Update | Big Picture Classes, The Messy Box, & More!
There's been lots of great announcements and good news this past week...let's check out all of the updates!
Messy Box
Elsie Larson and Emma Chapman of A Beautiful Mess have announced a new monthly papercrafting subscription kit called the Messy Box. The kit, which is being produced in conjunction with Studio Calico, will retail for between $19.99 to $24.99 each month depending on subscription length. The Messy Box contents for March 2015 will include 9x12 paper, washi tape, a transparency, journal cards, and various embellishments. This is the second subscription product from the sister team at A Beautiful Mess, joining their Happy Mail stationery offering.
Big Picture Classes has launched its previously announced new website under its new ownership by Studio Calico, finally making clear the reason for the controversial discontinuation of "forever" classes. The new website is a membership site in the model of such organizations as photography and Photoshop service Kelby Training, which charges a subscription fee in exchange for access to a library of content.
Membership at Big Picture Classes will cost $9.95/month, with no cancellation fees, and can be cancelled at any time. In addition to the catalog of class content for members, the site will continue to offer quarterly "premium" classes which are not part of the membership and which can be purchased by non-members. Users of the previous BPC site are being emailed a code that extends the new site's two week free trial period by an additional two weeks.
Alongside the membership section of the site, the new Big Picture Classes website also includes a store that sells products for use in the site's classes and a very robust looking forum section that includes extensive personal profiles.
The good news is that the west coast port workers have reached a settlement in their labor dispute over their union contract, ending the labor slowdown in the U.S. west coast ports. The bad news is that it will be weeks, if not months, before the backlog of freight waiting to be unloaded is cleared from the ports. Most major west coast ports have not only a backlog of freight within the port itself, but also a line of ships moored offshore waiting to be unloaded. Many industry companies, including Simple Stories and Bella Blvd, have had the delivery dates of product releases affected by the dispute.
For some time "Made in the USA" has been a marketing slogan aimed at consumers wishing to support American goods. The west coast port slowdown has increased the appeal of "Made in the USA" to wholesale customers as well, offering greater security that manufacturers will deliver products when expected. Several industry companies (such as Ken Oliver Crafts) have launched marketing campaigns stressing their US production during the slowdown.
[Disclosure: Messe Frankfurt and Creativeworld are sponsors of this site.]
Creativeworld, which took place in Frankfurt, Germany from January 31st through February 3rd, has announced its finally numbers for the 2015 show. The show served 290 exhibitors from 30 countries, and was visited by 8,353 visitors from 80 countries. Half of the show attendees were from outside of host country Germany. Altogether for the three shows (Paperworld, Christmasworld, and Creativeworld), Messe Frankfurt hosted 2,855 exhibitors and nearly 84,000 attendees from 156 countries.
"The intensive collaboration with our partners from trade and industry has borne fruit and this is a solid foundation for strengthening the position of the consumer-goods shows in Frankfurt as the world’s leading platforms for their sectors”, said Detlef Braun, Member of the Executive Board of Messe Frankfurt.
The 2016 Creativeworld show will take place at the Messe Frankfurt trade fairground in Frankfurt, Germany from January 30th to February 2nd, 2016.
