 At first, Scrapbook Utopia is downright unassuming. It doesn't have flashy design or graphics. Further, the site, scrapbookutopia.com, sells products that don't seem to have widespread application. This very specialized site sells only products aimed to help people make their own scrapbooks and gifts aimed at those for whom scrapbooking is more than a mere hobby. That hasn't kept them from being successful, however. As it turns out, the success of the site may have a lot to do with the fact that it is such a specialized market. More and more we are finding that niche markets like this are very lucrative. We spoke with Sandy, the site's owner, to find out more about the cause of her success.
"The business has grown dramatically. We started online in November of '99 and because we're an online business, we have no location. Consequently, we started out with 0 hits and 0 business. In March we had 15,000 hits to the site. Sales have increased and we've begun to make a profit after just a year and a half in business. I don't think that many businesses that start out as retail do that well that quickly."
When we asked about how she originally began to draw visitors to the site, Sandy replied, "When we first started we did about 6 months of advertising in a national scrapbooking magazine - a very small ad. Since then, we have done no advertising at all. We rely on word of mouth, we have links with a number of compatible sites, and we are on 12 search engines. But I think the biggest way that we draw business is through the email database. We have a guest book on our homepage. And we do a broadcast email to the entire list every week...and, you know, the hits just keep on comin'!"
They use the hit counters to determine what products sell well and how to purchase. "In terms of the administrative tools, being able to see the individual pages and their hits helps us...to gauge the percentage sales." In other words, they divide the total number of purchases of a given product by the number of hits to its respective page. They use this figure as an aid to determine which products to stock more of and which they need to promote better.
"It has been an interesting ride. The biggest challenge to us has been managing the growth. We've been happy with the software. Because the company (ICServ) has been doing upgrades and improvements, it seems to be going forward. We have been growing with the software and it has helped us to manage our tremendous growth. We started with all of our products in a very small space and now it takes up a huge space. Trying to deal with the inventory and orders and all that - the software has made it easy."
Our congratulations to Sandy on her success with scrapbookutopia.com!
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