Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:29:26 — 81.9MB)
The Topic:
Kami joins Peppermint, Katie, and Steph for what turned out to be a bit of a heated discussion about trends in product packaging, product sizes, names, and designers opening up their own stores.
Joining the Discussion:
Kami Leonard
Peppermint Granberg
Katie Nelson
Steph
Picks of the Week:
Kami: Pixlr Express
Peppermint: Martha Stewart Scoring Board
Katie: Unsplash.com
Steph: Photosphere (About • Explore)
Sponsors:
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You girls are hilarious. I was a relative latecomer to the digiscrap scene, discovering it in 2006. It seemed to me at that time that kits were predominant. I remember when the shift started to occur to separate packs because there was a lot of complaints from customers that they didn’t like it. They didn’t want a pack of differently colored flowers or ribbons. Others loved it. They did want to pick and choose. So there was a lot of controversy around it. Ultimately, I think it morphed into more of what you see today, with customers getting the best of both worlds… kits and add-ons to appease both. And, of course, the money-saving bundle which appeals to those of us who want at least a couple add-ons but appreciate the money-savings. I definitely agree, it’s only worth it if your customers want those extras because it IS a lot of extra work if it’s just fluff. I know personally, I love extra word art and splashes and I love having choices even if I don’t use all of them. I also love a pack of solids to match so I don’t have to search for me. I guess I’m like Steph. Just shoot me the bundle. I almost always want at least enough of it that it makes sense money-wise. And I prefer to have a full kit over having to load up the cart with individual items and try to figure out what’s supposed to match what, which isn’t always obvious! Scrap on…
As a customer, I agree with Peppermint. I hate when I go to new releases and it’s one page of one designer, then the next page is a different designer, but it’s only 2 kits. I also hate scrolling a newsletter when half the newsletter is one kit, but different pieces.
But, I also like to buy kits and the extra paper. I do reuse kits, or at least pieces, more often than the average scrapper (or at least Katie! haha). In fact, most of my pages are not hosted anywhere because they are a smattering of different designers. Since the post about making your own journal card by Heddy, I tend to glean ideas from the journal cards, but rarely buy them. I am a maximist when it comes to photos, and a minimalist when it comes to elements, so that dictates how I buy.
I’ll fully admit that I like stores for designers. I am less likely to visit individual stores, and more likely to delete that newsletter without reading it since it’s only one person’s kit/inspiration. There’s actually a few designers that since they have moved to individual stores I’ve not checked out their stuff. That sounds harsh, but I can’t imagine going through 50 different newsletters to check out 50 new releases. That’s a lot of time. I love Fridays because I love seeing a highlight of the new stuff on DailyDigi.
If I have a designer I really and truly love, I will check their shop no matter where it is located on a regular basis. BUT, they’d have to be in my top 5 because there is so much out there that it is hard to keep track of everyone.
So I just listened today and I just got a new phone. I have had my HTC One for a week and a half and it is awesome! It has its own panoramic photo option. We were just in arches national park last week and I took a few while we were there. I ordered one as two 4×6 prints from Persnickety for my pocket scrapping album and it turned out great!
Also now that I have more space on my phone I immediately downloaded Kami’s pick. Such an awesome app.
I’m about half way through this episode and in the process of adding a bundle to my store. Like Peppermint said, all that carting is a lot of work, so I thought I’d take a quick break and write you a little note.
I wanted to share that when I started digi scrapping in 2007, a lot of what I purchased came from DSP and Two Peas and most of it was in packs. But, I also downloaded quite a few kits from Shabby Princess around that time too. I definitely saw the transition to mostly kits and see that packs are coming back along with the option to bundle those packs.
As a designer, I was hesitant to jump on the bundle bandwagon, but as a site owner I saw that the bundles were doing well and I thought I’d give it a try. In terms of number of sales, I’ve seen no dramatic change. In terms of what is purchased, I see that digi scrappers do gravitate towards the bundles. I don’t bundle every kit because I don’t think it is wise to make a bundle just for the sake of making a bundle. When I consider whether or not to create a bundle, I try to make sure that the extras I create add value to the kit and that the price point is a good deal compared to buying the kit and add ons separately. Like Kami said, it is important for designers to make sure that the core kit is well rounded and scrap-able without the extras.
I am going to link up to this weeks podcast in our designer forum because I think all designers should hear this discussion and take it into consideration when considering designing bundles. Thanks for all you do ladies! You always give me something to think about and have helped me as a scrapper and a designer more than you will ever know!!
Greetings all y’all! Kelsey Brown mentioned above about cutting a pano into two 4×6 prints and putting them in pockets right next to each other. I have done that, too. My panos are usually wider that 12″ when they are sized to 4″ high, so I just pick my favorite 12″ to use. But I reserve the right to go up to 24″ and spread it across two pages. I have also cut panos into 3″x4″ chunks and put those side by side when that’s the pocket size and I think that looks cool, too.
I think you, Peppermint, are using a size smaller than 12″x12″ pages. Here’s some thoughts for that:
(a) Make the height less that 4″.
(b) Wrap the 4″ high pano around the edge of the page so it crosses three or four pages (cut the pano into sizes as needed to fit the pockets that are next to each other).
(c) Sacrifice some 12×12 pages to make 4″ high inserts for your book, watching the holes for the rings or at least ensuring that you have enough of the ring-hole margin to punch appropriately spaced holes. If you use pages that have 4×6 pockets and cut them down to two horizontal strips (because the center of the page will be cut top and bottom and won’t hold photos anymore), each strip will have room for four photos and with two strips together you’ll have eight in this arrangement: 2 photos, 4 photos (with the rings in the middle) and 2 photos. To get them to fit in your smaller book, open to the 4 photo spread and fold the two edges toward the middle. When I make smaller pages like this (or use commercially made ones such as Project Life) I usually run a strip of washi tape on the edge to draw my attention to the fact that there is a non-standard size page there so I don’t miss it. How fun to open your gate-fold insert and see your big pano there!
Hi girls, loved the podcast this week. Listening to you tease each other is one of my favourite parts of the show, after all the awesome tips and advice, obviously!
Was thrilled to hear Steph’s pick and the resulting discussion about what to do with all those beautiful panoramic images, as I just wrote about this on my blog today! Put them on a mug!
http://freeyourphotography.typepad.com/free/2013/09/panoramic-photo-mugs.html
I use PSE to make my panoramas, but am looking forward to trying out some of the apps you mentioned soon.
I loved this show. I always love shows when you discuss the business side of things or when you discuss the old ways (before I discovered digi scrapping). Those are parts of the community that I have no personal experience with – but am still very curious about.
I like separate papers and elements in the context of BYOC type offerings. I’ve noticed that there are designers that I really love their papers, but not so much their elements, and vice versa. So I can pick and choose my favorite papers and favorite elements and they can work together. But for a designer offering a stand alone kit (outside of a BYOC), I’ve always wondered what the purpose of separates was. Are there scrapping styles that only use papers or only use elements? I suppose the pocket scrapping is more paper based than element based.
I tend to like kits on the larger size. Peppermint seemed to say that having a few flowers to choose from and a few buttons to choose from will be overwhelming. I see it as offering the customer a better chance at uniqueness. Does that make sense? I don’t like to see all the CT layouts and all the customer layouts and they ALL have the same flower in it. But if a kit had 2 or 3 flower options, then you’ll see more variety in the example layouts.
I don’t get fatigued by too many choices … but I do get fatigued by seeing too many CT layouts. After seeing so many examples, the kit seems to lose its novelty in my eyes; it doesn’t feel new anymore.
Hmmm, I probably phrased it poorly. Options within a kit are super groovy – my opinions about analysis paralysis are more at the store experience level. If I’m switching windows comparing prices between individual components vs. kits vs. a bundle – and if I’m doing that for several different product collections on a new release day – I’m more likely (personally) to just shut my window and abandon my cart. I’m that way across the board, though, like on Amazon or Etsy. Or even standing in the peanut butter aisle at the grocery store. The longer I stand there weighing my options, the longer I have to talk myself out of buying anything at all and the easier it becomes to blame “all the work” for why I’m abandoning my purchase.
Oops, sorry. I don’t think you phrased it poorly. I think I took different things that you said and combined them in a way you didn’t mean. I meant to say that instead of looking at the unused items in a kit (or a bundle) as being throwaway items, they can be viewed as valuable in the sense that they offer the scrapper more opportunity to make their page unique.
I really like that some designers will sell retired products at their personal store. I think especially for someone taking a break, it keeps their name out there and doesn’t fully “retire” the designer either.
BTW, with everything going to the cloud, Adobe was hacked. This is one of my bigger concerns about being forced to the cloud. http://petapixel.com/2013/10/04/adobe-admits-hacked-2-9-million-user-accounts-compromised/
I am a kit scrapper and busy, so I want to eliminate steps. Even if I don’t think I’ll use everything in a bundle, I pick it up over separates because it’s easier and I might get a wild hair to experiment with the extras. One click, it’s all in my cart ready to go is preferred.
I enjoy the build your own collab concept, but I’m glad stores only do it once a month. The choices of what to get can be agonizing and I admit that there have been times I’ve passed on BYOCs altogether because I had a limited budget and felt I couldn’t get enough products to make it useful to buy and have gone for a regular kit instead.
I do have one exception to my kit/bundle preference: affixers. I will buy separates of tapes, brads, staples and stitches. Especially stitches. Thin, thready, simple stitches in white and black (hint, hint designers
). And I’ve gotten some kits that have come with zero affixers of any kind (gasp), so I’m glad to have a growing stash from other designers.
Wanted to comment on the question regarding automatically loading photos from a phone to a PC. You can do iCloud from a PC, just install the iCloud dashboard and it will automatically upload to your PC whenever you are I. Your own wifi reach. Or you could do it with the automatic camera upload with Dropbox. I use iCloud for my iPhone and iPad, and upload it specifically to my Dropbox folder. I then use the eye-fi card with my camera and also have it automatically uploaded to the same Dropbox folder. That means when I import it to PSE, it is already in the same folder. The eye-fi card will also automatically upload pictures to flickr, Facebook, and I think other places, but those are the only two I remember.
I love BYOC. I store the separate kits by designer on my hard drive, then tag the previews in Lightroom with the a tag “2013 06 June BYOC”. Then I can see all the kits that coordinate for that month’s BYOC. I also tag the kit with designer’s name, so I can see the kit along with everything else the designer has designed. Works like a charm.
Really interesting discussion. Obviously you’ll never make everyone happy. I enjoy BYOC at The Lilypad but find that I almost always buy from the designers that I buy from normally (ahem, Peppermint.) So it’s rare that I’m creating “my own” kit and instead just buying the kits split into two (or three) different packs. If I’m breaking away from my favorite designers then I’m more likely to buy the paper pack than the element pack because I am very picky about the elements I buy.
An MBA student should study pricing in the digi scrapbooking world for a project, I think it would be really interesting.