Aug 5, 2006

Scrapbook Store Signs



We went down to Utah in mid-July. During the trip, I managed to convince my family to let me go SHOPPING! For some reason, there are a lot of product lines at stores in Utah that never make it to MY neck of the woods.

I stopped at two notable stores and one FANTASTIC store. But, this isn't a store review, it's a sign critique. As an out-of-towner I didn't know where some of the stores were so I looked up the addresses on the internet and headed out.

The first store I stopped at was Pebbles in My Pocket. It's located on busy State Street in Orem, UT. I passed it three times looking for it. The sign is PATHETICALLY small - and, I didn't realize it was in a HOUSE so I kept looking at the strip malls I passed. I finally found it. The sign was small compared to all the other things going on on that street. And, it said "Pebbles in My Pocket" rather than SCRAPBOOK STORE!!!! The sign was hard to read and not very tall.

Another store I visited was in Sandy, UT - a suburb of Salt Lake. It was a GREAT new store called Heartfelt Creations. Someone told me it was behind a McDonalds so we looked for Mickey D's as we drove up the street. But, when we saw the McDonalds, I didn't have a hard time finding the store because of it's giant SCRAPBOOKS sign! Now THAT, ladies, is how a scrapbook store should be marked!!!!! As you can see, on the window is the actual name of the store, but, if I had seen "Heartfelt Creations" on the sign instead of SCRAPBOOKS, I probably would have kept driving if I didn't know what it was. Heartfelt Creations could be a number of different types of stores. Kudos to the owner for figuring out that WHAT SHE SELLS was more important than WHAT SHE'S CALLED. It was super easy to find once I get to the general vicinity.

A few years ago, a store near my house closed. It was called "Classic Keepsakes" and that's what the sign over the door said. It was tucked into a new strip mall between a physical therapy place and a Chinese fast-food place. The strip mall was nearly behind a gas station/C-store. Their sign on the busy road said "Classic Keepsakes". Honestly, most people didn't know they were there. When they had their going-out-of-business sale, everyone told all their friends and their phone rang off the hook with people looking for directions to their store. I was in talking to a clerk and she said two PROFOUND, yet common-sense, things (she should have been the owner).
  1. "If we had advertised and THIS MANY PEOPLE had come in, we wouldn't be closing."
  2. "Our sign on the front and the building and at the road should have just said SCRAPBOOKS so people would know WHAT we were."

Amen...

2 comments:

Christy B said...

I agree. I was in Destin FL last week determined to find the stores there. One was easy to find, it was in the Walmart shopping center but said SCRAPBOOK CLEARANCE - bang, got my attention! The second store was harder to find and while I do think it said Scrapooks on the sign, it wasn't as large and didn't stick out for me, so it was much harder to find. I think out of my 3 LSS, 2 of them have signs outside the building that just say SCRAPBOOKS, the other has Scrap in the name, so I let that slide.

Anonymous said...

Hi,
I'm not sure you realize, but when you post on STUFFDOCK it puts all your posts back to August 30th up on the message board, which of course fills almost the whole capacity of the board.
Thought you might be interested to know that.
Thanks.