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Business SMART: |
SMART Co-op Marketing
Teams |
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By:
Dennis A. Conforto
Chairman & CEO of A-Z Media Group, Inc. |
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One of the most
successful category segments of all time has been the car
industry. I am a great believer in not re-inventing the wheel
and learning from the success of others. I believe that it would
be wise for the scrapbooking industry to imitate the steps that
the car industry has taken to grow.
When the car industry started out about 100 years ago, it was
every manufacturer for himself. Each manufacturer set up their
own dealerships so that they could control what was happening
both at the manufacturing and retail ends of the business. At
the time, cars were still new and novel and this model worked.
However, after the great depression, hard times fell on the auto
industry and retailers were allowed to carry multiple brands of
cars. Soon thereafter, there was an onslaught foreign
manufacturers entering into the market. Car manufacturers went
to war with each other.
By the later part of the 1950’s the great world wars were over,
and America’s economy started to really take off. The auto
industry realized that they were competing for the same dollars
that other industries were. The car industry started to see a
decline in their sales and so industry leaders decided that they
should work together. They reasoned that to make things happen,
they needed to take several steps.
Here are a few of the things they did to control so much of the
consumers disposable income.
1. They purchased the best retail locations in North America.
2. They shared the locations and created a mile of cars
everywhere.
3. They controlled the news and product releases from Detroit.
4. They created advertising alliances with the newspapers and
created an “auto” section in every newspaper throughout the
country.
5. They jointly advertised the whole product category and also
advertised individually.
6. They made sure they didn’t duplicate the brands within the
same market area
7. Together they saw that anyone who didn’t sell cars was their
major competitor.
Now what can the scrapbooking industry learn from this? Well
here are some things I would recommend to retailers who believe
that the scrapbooking industry needs more exposure to
dramatically increase its sales.
1. Reduce the number of manufacturers you brand in your store.
This way, your store won’t look like and carry all the same
products of the other independent retailers. There are enough
manufacturers out there for scrapbooking retailers to both stay
out of each others way and to help each other grow just like the
car industry figured out.
2. Work with other scrapbooking retailers within the same
marketplace. It is likely that you currently consider these
other retailers your competitors, but soon you will see them as
allies. The scrapbooking retailer’s true competition is not
another scrapbooking store; it is any business that competes for
the disposable income that could be spent on scrapbooking. For
example, a car dealer is a bigger competitor to the industry
than another scrapbooking retailer.
3. Work with fellow retailers to promote the scrapbooking
category in your marketplace. A joint effort will help grow
the industry overall, so everyone wins. To make this work, real
money has to be spent on advertising and sales promotions. In
fact, any strong retail business should spend about 5% of sales
to promote your business.
4. Create a scrapbooking section in your local newspaper.
Get the majority of the scrapbooking retailers in your market to
spend ad dollars in that section. You want the newspapers to
provide their readership with 40% content and 60% advertising so
that readership for that section goes up 200% - just like the
car industry.
To this end, The SMART Group is now creating SMART Co-op
Marketing Teams across North America to help raise awareness of
the scrapbooking category. This program will help retailers in
each market across to reach their full sales potential. Many of
the nation’s best trade brand manufacturers are fully supporting
this program. We believe it is critical that this program get
off the ground fast so that we can solve the biggest issue we
all face right now, which is seeing our sales all grow by
another 50%.
To learn more about SMART Co-op Marketing Teams and to have The
SMART Group come to your local market,
click here.
And that is what being business SMART is all about… |
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