The Business of Scrapbooking

I am a frustrated scrapbook enthusiast. I love the idea of creating and keeping scrapbooks. I subscribe to several scrapbooking magazines. I always buy papers, embellishments, stickers, other accessories and equipment for scrapbooking every time I head out to a craft store.

Yet I don’t have the time. Since I decided a year ago to create scrapbooks for my kids, I am proud to say I’ve finished only two pages since then. But I have a tall cabinet of papers and my embellishments are in several big boxes — I am ready to scrapbook (I just don’t know when) .

Scrapbooking may look like a hobby a bored housewife might indulge in, but apparently it is big business. A study conducted by Creating Keepsakes magazine in 2004 called “Scrapbooking in America”™ (SIA) survey showed :

• Annual sales of scrapbooking industry is at $2.551 billion, representing a 27.8 percent increase from 2001.
• There are 4.4 million new scrapbooking households since 2001, for a total of over 26 million households and 32.1 million scrapbookers.
• Spending on scrapbooking supplies by households that scrapbook has increased 6.3 percent to $96.76 annually since 2001.
• Almost one in four, or 24.5 percent of U.S. households, participate in the hobby of scrapbooking, with Western states showing the most households involved in the hobby (between 26–31 percent of households).

If you can creatively design papers or scrapbook materials, this is one potentially lucrative business that you can consider. Maybe I’ll even buy your products, even if I keep it in the cabinet for years.