Digital Scrapping and the Traditional Retailer

Recently, I did an informal survey about scrapping habits.  It consisted of one question and I posted it on both traditional and digital scrapbooking message boards.

 

The results, as informal as the survey was, should be noted by every traditional scrapbook retailer who has felt a downturn in business and a loss of customers in the past 3-5 years.  Then, those same retailers should think about how to win back the hearts of those customers.

The question was this:  Choose the one statement that best describes your scrapbooking RIGHT NOW.

The options were:

• I have only scrapped traditionally
• I have only scrapped digitally
  
• I was a traditional scrapper but now do only digital
• I am a traditional scrapper who dabbles in digital
• I am a traditional scrapper who is thinking about digital
• I am a hybrid scrapper who scraps both traditionally and digitally
• I started out digitally but moved to paper scrapping

 Of the 100 answers I got, 51% said "I have only scrapped traditionally".  Okay, that's good.  But, that still leaves 49% of the respondents.  

 

4% said they have only ever scrapped digitally and another 4% said they converted completely from traditional to digital, but then the water gets muddy.

 

The remaining 41% said that they were either a traditional scrapper who dabbles in digital or a traditional scrapper who is THINKING about digital. or a hybrid scrapper who regularly does both.  That's the area that every traditional retailer should be concerned with.  Forty-one percent of your customers are on the verge of moving to digital and never looking back.  AT MINIMUM, you have lost some revenue there because that 41% is buying or going to be buying LESS from you over time since part of their scrapping is digital.  

 

So, your job is to capture some value from the shift in scrapping activities among your customers.

 

Figure out how to incorporate digital scrapbook products.  Set up a section of "digital scrapbook products" that includes albums, slick writers, mugs and frames to alter, rub-ons to embellish, software, etc.  

 

Add a photobook component to your store through PhotoBookBiz.  Many use the big names like Shutterfly, but they don't necessarily have the best quality, lowest prices or coolest software!  

 

Scan photos for those wanting to go digital.  Scanning is time consuming and there are some really fast scanners out there that most customers won't put the money out to buy.  

 

Most of all - tell your customers (the 41% who are flirting with digi) that you are DIGI-FRIENDLY so that they won't feel the need to leave you.  

The bottom line here is to pull your head out of the Bazzill and understand that nearly 50% of scrappers are wandering down the digital path.  They may not convert completely, but they will buy fewer traditional supplies from traditional retailers just by the mere fact that they are dabbling in it.