Frequently Asked Questions

How much does membership in The SMART Group cost?
The monthly membership fee for retailers is just $99 per month compared to similar groups that can charge as much as $250 per month! Plus, there are no exclusions and no hidden charges!

How is The SMART Group different from other groups?
The SMART Group is more than a buying group, more than an educational forum and more than a group that advocates growth and change in the industry. It is a group of like-minded business owners who believe that only through the cooperation of all segments of the industry can its true potential be achieved. It does that by making decisions founded on facts and information from a variety of sources and avoids relying on decisions based on feelings, guesswork or hunches.

What are the top three reasons I should join The SMART Group?
The top three reasons you should join The SMART Group would be to: 1. Save money on products, services and advertising; 2. increase sales through the use of the SMART business model which promotes more co-branding between individual retailers and manufacturers; and 3. improve profits through the implementation of best business practices that have been proven again and again worldwide in other industries.

How would The SMART Group save me money?
The SMART Group is, in part, a buying group designed to help members save money not only on products from member manufacturers, but from many service providers as well. For the typical retailer, the cost savings on products and services is over $1,000 per month, or ten times the investment of the monthly membership fee!

How would The SMART Group help me increase sales?
For members who are manufacturers, The SMART Group provides free access to its vast network of retailers. Retail members, in turn, are provided with a free premier store listing in Scrapbooking.com Magazine. According to the ratings of Google, AOL and Yahoo, Scrapbooking.com is the number one scrapbooking website in the world, with over 3.5 million readers per year. Scrapbooking.com Magazine’s business model drives those consumers into the retail stores featured in its Premier Store Listing Program.

How would The SMART Group help me increase profits?
The SMART Group devotes much of its educational forums to profitability. Most of today’s profit opportunities are found in the business relationships between retailers, distributors and manufacturers. It has long been the position of The SMART Group and its members that the industry’s extremely low average turn rate is crippling profitability and consequently the long term health and success of the industry. The SMART business model integrates best business practices to address this and other problem areas that have hurt the overall profitability of both retailers and manufacturers.

What is required of me to make The SMART Group effective for my business?
Like any membership-oriented organization, the greater the participation, the greater the benefit received. One of the biggest benefits of The SMART Group is the opportunity to network with “like-minded” members. It is not enough to just be in the same industry. As an industry organization, we must be like-minded regarding the issues, solutions and course of action to overcome the challenges facing the industry today. Timely implementation of meaningful, powerful solutions is the key to the success of the industry. Lack of speed and timeliness in solving core issues is what threatens our ability to achieve even greater success!

How long is the membership period and how difficult is it to cancel?
For retailers, the membership renews either on a monthly or annual basis. For manufacturers, distributors, publications, and service providers, membership renews annually. If you need to cancel your membership all we ask is that you notify us 30 days in advance. It’s that simple!

What does The SMART Group think are the big issues facing the industry today?

1. Too much focus on new merchandise and not enough focus on getting more new consumers into scrapbooking stores, which results in lower overall sales. Scrapbookers on average stay active for seven years. Currently, the number of scrapbookers dropping out is five times higher than the number of newbies coming in, which means the market is now shrinking instead of expanding.

2. Too much focus by manufacturers on writing a big book at trade shows and not enough focus on writing a consistent book on a monthly basis throughout the year. The two-tradeshow buying cycle contributes to the industry’s dismal average two-time turn rate, which is the number one cause of the demise of independent retailers. Because of this low turn rate, the average retailer has to pay for nearly 90% of their inventory before selling it. This business model is not sustainable for retailers and therefore not sustainable for manufacturers.

3. Too much focus on “make and takes” as educational classes and not enough focus on business education designed to increase sales and profits of both retailers and manufacturers. The lack of ongoing business education results in a poorly functioning industry.

4. Too much focus on the craft-only segment of scrapbooking and not enough focus on other market segments that could grow the entire industry five-fold. This results in millions of women and a handful of men who are interested in scrapbooking as a craft, yet are also looking for non-crafting solutions that respect both their time and pocketbook.

5. The high failure rate of independent stores has forced more and more manufacturers to consolidate. Manufacturers must then deal with the mass merchandisers and huge specialty chains, which causes the product category to become more and more price driven and commodity like in nature.

6. The lack of focus on co-branded advertising programs results in not enough money being spent on creating newbies to fuel the industry’s ongoing need for increased revenues. Over the last few years, less and less money has been spent on marketing to newbies, which has contributed to an ever-shrinking consumer base.

7. The lack of focus on in-store branding displays and signage results in less brand awareness for both manufacturers and retailers to the consumer. This leads to many stores not having the look and feel consumers want when they walk into a scrapbooking store.

8. The lack of focus on consumer communities results in the scrapbooking industry not being able to have any real market penetration. For many cause-based communities such as Autism and Alzheimer’s, scrapbooking is not merely a hobby, but a real solution in their everyday lives.

9. Not enough focus on moving the scrapbooking industry from a hobby mentality to a lifestyle reality. By repositioning scrapbooking from a hobby into a lifestyle, the industry will be able to retain consumers for longer than the current seven-year lifecycle.

10. The lack of industry-wide focus on the real issues is leaving the industry rudderless, leaderless and without a clear vision. It is for this purpose that The SMART Group came into being--to fill the vacuum clearly found in the industry today. Without the concerted efforts of a dedicated group, the industry will continue to function without a collective vision to carry it to increased growth and profits.