New Stamp Club

Posted by Kathy Torrence on Oct 11, 2007 in Uncategorized |

Starting this year, I’ve changed the format of my stamp clubs.  Last night was the first meeting.

At my stamp clubs in previous years, everyone brought their own supplies and used the meetings as sort of a ‘card crop’ – working on whatever projects they were currently creating and borrowing my stamps and ink, if needed.  I also provided one or two make-and-takes at each meeting for those who were interested in trying the project. 

All the members were obligated to make a purchase every month and everyone took a turn as the hostess with the combined orders (all members had to commit to the club until all the ladies had a turn as the hostess).

I was having some trouble with people who couldn’t attend the meetings and then placed their orders late or gave me their orders but then didn’t have a chance to pay for them.  As a result, I had to pay for a lot of orders up front out of my own pocket.  And most months, the group orders were delayed a long time because I had wait to for all the orders to come in.

Not to mention that after two years of stamp clubs, I have so many members that keep buying supplies, meeting after meeting, and have no idea of all the things they can do with them. 

One of my stamp club members recently held an outside workshop with some stamp club members there too.  I realized that some of the club members had never even been to an actual ‘workshop’ before – they seemed to really enjoy the ideas and demonstrations.

But I find that that stamp club members are hesitant to hold an outside workshop because most of their stamping friends are also in the stamp club and purchase their supplies at the club meetings.

So…I decided to change the clubs this year to more of a workshop format.  I charge $10 for the club meeting to cover the supplies and my time.  I also take $5 off any purchase of $25 or more (if they decide to make a purchase), and put all the orders together for a ‘mystery’ hostess drawn at random each month.   We’ll meet once a month and there’s no obligation to come every month.  All orders will be placed that night so there will be no delay – I think it’s going to work out well.

I may have to limit the size of the club, I think.  I had 11 women here last night, and it was a full house!  It did take quite a while to complete all the projects, too – I may have to either simplify the projects or break the larger group up into two smaller groups.

I’m going to post the projects that we made in several different posts so this doesn’t get too long…

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