Instant Gratification Patterns: Online Shopping

The crafting industry is full of fabulous products, but it's the designers who create projects and write and publish the accompanying how-to instructions in books, magazines and patterns that keep the demand for those products hopping. For designers, the most direct route to bring their project instructions to market, and the one offering the greatest control and potential profitability, is developing and marketing a line of patterns.

Taking this route, the designer maintains control over the content of her patterns, and the timetable from inspiration to market can be as little as a few weeks versus months for magazine articles and years for books.

Until now the pattern designer, four or six patterns in hand along with the subsequent investment in printing, made the rounds of quilt shops, slowly making a foothold in one shop at a time. Setting up booths at quilt shows, purchasing ads in magazines, and creating a web site with e-commerce capabilities would then follow. then there's manning the phone and web site to send out printed patterns onesies and sixsies at a time... Not much time left for developing product.

Enter the Internet and the ubiquity of the color ink jet printer.

Here's the scenario:

The designer has created the pattern in an electronic file. She either

a) pays a printer to print them, then warehouse them, and ships as orders come in.

Or

b) she prints patterns from the file on her computer on demand.

In both cases shipping and fulfillment are involved. Why not eliminate the printing and shipping steps by connecting the dots directly between the electronic file and the customer's color printer? Talking about instant gratification!

At QNNtv we have been offering a limited selection of instant gratification patterns for over a year. (I like that name, "Instant Gratification Patterns" it is!) We have learned what works and what doesn't work and are planning a re-launch of the program. The major lesson is that we need to educate our viewers about them: what they are, how to download them, etc. and do it visually. It's on my list for an upcoming studio taping session.

As Beth Mauro wrote in her article on this subject, Pay-Per-Project Online, for the crafts trade magazine CNA, shortening the time line between new product introduction and the availability (and easy access to) how-to project instructions creates a win-win-win for crafters, product manufacturers, and designers. An industry like quilting and crafting revolves around fresh projects that spark a crafter into saying, "I'm going to make that!" Giving him or her the tools to do so--quickly--is the most direct route to a successful finished project and a beaming "I made this!" That's what it's all about!

P.S. Now let's couple those instantly printable patterns with video-on-demand showing how-to make the project--now that's magic!

Comments

[Helga]

Great Site - really useful information!

[Britney]

Lucky to find you, keep on the good workk guys! Best of luck.n

[Britney]

Hi! Definitely nice and neat site you got there.