Welcome Pfizzgig!! *waves*

:peek: I've invited Pfizzig to visit us. She's interested in taking on Backgrounds. She's another Aussie (right, Pfizz?) and has had some malling experience with Heather - one of the founders of this mall, and our occasional guardian angel.

So hey, Pfizzig - here's a spot for you to ask questions and get to know us. :howdy: Make yourself a coffee, have a doughnut, spill your guts ...


Since you are returning to Neopets after a break, it would be helpful to know if you have any goals and aspirations for your account or your pet, and if you think you'll have enough time to play.

You and I haven't talked directly much, but we've seen each other over at the Daq quite a bit. I've been playing Neopets since November 2002, after my oldest daughter convinced her younger siblings to play, and I felt a responsibility to make sure they were safe. The younger ones have kind of lost interest, but Xaheras and I are still a bad influence on each other - in fact, Xa has joined the mall!

I like Lennies, and the Battledome, and have a strong fascination in the Neopian economy. I run the Clothing, Backgrounds, and Concert shop, and I've had several secondary product lines, including scratchies, maps, meds. Originally I ran a Grooming / Clothing shop.

My Real Life revolves around my humans (my husband and our youngest daughter), and my pets (two cats and a dog). I'm an accountant but I'm just at the end of a year off work, which I've thoroughly enjoyed. I hope the bad economic times won't keep me from finding a job next month, but if it does ... I'll have more time for Neopets, I guess! Final bit about me - I'm from Toronto, but moved to central BC a whole bunch of years ago. I love the scenery around here!

Hello all - Thank you for the invitation to your little corner of the web, Egg!

I am indeed an aussie, or at least an adopted one I've have been playing neopets for a fair few years now, with one or two sizable breaks in that time as real life got in the way. I was a part of the original neodaq mall once upon a time, always found it enormous fun keeping a themed shop and the general economic tinkering that comes with the territory .

I drifted away about a year ago after a rather sour experience with the premium service. At the time, real life was stupidly complicated, but happy to say things have settled better than I could have hoped. I'm moving house next week and having a break over the christmas period before I decide what to start studying next year. I don't think I'd ever pay for premium again, but neo is definately something I want to keep for my downtime

As far as goals and aspirations go, I have pretty much been picking up where I left off! I've caught up with some of the avatars I've missed, started rebuilding my portfolio again. Neo was always a great inspiration to draw and such, so I'm hoping to do some art for the rest of my poor neglected pets and familiarise myself with photoshop. Naturally I want to continue growing my shop so it will actually be an asset to the mall, but I have no other real plans for the spending of nps except to indulge any sparkly whims in the future XD. My favourite thing on Neo was always the lab ray - I have several and enjoy seeing what luck will give me each day

Where the Phoenix Feather Mall is concerned, I mostly want to make sure we're right for each other, and hopefully get to know you all a bit. I found the mall shortly after I started logging in again regularly and was looking for something to do, attracted by the pretty graphics and large portion of familiar faces! Maybe a silly thing to choose a mall based on, but I admit I decided to wait for a spot to open up rather than look elsewhere. Egg did sell the concept of the Background shop and it certainly has appealed to my imagination, though I'm happy to take on any category you have a need for at present.

I do have a few questions for you folks, namely how did you come together?

What do you enjoy most about your chosen/allocated category?

I'm sure there'll be more questions later, but for now I have a few last boxes to pack!

Welcome Pfizzgig! Sounds like you are already know to a couple of members here, and they speak highly of you.

I joined the mall by chance; one of the former members saw my mall-less shop and neomailed me. I must say I have been impressed and happy with the mall since day one. Egg runs a tight ship, and all our members are friendly and responsible. Malls only work with cooperation, and everyone seems to understand this and works together here.

Food is what I started with years ago--and I like it--so I just stick with it. I have a minimalist approach to malling; I have a one page shop with high multiples. This works OK for food, but for others I do not think it would be a good idea. My shoppers tend to buy the cheapest items, and mostly the same things. Out of the 79 items in my shop, about 20 sell the most by far. Anyway, that is a long story.

If the match is right, I hope a suitable category opens up for you and look forward to talking more with you.

Cheers! Ling Chi

Hi Pfizzgig!
I am a fairly recent addition to the mall and I too am an Aussie! I live in sunny queensland and in RL I am a part time high school teacher, part time student and full time mum and wife!

I look after furny/garden, and I am loving it after having cards/stamps in my previous mall. It was great fun selecting items and getting my shop front looking good. I'm looking forward to having some time over my holidays to weed out slow moving items and replacing them with some recommendations I've had.

I'm also looking forward to the day that I can sink some NPs into my neohome, which I'm going to match with my gallery - Hamlet themed

Welcome, I hope you see fit to stick around!

Hi there, lovely to meet you both!

Its sunny queensland I'm moving too next week (You'll find me, cowering in the shade somewhere lest I become a crisp!)

I've had a little browse around the open parts of the forum, an impressive amount of wisdom to absorb and I'm rather excited by the potential of it all

One extra question - What kind of spreadsheets/programs do you all use for book keeping and/or sales tracking?

Hi Pfizzgig,

I'm Roby, the smallest of the shops here and one of the newer members. In real life I'm a student from Alberta, Canada. Recently it's been snowing where I am, with highs of about -25 and lows getting past the -35 mark, this makes me incredibly jealous of your upcoming move to Queensland.

Previously I took care of the Map/Gift parts of the mall but I've recently made a move to the Grooming and Air Faerie sections (Actually today is my first real day at it). I can't tell you what I like and dislike about it but I'm looking forward to finding out.

I joined the PFM after neomailing the mall leader more or less out of the blue. I was only size 55 at the time and was surprised to be accepted into the mall, but I think we've all found it to be a wonderful fit.

You inquired about tracking programs we use, all I really do is import my sales history to excel and use pivot tables to manipulate it as I need.

I use neomallers portal which has a bunch of handy features.

http://www.neomallers.com/

Hey Pfizz it's been a while. :howdy: I think I was in the NeoDaq mall around the time you were. Since then I've been in a number of malls but I always feel more comfortable when there are a bunch of Neodaq people involved. I'm part of this mall because we are serious about malling without all the competition and aggression that some malls get into. I like the fact that we don't do neoboard ads but we do watch hut position. I find malling more relaxed and fun in this atmosphere. I have battledome, training and related magic. My current neoname is grooveyshop. I'm known on most forums as zoro.

I teach at the local university full time and live with my son and 2 cats. (one of them is named zoro) I recently asked my husband for a separation and am in the process of getting a divorce. That decision has improved life quite a bit. I find that I like independence a lot!!! It's snowy here in Pittsburgh and the scene outside my window is beautiful.

Welcome to the mall, everybody is really nice here and there's always somebody willing to help you with any neopet related issue.

As far as coming together, I wanna say I was recommended here by somebody from neodaq, but I'm not sure. I'm losing my memory in my old age.

What do you enjoy most about your chosen/allocated category?

I love the variety in the neggs/coffee/bakery section. Food in general just has such a large selection that there's always something that's cute and/or funny to me. I'mma geek though lol.

Once again, welcome to the mall!

I'll post more later. We're about to go and get tires on our little Saturn.

But welcome.

Egg would love to say more as well, but sadly she is very sick. Just got off the phone with her.

I'm Egg's eldest. And as I said, I'll post more and answer some of the q's asked.

Hera

Hi and welcome

I'm' tsangpo (g4kki on neodaq), another Aussie. I'm living in Victoria studying engineering at university and have just finished first year, so a few more years to go yet.

My category in the mall is the stamp/cards/scratchcards one which seems to be going solidly for me. Since joining the mall I've upgraded from around 400 to just over 500 and am gradually approaching main market.

Don't have much time now, I'll add some more stuff later.

Great to meet you all

Just dropping in to give a last wave, hopefully I'll be back online in a couple of days but it may be up to a week before the internet gets transfered over to the new address.

Feel better soon Egg, and take care til then folks

So sorry about the long delay.

It's -14 C, it tells me on my accuweather toolbar, but the temperature gauge in the living room tells me it is actually -17 C. And I'm more likely to believe that one. But then there is the wind chill. So I'm sitting in my basement, wrapped in a blanket. Why the basement? I live with three guys. One is my partner, and he just took off to go back to work (he works in a town 1 hour away, and he is house/cat sitting for a month). The other two are upstairs being their usual rowdy selves.

I'm Egg's eldest, as I said earlier, and I've been playing Neopets for a while. I was involved with PFM a long time ago, roughly since the beginning of when it became Phoenix Feather. I can't remember what the original name was. I first entered malling as a supplier of cards and stamps, and then when a place opened in this mall, I joined as a full member.

I enjoyed the cards/stamps/collectibles. But Neopets began interfering in my relationship/life/living, and so I stopped playing Neopets for almost a year. Maybe more. I have recently joined again (since August). I enjoy it, but I know accept it as PART of my life, rather than as integral to my life, and I am able to enjoy it far more.

The new category of petpets and paintbrushes (and now maps) are a good thing for me. I enjoy the different look of the items, as opposed to cards, where there was just the four/five colours!

Oh, I am also a teacher. I teach grade 4 English, grade 4/5 English as a Second Language (or Anglais Langue Secondaire), as well as grade 5/6/7 English. When I'm not teaching, I tutor math, academic reading, beginning reading and academic writing.

Pfizzgig seems I'm late. Hi I'm Josue from Puerto Rico and I'm currently in my second year in Law School (finals are underway). I got into this mall when I saw an opening on the boards... I think... I just loved the concept, the unity. With past malls I didn't really feel like there was a common goal. I just paid my portion of the NB ad and that was it. With this mall I get to stock what I love, books (see lupe_grand_force) and I'm always kept up to date on everything and we all progress as a whole.

To explain how I came to be here, I'd have to tell a whole history lesson - but instead, here's a tiny fable:

I started small ... just a little Neodaq Co-op on the side, selling scratchcards to bluids and smurfie. Before long I'd graduated to the harder stuff: paintbrush plushies, bears. Then one dark evening, I received a PM from smurfie. Just testing the waters, you might say, to see if I would ever be interested in malling. I was a little cool to the idea, as I recall. It was sinking NPs into shop upgrades that couldn't be sold later that threw me off. That was March 2006.

So here we are a couple years later, and I'm in Main Market now, and I've sold 34 thousand items, collecting about 80 million profit. So 37 million in upgrades works out to almost half my profit, which was my plan from the start! (I should spend another few million to even it up, but I like the hut I'm in for now.)

smurfie - now Heather - and I are the only ones left of that original group, and Heather isn't malling at the moment. aurigryphon, who did our gorgeous graphics and ran the mall for a while, still stops in on occasion, too. liessakitten came out of retirement recently to sub in for an empty spot as well.

I like selling Clothing mostly because that's what I know, I guess. It's been very good to me! I enjoy RS-ing and love half price day, and Restocking at Uni's Clothing is satisfying.

I've used Richie's Shop Sales Tracker almost since I started malling. It interfaces well with Excel, where I store data as well. On a side note, Richie has introduced the replacement for iPricing just recently (it's still in testing mode), which now sends shop wiz averages to the Sales Tracker! I'll post something more on this later, or you can go to the Neodaq forum and look in the Tools section.

The mall as such has gone through a few incarnations, but what has remained was important enough to me that at its last crisis I chose to step into management to keep it alive. The goals of the mall are to band together as friends to have fun getting rich. No one is more or less important because of size or age or experience, and we acknowledge that each one's success or failure rubs off on the rest of us. Each member has responsibility for their own shop - the other members (including me) can only suggest and encourage. We assume that hut position and marketplace exposure is more cost effective than noticeboard ads. In recruiting, we place as much value on character as we do on size, so we will accept new members who aren't even in a marketplace, if they seem bright, enthusiastic, cooperative, and ambitious enough to reach their goals, but laid back enough to not snark at other members' pace of growth. [Management reserves the right to snark on occasion.]

It doesn't always work out as well as it should on paper of course. Sometimes a firm decision is required, but the discussion hasn't ended. We haven't got a clear line on crossover items yet, for example, and the matter of minimal growth requirements has just opened up. We have yet to see where that takes us.

This has taken 3 days to write! I'm feeling better now, but I still haven't had a real meal since Friday.

Pfizz, it would make our decision much easier if you could just tell us if you're "bright, enthusiastic, cooperative, and ambitious enough to reach [their] goals, but laid back enough to not snark at other members' pace of growth". Thanks! lol

For everyone else, please PM me your verdict as soon as you are ready. Are you OK with asking Pfizzgig to join, and can she take Backgrounds? Let's get a decision in time for the last minute Christmas shoppers!

Dropping in to say hello ^_^

We are safe at the other end of the journey now, and should have permanent internet access within a day or two.

Bright? I have my moments XD
Enthusiastic? Take a look at my shop
Co-Operative? I like to think so
Ambitious? Oh yes
Laid back?

I'm extremely keen to take on backgrounds! I was playing around with some stock previously, as you can see from my shop it looks great as a single category, very focused and pleasing to the eye. I'd honestly rather do one category and do it beautifully than mix and match for a half effort.

Glad to see you feeling better Egg, will chat to you all again soon.

Wow! That was wonderfully quick, you guys!
PFIZZGIG gets overwhelming support to join us and take on Backgrounds! waahoo! :pile:

You're well underway with your new category, Pfizz. I'll reduce my prices a bit (they're around 2k markup I think) today while you finish getting ready, and see if Xa can adjust the code tonight. If that doesn't work, I think we can easily just switch usernames on that button.

Xaheras my dear: can we move the BG button up? Pfizz will only have one button, so if positioning makes any difference at all, she should have better placement to compensate. *bats eyelashes appealingly*

And everyone, you know what? I think we need to party! I mean, this week we had two members making it to Island, one shop has expanded by 70, and now a new mallbuddy to welcome. I'm a lousy party coordinator, but if anyone has any ideas, hit up a Staff Picnic thread and we can work something out.

:clapclap:

Congrats pfizz! It's great to have you on board

Welcome pfizz!!! Sorry I'm late to the meet and greet.

I'm Jill. I run a toy shop for the mall. My shop is Island size at the moment, but I really need to fix that and get up to main.

I've been with the mall for several months and with Egg's leadership its been a great place.

It will be neat to see how backgrounds does as a category all by itself. With the new customizations it will probably an exciting shop to run.

Glad to have you with us.

*hugs*

Jill

Glad to have you on board Pfizz!

And gosh, Egg, all that does sound like a darn good reason to party. I'm unforuntately a lousy coordinator for that kind of tihng too though.

Pfizzgig replied to my neomail today:

Quote :

Delighted to accept, Egg
I've registered on the forum, just awaiting activation.
I'll try and get the skeleton stock priced today before I log, still functioning on temporary internet so don't have a lot of time to tinker, but very much looking forward to it
Did post on the forum as well but not entirely sure it went through. If not, please pass my regards on to the others for me!
Hope to be a more permanent fixture soon,
~Pfizz

Hurrah!
I have interwebs (apparently!) and a nice new spot to play with!
I'm gradually tinkering with stocks and prices, as I wrote via neomail Egg, I'm happy to purchase any excess stock you have lying around (I have plenty of funds set aside for setup etc). Much of the stock and pricing is based on Eggs to begin with also, though I'll tweak that as I go along. Comments and tips are of course very welcome
I'll be around - Take care y'all

Welcome Pfizzgig.

I'm working on the code right now, and I'll see what I can do about a banner tonight.

Egg isn't answering her phone, so she'll have to wait on the movement of the button for now. And here I was ready to do it for her.


Hera


Code will be up and ready by 08:00 NST/PST (Military time)