For several years now, Photo Industry Reporter has been preaching the value of marketing your store’s photo printing services to the scrapbooking market. Based on industry surveys, scrapbookers take at least twice as many pictures each month as average consumers, and women (who make up the majority of household scrapbookers) print more pictures from their digital cameras than men. If photo retailers began to offer appropriate incentives and added a few unique “bridge” products to start attracting scrapbookers to their stores, they are bound to increase their print sales.
Little did we know that those bridge products would turn out to be digital scrapbooking equipment—ie photo kiosks capable of creating digital scrapbooks, large-format printers to output the pages and now software to help customers create digital scrapbook layouts at home.
By marketing these products wisely, you can gradually shift your store’s focus from selling high-volume 4x6- and 5x7-inch photos to teaching customers how to create and print 8x8- and 12x12-inch digital scrapbook pages—larger prints for larger profits.
Scrapbooking vs. Imaging Software
Browse the Internet for digital scrapbooking links and you’ll find dozens, even hundreds, of websites catering to the computer-savvy scrapper. Companies like ScrapGirls.com, Scrapbook-Bytes and Shabby Princess have generated a huge following by offering free tutorials on how to create quick, attractive page layouts using digital software and downloadable scrapbooking kits (paper, elements, phrases, etc.) sold on the sites’ Internet stores. A few of these sites offer free, or cheap, software programs that scrappers can use to create simple layered scrapbook pages, but the majority of sites cater to users of popular imaging programs like Adobe Photoshop, PS Elements or Paint Shop Pro. They sell their scrapbooking graphics in standard JPEG and/or PNG formats, so they can be easily manipulated with the imaging softwares’ existing feature sets.
That same Web search will also reveal a growing number of scrapbook-specific software programs—sold with everything the beginning digital scrapper needs to create page layouts on their PCs. Most of these programs include basic image-editing tools, layers, special effects filters, artistic borders and texting capabilities, plus large libraries of backgrounds, clip art and fonts. Typically priced between $20 and $40, the programs offer beginners a simple, inexpensive introduction to basic digital scrapbooking.
TopTenReviews.com rates the leading digital scrapbooking programs every year on its website (http://scrapbooking-software-review.toptenreviews. com), rating them based on their features and reviewers’ comments. This year’s first place recipient is Nova Development Art Explosion Scrapbook Factory Deluxe, which received four out of four points in every category—from ease of use to manufacturer’s support. Art Explosion was followed closely by Broderbund’s Creating Keepsakes Scrapbook Designer Deluxe, in second place, and Ulead My Scrapbook 2 in third. Photoshop Elements is not listed among the contenders, despite the fact that Adobe Systems has been actively pursuing the digital scrapbook market for several years now, adding features and enhancements that appeal to scrapbookers.
Adobe is quick to point out that Elements is not a digital scrapbooking program, even though it has a strong following among scrapbookers.
“Scrapbooking is an important market that we listen to quite intently,” says Jim Mohan, Adobe Group Project manager, Digital Imaging. “We are aware of the many scrapbook specific products out there and we keep tabs on what they’re doing to help their audience. We’re always adding enhancements to Elements that make it easier for scrapbookers to create digital pages.”
Despite its popularity with scrappers, Adobe’s competitors are in a completely different range of products that are not scrapbook-specific, like Corel’s Paint Shop Pro. According to the NPD Research Group, Photoshop Elements has a very strong sales lead over Paint Shop Pro—its closest competitor—both in North America and worldwide.
Software Sales Opps
Which programs offer retailers the greatest sales opportunities? If your store is already selling image-editing software to photographers, it makes sense to expand your marketing efforts to include scrapbookers. Photoshop Elements and Paint Shop Pro price tags (approx. $100 each) are fairly reasonable for serious scrappers who can easily spend $150 or more on die-cutting systems and other expensive scrapbooking equipment. By educating your customers in the value of buying a comprehensive image-editing program to enhance their scrapbooking projects, you can divert some of those scrapbooking dollars into software sales. For information on becoming a PS Elements distributor, visit http://partners.adobe.com/resellerfinder/na/reseller.jsp.
Consider scheduling some “Photoshop for the Scrapbooker” classes at your store. Scrapbook instructors generally work for fees they receive from participants, so you’re unlikely to incur significant class costs. Some scrapbooking companies, like Digital Scrapbook Place (see below) will provide free support materials to carry out the classes.
Selling the Complete Package
Digital Scrapbook Place (digitalscrapbookplace.com) produces some of the most popular digital scrapbook graphics in the industry. The company started with a small group of professional designers who sold $20 CDs packed with high-quality graphics that could be mixed and matched to produce dozens of themed digital scrapbook pages for children, holidays and other popular topics.
The company has since grown to represent a new standard in digital scrapbooking. Its products are sold to retailers through the DSP Wholesale Store, which provides new retail customers with DSP software, product displays, point-of-purchase signage and digital scrapbooking training programs similar to those developed by EK Success for conventional scrapbookers.
Photo retailers can even load DSP templates on their in-store computers for customers to create and print professional-looking pages. For more information, visit the wholesale section of the DSP site.
If you’d like to offer your customers another incentive for producing prints, becoming a source for scrapbook graphics and software is definitely a step in the right direction.
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Scrapbooker’s Edge
