Don’t Sell Craft Supplies—Sell the Creative Experience
Quick, answer this: What are you selling in your store right now?
Craft supplies. Scrapbook supplies. Rubber stamps.
Okay, good answers. Now try this: What are you really selling?
If you answered “an experience” you’re on the right track. What does that mean? How can we sell this “experience” better? Read on!
First, Know Why Your Customers Craft
Knowing what makes your customer craft is the key to selling her more supplies to keep her crafting. So why is she crafting? We asked, and she told us. “It’s relaxing,” “It’s therapeutic,” “It lets me play.”
It seems crafting gives her a sense of accomplishment, boosts her self-esteem and she has fun with it. Whether she’s making a quilt, collaging a wooden box, making a heritage album or a birthday card, for most crafters the end result is not necessarily as important as the process of creation.
Michele, a dedicated scrapbooker, comments, “When scrapbooking is the reason you get out of bed in the morning, it’s gone beyond a hobby. This is a passion!”
Retailer Challenge: Selling an Experience
Can you be the Disneyland of craft stores? Yes, you can!
“It truly doesn’t matter what the craft is,” comments Hot Off The Press President Paulette Jarvey. “Whether your customer’s passion is for scrapbooking or beading, we as an industry need to market the real reason she does the craft. When we sell at that level, we increase not only sales, but customer loyalty. Getting the customer’s attention with emotion means she’ll be much more inclined to be a long-term customer.”
How can retailers sell passion to the consumer? Rather than focus on selling craft supplies, your marketing message needs to be broader than just one specific product or product category. It needs to get to the heart of what you’re selling. It needs to promote the experience of crafting, whether that’s scrapbooking, card-making or collage. Disneyland doesn’t sell rides; Disneyland sells magic. Starbucks doesn’t sell coffee; they sell affordable luxury. You don’t sell product; you sell the crafting experience.
What Other Crafts Can Learn From Scrapbooking
Scrapbooking sells on a purely emotional level. No scrapper buys paper because she needs it. If that were the case, we’d all be selling black cardstock! The customer buys paper (and any other scrapbooking product) because it appeals to her on an emotional level. Sometimes the paper is a perfect match to her photo; sometimes the customer ends up taking a photo to match the paper. In the end, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the customer’s passion is being served.
How does the scrapbooking industry fuel this passion? “New products, all the time,” Jarvey notes. “Magazines, web sites, chat rooms, cropping parties, conventions. Scrapbooking is high-energy. There’s always something new, whether it’s a new tool, supply or technique. There’s a constant stream of education, from events like CKU and Camp Memory Makers to magazines and idea books.”
This constant influx of high energy and new ideas feeds the consumer passion. It gets her excited, and keeps her excited—all the way to your store.
How One Company Added Passion to Paper Crafts
When is a piece of paper something more than a piece of paper? When it’s a creative journey.
“When we developed the Artsy Collage–© line, we knew we had to market it differently than we’d ever done before,” says Jarvey. “In order to do this, we had to market the line backwards—in other words, build the marketing vision into the product itself, rather than waiting until after the product was released to develop a marketing plan.”
The company identified its message—“Your Creative Journey Begins Here” and incorporated the message into the style of projects. Artsy Collage–© is a line of kits, paper art packs and collections of three-dimensional embellishments used to decorate boxes, altered books and other surfaces. While the category is paper crafting, the look is a departure from traditional decoupage or collage.
“Our mission was to offer consumers the chance to create wonderful collage pieces, like those they see in stamp art magazines,” says Jarvey. “Because this type of craft can be intimidating, especially for beginners, our goal was to market the line as a journey. Our plan was that this approach would make the craft a bit less intimidating, friendlier and more fun.”
“We knew many of the Artsy Collage–© customers would be making these projects as gifts, “ Jarvey comments. “So we decided to build stories into the foundation of the projects to make them even more special.” To add to the marketing message, the company included legends and lore, an wise words and quotations to the product. For example, the line includes feathers, which are used as embellishments on the projects. A side note tells the consumer that according to folklore, finding a feather means your life is on the right track—a message that easily fits with the larger theme of the line.
What Retailers Can Do
First, identify your niche. Again, ask yourself what you’re selling. Creativity? Nostalgia? Art-as-therapy? Yes, you can sell more than one niche, but choose them strategically in order to successfully serve your customer. What is your customer’s passion—and how can you serve it?
Second, promote your niche. Have a theme. Decorate your store. If your niche is scrapbooking nostalgia, paint your walls tan and stencil an old-fashioned border. Use signage that promotes “A Walk Down Memory Lane” and “Back in the Good Old Days”. Use your logo, store slogan and theme on bags and bag stuffers, newsletters and business cards. Consistency is key!
Third, leverage the marketing your vendors have put into the line. With Artsy Collage–©, the theme of creative journeys is an easy one to sell at the store level: invite your customers to take a journey through your Artsy Collage–© classes, for example. Of course the program also includes a full-color header that helps capture the theme and look of the line.
So—What are You Really Selling?
Your answer is: An Experience.
The best news is, when consumers buy on emotion, they typically care less about the price. After all, few people question the price of a Disneyland admission ticket when they’re already sold on the experience. Tap into your customers’ passion and you can sell the experience too.
