Shopping With Integrity
It may seem a bit odd for one business to be sad about a "competitor" closing but the recent closures of Canny Crafts, Cotswold Keepsakes, Scraptastic and several others are sad times for most of us with scrapping businesses.
No store can stock everything and as most scrapbook retaillers are also scrappers ourselves we tend to shop around at other sites for the items we don't carry. Clare has a very interesting article on her blog today about how as scrappers we are responsible for how we choose to shop.
This is always a very difficult area for shop owners to comment on, it is difficult to make a comment without being seen as being afraid of or disliking competition.
My personal view is that in order for scrapbooking to continue to grow we NEED a good range of shops both online and bricks and mortar. We also need big stores and little stores, what is damaging is stores set up as a hobby to "make a bit of pin money" or simply to allow the owner to access wholesale prices for their own use.
These stores where the store owner has no intention of running them as effective businesses are then able to turn over stock at nearly wholesale prices i.e with very little profit whatsoever. In the short term this is great for the customer seeking a bargain but in the long term it leads to what we are already beginning to see; closure of larger stores which have overheads and large investments to protect and who cannot afford to run a shop making hardly any profit. The end result is that many of the shops which are run as a business and by people who work at it as a full time job will be gone and what remains will be a marketplace where a very small range of stock will be available relatively cheaply but the diversity that we see when looking at many of the shops we have now will be gone and the UK Scrapping market will be back to square one.
Once again I feel I need to say that we are happy to have competition - it is good for the customer to have choices and it leads to great customer service as everyone wants to provide a good service to attract customers, however when I shop for personal stash for items we don't carry I will certainly be bearing in mind the words of Clare and Sally R and many others and aim to shop with integrity.
No store can stock everything and as most scrapbook retaillers are also scrappers ourselves we tend to shop around at other sites for the items we don't carry. Clare has a very interesting article on her blog today about how as scrappers we are responsible for how we choose to shop.
This is always a very difficult area for shop owners to comment on, it is difficult to make a comment without being seen as being afraid of or disliking competition.
My personal view is that in order for scrapbooking to continue to grow we NEED a good range of shops both online and bricks and mortar. We also need big stores and little stores, what is damaging is stores set up as a hobby to "make a bit of pin money" or simply to allow the owner to access wholesale prices for their own use.
These stores where the store owner has no intention of running them as effective businesses are then able to turn over stock at nearly wholesale prices i.e with very little profit whatsoever. In the short term this is great for the customer seeking a bargain but in the long term it leads to what we are already beginning to see; closure of larger stores which have overheads and large investments to protect and who cannot afford to run a shop making hardly any profit. The end result is that many of the shops which are run as a business and by people who work at it as a full time job will be gone and what remains will be a marketplace where a very small range of stock will be available relatively cheaply but the diversity that we see when looking at many of the shops we have now will be gone and the UK Scrapping market will be back to square one.
Once again I feel I need to say that we are happy to have competition - it is good for the customer to have choices and it leads to great customer service as everyone wants to provide a good service to attract customers, however when I shop for personal stash for items we don't carry I will certainly be bearing in mind the words of Clare and Sally R and many others and aim to shop with integrity.
posted by Mel at 12:48 pm
7 comments
Today is Englands final warm up matchb efore the world cup and the day before Isabelles birthday. Izzy and Darren got in the party spirit in their England gear. I just love this little T Shirt I got Belle from Sainsburys with 2 little cubs on her shirt! OF course it is from the boys section, there are no nice girls football t shirts - they all say things like "When I grow up I want to be a footballers wife!" YUK!
