"Give the world the best you have and the best will come back to you."

-- Madeline Bridges

by Jami Petersen

June is right around the corner and it is scary to think that the year is almost half over. For some, the quickly passing calendar is a deterrent from making changes that could increase the profitability of their business. Change should be something that is welcomed year-round, not just as a new year's resolution.

You're probably feeling a squeeze on your business, perhaps you're struggling with bringing in new customers, or your average sales figure is lower than it has been in the past. These trends and concerns have not gone unnoticed. Pay close attention as you read this week's feature article. There are changes that can be made to help you with your business so that everything comes together and you become a retailer who has it all together.

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.

Club Scrap, Inc. Celebrates 10 Years of Extraordinary in the Papercrafting Industry. Club Scrap®, the innovative leader who established the very first of-the-month-club in the scrapbooking industry in 1999 by shipping its charter exclusive collection, is celebrating over 120 monthly kits with its 10th Anniversary in June. From humble, small town beginnings, to an expanded 16,000 square foot design and distribution center in Greenville, Wisconsin, the company now ships to more than 35 countries, and is continuing on a journey of designing and manufacturing the most unique, high-quality papercrafting materials available. In addition, Club Scrap® provides a forum for inspiration, ideas and techniques and offers an extraordinary value to its customers.

Epson recently announced four new all-in-ones in its Stylus® NX series. Designed for everyday printing needs at an affordable price, each all-in-one in the series offers convent features, total flexibility, and high-quality performance, making them truly smart, simple and amazing. The top-of-the-line Epson Stylus NX515 saves time and money, boasting Wi-Fi® and Ethernet capabilities, the ability to scan directly to your computer from the control panel, and a 2.5-inch tilt-screen LCD for selecting, cropping and printing photos without a computer. In addition, it delivers black text speeds up to two times faster than the competition, making it the fastest printer in its class.

TV star cheers up cancer-stricken teen. "Thirteen-year-old Brody Chapman, who’s known for presenting other cancer-stricken children with scrapbooking kits, has had a difficult month. Only his phone conversations with TV’s Bounty Hunter, Duane “Dog” Chapman, have given Brody the will to keep up his two-year fight against the disease."

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

Over the last month I have written a series of articles about reach, frequency, mind share and market share. These articles were mainly for the benefit of the manufacturers. This time I would like to address these four areas in one article for the benefit of retailers.

The biggest struggle that scrapbooking retailers are having today is that they are reaching the same consumer over and over again. By continuing to do this, the effectiveness decreases and the amount that the consumer will buy over time becomes smaller and smaller. The fact is that the industry is starving itself out by continuing to market to the converted and not reaching out to the unconverted scrapbooker. When looking at reach, scrapbooking stores need to work most of their ad budgets (around 75%) toward the newbie.

Since the life cycle of a scrapbooker’s activity in this hobby is seven years, it stands to reason that every seven years your whole client list will have to change. If you are not actively hunting for the new customer, you will, over time, bury your own business with shrinking sales. The whole industry is feeling it now. We at Scrapbooking.com Magazine and The SMART Group have been talking about this issue for 3 years. Now, for the first time, retailers and manufacturers are starting to actively change their advertising habits and programs at an ever increasing rate.

Yesterday. I met with a local newspaper and several scrapbooking retailers in Southern California. It was interesting to see the dynamics of the meeting change as all of us began to truly understand the lack of exposure the category has. And, on the other hand, how much exposure it deserves to have.

Through our work with The SMART Group, I have noticed that the group is getting SMARTer each day. As we in the group work with local newspapers to understand how to drive real editorial that creates significant interest in the category, we will show new potential scrapbookers how scrapbooking can help us to address the social challenges that we all face today.

In Southern California, we will shortly see the results of manufacturers and retailers in local areas working together to drive real traffic into scrapbooking stores. We will learn together how we can get new customers; we will learn how to convert them from a newbie to a beginner who will be loyal to both the retail stores and specific brands within those stores. We will learn together how to reach new consumers and solve at the same time the problem facing the newspapers - obtaining local news stories that are worthy of print space and are of interest to their readership.

At Scrapbooking.com Magazine we have started on a project called, “A Matter of the Heart.” This is where our readers tell us why they scrapbook. The stories are inspiring, every single one of them. It is these stories of why people scrapbook that will convert millions more to the hobby.

Once we learn how to reach the newbies in a cost-effective manner, we can then focus our energies on the frequency of our message. This will only happen as a result of increasing our sales so that we can spend more money to keep the pipeline full of new consumers coming to independent scrapbooking stores across North America. It’s only through frequency of message that we can reach the full potential of the marketplace.

Mindshare is the third tool that is important in our efforts to grow the industry. Mindshare will come from the industry being really good at working with large media outlets and letting them tell the story of our industry. The more we can change in the industry and lead it toward “team” marketing and to address the needs of the instant scrapbooker (a potential scrapbooker who is interested in the results, and not the craft), the more this industry will explode with unbelievable growth.

Only through reach, frequency and mindshare can we move toward obtaining the level of market share that is due the industry. Instead of 4.5 million women active in scrapbooking at one level or another, we can have 45 million women who make scrapbooking a lifestyle choice that tells the story of who they are, how they live, how they love, how they succeed, how they fail, how they cry, how they find joy and how they live a full life.

If you want to form a marketing team in your own state working with other SMART retailers and Manufacturers with the added support of Scrapbooking.com Magazine then please contact us. We will follow up with you to organize the retailers and newspapers and other marketing tools to help you reach the full potential of your business.

What do I believe about our industry? I believe the future is so bright we all ought to wear shades… Now let’s roll… And that is what being business SMART is all about. 

Printing on an Epson printer from an Apple® iPhone or iPod Touch™ is now possible using the new EuroSmartz, Ltd. Print & Share app that lets users print photos, business documents, PDF files, Web pages, e-mail, and more.

“Smart phones, especially the iPhone, are increasingly being used in place of laptops,” said Steve Semos, product manager, consumer ink jets, Epson America, Inc. “As an iPhone user, I can print PDF files, business documents and brilliant photos stored on, or taken by my iPhone to my Epson Artisan® 800 printer or any other Epson printer. Epson recognizes the need for mobile printing and is pleased to see that the Print & Share app makes printing available to all iPhone and iPod Touch users.”

The Epson Artisan 800 and Artisan 700 are ideal for printing photos and documents from the iPhone through a wireless network. Print & Share lets users print information from their iPhone or iPod Touch to a printer connected to a computer, via a network or through a USB connection. Smart phone printing to an Epson home or office printer is now a reality with the Print & Share app, available for $6.99 at the iTunes App Store.

“Epson is an internationally celebrated brand known for superior print quality, particularly when it comes to photo printing,” said Ian Schenkel, co-founder, EuroSmartz, Ltd. “We’re pleased that Epson finds value in our Print & Share app for iPhone users around the world.”

About Epson America Inc.
Epson America Inc. is the U.S. affiliate of Japan-based Seiko Epson Corporation (SEC) and is a leading provider of digital imaging products that exceed the vision of its customers. The company’s extensive range of printers, 3LCD projectors and small- and medium-sized LCDs are renowned for their superior quality, functionality, compactness, and energy efficiency. The Seiko-Epson organization is proud of its ongoing contributions to the global environment and was recently added to the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index, an indicator for leading companies in economic, environmental and social criteria.