How the mall gets its shelves stocked
Every open shop in the mall is the same room: 24 feet of glass front on the concourse and 24 feet deep. The shelves, the counter and the products inside change from shop to shop.
One room, many stockings
A shop’s glass front has a low riser, thin mullions, panes up to the head and a door gap six feet wide. The shop’s name is on the fascia over the glass. Walk in at the door and you are inside.
The inside follows one plan. The counter stands by the near party wall with a clerk behind it, and the spot where E opens the counter’s panel is in front. Shelving runs round the walls. On the back wall it is 6.4 feet tall, and on the side walls 4.8, so you can see over it from the concourse. Three islands stand down the middle with a 4 foot aisle on each side. The first island is the shop’s own piece, such as a telescope stand, a case of figures or a table of old monitors. The other two are gondolas of its stock. Both have end caps, there is a display plinth in the window, and a rail of the shop’s carrier bags stands behind the counter.
I fitted every shop the same way, after Millecor, which I used as the model: slotted metal uprights, a lip and a price strip on every board, a coloured header over each run, a lit sign band behind the clerk, track lights and a counter on a dark plinth with a till, a card reader and a stack of bags.
| Shop | Unit | What you see on the shelves |
|---|---|---|
| Agena Astro | 101 | Boxed telescopes by brand (Celestron, Sky-Watcher, William Optics, ZWO and others), mount and camera boxes, eyepieces standing in rows, filter packs, three telescopes set up on a stand |
| Millecor | 102 | Tubs of whey protein and PRO-7, aminos, creatine, bottles of Test-Blast, Multi Men, GNX-9 and fish oil, shaker bottles on the counter, a scale by the door |
| J-List | 105 | Anime figures in boxes with clear windows, all-ages manga, calendars, art books, how-to-draw books, magazines, a capsule machine by the door |
| Hitt Hosting | 112 | Nine software boxes, one design each |
| Phosphor & Solder | 203 | Mechanical keyboards, a table of old monitors, single-board computer kits, parts bins |
| Ink & Ledger | 204 | Notebooks in six cloth covers, pen cups, a case of fountain pens, boxed pen sets, ink, washi tape, greeting cards, desk organisers |
| Black Rifle Coffee | 212 | A drum roaster in the window, bins of beans, bags of six roasts, canisters |
FlameNet Video and MyComicShop stock their own worlds, which the next section covers. Agena Astro also has five glass cases along its far wall, labelled Telescopes, Mounts, Cameras, Filters and Accessories. Press E at one and Caelum’s gift shop opens at that shelf, the same shop that is on the observatory roof.
The Hitt Hosting shop has nine boxes: Hitt Hosting, Hitt Books, Hitt CRM, Hitt Desk, Hitt Field, Hitt HR, Hitt SE, Hitt Security and Hitt Sign. They stand spine out on the low and middle boards, packed like books, and face out on the top boards. No box carries a price, because pricing is under review. A QR stand by the door opens the Hitt Hosting site.
Where the products come from
The labels use only the words the vendors use themselves: the brand, the product and the title, set in plain type. No logo, no character and no cover art is copied. A manga volume has a colour field and a volume number. Where a comic is named, the cover is a block of colour with the title and issue as text.
The signs follow the same rule. A promo sign at a real vendor’s shop carries only lines that the vendor’s own site states, word for word or cut down to a phrase. Sale percentages, prices and anything seasonal are left out, because they change on the site and a sign that still says them would be wrong. The invented shops get plain lines: their name and tagline, New arrivals, Staff picks, the hours.
Counters and doors
Press E at a shop’s counter and a panel opens. It says what the shop is. When a link is on file, the panel adds a link to the vendor’s own site, which opens in a new tab with a plain note that it is an affiliate link. J-List and Black Rifle Coffee link to the vendor’s home page with a note that the link is plain. A shop with no link says it is not connected yet. My own shops, Hitt Hosting and the Hitt Fitness kiosk, link with no note. The link goes through this site first, which counts the click by shop and by day. Nothing in the mall takes an order or a payment. The panels for Millecor and Black Rifle Coffee say outright that the building sells nothing.
Two shops are worlds of their own. At FlameNet Video the shelves hold a public domain library with real posters. A member who signs in sees their own library. At MyComicShop the shop’s own library fills the racks with covers, one case per series, and until it does the racks hold display copies. Behind the glass, a new-release wall shows face-out issues such as Hammer Head #1, Dungeon Crawler Carl and Batman, and the back-issue bins carry series names such as Action Comics, Amazing Spider-Man and Detective Comics. Walk through the pair of glass doors at either one and the mall steps aside while the shop loads.
The 14 units without a shop have a hoarding across the glass with the planned category on it. The diner, the bar and grill and the spa have doors but no counter.
If you want to know who made the models, people and textures, press E at the plaque on the atrium’s information desk. It lists the author, the source and the licence of each one.