"Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence."

-- Helen Adams Keller

Tombow

The Craft Collection by Tombow

With the addition of new Dual Brush Pen packs to
Tombow’s Craft Collection your customers can create
and design pages that will last a lifetime. So choose
Tombow’s Craft Collection and offer your customers
uncompromising quality to preserve the world’s
most important memories – theirs!

Sign-up for product updates and announcements on our website!

www.tombowusa.com

by Jami Petersen

Web marketing is a powerful tool, especially in today's economy. There are several free sites that manufacturers and retailers can use to their advantage. But with all the internet has to offer, how do you narrow down choices and make the best decisions for your business? Susan Katz has some answers to these questions and advice for successful web marketing strategies. Read more in today's SMART article.

Jami Petersen
newsletters@a-z.com

Tragic Magic

Tragic Magic

The next Scrapbooking mystery takes readers back to New Orleans, where there are spookies, foodies—and crafty killers. Carmela, owner of Memory Mine scrapbook shop, and her best friend have a big project converting an old mansion into an unforgettable haunted house. But when Carmela’s client turns up dead, she finds herself in some deep gumbo again. Discover more Tragic Magic including recipes and scrapbooking tips.

Click here to learn more about this scrapbooking mystery...

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.
 

 

Epson Expands its Award-Winning Compact Photo Printer Line with PictureMate Charm. The ultimate companion in photo printing has arrived with the release of the affordable, portable Epson PictureMate® Charm. Offering the same impressive features and results as previous models in the renowned PictureMate line, including superior photo quality, economical print costs, long-lasting prints, and powerful image enhancement tools, PictureMate Charm is the ideal solution for printing and sharing cherished memories at home or on the go.

Halloween Fun from Creativity for Kids. For the first time ever, Creativity for Kids introduces a spooktacular Halloween craft kit. Gather the family together for some Shrinky Dinks Halloween Fun and create a unique decoration for your house. Make 30 Halloween-themed genuine Shrinky Dinks ornaments to display on an eerie black velvet tree that’s 11” tall. Color in the designs with colored pencils included in the kit, add a hole with the mini hole punch, then bake and shrink your ornaments. Once they’re done, arrange them on the tree however you like for a decoration that’s sure to delight all the ghosts and goblins in the neighborhood.

Dies Direct is arriving soon! America's only manufacturer of metal dies and embossing plates for paper arts direct from its US factory , will launch its Web site on November 1st. Dies Direct, a division of PMA Photometals, Inc., will be offering scrapbookers and cardmakers a host of American-made products with new designs, refreshing ideas and the resources of a multi-million dollar custom metal fabricating manufacturer.

The Memory Tradeshow

The Memory Tradeshow is the premiere market for scrapbooking and related products, family history and digital imaging.

It is the most important gathering of this industry regionally, and it’s attracting executives from all sectors: manufacturers, retailers, distributors, suppliers, sales reps, designers and press. The show’s goal is to provide the highest ROI show within the industry with a greater focus on the business of the memory industry, education and best business practices.

Learn more and save >>

by Susan Katz

250 million searches are performed on Google every day while print publications are closing up shop. The new world of marketing has arrived. Although the scrapbook industry seems to be ahead of the game with an abundance of bloggers, email marketing campaigns and social media groups, there is still a long way to go in our understanding of this relatively new marketing venue and how to use the tools effectively to increase sales which, lets face it, is our ultimate goal. How successful are your web marketing efforts? Are they meeting your goals? Are you measuring their effectiveness at all?

It is important to define your web marketing goals and to review those goals from time to time to make sure they are still relevant to your overall business. Some common goals for web marketing are to 1) increase traffic and 2) increase conversion from potential customer to buying customers. These two goals can and should be measured and tracked on a regular basis to ensure that you continue to meet your goals. As you get more sophisticated with your web marketing efforts you may want to consider adding goals such as increasing potential customers rather than just traffic, or increasing customer loyalty and repeat purchases.
But accomplishing these goals is tougher than it sounds. Just because you are on Twitter and Facebook, doesn’t mean that it’s translating into increased sales, especially when you have a low number of followers and fans.

The key to any marketing strategy, web-based or traditional, is to know your target customers/consumers.

Find out who they are, what they are interested in and what concerns them, if they are online, what they are doing and aren’t doing on the internet. Develop a set of buyer profiles and quantify how much each set of buyers contributes to your business. Once you know your customers, you can develop a marketing strategy that speaks to them about what interests them. Make sure you understand their perspective. Consumers aren’t necessarily interested in your products; they are interested in their own lives and solving their own problems. Then tailor your marketing efforts to what interests you customers, be where they are.

Susan Katz is a Marketing Consultant and Market Research Expert with 20 years of experience helping companies develop strategies and tactics to grow their business. She can help you profile your customer/consumers. For more information, please visit our website: www.KATZsolutions.com or email her at skatz@katzsolutions.com. Connect with her on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/susantudekkatz.     

Scrapbook Adhesives by 3L™

SCRAPBOOK ADHESIVES BY 3L™ offers you a new opportunity to gain more sales!

They now have launched an online store powered by Shopatron! This move also bolsters the commitment SCRAPBOOK ADHESIVES BY 3L™ has to their fulfillment partners by driving sales through independent retail stores. The addition of in-store pickup available for brick-and-mortar stores will create ancillary sales of complementary products when customers arrive to pick up their orders.

Sign up for FREE today!!  

Trade Show Input

Occasionally Scrapbooking.com Magazine would like your opinions on different topics that are relevant to the craft industry. We would appreciate your valuable feedback about the 2010 Utah Trade Show:

Click here to participate. . .
 

Sakura

Sticklers™ kits include gold or silver outline stickers with three Glaze® (glossy) or Soufflé™ (opaque) 3-dimensional ink pens.

 Fun to demo because anyone can color! All ages can easily personalize cards, bookmarks, cell phones, picture frames, votives, journals & more. All-in-one family fun kit works on glass, paper, plastic & metals. Great for travel, parties, incentive, award, gift and home.

Peel Sticker, Place, Color-in, Let Dry. View video on website. $6.99 U.S. MSRP

http://www.sakuraofamerica.com/Kits-Sticker

New Crayola.com Web Application Makes Kids the Stars of Their Own Coloring Pages

Crayola is taking coloring outside the box and onto the Web with an application called “Lights, Camera, Color” that lets kids turn their digital photos into personalized coloring pages. The first kid-friendly, Web application of its kind was created to bring online and offline creativity together by making kids the stars of coloring pages they can create, print and color. Special codes found inside Crayola crayon boxes (48-ct. and higher) let kids print and color line-art versions of digital photos they uploaded and customized with text and fun graphics. Whether it’s a family vacation, a birthday celebration or a momentous moment on the soccer field, Lights, Camera, Color makes kids’ photos one for the books -- personalized, custom coloring books that is!

Specially-marked Crayola crayon boxes will contain a unique code that unlocks the Lights, Camera, Color picture printer. Kids can try out the program for free online at Crayola.com at any time, but a code is required to print out personalized coloring pages. The 48-ct. box contains a code good for 3 months of unlimited prints; 64-ct. and larger boxes offer codes good for 6 months.

Designing custom coloring pages from your photos is fun and easy. Choose a digital photo and save it to your computer. Upload it to Lights, Camera, Color at Crayola.com. With a click, the color magically disappears from the photo, as it morphs into black and white line art ready to return to full color with the bold and bright strokes of a crayon.

To add to the online fun, kids can personalize their masterpieces with text and graphics and even create their own creatures with the “Body Builder” tool and build machines with the “Gizmo Gears” application. Perfect for gift giving, adding to a scrapbook or framing for a bedroom wall, the options are endless and the themes as vast as a child’s imagination. Kids can take Lights, Camera, Color for a test drive at www.crayola.com/colorme.

Crayola will partner with Olympus, the official digital camera of Lights, Camera, Color, this holiday season to introduce the exclusive FE-46 Digital Camera Coloring Set featuring Lights, Camera, Color. The set will include an FE-46 digital camera and case, a 64-ct. box of Crayola crayons, a colorable craft storage box and a unique code for turning your images into personalized coloring pages. The 12-megapixel camera will offer a 5x optical zoom lens and a 2.7” high-resolution LCD screen. It will be available in light blue, light pink, pearl black and pearl white. The FE-46 Digital Camera Coloring Set will retail for $99.99.