Archive for March, 2008
Our beautiful rainbow of Bazzill cardstock is here! It looks so cool sitting in the paper racks – like a kaleidoscope of colors. Our designer, Tiffany, is so excited she can’t stand it! I took a picture of the paper racks – all 16 in a row – and it’s at the bottom of the e-mail. It arrived on Friday – a total of 34 boxes. My 8-year old daughter Lauren was home from school, so I asked her if she wanted to earn some extra money and help me put it away. When she got to the office, she said her price was $2.00 per hour. After an hour or so, she started getting bored (imagine that!), so she started folding boxes. She told me her price was now $4.00 per hour since she was doing two jobs. I told her it didn’t work that way.
Lauren, my husband Tony & I worked on putting it away until 9:00 pm Friday night. When we got in the car, I handed Lauren a $10 bill. She said “You don’t have to pay me, Mommy”. I told her I agreed to pay her $2.00 an hour and she had worked about 5 hours. “I know, but you don’t have to pay me. It’s our family business.” I was stunned and so proud of her! We’re obviously doing things right
Besides the Bazzill, we have a great selection of unique items this week. Lots of travel, of course. Many of you have been requesting equestrian scrapbook supplies and I’m happy to say we have a selection for you – whether it’s western, rodeo or English riding. Last week we had new baseball and so you don’t think we forgot the girls, this week we have fast pitch softball – including a customizable softball jersey. We also added supplies for cars and driving, whether you’re scrapbooking off-road, racing, your first car or classic cars. Karen Foster has a new Ancestry line and we designed some coordinating SYT cuts. We’ve also received a lot of requests for scrapbooking items so that you can scrapbook your scrapbooking adventures! We have designed the first few of many – keep letting us know the ideas you have. Lastly, we have the new HERMA Repositionable Adhesive in my favorite color – purple! Gotta have glue to stick all these great products together. You’ll notice that we have matched product to both WorldWin and Bazzill cardstock. When we did the cardstock survey several months back, many of you asked us to keep both cardstock companies and we are. Have no fear Colormates lovers! Click here to see all the new items:
http://www.scrapyourtrip.com/32608.html. Today is also the last day for the Basic Grey pre-order. We will be placing the order tomorrow and hope to see it in about 6-7 weeks. Here is the link:
http://www.scrapyourtrip.com/bgpreorder.html.
I’m doing something really exciting today! Microsoft is having a Small Business Summit, featuring “over 50 of the nation’s top small business experts” and I’m one of them! I’m going to be live via satellite today at about 12:15 Eastern (9:15 Pacific). Here is a link if you’d like to see me gush about scrapbooking and how wonderful my customers are:
http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/summit/. If you have an inner entrepreneur just busting to get out, this summit is packed with great info. It’s been going on all week and they are going to post all the interviews online after it’s done so you can catch up. I’m a little nervous and am going to try to remember to smile when I talk – all the other people look so darn serious!
As always, thanks for your business! Without you, my wonderful customers, I would have never been able to grow my business to be successful enough to get Microsoft’s attention. I am overflowing with gratitude
Julie Swatek, President
Scrap Your Trip®
www.ScrapYourTrip.com
http://blog.scrapyourtrip.com
‘cuz life is a trip worth scrappin’®
Lauren helping but away the Bazzill cardstock.
She “struck a pose” as soon as she saw the camera
Isn’t it BEAUTIFUL?!?!?
March 26th, 2008
Well, I don’t know what y’all said to Rhonda – but it worked! She was so touched by all your e-mails that she has decided to stay! She’s still moving to the beach, but she’s going to telecommute and drive into the office one day a week. Even though she’s working from home, she will give you the same great customer service you are used to and you won’t know the difference (unless you hear the sound of waves crashing in the background).
Becca will be doing the part that requires being in the office, but that means I get her back! Just an example of this crazy rollercoaster office we call “Scrap Your Trip”!
I told you I was having trouble deciding which BasicGrey collections to order. Since I couldn’t decide, I got them all! Every single item (including stamps) from the 5 new collections is on pre-order for one week starting today. BasicGrey is quoting us a 6-week ship time (they determine their shipping order by a bracelet they hand out at the CHA show – apparently there is a mad dash to their booth so you can get one. I didn’t know, so we’re at the end of the line)
, so we’re hoping to start shipping it to you the second week in May. This is much longer than the other two pre-orders we’ve done, so unless you want to wait 6-7 weeks for your whole order, I would suggest placing a separate order for the BasicGrey. Click here to see all the items:
http://www.scrapyourtrip.com/bgpreorder.html.
We have over 170 items this week in so many different categories that I am going to list them out:
*Easter & Passover
*Stamping Station Travel Stickers for 39 destinations with 8 matching papers
*Military
*Baseball, including a customized baseball jersey laser die cut
*Karen Foster Mini Charms
*SYT cuts for the following: England, New York, Netherlands, Washington DC
and In Memory. Wait until you see the Buckinham Palace Guards and the
Statue of Liberty!
Click here to see all the items:
http://www.scrapyourtrip.com/31907.html.
One of the things that I enjoy the most is sitting with the designers, Tiffany & Jill, to come up with all the ideas for the SYT cuts for the week. We try to focus on 2-3 countries and 2-3 states per week. Keep those ideas and requests coming! One thing to remember, though…We can’t design cuts for anything that is trademarked. If you ever wondered why we don’t carry items for places such as Hershey Park, Busch Gardens, Six Flags, Disney Cruise, the names of the cruise lines, etc., it’s because the name is trademarked and they haven’t licensed it for use to any of our vendors. Hopefully they’ll get with the program soon!
I hope you have a wonderful Easter. All our family and our best friends will be sharing dinner with us – all 16 of them
As always, thanks for your business!
Julie Swatek, President
Scrap Your Trip®
www.ScrapYourTrip.com
http://blog.scrapyourtrip.com
‘cuz life is a trip worth scrappin’®
March 19th, 2008
For the past nine months, Rhonda has been the “voice” of Scrap Your Trip’s customer service. I know many of you have struck up a friendship with her through e-mails and phone calls. How could you not? She was always just a “honey” away
I am so sad to say that Rhonda is leaving us. She has a new love in her life and they just bought a house at the beach. I tried to duct tape her to her chair, but it she wasn’t having any part of it! If you would like to send her your farewells, please send an e-mail to customercare@scrapyourtrip.com and put “Rhonda” in the subject line. We’ll make sure she gets it.
Becca will be the new “voice” of Scrap Your Trip. If you thought you liked Rhonda, you’re going to love Becca! She has been my assistant and whenever we talk about her we say “Becca? LOVE Becca!” She is quite possibly the happiest person I ever met in my life. During the 9 months she has been my assistant, I have never once not seen her smiling. She will continue to offer the outstanding customer service that Scrap Your Trip is known for and I know y’all will love her as much as we do.
Bazzill is coming! We are expecting it in by the 26th and have put the swatchbooks (including all the supplements) on the site to pre-order. If you order by tomorrow night (Thursday-3/14), we are offering a pre-order discount of 25%. Bazzill is holding our order so they can include the swatchbooks. Don’t worry – we will still be selling them after the pre-order sale is finished. While we’re on the subject of pre-orders, today is the last day to pre-order any of the “Berry Sweet” or “Rough & Tumble” line from K&Co. We will be taking it off the site tomorrow morning and placing the order.
We have an awesome selection of new products this week – 191 items! We have something for all but two continents (and I don’t think Antarctica is a big tourist destination). I can’t believe Easter is almost here, but we have the first of two Easter lines, along with some “springy” papers. We have all the new travel papers, stickers and die cuts from Paper House’s new release. Simply put – stunning. We even have papers and stickers from the Wizard of Oz! We have golf and bowling, rugby and Civil War, a new SYT Italy kit and more. Click here to see all the new items:
http://www.scrapyourtrip.com/31208.html>. The pre-orders for Bazzill Swatchbooks and K & Co are here:
http://www.scrapyourtrip.com/whatsnew.html.
I really want to thank you for continuing to be a part of the Scrap Your Trip family. I am often overwhelmed with gratitude that so many of you enjoy my weekly messages and that so many of you use that opportunity to “reply” to those messages or post on my blog telling me how you’re doing, where you travelled, what you’re scrappin’, or some product you’re looking for.
We know you have an abundance of choices – online and local – for your scrapbooking needs so we do our best to make every SYT shopping experience the best it can be. We know that for many online shoppers it takes a small leap of faith that when you hit the “Send Order” button, hoping that you won’t be disappointed with your experience. Our mantra is “We choose Customer Service over profits every single time.”; so if you ever have a problem, just let us know and we’ll make it right. We’ve built Scrap Your Trip on a solid foundation of shoppers that started out as happy customers, progressed to being friends, and ended up as part of our extended family. All I can say is thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Julie Swatek, President
Scrap Your Trip®
www.ScrapYourTrip.com
‘cuz life is a trip worth scrappin’®
P.S. One of the many e-mails we’ve received recently is a heart-wrenching story of a 13 year-old boy who fell while skateboarding and wasn’t wearing his helmet (his parents weren’t at the park to make him). He is still recouperating from brain surgery. Just wanted to pass along the message to remind everyone about helmet safety and how fragile the human brain really is.
March 12th, 2008
You know how something can be a lot of fun but a lot of work at the same time? That’s what it’s like ordering new products when we come back from a tradeshow. We brought back over 200 pounds of catalogs! ( I know the weight because our suitcases were too heavy and we spent about 15 minutes rearranging everything to get them all under 50 pounds). We’re making progress and I wanted to give you an update on how it’s going. Based on your requests, we will be adding Bazzill and Basic Grey. We are going to be ordering every current color of Bazzill 12×12 cardstock. Yes, all the new Birthstone Colors. Yes, all the Bling. It’s almost 600 colors! We will be selling them by the sheet, so you will be able to get just the colors you need. The new paper racks are here (all 16 of them!) and the order will be going in today. I can’t even imagine how many boxes are going to come in at once – we’ll be sure to take pictures to share. I hope to have the Basic Grey order together this week. I’m having trouble deciding which collections to order, so if you have any suggestions, please make sure to post them on the blog.
We are trying something different this week. There are always collections we see that don’t really fit into our usual product mix. I’ve always wanted to have a section called “This Has Nothing To Do With Travel But It Was So Cute I Just Had To Order It”, but that’s too long of a name.
Two of the best collections we saw were the “Berry Sweet” and “Rough & Tumble” lines from K&Co (my absolute fave is not available until end of April). You can pre-order this collection until 3/11/2008. We will place the order with K&Co on 3/12/08. Estimated ship date for these products is 4/7/2008. Since it’s going to be awhile before this product is available, don’t place any other products on the same order that you are in a hurry for – we are going to hold any orders with these items until the product arrives from K&Co. Hope you like the new idea! You can see the items here:
http://www.scrapyourtrip.com/preorder.html
We also have 126 items of “typical” Scrap Your Trip products. We have St. Patrick’s Day (great for those Ireland pages), Out West, boy and girl soccer, theme park, and Bike Week. We have products for scrapping home improvement (the first scrapbook I ever made) and moving. We even made a custom address plaque for your new home address! We have some gorgeous Old World style map paper and travel toppers from Travel Expressions. Lastly, since “March Madness” has begun, we’ve added some new basketball items. We have a SYT designed basketball jersey that you can customize in your school’s colors and we will personalize it with a name and number. We’re always trying to design things that are unique and I can guarantee that you won’t find a personalized basketball jersey anywhere else! We’re working on designing ones for all the other sports, so stay tuned. Click here to see all the new items for this week:
http://www.scrapyourtrip.com/30508.html
As always, thanks SO MUCH for your business!
Julie Swatek, President
Scrap Your Trip®
www.ScrapYourTrip.com
www.ScrapYourTrip-Wholesale.com
http://blog.scrapyourtrip.com
‘cuz life is a trip worth scrappin’®
March 5th, 2008
