Organized, at last!

I finally have everything organized and put away from CHA Summer - just in time for the next shipments to begin arriving! My husband and I put up slatwall panels (It was harder than I thought it would be - those things are HEAVY!). I used slatwall shelf brackets to hang my new Cropper Hopper 12x12 Hanging Files. And in them? As much paper as we could safely stuff. About 150 sheets in each.

The paper is easy to find, doesn't get bent, and is safe from light and dust. I put the sheets upside down, so I can see the names and SKUs (sorted by SKU). I managed to get all the paper into a nice spot this way. Now, I only wish I had more wall space, so I could store ALL my scrapbook paper this way!

Then, I hung up all the beautiful new Heidi Swapp goodies I have in stock, but NOT online yet! I have had them in stock for about two weeks, so I should probably get going on that. It has been a lot of work to get the images formatted for the web - but I'm almost done.

I'm also busy adding a Gift Wrap option to the site in time for the Holiday season! I'm very excited about this - our customers will be able to buy presents at our store and ship them to family everywhere - looking beautiful! I am hoping it will be ready some time next week.

The last major thing in the works is moving the site to new shopping cart software. We are upgrading the software and will need to do a lot to get it ready and looking decent. There are quite a few reasons for this - I'll have to leave that for another day (and get working on the Heidi images!)

Joy of Assembly

I love putting orders together! I get home from work and rush to get the kids fed & bathed, homework done, and off to bed. Then, I can relax. I print out the day's orders and get to pretend shop - without any of the decision making, and sometimes with a beer of a glass of wine (I love my job)!

{When I manage to print orders before the kids go to sleep my 2 year old, Ryan, hears the printer and runs toward it yelling "paper!" He picks up the printed order and hands it to me. It is the cutest thing.}

I love thinking about someone from across the country or world opening their package and wonder what they are going to create with it. I imagine them excited to create something beautiful that will be treasured for years or decades.

It's inspiring to see how people put together new products in different ways - I've gotten great ideas. Today, I packed an order with American Craft Foam Thickers in Daiquiri Light Green and Latte Brown. Also in the order are BasicGrey Mellow papers, Scenic Route papers, and Love Elsie Soft Charms. The green and brown colors coordinate so well with the papers - I'm definitely scraplifting that idea.

My favorites new products in stock right now are the new Mellow and Recess collections from BasicGrey, Ally's Wonderland from SEI, and all the new stuff from Scenic Route. I am very excited that the CHA Summer products are mostly not themed, making them very versatile. I think I'll use Mellow for my 2 year old boy's pre-school album. I love the fall colors in it. Actually, all the new products are great - and seem much more versitile than the winter releases. I hope my customers feel the same way!

On the personal side... A bit of history

PaperCents.com was started almost 2 years ago. I fell in love with my Wishblade and wanted to sell them (I actually didn't until 6 or 7 months later). I started with enough products to fit on a shelf in a walk-in closet, just SEI & Making Memories...

Now, I have filled that closet and an entire other bedroom. I'm not sure where I'm going to put all these new products I've ordered.

I need a couple of weeks off to get everything better organized, for sure. One day soon I'll have to post some pictures of my storage or lack thereof. Maybe I can even get some tips from you! I am working on a hanging file system for all the new paper that's coming in.

A bit about me... I graduated from Florida International University in 1997 with a business degree in MIS. I have worked as a computer consultant and programmer since then. I love web design, graphics and other creative aspects of my work, but lately have been working more on logic and really techie stuff. So, I use PaperCents.com as my creative outlet. I've given up on trying to explain my font obsession to my co-workers! (I have to head over to the Marketing department for that.)

I've been married for 9 years and have two kids, Isabel 5 and Ryan 2. My husband is from Panama, so we took some portraits of the kids in native dress (called apoyera) a couple of months ago at the Fairchild Gardens Mango Festival. I've included a few of the pictures in this post.

Scenic Route is here!

Well, most of it is. The rest is coming very soon! Check out the beautiful new lines from Scenic Route: Ashville & Sumner! I just love Scenic Route's double-sided cardstock and the beautifully coordinating embellishments! Their scrap strip papers are a great way to buy a variety of patterns for backing and accents on a page.

Click the images below to see all the products in either collection. Grab these products while they are still pre-orders to get an extra 5% off!


Ashville:

















Sumner:

CHA Indecision

I must confess. I am having a hard time deciding what to order from the CHA Summer 2007 releases. There are so many beautiful products. That's not the problem. Limited space and limited budget are the problems I have.

One of the tricky things about an online store (versus a physical store) is you don't really get to see your customers and their responses to products. Sure, you can comb through web logs and see in general how long people stayed on a given page... But you definitely lose something in the communication process.

So, I will spend a day or two diving into forums and blogs to see if I can get a peek into the online customer's mind. And decide if I should order the entire BasicGrey line, or just the collection packs...

Oh, life is hard for the indecisive!

Evil SPAM and the Quest to Communicate

I never realized quite how problematic SPAM can be until I started an online store. There is a constant concern that an e-mail might not have gotten to the recipient. SPAM filters are a great tool, but I'm as guilty as anyone of deleting all junk mail without checking for anything I might need or want in it.

Well, not knowing whether or not an e-mail reached it's intended recipient is a large part of why we are changing to a new Newsletter software.

We hope our customers will find it easier to manage their subscriptions and cancel them easily when desired. We hope to create increasingly professional and useful e-mails that our customers will look forward to receiving. We hope the software will help us stay better connected by making news easier to produce. But mostly, we expect the new software to allow us to see if our customers are actually receiving the news they requested.

I'd love to hear what you think of the newsletter! What would you like to see added/removed from our e-mails? What kind of scrapbooking information are you not getting elsewhere?

Introducing... The PaperCents.com Blog!

Welcome to our new blog. We hope to discuss a variety of topics, including the business side of online scrapbook stores, product reviews, our personal challenges, news and offers for our online store. And we really look forward to hearing from you!