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Digiscrap Boutique:
I think it's definitely a wrong approach. For myself, the time that it takes me to design, there is no way that I could offer my kits at such a huge discount. I think the digital scrapbook designers need to understand that their products have infinite value. Unlike traditional scrapbooking, once the product is used, it's used. You can't go back and use it again. If you priced your kit at $7.00 or $8.00, that customer has the advantage of using it forever provided they don't lose the file. So there is no reason to say, "Hey! Take this for $2.00 or $3.00" because if you develop your name and your brand, your customers are going to repeatedly buy from you.

TheDailyScrapper:
Why do you think some designers offer such huge discounts, downloads everything for say $20.00 the entire store, or 80-90% off for the next 3 months. What do you think are the motives to almost an illogical discount from the business point of view?
Digiscrap Boutique:
I believe that they are doing it for immediate sales gratification. I think they are also doing it because they believe that it will help get their name out there. I believe they are doing it because of the competition. But the thing about it is you have to realize that you are your biggest competition. You can't sell your products based on what other designers are doing. You have to say, "this is what I do, this is what I am good at and this is where I am going to carve my niche." If you are constantly saying, "I'm going to down cut this designer, that designer" you are going to continue to do that for the course of your designing career. And you are going to get so burnt out from it you are not going to want do it anymore. Let's say you are going to release 5 products at one low price. That means you have to design 5 products. How long that's going to take you to get that out there, I don't know but you have to do so much more work just to make a sale rather than taking your time, designing one kit and then putting it out there and selling it.

TheDailyScrapper:
If a huge number of people entered this market as a hobby with the intention of making a quick buck not understanding the actual business implication behind it, could that in the long run devalue the market unnecessarily?
Digiscrap Boutique:
Yes, I think it is. A lot of people as saying, "I want to make money and I want to make it fast." When I started digital scrapbooking, it started off slow. But we stayed consistent and we built a repeat business. That's what we do. You can't look at it and say, "Oh, I'm going to just make all the money I can off the one scrap kit." Your scrap kit is going to be in the store forever until you take it out. You have the potential to continue making money of that scrap kit. It doesn't matter if you sell a 100 in one day as long as you get to the 100 in the end.

TheDailyScrapper:
How do you handle a designer's application that doesn't meet your store requirement?
Digiscrap Boutique:
It depends on the reasons why I am rejecting them. The main reason I would not take someone is either a)I believe that they are not really that active enough. If I go to someone's blog and I see that she has maybe 2 posts in several months. I am going to say to myself, "this is the person who isn't really focus on designing." b)She has too many stores. This is again another person who is going to be so busy trying to promote all her other stores, how much time she has to give to me? c)and of course the worst one of all is their products are just not up to par. For those people, we just tell them honestly as tactfully as we can. If it is the case that their products are not up to par, I like to give them some advice of what I think they should do to make it better in order to try again and I invite them to try again.

TheDailyScrapper:
You have a Grab Bag Event in your store. What exactly is that?
Digiscrap Boutique:
Right now we are having a sale promotion where many of our designers are designing some products to give to other commercial use designers and customers. It's sort of a way to say thank you. Grab your bag and you don't really know what's in it. It's sort of like a surprise, like Christmas time and you get it for a nice sale price.

TheDailyScrapper:
Have you ever received complaints that someone says, "I got a grab bag and it's really crap!"
[both laugh]
Digiscrap Boutique:
I have! [laugh] I got once from my very first grab bag that I did. I got complaints saying that "I don't feel you fill enough in this bag. I was expecting full products." I felt as though I'm sorry to tell you but this bag whether it's full or not, it was an extremely great value. And it's a grab bag! You don't know what you're getting. If the product is poor quality, that's a different story. You need to fix it.

TheDailyScrapper:
How often do you do this kind of promotion?
Digiscrap Boutique:
We're doing this promotion for the weekend. I like to offer grab bags because a lot of people like them especially the designers. If you have a designer who is a fan of yours and they like to get your stuffs but they are on a budget, they can come and get their commercial use products and use them in their designing and save themselves a good substantial amount of money.

TheDailyScrapper:
Is there a particularly busy sales season?
Digiscrap Boutique:
I don't know if I have been in this business long enough to determine the trends but I would say that definitely right now during the summer time, things have definitely seem to slow up a bit. Early Fall, all throughout the holidays and January would really be busy.

TheDailyScrapper:
Tell us about your 'Kit of the Month'.
Digiscrap Boutique:
The 'Kit of the Month' goes through our form. For one low price of $35.00, you are going to get a brand new....

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