AND OUR NEW BUSINESS IS…

1/1/11

About four years ago I became addicted to scrapbooking. Actually I’ve been doing some form of scrapbooking all my life. Whether it was just a few souvenirs glued in an old photo album or intricate pages with hidden journaling, I’ve scrapped, long before we worried about acid free items. We of course should have, but who knew?

As the spoiled, pampered princess my husband had made me I was given just about anything I wanted for my new “hobby” including a Cricut cutting machine, a Xyron adhesive machine and all the papers, stickers and tools I wanted. I played and had a great time.

I was just really getting into using all this equipment, learning the ins and out of it, along with learning Sure Cuts a Lot, and Inkscape. I had BIG scrapbooking plans. Then as you well know life changed drastically.

Oh I packed up my scrapbooking stuff and it traveled all over with us for 18 months, but I never seemed to have the time to scrap. We were either busy working or enjoying all the free sites we could visit. I just never seemed to drag that heavy black bag out of the camper closet.

Well the first week in October I drug that black bag out of the camper and back into the house where my son moved it back upstairs to what had previously been my scrapbooking room.

The reason I say previously a scrapbooking room is because now it has evolved back into an office, as it was when we first moved in. The business has changed, and so has the room. All the scrapbooking stuff is being set back up because it is now part of the business.

On the various lists I have mentioned repeatedly how we were working hard on a business plan, figuring out concepts, domain names, logos and everything else. I’ve kept to myself what the business is. Basically because I wanted to research to see if there was even a niche market for it. I like building small businesses to fill in the areas that some how have been overlooked by others. Especially when it works around something I like to do.

So what is the business you ask? The name of our new business is WEBFOOT TUB DESIGNS. Huh? You might say. A little background here. Many of you from the lists over the years have read many of my animal stories. I have been often encouraged to turn them into children’s books. So we are. Buddy the Bathroom Duck has evolved into Buddy the Bathtub Duck. Thus the Webfoot Tub (see logo photo at the left—designed and scrapped by my son). As time goes on our website will have Buddy and friends in a series of cartoons, drawn by Sean. We plan on self publishing the Buddy and other animal stories as well. But the children’s stories are only a tiny fraction of the business.

The main component will be greeting cards and specialty scrapbooking pages for sale. I know, I know there are hundreds of hobbyists out there selling greeting cards and such and they are not big money makers. We’ve researched the numbers, but we’ve also researched those webpages and that is where the niche comes in.

While we will, of course, make and hopefully sell all the normal greeting cards, birthday, Christmas, etc we are also going to try and provide a great variety of those hard to find cards that we all look for at one time or another.

One of our first “niche” cards will be adoption related cards. It has been brought to our attention (thanks Chrissey) that there is a shortage of cards not only to announce adoptions, but to celebrate Gotcha (the day the adoption became final) cards. We will also include cards for those who want to thank the birth parents for loving the child enough to give it up.

We plan on this and numerous other niche areas being highlighted as time goes on. So if you have a special card or scrapbook page you would love to see made available for sale please speak up.

We plan on covering ALL holidays for all religions and groups, not just the main few, as well as cards for hobbyists, sports enthusiasts and much more.

We will also be having a group of Buddy cards and merchandise as time goes on.

While some of our cards will be your basic folded cards we will also have shaped, pop-up, slider and other unique cards.

While all three of us love to scrapbook and create we realize not everyone has the time or the inclination to make their own. So we’ll create them for you. Our scrapbook pages will be made where all you’ll need to do is add your photos for those special moments in your life, as well as just day to day events.

This will be a family business, my husband Gary is the main IT person, plus he’ll help with design aspects. Sean is our artist. He can take even my roughest design sketches and turn them into gorgeous items. Me well I’m the budget keeper, one of the three designers, Buddy author, public relations and all other niche filler.

We are aware that a family business can be tough, we’ve had a few before. We are also aware that Dave Ramsey says stay away from partnerships. So we are working hard to make sure everything is, as recommended down in black and white, and no one person is making all the decisions. As for the last two years everything is done by family vote here. Please wish us luck,

The first few photo cards are now up on the website: webfoottubdesigns.com

One more thing: HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Jan whose family is working together once again to move forward in life in OK