Scrapbook industry woos male crafters

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Apr 7, 2007 | by Kelly Crow The Wall Street Journal

With an armful of keepsake photos, $300 worth of colored paper and a leather album, a would-be scrapbooker recently headed to a Friday night class hoping for practical tips on assembling a memory book.

But once Stephen Webb stepped into the "crop party" at a store in Savannah, Ga., his courage faltered. "It's all these young soccer moms sitting around, giggling," says the 27-year-old firefighter in Atlanta. All he wanted was to organize five baskets of baby photos, shots of him playing for his state championship high-school football team and snaps of his life at Station 8. He spent the next two hours sitting with 15 women at long tables overflowing with frilly paper, packages of ornate stickers and neat piles of photos. "It was just really awkward," he says.

The $2.6 billion scrapbook industry is undertaking a delicate PR campaign. For the past 15 years, it has enjoyed a dot-com-style boom by selling sparkly paper, flowery stickers and cheery albums to scrapbookers -- predominantly women -- who turn piles of memorabilia into one-of-a-kind books about babies, weddings or the family vacation. But with sales tailing off, the industry has a new plan: Get a few of the nation's 138 million men to pick up a pair of zigzag scissors.

This year, Utah-based direct-seller Stampin' Up rolled out scrapbook goods aimed at men, including papers that look like rusty tractors and weathered barn doors and $17 stamp sets of lifelike deer and war medals. David Palmer, a Seattle consultant for scrapbook heavyweight Creative Memories, organizes scrapbooking events for single fathers and a few years ago started selling his $89 die-cutting scrapbook tools at home-improvement conventions. Even the sister of Nascar driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. created a line of macho merchandise, called Speed Scrap Design, in 2004. Supplies range from a $2.49 pack of lug-nut stickers to papers dotted with wrenches, checkered flags or mugs of foaming beer.

The marketing push is finding a few takers. Just over 1 million men made scrapbooks in their spare time last year, according to the Craft & Hobby Association. (It doesn't have historical figures; until last year, the 66-year-old trade group didn't "see the point" of polling for male scrapbookers.) The hobby also boasts some famous fans: Media executive Frank Biondi and movie star Brendan Fraser have display shelves for their custom-assembled, $3,500 brag books. Biondi has at least 15 scrapbooks about his life; Fraser has albums chronicling each of his films, like "The Mummy" and "George of the Jungle."

But for men, the decision to "scrap" can be fraught with complications. On one hand, men say scrapbooks are a way to preserve memories, create legacy-building heirlooms, connect with family members and, in a few cases, meet women. On the other, few want to be caught hanging out in a craft store.

Mike Cargill, a product manager for car-parts maker Axiom Automotive in Phoenix, says he enjoys sitting down with his 10-year- old daughter and flipping through the scrapbooks his wife makes, but he's not about to start laying out new pages. "Working in the automotive industry, you're never going to see me walk into work with a scrapbook under my arm," Cargill says. "I would probably have to cash in my Man Card."

The industry is looking beyond its core customers as sales have slowed, following years of runaway growth. The latest swell began in the early 1990s with a renewed national interest in researching family histories, particularly among members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (About 75 percent of scrapbook manufacturers are based in Utah.) Its popularity spread quickly as paper-craft makers churned out more elaborate supplies and tools. From 1998 to 2004, scrapbooking grew from a $350 million minor hobby fueled by mom-and-pop stores to a $2.6 billion business with goods in big-box stores and crafting chains like Archiver's and ReCollections, with products like $14.99 color-coordinated papers by Die Cuts with a View and $12.95 "goodie box" stickers by Doodlebug Design.

Sales began to slip three years ago as the doodad glut, and the growing complexity of the hobby, scared off novices. Others chose to post their digital pictures online instead. At Creative Memories, a direct-sales album maker in St. Cloud, Minn., sales in 2005 fell 20 percent, to $320 million, from 2003. Industrywide, companies scrambled to try to reverse the downward trend by simplifying their product lines and launching online-friendly scrapbook software. But now a key strategy is to go after a broader audience.

"Men have got to have a place in this hobby," says Shelli Gardner, chief executive of Stampin' Up in Riverton. "They may not be begging for it, but we need them."

The campaign is achieving some success. In Toronto, Scrapbooks by Design store owner Patrick Piette says 18 percent of his shoppers are now men, up from "zero" three years ago. (Bachelor-themed books made by the best man are newly popular gifts for grooms, he says.) Palmer, the Seattle scrapbook pro, has a roster of 80 male scrapbook clients, up from 12 three years ago. He encourages men to try embellishment-free layouts with darker papers, and recommends handwritten captions to tell stories. Can't come up with the right words? He tells them to paste favorite song lyrics.