When Elena Diaz opened The Memory Cottage more than four years ago in Pembroke Pines, Fla., everyone laughed–from the bankers who rejected her loan applications to her landlord, who thought the scrapbooking store would be long gone before the three-year lease expired.
Diaz has silenced the skeptics and turned her passion for scrapbooking into a successful retail and wholesale business. She’s tapped into the exploding market for scrapbooking, which the Hobby Industry Association estimates at $2 billion to $2.5 billion. It’s a market that has quadrupled in the last five years and continues to grow.
Scrapbooking has made a quantum leap from the days of just slapping some photos in a generic album with magnetized pages. Today’s scrapbook pages are virtual works of art, with embellishments ranging from three-dimensional stickers to fibers, buttons and plaques.
“Right now texture is a big thing, and anything three-dimensional,” said Diaz, who carries about 2,000 different kinds of paper and at least 10,000 different types of embellishments. “The customers all want the newest stuff. They don’t want their pages to look the same as last year.”
There are embellishments to illustrate almost any theme imaginable.
For vacations, there are stickers featuring San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge or London’s Big Ben. New brides can decorate pages with a mini-wedding dress, groom’s tuxedo, wedding cake and champagne bottle.
Know someone who’s a tennis buff? There are stickers with a tennis dress, racquet, can of balls and sneakers.
Materials are photo friendly
But the important thing that makes today’s scrapbooks different from the ones made 20 or 30 years ago is that the paper and materials are acid- and lignin-free so photographs won’t turn yellow.
“You know these are going to be around for a long time,” said Vivian Perez-Espinosa, owner of Let’s Scrap in South Miami. “A lot of moms are making albums to leave for their children so they will know more about their history.”
Although scrapbooking is the third most popular craft behind cross-stitch and home-decor painting, it represents less than 10 percent of the craft and hobby industry. The growth potential for scrapbooking is what has everyone clamoring for a piece of this business, from small independents to major national chains.
According to a report on the stationery and greeting card industry by Unity Marketing, only 20 percent of adult consumers have purchased scrapbooking supplies in the past year, compared with 67 percent who bought greeting cards or 44 percent who bought calendars.
“It’s got huge growth potential,” said Pam Danziger, president of Unity Marketing. “The key is getting it out of the crafting ghetto and reaching the mass market. The future is going to involve linking it up with the Internet, computers and digital technology to bring it into the technology age.”
There are about 2,500 independent scrapbooking stores in the United States, according to the Hobby Industry Association. But you’ll also find scrapbooking supplies everywhere, from crafts stores like Michael’s to Wal-Mart, Target and Office Depot.
Delray Beach, Fla.-based Office Depot started adding scrapbooking supplies to its stores a year ago and now carries the merchandise throughout the chain. All stores carry an assortment of 60 to 75 products.
“A lot of the items were natural extensions of the products we were already carrying,” said John Ferraiulo, an Office Depot merchant. “Scrapbooking is really about preserving and organizing memories. Office Depot is good at helping with presentation and organization.”
Michael’s Craft Store, which carries a wide selection of scrapbooking supplies in its stores, this summer launched a spin-off chain, Recollections, catering only to this segment of the craft market. There are two Recollections stores in the Dallas area, and the chain has announced plans to open a 10 more stores next year in the Dallas, Phoenix, Atlanta and Washington areas.
While the traditional Michael’s store stocks about 5,000 items for scrapbooking, Recollections’ customers will find a selection of about 20,000, plus a classroom where they can come to work on their projects.
“There’s no telling how many of these we could develop,” said Tom Clary, a Michael’s spokesman. “Scrapbooking is more than just a trend. People are really staying with it.”
Gine Silveira has been a scrapbook addict for more than seven years. It started after the birth of her second child, when a friend took her to a scrapbooking party. Now she makes one or two new books every year, including redoing many of her old scrapbooks that were made long before acid-free paper that prevents yellowing.
“It’s a great way to sit down at night and just relax,” said Silveira, who lives in Pembroke Pines. “Then on the weekends I get together and do it with friends.”
Although Gayle Olson only recently started scrapbooking, she’s already a convert. She has made albums for her husband’s 60th birthday and her garden club. Now she’s working on several more for each of her four grandchildren, plus one from a recent cruise vacation.
“It’s really a creative way to express yourself and to preserve family history,” said Olson, who lives in Miami Beach. “It’s the first crafting thing I’ve done that I can see staying with. I want the rest of my family to enjoy it.”
Consultants personalize sales
But if you’re not the crafty sort and don’t know where to start, Creative Memories offers a solution. The Minnesota-based company has more than 70,000 consultants worldwide who sell their products from homes or at parties in much the same manner as Tupperware. The company’s entire product line focuses on scrapbooking, but it is less about adornment and more about keeping the photos safe.
“We offer a more personalized relationship,” said Tamara Crook, a Creative Memories unit leader in Davie, Fla., who runs classes and workshops in her home or others’. “Customers can call me and I’ll help them anytime. It’s more than just being crafty. It’s about memory and heritage preservation.”
Industry experts say that aging Baby Boomers given a wake-up call by the Sept. 11 attacks have become increasingly conscious about connecting with each other and preserving their heritage.
“We’ve learned as Americans how fragile and tenacious our relationships really are,” Danziger said. “We’ve become much more value-oriented and want to spend time in ways that are more meaningful. Scrapbooking is about turning away from the mindset of cocooning and reaching out to connect with our past, present and future.”
