"Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome."
-- Booker T. Washington

by Jami Petersen

As they say, hind sight is 20/20. It would be wonderful to have the knowledge we now have about the industry. It would have been easier to make different choices about business plans and marketing. Obviously we can't turn back time but we can learn from the past and go forward the SMART way. Dennis Conforto shares his thoughts about how to move forward in a more productive way. Read more about his ideas for salvaging the industry in this week's SMART article.

Jami Petersen
newsletters@a-z.com

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Press Releases

News you can use about the latest media coverage of hot trends, noteworthy events and dynamic industry leaders. Learn more about the current headlines in arts and crafts by clicking on the title of each article segment.

ScrapVenture Changes Hands - and Direction. Popular Business Resource for Scrapbooking Businesses Narrows Focus. ScrapVenture, a family of authority websites specializing in scrapbooking as a business, has been purchased by Dawn Stegall and is changing direction to focus on online business owners.

Kalida teen gets scrappy. Somewhere in your community, there are young, passionate artists who just need a little encouragement to get started scrapbooking. By figuring out how to mentor and nurture them, we can grow life-long lovers of the art.

Serif Unveils Digital Scrapbook Artist. All the creativity of a craft store with the limitless potential of the digital age. Scrapbook artists are increasingly turning to their digital images and computers to preserve memories such as a trip abroad or a child’s first day at school. Recognizing this trend, Serif, a leading developer of professional design and graphics software, today introduced Digital Scrapbook Artist™, its photorealistic digital scrapbooking program. 

by Dennis A. Conforto, A-Z Media Group, Inc.

Looking at the political debates recently it dawned on me that each candidate had very different views of what needed to be done to fix the economy. Who knows which plan will work, but we shouldn’t wait around for someone else to fix our own issues. I think for all of us within the industry it should be very clear that there is nothing that either party is really going to do for the scrapbooking industry. There will be no bail out for us unless we provide it for ourselves.

Our industry made some classic mistakes that we must now correct and move forward. Clearly the industry slowed down in 2005 when sales went flat, and then were down in 2006, 2007 and down again in 2008. As a result, many scrapbooking businesses are on the ropes today, both in retail and manufacturing. What were the causes and what are the solutions for having a business model that can be profitable in good and bad times?

Our first mistake as a scrapbooking industry was limiting our thinking and our marketing to focus on craft aspect of scrapbooking. In marketing and branding the industry in this way only 4.5% or 4.5 million women were ever really into scrapbooking and most were crafters. Only 12% of women are active crafters leaving another 88% of woman who either don’t have the time, money or desire to craft. Yet nearly 100% of women take pictures. This was a major disconnect to the primary market place of women.

It should not be interpreted that the majority of women didn’t want to scrapbook, but the majority of woman rejected the craft-only aspect of scrapbooking. If 4.5 million women produced $2.5 billion in yearly sales in 2004 and 2005, what if we had marketed differently? What if we had focused more on scrapbooking and less on the craft of scrapbooking and we had 45 million women? Instead of being a 2.5 billion dollar industry, we should have been a 20 billion dollar industry.

Had we not limited ourselves to the craft-only mentality of scrapbooking, we would have generated whole new categories of products; we would have had more in the non-crafter marketplace, more in the male marketplace and more in the corporate scrapbook marketplace. Instead, we defined too narrowly what scrapbooking was; we limited it and thus limited our ability to do more business.

No question the economy would have impacted our sales no matter what how great or small our sales would have been. However, had we marketed correctly, we would have had more money to carry us through the down times and investing back into our business for when the good times return.

Our second mistake was to create a series of business practices that made it impossible for the whole supply chain to be profitable. Manufactures didn’t like the idea of shipping less quantity more often. They wanted to ship retailers more than what they could sell in 60 days. This created an environment where retailers had a two time turn rate. This in turn weakened the retail store that had solid sales but no cash flow. Without cash on hand, retailers would buckle under the pressure over time and go out of business. This policy of ship more, less often slowly killed off the retailers.

To manufacturers’ dismay their most important channel of distribution was being wiped out without a true understanding as to what was happening or their role in the process. To make matters worse, the industry was simply not promoting itself and relying too much on word-of-mouth advertising. The industry spent hardly any advertising money on attracting newbie’s to the market place. Obama and McCain spend more money combined per week promoting their views than the industry would spend in an entire year. And co-op funds found virtually in every other retail industry were nowhere to be found within the scrapbooking industry.

Lastly, manufacturers and retailers got caught up in the tradeshow buying frenzy. Manufacturers would walk away thinking the show was great, but in truth these buying spikes would only serve to wipe out retailers. This combination of factors made our industry weak before the economy problems, and now is even weaker.

So the question is what is our bailout plan? Since nobody is going to save us what are we going to do to save ourselves? Surely nobody today thinks we can continue to do the same thing and expect different results?

Here is my suggestion for our scrapbooking industry bailout program. First we have to agree that our biggest problem is lack of revenues. So then let’s get beyond the fact that scrapbooking is primarily for woman who are crafters. Let’s expand scrapbooking not limit in terms of products, categories, genders or corporate programs. This means we would not lose the messaging we have but add to it with new products that fit the needs of the majority of women who are not crafters, new products for men and corporate scrapbooks. The drivers for change on this issue will be retailers who demand new product categories and innovative manufacturers who produce them.

Second let’s agree that it is in the best interest the industry to create a business model that promotes and supports inventory flow through every 60 to 90 days. We must move inventory quickly throughout the whole supply chain. The drivers for change on this issue will be manufacturers who know retailers cannot survive on a two or three time turn rate. This would mean that manufacturers would do new product introduction throughout the year, not just for tradeshows. It would also mean that manufacturers would create systems to ensure they don’t overstock retailers beyond the 60- 90 day threshold. And retailers would create Open to Buys that would help them maintain a 4 to 6 time turn rate.

Third let’s agree that to attract newbie’s, we must all spend money in advertising the brands. That happens best with matching co-op funds from manufacturers. This creates a system where retailers are promoting their brand in such a way that it becomes a consumer brand. This would mean that manufactures would create matching co-op funds based on the sales production of a retailer selling and promoting their brand.

If we get the new categories and messaging right, if we get the inventory movement right and we spend the right amount of money to get the new message out, then slowly but surely our self-made bailout program will begin to work. This requires an industry-wide commitment. It can’t just be a handful of retailers and manufacturer pushing for our bailout, it has to be the vast majority pushing together. Remember nobody is going to bail us out but us.

In the meantime we continue to work on the TV series for the industry called The Real Vacation to reach not the few but the many for all. What we need today are big ideas not small ones, ideas that reach the masses not just in a local area but nationally and beyond and that is what being business SMART is all about!

If you would like to comment directly to Dennis about this article or have him address a subject matter in future articles feel free to email him directly at dconforto@a-z.com.

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Valley Elementary Schools Making the Most of their Own Bit of GLITZ

Donations made to several Valley Elementary schools on Sept. 25th and 26th have been put to good use! Drop offs were met with oohs and aahs from elementary school office workers with big ideas for their bit of Glitz products ranging from classroom décor to seasonal art projects for the students to teacher appreciation packets to repackaging into individual batches for auction at upcoming fundraising events!

A few of the selected recipients were: Entz Elementary, Canyon Rim Elementary and The Montessori House.

An Entz Elementary School parent said, “I got a glimpse of the donation and thought how excited my son would be to see that passed out during art class! I can’t wait to see what he brings home.”

Ms. Sheri at The Montessori House is saving the items for a special Valentine’s Day project the kids look forward to every year. They’ll have some extra special supplies to add to the mix this time when they decorate their bags for collecting special notes and treats from their classmates and teachers!

Canyon Rim Elementary school plans to make the most of the supplies donated and attempt to use them for a variety of special projects throughout the upcoming months!

Glitz Design, a locally owned scrapbook supply company, donated to local elementary schools the same way they do everything else…with as much Glitz as possible! The three Glitz Design owners made the rounds to selected Phoenix metro area elementary schools delivering donations on Thursday, September 25th and Friday, September 26th, 2008. The donated supplies (with a retail value of approx. $5,000) included: over 2500 sheets of full color, double sided heavy stock scrapbook paper, over 2000 full color, pop out chipboard stickers (Glitz calls it Eye Candy), and over 1000 Glitz Icing strips (flexible, self adhesive strips of rhinestones).