How loyal are you to specific doll makers?

In the beginning I bought what ever appealed to me. But after so many years in hobby I found several companies very disappointing to me. Then it was what worked together and posed well. Now I am loyal to three companies and will consider ones from two others for variety. I don't stray outside those as I will just end up selling.

 

personally i'm open to buying from pretty much any company if i like the sculpt/has the body I like/etc, but it seems like all of my new dolls (like, bought from the company/dealer) are specifically from fairyland i admit i do like them and luts a lot! all of my secondhand dolls are not from FL, and range from a really old souldoll to an iplehouse JID that i picked up on a whim to repair. i think lately though i've slowly been finding my personal 'style', i like really elegant, ethereal dolls like A-S and LS a ton, and i want to get another A-S doll in the future, hopefully one of their 1/3 girls.

 

I've looked at dolls from lots of companies (Angell Studio has had my attention for years ) but I've pretty much only owned Fairyland dolls aside from a Little Monica body that I used to have. It's not intentional, I just like their faces usually and the bodies are more what I prefer since I don't like the torso joint placement that a lot of other companies use. I really hate the diaper joint though, so I'm still waiting to find my dream company in a sense haha.~
There are so many amazing artists out there though, I hope to have a nice little varied collection someday.

 

Currently all the dolls I own are from different companies, and I recently made a "rule" for myself that I'm only allowed to get one doll from a company, although if I ever had the chance, I'd definitely get two Peakswoods (I'm in love with two of their special resin colors and absolutely cannot pick between the two) and two Angel Philias. It's more a rule for fun to encourage myself to look for smaller companies instead of just looking at the "big" ones, and also so that I get variation in my collection, as in my last doll-collecting hobby I grew bored since all my dolls (Pullips) look the same since they have the same face sculpt.

 

I usually buy based on what I'm looking for, but if I can order from a specific company I like I'll do that instead. Right now I love aimerai dolls. Their sculpts are cute, they're reasonably priced; and they typically ship out in 2-3 months. I really appreciate reliability in a company and I like to know that my business is going to a great company with amazing quality and prices.

Usually ordering from companies I've never dealt with before can give me anxiety, but then I'll usually order through a dealer for less stress.

 

No loyalty here, but there's a number of companies that're on the no-buy list from bad experiences, be it personal or someone else's...

Posing, resin color, budget, height, and aesthetic are more important to me than company, and some dollmakers just happen to be more appealing in certain categories and those I just happen to buy from. So some companies I do tend to lean towards because they have an aesthetic I like, but that's more of an aesthetic loyalty rather than company.

 

I’m pretty loyal to a company but it’s only because I love what they create, the story of what they create, and the quality of what they create. They have been very kind when I’ve had to contact them, and they make some beautiful clothing and accessories, as well as their dolls. I never intended to love them so much, but I find they hit the spot for me. I’ve owned dolls from several companies over these many years I’ve been in this hobby, but most of them ended up finding new homes...except for the ones from this company.

 

I am not loyal. My 3 dolls are from 5 different company, and only my girl is a full dolly. (I am still waiting for two of them, 11 months for my DC girl, and my last doll won't be here before 2021 may I think...) I like different type of dolls, and with my strict standards it's not too easy to find a doll I like. At least not in full. So I buy what I like, and it's does not matters what company produce it...

 

I always like to collect things from different brands whenever I buy something so for me bjds are the same. However the customer service can be a huge turn off for me. If their customer service isn’t good I don’t want to order anything from them. And I like to deal directly with the company unless the stuffs I want to buy are only available through dealers (gotta find different ways to acquire things since this hobby is expensive)

 

I've never bought from the same company twice. I'd like to own one doll from every company I'm interested in.

 

I like a variety of dolls and will never again buy two with the same body (unless they’re twins), so I buy from a lot of different companies. I will buy from the same company as long as the bodies are different.

 

I have dolls from many different companies in my crew, but my favorite stand-bys will always be my Cerberus Project and Volks dolls.

 

When it comes to some of the larger companies, I've previously owned a lot of Doll Chateau, Ringdoll and Dollzone dolls, and I don't feel terribly loyal to those--they had things I liked, so I bought them. I own 3 FL dolls and am going to end up with another, plus some FL heads, and again, I like them, but I don't really follow FL other than the discussion threads, and I don't feel that loyalty with them either.

The one time I've felt a huge feeling of "brand loyalty" was with Twigling. For one thing, I've talked to Reese so many times by email to sort out orders, and she's wonderful. Her sculpts are beautiful, and the articulation and customization options are exactly what I want. She does resin colours that I wanted to see. I follow her a lot more actively, and I used to hold Twigling dolls in general at a grail kind of status, where I couldn't have them. I'm planning at least 4 more dolls form her (in the indeterminate future,) and I have 4 at home, 2 on order. I don't know what it is about Twigling, but they're exactly what I've wanted out of dolls, and I see myself going back for more and more of them.

 

I always admire Angell Studio and Soom, but I've yet to buy any of their dolls...
Whereas I have a lot of dolls from Dearmine at this point, and several from Atelier Momoni.

Generally though, I buy whatever I like, regardless of company. I gravitate toward artist dolls, though, they just tend to have the sort of 'different' style that appeals to me.

 

I like verity first and foremost, so if I had an option I'd get as many different bodies and sculpts from as many companies as I could... Unfortunately I gravitate towards specific scale and style that very few companies actually make, so as far as I can see I'll have to stay "loyal" to 4-5 companies that carter to my tastes, and I'll have to resign myself to body repeats eventually

 

I own a lot of Dollzone and Doll Chateau dolls.

It's not so much loyalty, especially after a whole fiasco of trying for almost 2 years to either get the thing they forgot with my order or give me a refund for it ... :')


But its just my personal taste. I like weird dolls.
And it just happens that DC/DZ makes a lot of weird ones.

I've also got weird lil friends from other companies as well -- ive got two miracle doll heads and just put a body on order!
(I did have three Miracle Doll heads, but sold him to a friend. He's more appreciated there!)

 

I would say that I'm the polar opposite of @animemom, lol. When I first got into the hobby, pretty much everything was Iplehouse. Then it was Iplehouse and Luts. Then Iple, Luts and Soom. Then I added Soul Doll...and over the years, Fairyland, Loong Soul, IOS, a bit of Volks, LLT, small independent artists like Mouton en Sucre...and so on. It's actually become more exciting to me - I never know what will come along next!

 

I'm now considering buying only from artists. For some reason companies are becoming boring to me.

Only companies are still worth (imo ofc):
Peakswoods (HEADS only. I hate their bodies);
DC / DZ (not including face-up / blushing options);
I will update -it' 2.30 a.m and I don't remember any other company.

 

In my earlier days in the hobby I loved Soom dolls the most to the point that I had their website as a quick tab on my bookmark bar on my browser just because I was constantly checking their website to see what new lovely fantasy dolls they would create!
Sadly over the years I kind of feel out of love with them as their quality control was not good at all. They would constantly change the colors of their resins without changing the name of the color or explicitly saying they had changed it, and also it tended to yellow very fast and unevenly over time, among other things. That combined with not really ever updating their YoSD/MSD bodies for 10+ years just made me fall out of love with them to the point that I can't really even consider getting their smaller dolls anymore. I still love their face sculpts and I do still want a couple of their larger dolls that have updated bodies, but I really hesitate to go back knowing their problems.

Really the biggest nail in the coffin for my loss of loyalty to Soom was Fairyland making fantasy dolls. Fairyland's fantasy dolls are much better engineered, more posable with more varied body options and just all around much higher quality than Soom dolls were at the time.
For the last four years or so that Fairyland has been making Fantasy dolls they've taken over as my favorite company that I constantly check in on and anticipate what they create.
I am always open to the possibility of dolls from other companies of course, but I've just found that Fairyland tends to most consistently make dolls that I find aesthetically pleasing.

I'm also a very big stickler for my dolls looking proportionate and stylistically similar to one another (that are part of the same story/ within the same scale, etc.), and of course the best way to find success with that is having dolls made by the same company/artist. I've been too frustrated too many times getting a doll from another company that reasonably should work well with my other dolls only to be disappointed that their proportions are ever so slightly off. Its so unbearably distracting to me. So, because I have mostly all Fairyland dolls now, I really only will take a chance on a non-Fairyland sculpt if they are one that I absolutely adore or that i'm very confident will work well with them.