Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better... I think.

I blogged recently about the 5K race my husband ran. The town center area it was in is very new and upscale. It's been open about 3 years now - just long enough for some of the leases to expire. The place is stacked with boutique shops, professional offices, a small chain or two (Pier One, Quiznos, Starbucks, Kits Cameras) and a ton of restaurants. You can get everything from Indian to Thai to Mexican, Italian, etc. there. There are a LOT of restaurants. What the area lacks, though, is a draw in the evening BESIDES the restaurants. There is no theatre - movie or otherwise - and most of the shops are closed up by 6 or 7 - even on the weekends. And, there are SO MANY restaurants that there simply isn't enough of a lunch crowd to fill them. Unlike an outdoor mall near the Microsoft campus where lunch is "standing room only" every day in the restaurants in the area, there just aren't enough dentists and real estate agents to fill the tables.

Couple that with a lack of much in the evening to draw the dinner crown and you've unfortunately got a poor place for a plethora of restaurants.

So, as the leases come up (I'm assuming), the restaurants are shutting down. The first to go was my favorite - Cosi. It's the only one in the area. Mark and I would often meet for lunch there. But, it was pretty empty no matter what day we went. It shut down and turned into an Italian bistro. The next to go was Zinnia. It was a "chick place" for lunch and tres expensive for dinner. We had lunch there a few times - they had good Paninis with interesting salads. It's gone and it's currently morphing into Kafe Neo - a Greek restaurant (yum!).

But, I have to wonder what makes these two new restaurants think they can succeed where the others didn't? Did they really look at the street traffic at meal time? Or do they just think they're smarter than the previous owners.

This is not unlike what happens with scrapbook stores. Usually when one closes, another one someplace else might open. Not always in the same spot, but in the same area. For a while, it was an epidemic in my area. The minute one closed, someone else decided to open. Does the owner of the new store think the owner of the closed store was just not smart enough to run the business? Or, do they believe the story that they closed for "family reasons"? You don't close a business that is a cash-cow. PERIOD. If the store is doing well, you pay someone to manage it or sell it. People don't close profitable businesses.

I wish these new restaurants luck. I'm sure I'll eat at both from time to time. But, I hope that the new restaurants did their homework and have a compelling reason as to why they think they will succeed where the others didn't.

Bottom line is to do your research... Don't open based on YOUR desires or emotions or even the "you can do it" encouragement of others. Want, needs, desires and encouragers aren't footing the bill. I can't only imagine the debt these previous owners are stuck with. For example, a Cosi franchise is a minimum of $775,000 to open. Yikes...

Why I Scrap...

My boys spent Sunday afternoon going through their scrapbooks. Some of the pages are really ugly by today's standards. But, they read and laughed about every word. They especially loved the speech bubble stickers with the silly comments from pages I made a long time ago. They don't care what's surrounding the photos and stories- they just care that they have the pages. If you want to be reminded of why you scrap, haul your books out and let your children have a look! It will bring you out of your slump and motivate you to get scrapping again!

Missed Opportunities

Mark ran in a 5k race on Saturday. He had run in it last year - his first 5K - so he wanted to do it again this year to prove that A) he was more fit and B) that his little bout with Encephalomyelitis last August didn't stop him from improving (I can't believe it's been 11 months since I took him to the ER and watched him become paralyzed right before my eyes!).

So, I went down with him to cheer him on (I told him if he keeps making me come with him, I'm going to get a giant Foam Finger with his name on it). It was in downtown Mill Creek, a new "pedestrian friendly" planned "downtown" area near our home with lots of upscale shops and restaurants. It was their weekend festival that kicked off about 10am that morning. The race started at 9am and we arrived at 8am. There were about 1200+ runners and a lot of "fans" like myself swarming the streets.

Nearly every single shop besides a restaurant serving breakfast and Starbucks was closed. Here were thousands of people milling around waiting for the race to start and no one thought it might be a good idea to open their doors early that Saturday. ONE woman with a home decor shop DID. And, you know what? She had people going in and out of her shop all morning. She probably made a few hundred extra dollars that day because she did that. Everyone else missed a great opportunity to ring up additional sales that day.

The same thing happened a couple of years ago. It was 2 weeks before Christmas and I wandered out to a cute historic city with fun shops near my home for a morning of shopping. I arrived (with money in hand) about 10am expecting to shop for a couple of hours. Out of this town full of cute gift shops, exactly 3 were open. The rest opened at 11am. Can you believe it? I was purchasing some gifts in one store and commenting to the owner how shocked I was that no one was open and he said, "Yeah, it's like they don't really want to be in business or something. I'm here by 8am most days and if you try my door any time after that, I'll open it for you." I was gone by the time 11 am came around. I didn't stick around to wait. It was a tremendous missed opportunity for these businesses. Interestingly, many businesses in this town have closed in the last year. It's no wonder.

Sometimes when you're in business, you want to be lazy but you really can't afford to be. Every one of those Mill Creek Town Center businesses knew what was going on that morning. Every one of them had an opportunity to open early and increase their sales for the day. Yet only one was smart enough to get out of bed and show up. I hope she was richly rewarded for it.

I don't believe that any retail business can afford to miss too many opportunities - even if it's not really convenient or you just don't feel like doing it. Your inventory needs to be turned and your debt never sleeps in. Carpe Diem when a great chance to make some extra $$ comes your way!!! I stood around for 2 hours that morning with my purse on my arm and money in my purse and I'm sure many others did too.

Why Martha going to Walmart is a "Good Thing" for the LSS...

I have seen some shock or surprise about the Martha Stewart scrapbook line going into Walmart. My gut tells me that EK Success did that because it wasn't snatched up by the independent scrapbook stores when it was released to them 6 months or so after going into Michaels. History has shown that outside celebrities never do that well in our industry. We'd just as soon have our home-grown celebrities endorse a product. I think that most LSS's saw the products moving slowly at Michaels and decided it wasn't worth devoting the space to re-worked and re-colored EK Punches in pretty "robin's egg blue" boxes. I've seen very little of the Martha Stewart stuff in LSS's I've been to.

So, now it's going in to Walmart. That's probably a HUGE benefit for EK Success. They, of course, want to move as much of it as humanly possible. And, it's a GREAT thing for local scrapbook stores. Many practicing scrapbookers aren't excited by the line in the first place so they aren't likely to run over and buy it even at the "Walmart Price." And, new scrappers will recognize the Martha name and buy it thinking it's going to teach them how to scrap. Her name may bring new scrappers into the hobby.

But, the really bright spot is that while Walmart lines it's scrapbook aisles with Martha's stuff, it will have LESS space for the product lines that have traditionally sold well in independent scrapbook stores. That means that as long as there is a contract in place to carry the MS stuff (and there probably IS a contract), not much else will fit.

So, I applaud Martha for finding a home at another "Mart". It will actually be a "good thing" for the industry. They get a line non-scrappers will recognize and we don't have to worry about the stuff we just bought at CHA showing up there before we get home from the show.

Unwritten

I LOVE this song! It's the ring tone on my phone and it motivates me on many levels - business, personal and even SCRAPBOOKING! I mean, who hasn't stared at the "blank page before you" and wondered what the heck you should write? LOL!

Enjoy!

The K.I.S.S. Scrapbook

I finally got some prints made from my nephew's wedding at the end of May. I made this quickie book for Mark's oldest brother (the Father of the Bride who lives alone in Florida far from family). The photos are all pictures of Dave with his siblings, his son and his nieces and nephews.

I forgot how sweet simplicity can be at times! I picked up this 25 sleeve 4x6 photo album at Michaels. The plastic cover had pockets that just had a piece of printed card stock in them. I pulled them out and made my own front and back covers using some family-theme embellishments. Then I just put the photos in the book. The majority of pages just had photos in them. But the final page, with a photo of 7 out of 8 of my husband's siblings and their father got a little embellishment on the facing page. Some of the photos I put a rub-on on the outside of the sleeve with a poem or quote about family. It was so simple and took me under an hour. I think the book was $1.99 and I probably used about $5 worth of embellishments and the 22 prints I used were free plus shipping from a recent Shutterfly sale.

Sometimes I forget how good it feels to keep it simple!

You Get What You Pay For...

I've talked about the Dollar Tree Scrapbooking products before (Miss Elizabeth's). My mom lives near a big Dollar Tree in a very non-scrapping community so for a while, she would buy TONS of the Miss Elizabeth's stuff and bring it to me. I have WAY TOO MUCH of it and I usually give much of it away. The other day I was working on a project and needed some FAMILY embellishments. So, I opened up my FAMILY box and found these. I found them in this state. These are puffy plastic stickers and they had curled up from the plastic sheet they were on. They did this IN THE PACKAGE in a box in my room which is out of direct sunlight and air conditioned.

They hit the garbage can after that (and several of their friends in other boxes who were doing the same thing). Yes, I know, they are on plastic so there may have more easily curled up from the smooth surface, but I would have been really ticked if they had done this on a layout.

Even some of the sheets of letter stickers Mom had bought me had stickers falling off of them. The adhesive just wasn't holding. Sort of like the $1 tape runners she bought me. They all hit the garbage can when I couldn't get them to hold anything on. I made a lovely card and before I could even get it into the envelope, things were sliding off.

Like I said, you often get what you pay for when it comes to dollar store scrapbook products. My kids learned that lesson a few years ago after begging for trip after trip to the local dollar store to buy junk that would be broken 5 minutes after they got home. It was a great lesson in quality. Not everything at the dollar stores is junk, but you also can't assume that everything is good quality either.