Suite Selection
A guide to choosing the right custom invitation and paper albums for your store and your customer base
By Cinda Baxter -- Gifts and Dec, 3/1/2009 12:00:00 AM
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| Custom personalized notecards. Carlson Craft. (800) 328-1782. www.carlsoncraft.com |
For a stationer, wedding specialist or gift and stationery retailer, there's a degree of hopeful optimism involved in offering custom invitations and stationery to your customers. Your logical business side likes the math (a $300 sample album could generate more than 10 times that amount in sales in a single month), while your social, customer-oriented side embraces the pleasure of finding the right papers to fit the client's personality and style.
Both goals are certainly attainable ... or equally impossible, depending on how you approach the purchase to begin with. A bit of homework and a lot of planning can improve the odds that you'll tip in the right direction.
The Customer Profile
Step one involves painting a picture of your typical customer in demographic terms. Are you located in a young, hip neighborhood or a more established community? Will you be drawing from a budget-driven audience or one that's fairly upscale? What segment of the local market is being underserved? Are you aiming in that direction?
Step two follows a logical progression: What do each of those people need? What are the milestones in their current life stage? Think about where paper factors into those milestones, and a roadmap begins to take shape.
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Custom Wedding Portfolio features classic letterpress for modern sensibilities. Dauphine Press. (888) 869-0659. www.dauphinepress.com |
The Community Profile
The business profile of your immediate area counts heavily too. Are there several temples and synagogues nearby? Chances are, you'll have a tough time generating bar/bat mitzvah orders since most of the aforementioned offer discounts. Is there a tux shop down the street that also sells invitations? Find out what lines they have, since those will likely be discounted.
Identifying the competition may require global thinking. For example, a neighborhood populated by young, expanding families might seem like a good candidate for loading up on birth announcement albums. The past few years have proven otherwise, however, as more and more orders drift to the Internet or into DIY projects. It's logical — when you've just come home from the hospital with a newborn that sleeps odd hours, it's easier to order online or glue layers together at the kitchen table than to get cleaned up, load the baby into the car seat, and traipse off to a nearby retailer. In that scenario, both the Internet and local DIY-geared stores need to be factored in.
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| Crane offer albums ranging from traditional to contemporary. Crane & Co. (800) 572-0024. www.crane.com |
To Stock or Not to Stock
While perusing various lines, you'll run into yet another choice: stocking versus non-stocking retail. In layman's terms, some companies will allow you to carry their albums only if you also carry their boxed goods. An example of this is Crane & Co., whose stocking requirement is firm, assuring the brand a significant presence in each of its dealers' stores. Some companies with stocking requirements offer pre-packs or suggested SKU lists to work from; all will impose a minimum buy-in.
Although stocking requirements may seem ill-advised in today's tight market, they actually play to a storefront's advantage, preventing home studios and online-only invitation discounters from becoming dealers. If the boxed goods fit your customer base, and you have the space and money to stock, these are vendors that belong on your short list. They'll generate income through both custom orders and off-the-shelf purchases — the latter of which can continue for years.
Market Saturation
Another element to consider is how many albums have already been placed in your area. It's one thing if you're one of two or three accounts in a large metropolitan area; it's quite another if you're one of two or three in a town of 25,000.
The exclusivity of a line typically mirrors its price point. Budget-priced lines blanket areas with lots of accounts, including home studios and Internet-only retailers. More exclusive lines, on the other hand, are more cautious, understanding how closely a brand's image, dealer loyalty and availability are linked.
If you cater to the mid- and lower-range price points, you may have little or no territory protection, but odds are good you'll get the books. If, however, your customer base is more upscale and your album selections more selective, fewer accounts will be allowed in your area. It might be harder to become an account, but you'll be more sheltered from local competition when you do.
Becoming one of those exclusive dealers doesn't equate to eternal territory protection, though. If your sales efforts come up short, odds are fairly good you'll find a new competitor nearby, or worse, lose the books at some point in the future.
Presswork Particulars
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Colorful selection is just one of the offerings from Encore Studios.(800) 526-0497. www.encorestudios.com |
Knowing who's at the press is another important factor when considering a line. Companies who own and operate their own equipment are traditionally more able to accommodate rush orders, special requests, unusual scenarios, and re-prints, since there's no required third party input.
Another bonus to operator-run presses comes in pricing; companies who pay third party printers need to factor that added expense into the wholesale price, pushing the retail numbers higher. Those who handle their own press runs have no third party expense to pass along, giving you more bang for the buck.
Profit vs. Popularity
This really is what it's all about. A stunning $650 album may make you feel good, give you bragging rights, and give customers something to "ooh" and "ahh" over, but if you never write an order out of the book, it robbed you of three others that may have paid their way the first month.
When considering an album, you need to look at the prices on several designs you can imagine your customers ordering. Check the proof charges. Ask how they calculate shipping fees. If your customers will accept the numbers, the book will be a good fit. If you think they might balk, this may not be the time to experiment and tie up some of your much-needed finances.
When estimating retail costs, be sure to add in all applicable charges. Los Angeles customers, for example, will see a nearly 10 percent hike due to recent sales tax increases. That might not sound like much on its own, but it factors in on an engraved order retailing at $2,500, pre-tax.
A good rule of thumb is to shoot for books with mid-range retail pricing for the bulk of your investment, then add a little just a hair below and a little just above, raising the odds your selection will meet consumers' needs. With time, patterns will emerge, telling you whether to stretch further in one direction or pull back from another.
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| Checkerboard offers albums ranging from traditional to contemporary. (800) 735-2475. www.checkernet.com |
The Final Tally
There are several factors to consider when purchasing new albums, some driven by your customer base, some driven by the product itself. In the end, your goal is to be profitable, and to invest in lines that will continue to earn the valuable shelf space they inhabit. With some planning, some conversation, and some legwork, fifty feet of shelf space can turn into a profit center that far outpaces the rest of the store.
Combine that with a staff well trained in etiquette and knowledgeable about printing processes, and you'll earn the title of "expert stationer" in no time.
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