December Daily 2018 MEGAAA thread

So I watched Ali's Facebook live -

And a few "unpopular opinions" based on stuff I'm reading on here:

1. First I see a few people making fun of her voice - but as a woman who is also 5'9" and also has a deep voice for a woman - I actually like that Ali does not have a high voice and doesn't constantly apologize and say "like" and have all of the other common but unfortunate female speaking voice tics. Two thumbs up for tall girls with deep voices

2. I don't mind the Facebook live format as a replay. I found the video quality of the replay video on her blog to be fine.

3. I think she is offering a lot of interesting products meant to appeal to a wide variety of crafters. Unfortunately, as the scrapbook industry contracts there are fewer and fewer companies offering anything really new or different. So I appreciate her efforts to give her customers choices, while sticking to a familiar design feel. So far I have not seen any other companies release anything like the oversized rubber shapes, 6 to 8 different designs of transparencies, 6in numbers, or holiday silk screens. Is everything my style - of course not. But that's what makes crafting fun - we don't all have to love the same thing or do the same thing

4. And finally on prices - yes, I agree I think Ali is charging a healthy mark-up on a lot of these products, but she is also taking on a significant risk that stuff may not sell and she may end up with a garage full of embossed tags. People on here seem to think Ali is like Walmart or Amazon - when in reality she is a small business owner in an industry with I suspect very tight profit margins. Although I think she makes good money with the subscriptions, I think December Daily is probably important to her overall bottom line. Plus she is offering a boutique style product. All of us can walk into Hobby Lobby tomorrow and buy some mass-produced holiday scrapbook paper line and a cheap album and call it a day. But clearly we are not that crowd - we are a crowd that spends our evening chatting on a scrapbook message board that is a tribute to a long defunct scrapbook company. So like everyone else I'm not rich and I also want to feel like I'm getting a good value - and after all it is just paper - but to me at least I think her prices are pretty reasonable for what she is offering.

5. My only criticisms are I wish she was offering more album choices, and I wish she would go back to offering the main kit with an album included. I'm a fan of just getting a kit with everything included and then using my stash to fill in gaps. I'm not excited about having to deal with sales drama and scrolling through the site just to get the main kit and the album - all I really want.

That's it