All this took me by surprise, and it took me a while to read everything before I could get situated. To say that this is controversial is an ultimate understatement, especially when the company name has to be abbreviated, with hopes people will not recognize it. It's true that even I have often abbreviated to HW3D everywhere, but what concerns me is the
intention of such requirement - definitely not a good sign. It might imply they want to minimize traffic to this store as much as possible.
Maybe it makes sense that DAZ doesn't want HiveWire3D spelled out as a brand behind all these high quality animals. That would conflict with everything they have been claiming about this store, their products, and the people behind it - especially when they want to sell these animals with exclusivity rights. That would put them in a strange situation, so yeah, the brand needs to be disguised.
But perhaps the real shocker is to give DAZ exclusive rights to sell the products, which together with the disguised brand name, it makes this a really odd deal. I perfectly understand the reasons behind all this from both sides, though. Personally, animals are not high in my priorities, so this doesn't affect me much. However, by total coincidence, I am in a joint project that involves indirectly supporting an upcoming HW animal, so I will have to rethink that. The product would be for Dawn, but people who buy at DAZ are looking for Genesis, so this might not work out in the end. We wanted the product to be related, but now I think it doesn't have to. I will have to discuss this with the team.
Maybe there aren't many using Dawn etc at daz at the moment
And the reason is quite simple - these people at DAZ were convinced that "Dawn is unusable". They don't have to try - the already "know" it. That's why they don't come here - it's not like they don't know HW exists. After supporting Poser and DS in most of my products for years, I came to meet many of these people, and they only let me speak because I support DAZ Studio. But the damage has been done - there was no convincing them otherwise, and I tried. Seeing is believing, right? I have shown them my Dawn gallery, and they claim I have some kind of special skills that "normal" people don't have, so if I show them hundreds of beautiful Dawn renders in a wide variety of styles, it's just me - other "normal" people can't do it. In their minds, only wizards and gurus can make good Dawn renders, because she (and all HW figures) are "unworkable" (they use that word a lot).
Coming from this personal experience, it's hard for me to deal with DAZ as just another company, because their smearing campaign has been affecting my store sales ever since HW has opened doors back in 2013. It has affected me both personally and professionally.
Even though I have reservations, I will give this the benefit of doubt. I hope it will work out of everyone involved. This is business, so we do what we need to do.