Interesting Thoughts On Creative Memories
Today I decided to do something new for Scrapbook Update and bring to everyone a guest post from Rob Bostick of Judikins. Rob contacted me with some excellent thoughts on the downfall of Creative Memories that I felt would be educational to share with everyone. Thanks very much to Rob for agreeing to share his experience and knowledge with Scrapbook Update's readers!
I read your article [on CLN Online] about Creative Memories and I agree with a lot of what you said. Creative Memories has never been good with adapting to changing realities but then the same can be said about today's craft industry.
My first contact with Creative Memories was back in 1991 when several of their consultants started buying scissors from us. The most notable of these was Barbara Tolopilo who went on to found the company Family Treasures.
The marketing concept behind Creative Memories was that your photos are not safe in a shoe box and need to go into acid free albums. They would show faded color photos taken in the 50's and 60's to make the case that you must put your photos into their special "acid free" photo albums in order to keep them safe. (After all these are your memories and you wouldn't want to lose them!) They never mentioned the fact that photo processing chemistry in the 80's had improved greatly and photos kept away from sunlight would last for many more years than those of the preceding decades.
Their consultants were the real creative force. In order to sell more at their parties they were constantly coming up with new tools and new things to add to the albums. Of course the company needed to be sure that everything was acid free (and wanted their cut of the action), so practically from the beginning they forbade the consultants to sell anything that wasn't a Creative Memories product. (There was also that nasty sales tax problem.) The harder the company tried to control this, the more consultants left to become independents. Family Treasures was just one of the companies that formed to supply these consultants as they left to become independents. Creative Memories kept trying to come up with more products but couldn't supply the wide range of new products that this army of smaller companies was now creating. It was these companies that were the start of what we think of as scrapbooking today.
Many consultants had been using stickers in their albums. In order to satisfy them, Creative Memories started selling to their consultants a special line of approved Mrs. Grossman's stickers. A big turning point came when the consultants found out that all of Mrs. Grossman's stickers were acid free and CM's special line wasn't that special. Never again would Creative Memories enjoy the 90+ market share of the scrapbooking industry. But, up until recently, their smaller slice was compensated for by a greatly increased pie.
The real demise of Creative Memories (and down turn in scrapbooking) is due to digital photography. The preserving memories argument is gone. Today a digital copy of your cell phone video going viral on the net will be around forever. Who needs paper photographs?
Scrapbooking today is not about "preserving memories" it has become "crafting with photos". Today's images are culled and cropped before they are ever printed out (often before being taken out of the camera.) This printing process requires user effort as well as an extra expense. The preservation of paper photographs will never again be as widespread as it was when everyone dropped off their film at the drugstore and got back their packet of "memories".
