"A strong imagination is always required to create a strong opportunity."

-- Michel de Montaigne, writer

by Jami Petersen

We talk a lot about offering the right products at the right time, which is important to any successful business, but there is another component that weighs heavily on how you turn these products - STAFF. Who you hire can dramatically effect turn rates and return customers. In the first of a three-part series, Dennis walks us through what to look for in employees. In the coming weeks, he'll share more insight into helping your employees go from good to great! 

Jami Petersen
newsletters@a-z.com

Wooky Entertainment

Target New Consumers:

Teenagers with the Paris Hilton Creativity Collection. This new line is for teens from 10 years old and older who are interested by scrapbooking. Following the latest trends and fashion, the Paris Hilton Creativity Collection is adapted for teen girls of 2010!

Visit us online: http://pariscreativity.com/
For more information : info@wookyentertainment.com

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.
 

Tombow Mono Adhesive Vellum. Tombow, a leading manufacturer of craft, fine arts and fine writing instruments in North America, introduces Mono Adhesive Vellum. This instant, permanent adhesive provides an invisible bond, disappears on most vellum papers and is especially useful with transparencies and acetate overlays. Great for scrapbooking, card making, invitations, announcements.

Flower Soft® launches new ‘Moments in Time’ collection of un-mounted stamps and Card Toppers™. Flower Soft® is launching a number of new products to coincide with its new and groundbreaking Ultra Fine range of colors. The ‘Moments in Time’ collection, designed by Rikey, focuses on nostalgic imagery from a bygone era and is a charming addition to the Flower Soft® portfolio.

Luminarte Warehouse closeout 30% off sale. As our Fresno location is closing the entire 188 color selection will be made available one more time. What we have left by March 31 2010 is final. In May 2010 www.dreamingcolor.com will be seeking design team members to assist in market testing new products, expanding our YOUTUBE library of tips and techniques.

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

For too long now, scrapbooking retail stores have impaired their profits by hiring retail clerks rather than retail salespeople. The differences between the two are affecting your bottom line.

Behind the register, a retail clerk steps out of the way in the buying process. Conversely, the retail salesperson steps toward the consumer and then steps the consumer up to the best products by showing and demonstrating different choices to fit the consumer’s needs.

Such a staff member will not only increase your sales during a customer’s visit but also promote loyalty with that customer, especially if he or she is able to pull off a sale in non-pushy manner. Scrapbooking stores can be dizzyingly intimidating places for the novice or new customer who might just walk out of the store in frustration if nobody volunteers to help her navigate your floor.

Hiring salespeople for a scrapbooking store is much different than hiring a retail clerk. Look for someone with true commitment to the success of your store. To ensure commitment, offer more than an average hourly salary—reward them with bonus commission payments that correspond with the revenue they generate for you. This will ensure that fewer people go out the door without buying and those that do buy will buy more. Your salespeople should be scrapbookers themselves, so that their true enthusiasm for the products you carry will help them to upsell and add on to a sale.

Finding the right person to sell for your store is the key to your success and can increase your sales by as much as 25%. Sales profile questionnaires are available through The SMART Group to determine how your prospective employee will do as a salesperson. The questionnaire can be taken online by your candidate at her own home. Once completed, the results are automatically forwarded to you with a comprehensive profile and commentary on your candidate.

In the book Good to Great, author Jim Collins asserts that the leader of any business has to get the right people on the bus (your business) and the wrong people off the bus. Once you have the right people on the bus, the next step is to get them in the right seats (jobs) as fast as possible. Staff turnover can be a tough call, but in the end nobody wins if you have the wrong staff.

If you’re in retail today, you are a selling company, not a display company for someone else’s inventory. Moving inventory is as complex as the selection of products found in the scrapbooking industry. Everyone who works for you needs to be selling all the time. It is easier to teach a natural salesperson how to cashier than to teach a cashier how to sell products. You are in the business of promoting and selling one the greatest merchandise categories in the world today... SCRAPBOOKING.

With the information presented here, we hope you will consider a change in how you think about your staff. Join us next week as we discuss the next steps to training your employees.

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.

New Color Assortment Sets: Jellybean, Retro, Jewel, Groovy, Soda Shop and Grunge

Tombow, a leading manufacturer of craft and fine arts plans to unveil new Dual Brush Pen Sets for the craft world. Tombow Dual Brush Pens have always set the gold standard for professional art markers. And now they’re even better; they have a new look for the craft market. We have created SIX new and exciting color assortments both in our 6 and 10 pack sets. Not only that, but we’ve also lowered the price on them! That’s a combination that can’t be beat.

Tombow Dual Brush Pens are available in 96 colors, and they feature, as you might have guessed; two tips. The one end is the flexible nylon fiber ‘brush’ tip which works like a paint brush; ideal for coloring directly on rubber stamps, creating subtle washes and shading while the blender pen is used to soften and blend colors, creating a watercolor effect. The other end hosts a ‘fine’ tip which is great for drawing borders, writing and coloring tight drawings. The ink is water based and thus is non-toxic, acid free, and odorless.