I thought we didn't want a third show...

Just recently, I purged my office of all the trade and consumer magazines I had kept "just in case" I wanted to refer back to them. Most of them were magazines no longer in business and they were just clogging shelves of my office.

I tossed one particular issue of a trade magazine I had kept because it really made me mad at the time it came out in 2007. I won't mention the name of it because it's still on business. But, this entire issue was a blatant attempt to kill the Memory Trends show. Memory Trends was, I believe, one of the best things about the industry. It was a time for us to come together for our own networking party without yarn or decoupage classes to wade through.

I made a case for the third show when this particular issue came out. You can read it HERE. I wasn't so much making the case for a THIRD SHOW as much as I was making a case for the industry to only attend ONE show - a scrapbook-only show that would bring the fractured industry together without the distraction of non-scrapbook specific events. But, this trade magazine's publisher did his best to make sure Memory Trends never saw the light of day again by continually lobbying against anyone attending it. I believe the death of Memory Trends accelerated the downturn of the industry from the inside. We lost our "moxie" when we lost our show.

So, now, I see a new retailer group trying to get started. After having my own group for scrapbook retailers for the past 7 years, I wish them luck. It is hard to get retailers to pay for any networking groups at any price. It's a sad and puzzling fact about our industry because it's extremely common in other industries to pay for networking groups. And, I see that this new scrapbook retailer group is having a meeting this Fall in Las Vegas that they are saying is "replacing the old Memory Trends slot". And, I see that the very trade magazine publisher who tried to beat down and push out Memory Trends is their co-sponsor.

And given the fact that the WONDERFUL one day retailer event planned by true industry veterans before GASC next weekend was shelved because ONE SINGLE RETAILER thought it was worth the $99 price to receive a full day of business help, I wish them well trying to pull retailers into Las Vegas at a random time for $225 plus travel expenses.

Get a FREE PHOTO BOOK from my photobook site!

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The free book has 20 pages but you can pay for additional pages as well as additional books. While you're there, you can make other products from layouts in your book - key tags, mugs, puzzles, etc. with just a click of your mouse.

But, your personal soft cover book is FREE!!!

This is a GREAT WAY to try out the program if you're thinking about PhotoBookBiz!

I *heart* making cards!

I love to make cards because they're so easy and fast and feed my paper-crafting gene. I popped out this wedding card for a friend's daughter before we went to her reception last weekend. The card base was from a pack of cards I bought at Micheal's in their dollar bin. The whole card probably cost me a grand total of a dollar. It sure beats the $4.99 they're charging at the card store these days.

I have lots of friends who will never scrap a photo but make cards for EVERYTHING. Sometimes I wish the scrapbook industry would offer more for card makers. For instance, I pulled the WEDDING sticker off a sticker sheet full of random words. I would love to have a whole sheet with about a dozen of nothing but that word, "WEDDING" on it. It would make it so much easier to not have to scramble for the right sentiment on the front of a card. "Thank You", "Happy Birthday", "Merry Christmas", would all be nice to have LOTS of on one sheet.

Zealots

I went to a class last night about saving money on groceries. I had actually been to this class before a couple of years ago but went again to support the group.

The woman who taught it feeds her family of 7 for between $300 and $550 a month. That includes all their toiletries like toilet paper, shampoo, deodorant, etc. She really knows how to save money.

But, last time, she endorsed The Grocery Game (which I use) as a way to get started and learn how to save. This time she spent the whole class discouraging anyone from using it. She said, "You just need to learn what a 'rock bottom price' is and go for that with your coupons." She also said that she is not happy with anything less than 75% off retail.

Her system is so time consuming and complicated that several (including a mother of preschool aged triplets) left the class saying, "This is a nice idea, but I don't have time to do it." Privately, as we left the class, I told a few of them to start with The Grocery Game. I regularly save between 40 and 50% off my grocery bill just using that. It's a place to start. I use it but rarely use the coupons that it suggests as I just don't have time or desire to clip and file coupons.

If you get into the whole mindset of coupons and saving huge amounts on your grocery bill, you can take it a step farther and really start using those coupons. But, The Grocery Game was a starting place that everyone could succeed at.

On the way home, I couldn't help but compare this to the scrapbook industry. The Zealots sort of took over early on. We immediately started discouraging people who would LIKE to start scrapbooking. We made them feel bad about simplicity. We said, "don't use small stickers and snapshots. You have to have a die-cut machine and an expensive DSLR if you REALLY want to scrapbook!" I wonder how many picked up a magazine or walked into a scrapbook store or class only to come away as the women did last night thinking, "I don't have time or talent for this." I would have been the one behind them saying, "Get a three ring binder, some sheet protectors and a pack of colored paper from the office supply store. It's okay to start small and simple!"

It's great to be excited about and truly love something like this woman loved her grocery savings. However, you can't forget how it was when you started. You weren't at the same level. Zealots sort of expect everyone to instantly rise to their level rather than helping them start down the path.

Our industry is generally guilty of that. We needed a "starter" magazine that had staying power and was an evangelist for the industry. Paperkuts magazine did a good job filling that spot as long as it was in business. They kept it "real" more than other magazines. But when we lost them, the other magazines might have showcased simple scrapbooking styles, but they certainly weren't always easy scrapbooking styles. It took a lot of work and techniques to look that simple at times.

It's really too bad that we left so many people behind. I believe that it is one of the major problems we are experiencing right now. We don't have a large stream of new scrappers coming in because they see it as something unattainable like the extreme couponing that the woman teaching the class was doing. It was good info, but felt unachieveable to most who attended and she discouraged any other method but her own complicated and advanced one. I can appreciate her zeal, but most of us may never get to that point despite having the desire.

What the Kindle DX Can Teach Scrapbook Retailers

A couple of months ago, I bought my husband the Kindle 2. We love that thing! It's so convenient! The other day, Amazon announced the coming of the Kindle DX - with a screen 2.5 times larger than the Kindle 2.

Welcome to the future of reading. My kids will probably have all their text books on a Kindle-type device at college. No more standing in line to purchase $200 text books you have to lug around and no more standing in a longer line at the end of the semester to sell back your $200 book for $25.

Already, several text book publishers are working with Amazon to digitize their books for the Kindle. Other book publishers should be taking notice. This IS the future of reading. Will regular books ever completely go away? I don't think so. But, the Kindle and the devices that will follow it will do to books what the iPod did to music. It will change the way many of us read and change the way book publishers make their money. My husband has essentially stopped buying physical books. He is now buying his business and political books for his Kindle. We are STILL Amazon customers (okay, we are Amazon junkies), but we are just getting our books differently from them now.

How many book publishers will now just throw in the towel and say, "We're dead"? Probably a few. But, most will look at digitizing their books to work on these devices. A few will ignore the technology believing that there will always be people who buy real books and will slowly, over time, give in to the trend. While others will stick their heads in the sand and say, "we'll never digitize" and then moan and groan about their drop-off in sales.

Kudos to the early adopters of Kindle technology. They aren't acting threatened by it - they are embracing it and figuring out how they can get on board with it.

There is a lesson here for scrapbook stores. Our industry has experienced a large shift to digital scrapbooking. We now have digital photos, custom photo books, digital scrapbook paper and embellishments and large format home printers. The digital age has done to our industry what the Kindle is doing to the book publishing industry.

Most of us have acted threatened by the technology and chosen to ignore it rather than embracing and adapting to it. Many retailers pretend that digital scrapbooking has had NOTHING to do with our decline in sales. We blame drop-outs. We blame the economy. We blame our competitors. Fact of the matter is that many, many traditional scrapbookers are now digital scrapbookers and we didn't even TRY to keep them from leaving us. In fact, most of us were so busy actively ignoring digital scrapbooking that we didn't even see them leave.

A few retailers have jumped on board with digital scrapbooking and have looked for ways to keep those people who have converted to digital coming back into their stores. They are offering custom photo book classes. They are teaching photography classes. They are selling digital scrapbook software and scanning photos or printing out digital pages. They have set up special sections in their store where they offer "Digital Scrapbook Products". They have basically said, "We're not giving you up just because you went digital."

Kudos to those scrapbook retailers who embraced digital in some small way. I believe they will be among the survivors.

There Is No Free Lunch (at least at KFC)

I had heard today that there was some promotion for a free sample of the new KFC grilled chicken that Oprah had promoted. You could use a coupon to get free chicken and two sides. So, guess where America headed to eat today?

Apparently, there really is NO FREE LUNCH. KFC blew it in a big way when many of their franchisees refused to honor the coupons or played games in honoring them or just plain closed up shop for the day.

So many lessons in running a business here... LINK to just one site full of complaints.

I can't wait to see who gets blamed. If you give something away for free and score a big name to promote it, why wouldn't you prepare appropriately? That's Business 101.

How many people will never go there again? Probably a lot. Colonel Sanders would be so disappointed...

And, yes, this IS related to scrapbook businesses. Learn from other's mistakes. If you make a promise, keep your promise. Otherwise, you lose customers and none of us can afford to do that!

May is National Photo Month!

Imagine the world without photos. Our memories would be the only thing left from weddings, births, family reunions, school programs, etc. Photos help us remember the events - big and small - of our lives.

Show your photos some love this month! If you've been meaning to scan and share - do that this month! If you've been meaning to upload your photos from your camera - do that today! If you haven't gotten your photos into scrapbooks, photo albums or photobooks, now is a great time to work on those activities again. Here are some other suggestions:

• Offer to take a photo for someone so they can be in it.
• Print out those photos from your computer.
• Organize and label your negatives.
• Send slides off for scanning.
• take photos of ordinary, everyday activities - those are important, too!
• photograph your collections and hobbies
• photograph your kids' favorite toys

Photos bring our memories back to life! Celebrate them in May!