amster22 , etc.
Sooo, do you think that, as suggested in the Daz forums, that a bunch of new customers have offset the 'regular loyal customers' that follow the Daz forum, hence they aren't as concerned about the existing customers, or do you think that the Daz sales team may be in a negative feedback loop where they keep hiking prices to offset losses, not understanding that people are buying less now because of the higher prices?
Short of the Daz sales team sharing their numbers, no way to know either way for sure, but the 'change introductory discount to 20% off from 30% off' thing smells a bit like desperation to me. Or, even sadder, callous disregard for regular customers...
Daz is really changing and they are doing experiments in their products/marketing. The starter/pro bundles have disappeared for a couple of years, but have you noticed that there has not been any "big" bundle with a numbered DO char for at least 3-4 months? The last was one was maybe Bonnie 8.1 in september. The few bundles that are proposed now are just some incoherent set of new/old assets and daz is not very pushy about them. Even the number of new items per day is reduced. It used to be 8-10, while now is rarely above 8 and there are some days without new items. New for a couple of weeks they have introduced "cloth bundles" where an outfit is a bundle and you can buy separately the shoes, skirt, etc, as independent assets. The daz+ exclusive (and expensive) items are another experiment and there is a new one today. And the (hopefully abandoned) season pass. And of course the NFT madness.
The reduction of the "new" discount to 20% is probably also an experiment and today sale is back to 30% off for new releases.
My first impression is that all this is very amateurish and that they do not really know where they want to go.
Maybe trying to target another kind of customers more "professional" than the usual daz hobbyists.
This could make sense. Objectively compared to professional sites like cgtrader or others, daz assets are cheaper by a factor 10. And professional studios have another approach to assets. While price is always a concern, it is less important as it is included in the project cost. And their purchases are less emotional and more rational. They rarely buy because it is cheap and "it may be useful in the future" or because they find the asset beautiful for some reason, but because they need it. And they will not wait for a good sale in 6 months if they need something.
This would be coherent with the bridges and with the fact that if you look in the product library in your account, you now can download native versions of most assets for C4D, MAX, Maya, blender, etc.
Only problem: if you want to target the professional studios you need 1/ to seriously up your quality assurance that is still one of the weak spots of daz and 2/ have a solid and responsive customer service. This costs money and I am not sure the daz management is in the state of mind to make this kind of investment.
Maybe they do not want to change their marketing target and just try to raise the prices, but they do that in an extremely tactless and amateurish way without any counterpart or even communication towards their customers. All they succeed to do is make their customers angry and this is never a good policy.
Honestly, I have no idea of what are the daz projects. They clearly want to make more money, but they do not seem to have any marketing strategy. In this business, there is no fixed price for assets and marketing is essential. You can make exactly the same benefit by selling an asset once at 1k$ or by selling the same asset 1000 times at $1, or anything in between. In either case, the problem is the customer base. If the asset is too expensive, you may not find any client interested. If it is too cheap, you will find customers, but possibly not enough to cover your costs. Presently, I have the impression that they are fumbling around, trying to see what is the highest price that they can get without loosing too much customers. But these random experiments and the way they just seem to advance in the dark are in no way good news for the future of daz.
