A Brief History of Z&A

It's hard to pinpoint the exact moment that Z&A Productions was born because, as often happens with these things, there wasn't an exact moment when it was decided that it should be born. It started with some coding Antony did to explore RLV, and with some building Zardia was doing, and the demands of Antony's Mistress, Miss Vila Pixelmaid. Antony's very first build was a prim that could be worn with a touch to lock and a touch to unlock. After that was a simple ball-shaped isolation helmet that further explored what could be done with RLV. After that came a cube that you could sit on and be locked on, by way of experimenting with and understanding talking to an RLV relay.

Meanwhile, Zardia was making jelly (don't ask)...

What is recorded is that, one day, in February 2010, Zardia told Antony of a mall that had some affordable spare shops, run by a friend of hers. She tried to talk him into opening a shop, he came up with a bunch of objections, she came up with a bunch of reasons why those objections were total crap, he couldn't argue with that and...

...on February 19th, 2010, Z&A Productions had a shop.

Well, actrually, that's not quite true. Zardia and Antony had a shop, we'd not decided on a name yet. The name came a day or so later and, on the 21st, we had our logo:

There was still some work to do though. First came the shooting of the products:

(keen-eyed Z&A fans will notice we didn't go with a white backdrop in the end) and then came the creation of the vendor boards:

(keen-eyed Z&A fans will notice the backdrop we did use in the end) and, finally, on the 24th of February, we had a shop, with stock:

That shop only lasted about three weeks. The owners of the mall had been offered a whole mainland sim at a good price and wanted to move everything over there and build bigger. So, with the promise of a good price on a bigger shop (and direct TP rights! DIRECT TP RIGHTS!), we agreed. And so, on March 16th 2010, Z&A Productions' Main Store, MkII, was born.

We were so chuffed with that shop. It was huge, and open, and felt like it was going to be impossible to fill and would last us forever. It lasted just under a month.

Turned out the landlords couldn't afford the next month's tier and were looking to sell it from under us. So, sadly, just as we'd started to get into the swing of things (the keen-eyed reader will notice that, by this point, we'd discovered hunts and we were taking part in a few of them -- we'd started getting traffic and, more important, we'd started getting sales!), we had to close it all down again, with nowhere to go.

But then Miss Vila discovered Craigie and a spare plot there. It was bigger than the previous store. Moreover, it was an actual plot of land (none of this renting a building on someone else's plot nonsense). It was more expensive than we'd been paying. It was, dare we say, an admission that this was getting a little serious. After a three hour conversation about the pros and cons we decided it was time to get serious. The Z&A Productions Main Store MkIII was born:

There's so much we could write about Craigie, it was an awesome location for us. The people were great. The sim was great. Meeting and doing fun things with the 24/7 Restricted group was great. Craigie is, without question, where Z&A grew up and became a name that people know and pass on.

And, sadly, that brings us to the reason for this post. You'll notice we're talking in the past tense here. As some of you might know, Essendy are having to let Craigie go, to consolidate their sims somewhat and to make more waterfront for their residential sims. Because of this the commecial lands that are on Craigie are being moved to another sim. And, in any other situation, we'd be moving there. We adore Essendy and would still do business with them (and probably will, there's still going to be a mall...), no question, no hesitation.

Only....

Meanwhile, the home sim of Miss Vila, Zardia, Antony and the Z&A Workshop had undergone some big changes and had turned into a BDSM-friendly femdom sim. There was some land still going spare (as of the time of writing there still is -- if you want to come live on, and be part of, SL's newest femdom sim, do get in contact) and, if we had to move the shop, it made more sense to move to our own sim than it did to move to another one. It was a hard decision to make, a very hard decision to make. But, in the end, it made sense to support the sim we've helped to build and that we live on.

So, as of today, Z&A Productions' new main store lives on the island sim of Shackles:

We hope you come and visit us. We also hope you come and explore the wider sim too (you'll find many Z&A products dotted around, not to mention some builds exclusive to Shackles). Please also note that we've closed down the small shop we opened at Shackles. Now that our main store is located there there didn't seem much point in keeping that going (right now it's a MoDesign affiliate shop -- Antony's still giggling like crazy at Mo's PG-friendly RLV-enabled barrel).

So, there you have it. A brief (well, okay, briefish) history of Z&A Productions, ending with the next step in our evolution. If you've purchased from us, supported us, or just popped into our shops, thank you. You make it all worth it. :-)

Many thanks for your support,
Zardia Avindar
Antony Fairport
AKA Z&A Productions