Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 26, 2016 23:08:59 GMT
One of my local stores announced that they are closing unless they can find a buyer. It was due to her health. So a very small part of me wonders if I could make a go of it. Bless my husband, he is still supportive and thinks I could totally do it. I just wonder if it is profitable or if I would put us into debt.
I am so conservative that I know I won't due it, but it does sound interesting.
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Post by scrapaddict702 on Sept 26, 2016 23:29:48 GMT
I think you have a better shot at it with an established place that has good traffic than starting fresh. I just think with any Mom and Pop, you're going to end up doing the majority of the work (the people who worked at one local here made minimum wage). If you want to seriously consider it, talk with the owner. If you have a background in business or she is going to sell trade secrets along with the sale of the business to help, it would make the venture much more manageable.
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Post by papersilly on Sept 27, 2016 0:56:11 GMT
I think we all romanticize the thought of owning an LSS. But I think it's hard and no different than running any other small business. There is a reason so many brick and mortar LSSs have gone out of business in yeast few years. I know I have barely stepped into the LSS that I used to shop at years ago. I already have tons of stuff and online stores can be as competitive as B & M stores.
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Post by iheartpaper on Sept 27, 2016 2:50:22 GMT
I've driven by, but didn't have a chance to go in. What a great spot for the store, too. Owning a scrapbook store would be so much fun, but I imagine a risky endeavor. Youll have to keep us updated on your decision.
Wishing whoever purchases the store and the current owner the best!!!
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2016 3:08:51 GMT
If it's your dream, at least explore it and run some numbers!! I would love to have one....in an old building with enough space to have a small coffee shop and have some select antiques and decor items for sale, too!
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Loydene
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 2,639
Location: Albuquerque, New Mexico
Jul 8, 2014 16:31:47 GMT
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Post by Loydene on Sept 27, 2016 3:09:22 GMT
I am a huge paper hound and have an unfortunate addiction to paper products, live in Kansas City --- and don't have a clue what store you are talking about.
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Post by anniefb on Sept 27, 2016 3:47:54 GMT
Definitely no. There's a reason so many stores have closed over the last few years.
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Post by iheartpaper on Sept 27, 2016 4:23:23 GMT
I am a huge paper hound and have an unfortunate addiction to paper products, live in Kansas City --- and don't have a clue what store you are talking about. She's talking about The Scrapbook Boutique in downtown Lees Summit. Being from the area, when she mentioned it I did a little Facebook homework. Hope it was ok to say...
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2016 4:54:01 GMT
It's always so tempting, but we have an LSS within walking distance of my house, and that owner had prior experience in retail. She's barely keeping her head above water. Three other people I know have lost their shirts by opening scrapbook stores after 2008.
Dreaming is fun, but it's not a risk I'd take. Your mileage may vary.
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Post by katlady on Sept 27, 2016 5:18:07 GMT
I would love to own a store, but it is hard. Most of the merchandise in a scrapbook store is low-priced. You have to sell a big volume to pay your bills, and/or have a lot of classes.
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msliz
Drama Llama
The Procrastinator
Posts: 6,419
Jun 26, 2014 21:32:34 GMT
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Post by msliz on Sept 27, 2016 10:13:28 GMT
Don't do it. Stores that depend on a customer's fun money are the ones that suffer most in a poor economy. Toy shops, gift shops, hobby shops, ... big mistake to invest in one.
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Post by gigi333 on Sept 27, 2016 10:54:17 GMT
Talking as a small business owner here
Run, run and don't look back
It's pure hell
It ruins something you originally enjoy
Paperwork is a nightmare and actual real life nightmare
You will end up working all the time for little or no pay off. At times your staff will earn more than you do.
Unless you need a job I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole
I don't work in the scrapbooking industry
But a lot of people in my family run small businesses and these people are stressed out all the time
You don't get weekends or nights off
I do t want to sound like a Debbie downer, and there are parts which have been great but my quality of life would have been better staying in my old job and not going out in my own
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Post by crazy4scraps on Sept 27, 2016 14:16:17 GMT
I would love to own a store, but it is hard. Most of the merchandise in a scrapbook store is low-priced. You have to sell a big volume to pay your bills, and/or have a lot of classes. I typed up this whole big long thing about what it's *really* like to own and run a store, but decided I should just cut to the chase. It's definitely not as glamorous as it seems. I owned one for over five years during the heyday of scrapbooking, and even then it was no picnic. A LOT of people would come in with all the romantic notions of how fun it must be to scrap all day. Yeah, NO. That's one thing that quite honestly never happens. The bottom line is that it's retail, and if you wouldn't be happy working anywhere else or for anyone else in retail you probably wouldn't like working for yourself in retail either. The two happiest days of running my store was the day I opened it and the day I closed it and I'm not even kidding. If you are truly, seriously thinking about it, my best piece of advice would be to ask the owner if you can shadow her for a week or two. And by that, I mean get there when she gets there (probably an hour or more before the store opens) and leave when she leaves (probably an hour or more after the store closes some days). It wasn't uncommon for me to work 12-14 hour days. See what the job actually entails day in and day out. See what she spends her time doing, because what you would likely be buying is a job not a business. At least if you do that you would be going in with eyes wide open and the rose colored glasses off.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2016 15:27:43 GMT
I'll be the odd man out and say I would go for it if my spouse was supportive, we had the cash flow to buy it, and it's doing well right now so you're not trying to revive a dead market.
I own a business and yes you work ALLthe time. I sell tools to mechanics and I'll say this, I hate it. I dream every day of doing something more artsy and creative. We fight a lot because I'm not happy with my job. And there's no way out. If I had an opportunity to do something more along my dream instead my finances I would absolutely do it.
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Post by myboysnme on Sept 27, 2016 16:15:17 GMT
I would say no way. It will ruin any love for the hobby that you have, and we have to face the reality that young people are not coming in to the hobby. They don't print their photos. Everything is digital. Even their childhood photos were taken with digital cameras.
I was at CKC Lancaster this summer. Echo Park came and were selling huge paper kits for $4 each if you bought 10 of them. Do you think they sold out? No. They said they likely would not be back. That's at a convention where people come to buy and spend.
I worked in a very successful LSS for almost 7 years. There is no way an LSS can be successful these days. The ladies I worked for barely got out without bankruptcy and it was a store that lasted 10 years. Someone bought it for what was owed on it and she got out after 2 years - just closed it right down.
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peagia13
Full Member
Posts: 166
Sept 2, 2016 19:52:32 GMT
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Post by peagia13 on Sept 27, 2016 16:29:10 GMT
I think you have a better shot at it with an established place that has good traffic than starting fresh. Only if the existing owner has a stellar reputation. Rehabbing a damaged reputation can be so much more difficult that starting fresh.
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Post by crazy4scraps on Sept 27, 2016 18:21:34 GMT
I would say no way. It will ruin any love for the hobby that you have, and we have to face the reality that young people are not coming in to the hobby. They don't print their photos. Everything is digital. Even their childhood photos were taken with digital cameras.I was at CKC Lancaster this summer. Echo Park came and were selling huge paper kits for $4 each if you bought 10 of them. Do you think they sold out? No. They said they likely would not be back. That's at a convention where people come to buy and spend. I worked in a very successful LSS for almost 7 years. There is no way an LSS can be successful these days. The ladies I worked for barely got out without bankruptcy and it was a store that lasted 10 years. Someone bought it for what was owed on it and she got out after 2 years - just closed it right down. This is a fact. They are happy with their Facebook timelines and cell phones full of selfies and they have no need or desire to ever print their photos. And if by some miracle they did want to do something "scrapbooky" they would make a digital album on their computer at Shutterfly or Costco. Couple that with how many former traditional scrappers have gone digital, and it's really a wonder that there are any LSS around at all anymore. It's pretty sad. I was very lucky that my situation was such that I could get out without a pile of debt when I closed my storefront 15 years ago. I personally know several other ex-retailers who were not so lucky. Just from a business perspective, I believe if the store in question was truly successful it would have been sold without any of the customers ever knowing something was going down. Once an owner is trolling their own customer base looking for a potential buyer, it's pretty safe to say that they're already swirling the drain.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2016 0:00:02 GMT
I truly loved all the input!!! I'm not afraid of working retail, hard work or long hours. My background is finance, audit, legal and real estate. My concern is being able to do the creative extras that generate income. I have done some serious thinking and decided that it is not my dream and it doesn't fit in with our long term plans.
Thanks everyone, this has been a fun discussion.
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Post by myboysnme on Sept 28, 2016 0:05:15 GMT
I truly loved all the input!!! I'm not afraid of working retail, hard work or long hours. My background is finance, audit, legal and real estate. My concern is being able to do the creative extras that generate income. I have done some serious thinking and decided that it is not my dream and it doesn't fit in with our long term plans. Thanks everyone, this has been a fun discussion. It has been interesting to see where we think the pulse of brick and mortar scrapping is. Thanks for the thread!
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Post by trixiecat on Sept 28, 2016 11:04:01 GMT
I used to work for a large LSS. Everything that came into the store was marked up by 50%. Can you imagine how much paper you need to sell to pay the rent? If you start with a profit of $.50 per sheet of paper and have to pay rent, electricity, and possibly one employee, you could easily be making pennies. If you taught all of the classes yourself then you would pocket some money, but again, I doubt enough to pay the rent. I used to teach and the time it took to design a class, pull class kits and teach was worth it for the "fun" value, but not the money value. I think you made a very wise choice and also, you wouldn't want to ruin your love of the hobby.
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peagia13
Full Member
Posts: 166
Sept 2, 2016 19:52:32 GMT
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Post by peagia13 on Sept 28, 2016 12:55:49 GMT
Another thing is that it is extremely extremely rare to have a savvy business personality and a talented front person designer for classes and events all rolled into one body.
Many people think they can handle it all but that's not usually the case.
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Post by crazy4scraps on Sept 28, 2016 13:46:20 GMT
Another thing is that it is extremely extremely rare to have a savvy business personality and a talented front person designer for classes and events all rolled into one body. Many people think they can handle it all but that's not usually the case. And even if you do, there's not much you can do when a company like Archiver's comes in and plops their 10,000 SF store less than five miles away from your 2,000 SF store to capitalize on the market you've spent years working 60-70 hours a week to build. True story. And they did that *seven* times here. The silver lining for me was that it was the last nudge I needed to get out. I was already burned out on retail and it forced me to go down a different path. But some of my retailer friends didn't fare as well as I did and they lost everything including homes and/or marriages.
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Post by Delta Dawn on Sept 29, 2016 17:33:56 GMT
Here is something to think about. I have a LSS in a house. She has a bonus area in the house were she holds classes and has limited scrapbooking stock for sale. She was a brick and mortar store owner, she and her business partner closed the store and she continued on at her house. She teaches many classes and she is the "store" at all the crops in town. I think she does fairly well. She isn't open retail hours. She posts her open hours on Facebook and on her website and has time for work and time for Brownies and softball games. Do I think she is making money? Probably not a lot. She was at a crop I was just at and she was teaching all day and her husband was running the store. They made a bit of money doing it, though.
People don't buy like they used to. I have tons and tons of stuff and I am having to donate a lot of it because it's just too much stuff. I would typically go to the LSS a couple of times after work as it was on my way home. That store closed after being sold 2x. None of the owners of that store were intelligent business people. I am not surprised it closed. The other LSS we had at one time was run by two crooks. Karma got them but good. That's all I am going to say.
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Post by crazy4scraps on Sept 29, 2016 20:03:54 GMT
Delta Dawn She is probably supporting her own habit enough to make it worth doing. On a small scale like that it's much more doable and fun but she's not likely to be raking in the cash. More likely she's getting her own stuff at cost and maybe breaking even on the rest once it's all said and done. I hosted some good sized crops back in the day hoping that I could make a little extra money selling stuff while I was at it and had a captive audience. But like you said, people already have SO.MUCH.STUFF! And everyone is always looking for only bargains. Plus there is still a pretty big variety of things out there that it's really hard to know what to stock that will actually sell at a profit. By the time you sell a little of it at retail or almost retail, and calculate what you're making on everything else you had to dump at a big discount just to get rid of it and (hopefully) get your investment back out, you end up averaging a pretty small margin overall. Nobody is getting rich in retail these days!
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Post by Delta Dawn on Sept 29, 2016 22:19:06 GMT
I can't imagine she is making much money if both she and her husband are having to work at it. If it buys her supplies and she enjoys it then that's all that matters. Just about every weekend, though is a crop of some sort. If both of them have to work at the crop neither one of them get a weekend.
She may be having fun, though!
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Post by papersilly on Sept 30, 2016 0:20:26 GMT
a few years ago an LSS opened up a couple of cities over. it was a cute shop not too far from a big shopping center. they didn't have a large inventory but they got new products in regularly. 1/3 of the store sold products, another 2/3 was crop space. they hosted regular crops and I guess they had regulars who attended. first the wife worked there. then they started to struggle a bit so she had to get a full time job and the husband came in to mind the store. about a year into it, they started having more crops and more sales until finally, they threw in the towel and closed the store. it was a cute store but I don't see how she sold enough product and hosted enough crops to pay the rent and pay for new products. i'm not surprised it closed.
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Post by scrapaddict702 on Sept 30, 2016 0:39:12 GMT
I used to work for a large LSS. Everything that came into the store was marked up by 50%. Can you imagine how much paper you need to sell to pay the rent? If you start with a profit of $.50 per sheet of paper and have to pay rent, electricity, and possibly one employee, you could easily be making pennies. If you taught all of the classes yourself then you would pocket some money, but again, I doubt enough to pay the rent. I used to teach and the time it took to design a class, pull class kits and teach was worth it for the "fun" value, but not the money value. I think you made a very wise choice and also, you wouldn't want to ruin your love of the hobby. They don't pay retail for merchandise, so the markup is purely to make more per item. I also don't fully get this argument because dollar stores do great. I do realize they have multiple stores and therefore can produce and/or purchase things for better prices than a single shop can. There is a new shop here that basically bought all of the last store's stuff when they closed (I'm talking fixtures and furniture). Her stuff is marked up and I won't go back. If it's more than retail, it isn't going to happen from me. I would have been willing to spend a bit here and there, but the prices were ridiculous. She had the MISTI's and I think they were marked up about 30%. I think more stores would do better with routine sales and selling at regular retail (less profit per item, but selling a higher volume) versus the current trend of putting things more than retail. I can get it online cheaper, so I will. I'm a cost based shopper, not a loyalist and people my age are like that...especially given the economic turmoil of the last decade.
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Post by katlady on Sept 30, 2016 5:33:42 GMT
I used to work for a large LSS. Everything that came into the store was marked up by 50%. Can you imagine how much paper you need to sell to pay the rent? If you start with a profit of $.50 per sheet of paper and have to pay rent, electricity, and possibly one employee, you could easily be making pennies. If you taught all of the classes yourself then you would pocket some money, but again, I doubt enough to pay the rent. I used to teach and the time it took to design a class, pull class kits and teach was worth it for the "fun" value, but not the money value. I think you made a very wise choice and also, you wouldn't want to ruin your love of the hobby. They don't pay retail for merchandise, so the markup is purely to make more per item. I also don't fully get this argument because dollar stores do great. I do realize they have multiple stores and therefore can produce and/or purchase things for better prices than a single shop can. But have you seen how many people go in and out of a dollar store? I have never been the only customer in a dollar store, like I used to be sometimes in my LSS. It is all about the volume of sales.
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Post by canadianscrappergirl on Sept 30, 2016 15:02:47 GMT
I think that owning a lss isn't what most who own one envision when they own one.
I think most feel they will get to play all day with all the product but in reality you are busy ordering and trying to stay on top of the latest and greatest product/techniques etc.
My friend had a lss here in my small town and she said she never had time to just scrap what she wanted she was always too busy making up samples/ordering/putting out stock. She hated working with and ordering lines she didn't like too.
I think having a lss these days would be difficult with the big box crafting stores and online shopping. Trying to decide what will appeal to your clients and moving stock fast enough to get the new 5 crate paper lines in even though the 5 you got just months ago aren't selling would be stressful.
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Post by crazy4scraps on Oct 1, 2016 5:17:29 GMT
They don't pay retail for merchandise, so the markup is purely to make more per item. I also don't fully get this argument because dollar stores do great. I do realize they have multiple stores and therefore can produce and/or purchase things for better prices than a single shop can. But have you seen how many people go in and out of a dollar store? I have never been the only customer in a dollar store, like I used to be sometimes in my LSS. It is all about the volume of sales. Also, I would imagine the dollar stores aren't paying .50 for something they're selling for a dollar either. More likely they are paying .20-.30 so their margin is higher. The one near me has signs up saying that if you order anything in bulk you'll get an even better price on it which tells me their cost isn't typical small business wholesale. Because most are probably part of a franchise or co-op of sorts, I would imagine that they have pretty decent collective buying power so it's not an apples to apples comparison. In addition, the theory of volume sales only works if you're selling through the majority of your inventory at or near full price and that's really hard to do in the scrapbook industry because everyone is looking for something different AND they're looking for deals. Inventory management is pure hell for a small independent business like an LSS. If you order direct, you're extremely lucky if the manufacturers ship out their new products when they told you it would ship. If you order from a distributor you're at their mercy because they may or may not have every item you ordered in stock when your order gets to the top of the queue. And in either case, more often than not the mom and pop LSS isn't getting ANY major breaks on price or on terms (the length of time from when the order is shipped until it has to be paid). Big box chain stores always get some kind of break whether it's on the price they pay per item or how long they have to pay for it. As an LSS owner, there were very few companies at the end that would offer me or any independent retailer terms and all orders had to be paid up front or with a credit card. I'm sure Michael's or Dollar Tree or whoever gets 60-90-120 days to sell the products through before they even see the bill for it. Consumers also need to realize that the retail markups on that inventory have to cover *all* of the costs of running the store, including many of the things most people don't even think about. The obvious ones are rent, heat/electricity, phone, labor costs (including payroll and income taxes). The less obvious ones are water/sewer/trash collection, internet connection, bags or other packaging supplies, price stickers and office supplies, signage, freight (which was always a big expense, paper and cardstock are HEAVY!), postage, advertising, web hosting/design, credit card processing fees, bank fees, fixtures and displays, inventory shrinkage (a/k/a theft, products damaged by customers, etc.), printing expenses for newsletters or mailings, everything right down the soap and toilet paper in the restroom. I'm sure I've forgotten some things too in the 15 years since I had my store. So when you consider that the average sale at an LSS is probably around $10-15 and the average store maybe has 10-20 customers a day, you can see pretty clearly that even with markups somewhat over MSRP it's going to be pretty tough to make enough money to sustain that business over time unless you have a very solid and loyal customer base. "Profit" is the money you have left AFTER all of those bills have been paid. Like I said, most small retailers today are not getting rich by any stretch of the imagination.
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