Is the Digi-Scrap Community in Need of Guidance?

By PChip | Category: Business Management |

I’m back after a very nice Thanksgiving Holiday offline. We had family come in town and I even had a surprise visit from one of our daughters I wasn’t expecting at all. Boy, oh boy was it a week full of bountiful thankfulness!

Now That I’m Back…

As is the case fairly often, when I popped back online today I stopped in at DigiShopTalk to see what folks were carrying on about. There’s always a wide range of discussions there ranging from CT calls, to who’s seen the latest kid-flick, to who’s got new products to announce or unannounced store closures. As one of the largest networking communities in our industry, there’s once again a passionate discussion going on about customer service and concerns over product quality.

I usually observe these discussions and don’t get involved when they are based on a specific store or individual designer. However this one is focused on the industry as a whole and how it could be regulated.

My Professional Opinion

Note I did not say my humble opinion. That’s because as a professional working in this field and as a business woman of many years, my opinion is not humble in the least. I have a strong opinion about regulating products and services. My thoughts on regulation and oversight with products/services/policies that affect the well-being of people, animals, and the societies in which we live in - differs from those I have about products/services having no affect on our well-being. My input at DST included:

I see an attempt at regulating our industry as a huge endeavor that will be impossible to achieve. But certainly a worthy one to address at whatever levels our masses can do it. Are you familiar with the “neighborhood watch” programs that many homeowners participate in? It’s a program that involves teaching homeowners what to look for and how to report high risks activities to other homeowners in the neighborhood. The efforts are conducted not as a way of encouraging nosiness or neighborly spying, but for the purpose of protecting each other and helping keep the neighborhood clean of riff/raff. Training is provided to the participants, flyers are hung on the houses to tell folks there’s a neighborhood watch in place and hopefully the programs help discourage wrongful doings. The “policing” is accomplished on a purely voluntary basis and has limited security. Yet being a part of a neighborhood watch program is still well worth participating in.

I honestly don’t see the digi-scrap industry being able to do much more in the way of regulating than a homeowners neighborhood watch program could provide. I’m saying YES it’s definitely worth pursuing a consumer advocacy type group for the industry. There just needs to be a clear understanding up front as to the worth of such a program and recognition from the industry that it will only be as good as we make it.

I Offered to Help

I did put my hand up in the air to help support an initiative that may help us develop and provide a service for quality control within the industry. I think it’s worth pursuing. Our industry is young and the new business owners starting out at their kitchen tables are vulnerable to huge mistakes. Which leaves many customers open to dissatisfied experiences. Not so much out of meanness or purposeful wrong doing, but more out of lack of training and/or business experience from somewhat unexperienced business owners building their new careers.

This business isn’t difficult to get involved in at a shoestring level. There are several career paths that are easily obtainable for hobbyists who have an entrepreneur spirit. Longevity in our industry isn’t seen as a strength as yet. We (the industry) are as weak in that area as we are in pricing our products and services far too low. Two areas also recognized as challenges and often faced in the world of arts and crafts - another industry fat with hobbyists turned careerist. It’s these weaknesses that hurt our industry as a whole and our own wallets as well. Not to mention the affect is has on our self-esteem.

So Where Will This Discussion Go?

If you’ve been a part of the DST community for very long at all you’ve seen how fast discussions can rise to the fore front and then fade away almost as quickly. Sometimes there’s actions put behind the words, sometimes not. It’ll be interesting to see where this one goes. I encourage you to read the discussion string at DST and voice your opinion on the matter. I’d love to hear your thoughts and hope that you will take the time to share them here on our blog and/or in our networking forums.

What do you think about this? Do share your thoughts, please!

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Tags: Business Management

7 comments
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Kayla November 29th, 2007 7:14 pm :
When I was a mortgage loan officer we created a county lender’s association. The lenders who were members of the group agreed to abide by a code of ethics and standards. We had a board of ten people (from various companies) and also committees made up of a mix of people working in the industry. We all worked together to make our industry more reputable - I think something similar to this could be very good for the digital community.

Member companies paid dues to the organization and they agreed to be bound by the term of ethics. Some lenders did not participate - it was voluntary - but it gave customer a good idea of the companies committed to being open and honest - the companies who participated were given a seal to display in their places of business.

I think it would be a good thing - it also would be a good thing to help educate newer designers on what is acceptable and good business practice…I think a lot of the quality issues out there are simply due the designers lack of experience and a little bit of mentoring would go a long way in those situations…
PChip November 30th, 2007 11:24 am :
Kayla - that’s an excellent idea! The “organization with members agreeing to abide by certain terms” thing I mean. I think that would help customers see who’s committed and providing the top-level products/services. We would just need to educate the customers on where to look, etc.

I also agree with you completely about educating designers on good business practices! I think that’s a big issue in any industry.

Thank you for your input. I appreciate your opinions on this.
Jennifer White/ScrapKittyDesign November 30th, 2007 10:04 pm :
I have been one of those professional crafters, and always made sure to belong to my local Crafters Guild wherever I lived. The guilds serve several purposes - education and business advice, knowledge pool, standards setter, conduit to connect artists with funding sources and work opportunities. I’ve maintained for a long time, every time this topic comes up, that we need a trade guild. You would have to meet a set of criteria to join - have a portfolio of work reviewed, have been selling in a consignment environment for a specified amount of time, make a commitment to contributing by educating others, helping raise funds, advertising, helping with admin work. Once accepted into the guild, you would be qualified to display the guild logo or seal on all your products. This would let the customer know that you’ve met certain criteria, and that the purchase is backed by the guild. Guild members would have to agree to allow the guild’s dispute resolution committee to arbitrate any disputes, and customers could feel like they have a place to report dissatisfaction if they don’t get a satisfactory response from the designer. Kind of like getting a ’seal of approval’ for your work. The guild could also perform valuable services for the digi-scrap community by holding new-designer classes and workshops, including such topics as tax responsibilities, marketing, or organizing your time. This would be a perfect entity to oversee the STOUI also. I would gladly work to help get something like this going. I think it’s much like what Kayla described above - almost every industry has such organizations, and we should embrace the idea as our industry matures. Not to say there is not a place for ‘hobbyist’ designers, but that it might be time to separate the professionals (those serious about improving their craft and running a business) from the talented amateurs.
Just my two cents!
PChip November 30th, 2007 11:12 pm :
Okay - what you ladies are talking about is easy to implement within the structure we already have going at DSD-Pro. Very easy. If I can round up the support from folks, we can make that happen.

However, I don’t want to be perceived as running over what kscwgirl already has started from the initial discussions from DST. I’ve signed up for her new group. Haven’t been approved as yet though.

As soon as that approval goes through and I see what discussions are going on, I’ll look more closely at pursuing this.

Thanks VERY MUCH for your input it is helpful!
Cassel December 2nd, 2007 10:05 am :
Being new to “selling” digistuff, i think it would be a wonderful idea to have some kind of grouping of the designers. Something that can be a valuable and worthy to the designers and the customers too. And also such a grouping could be identified, just like those members of TWInc. Such a grouping could have several advantages:
- give a visual clue to customer that the site or designer is following at least a set of rules
- give the customer a place to go if they notice something not right
- help the newcomers to the business to start with some background
- help the newcomers learn from the experienced designers how to avoid some mistakes
- help set some standards in the industry, as much as can be done.

I likely would not have much input to help in such grouping, but i would certainly be willing to become a member, even if only to learn and participate.
David December 3rd, 2007 6:58 am :
Seems a sensible step forward.

Any industry with sufficiently low barriers to entry will get flooded quickly with low-cost / free offerings.

With un-registered digi-scrap businesses started essentially for free, we either have to struggle against the tide, or raise the barriers in a meaningful way.

One such barrier could be a guild as such. Maybe there should be a peer reviewed standard of product. A dispute resolution service. These barriers are also low cost in $ terms.

Anything that raises the cost of business, just make us less competitive.

But the barriers have to mean something to the customers. An arbitrary “club” badge is not neessarily going to make a difference if not perceived by them as a good standard worth paying for.
PChip December 4th, 2007 2:34 pm :
Absolutely great input here folks. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

So this issue doesn’t drop out of site, I’m continuing it in our networking community forums. If you want to stay in the loop and continue discussing this pop on over to the forum string at:

http://dsd-pro.biz/forums/index.php?showtopic=245&hl=