HiveWire has a history from our beginning, of trying to make our content available to many stores in this DAZ Studio and Poser community. When we introduced Dawn, we contacted Renderosity, Runtime DNA, YURdigital, Poser World, Reality 3D, and yes even DAZ 3D, to invite these stores to support our Dawn release. Everyone we asked to support Dawn, by way of a Dawn Community Bundle and supporting contest, did indeed jump in excitedly... with the exception of DAZ. Throughout the years we would still invite DAZ to support contests, and HiveWire Community Content Bundles with no positive response. But, this last April, DAZ reached out to us by way of an email to me.
Lisa, myself, and our team, were surprised to see DAZ move in our direction. This started out as an open discussion to consider ways that HiveWire and DAZ could work together for the benefit of both companies. This discussion was never about DAZ wanting to purchase HiveWire, just to make that clear. But other options were very much considered.
Over these last several months, several lunch meetings, Skype meetings, phone calls, and extensive dialog exchanged in a lengthy email chain, we've reached this mutually beneficial decision. What DAZ has is an intense interest in publishing our quality original animals. So this is the area we kept coming back to and the one that would make the most sense for us.
This is what we've agreed to that I can share that is not confidential. HiveWire will publish our existing and future original animals exclusively with DAZ, in both DAZ Studio AND Poser formats. They are in fact adding to their product base of Poser products and want to make our animals available in both formats.
We are starting with our HW3D Big Cat, Cougar, House Cat, and Kitten at DAZ. Laurie Prindle/CWRW is tied in to most of our animals, by way of her gorgeous texture map work, and product imagery. After talking things over with her, these were the products requiring the least amount of updating to prepare for upload. Then we'll move to our HW3D Horse, associated breeds and on from there. Laurie will move some of her additional supportive map and pose products to DAZ to enlarge the product offering. She'll start with her Panther, and Tabby maps.
HiveWire 3D will not use our full company name as a vendor at DAZ. We've agreed to abbreviate our name to HW3D both on those products published at DAZ, and as our vendor name at DAZ. There is concern that customers at DAZ who don't know about HiveWire (which is most of them), might do some internet searching and find our site and store, and we'll gain further traction from those searches. Our company name is not changing, only our vendor name that will show up on our products at DAZ.
Our full company name is currently all over our own products so our animal product imagery is being redone. Laurie has been, and will continue to do product image updates to match the DAZ requirements. She is also making material and texture updates for Iray and Superfly as well as updates for 3Delight and Firefly where needed.
So you can anticipate a very limited time table for all HW3D animals being available in our store. When we get word from DAZ that one of our submitted animal products will be set live on their store, we will then deactivate that product on our store, and point (link) that product to the DAZ store. Any updates made to the products for the DAZ store will also be updated for those of you who have already purchased the products at the HiveWire store. You can watch the product updates thread here for details.
This is the delicate part, but it's important for all who want to know, and those who care about us, that we're doing this to keep the HiveWire site and store strong. We view this as a means of increasing our revenue base, that will ensure that HiveWire is here, and healthy for years to come. You can call it offering up our sacrificial lamb for the good of the whole company. Call it whatever you want. But please know that we view this as a necessary business decision.
Will there be some concerns for us for having made this decision? Most certainly yes! But... we strongly feel that the benefit of moving our original animals over to DAZ, will outweigh any negatives by doing so. HiveWire will still exist, HiveWire will still produce for our Human figure line, and our animals as well. We will still be happy to publish your supporting content to our HW3D animals, and whatever else you as an artist would like to publish that is of value.
On behalf of Lisa, Paul, Alisa, and the HiveWire team, we thank you all for your understanding. As always, we are grateful to you, our friends, artists, allies, and community members, for your strong support and confidence in us. We have not abandoned you. It's just that some of you who wish to acquire our animals from here forward will have to make those acquisitions via our new publishing partner, through the DAZ store. We move ahead with excitement for this new way of expanding our audience. We move ahead with excitement to work closely and in partnership with DAZ in a way that benefits both companies.
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