**** 8/25/07 edited to add: Dear Anonymous@yahoo.com – i would have posted your comment disagreeing with my opinion HAD YOU SIGNED YOUR NAME! or had an real email address- just sayin’ ****
Mounted, or Un-Mounted… that is the question. For visitors who just happened upon my blog, I’m talking Rubber Stamps, not horses or rated R activities. Move on if that was what you were looking for…. Ü
After thinking about this all day (well, before I went to sleep anyway- I had read all the threads on SCS about it last night), I decided to put my thoughts down on electronic paper. (does anyone actually HANDWRITE anymore?)
It seems every few weeks, this topic gets revisited in the Splitcoast Stampers forums. More often than not, it gets VERY HEATED and sometimes down right ugly! There are extreme opinions on it. All of which are fine, as long as you show some respect to others who have differing opinions. Recently an open letter to SU published on someone’s personal blog started another firestorm on the SCS boards. It was well written letter. I don’t happen to agree with all of it, but she did make a few points. If you want to read it, it’s here: http://paper-and-ink.blogspot.com/2007/08/open-letter-to-stampin-up.html. My only hope is she sent it to SU! as well, where it might actually make a difference.
In one of her points, she suggests Stampin’ Up! is losing business since they don’t offer a clear option when purchasing their sets – presumably at a lower cost. This is an argument I’ve seen before but for some reason, no one has written about how cost prohibitive doing this would be. Offering a clear version or a rubber un-mounted option (packaged without wood) for Stampin’ UP! stamps could not be done at the current level of cost to the consumer. And why should a company change their business model when what they’re doing works? Their business isn’t faltering, it’s growing.
For the sake of argument, in order to offer a clear or even a wood-free option, they would have to completely re-engineer the production and packaging assembly lines. It’s not a matter of just removing the rubber from the plastic case with the wood blocks and putting it in an envelope or cd case. Not to mention there would now be a need to manufacture the said envelopes/cases. There would be huge delays if it was left to humans to remove the rubber or wood and re-package the set, since even the shipping process is automated. So why should Stampin’ Up! spend the millions it would take to build a another step into their automation just to offer that option for an untested percentage of customers?
The solution is actually already built into the product. The stamps are ALREADY un-mounted. You, the consumer, have the option not to mount your stamps! If you think that you shouldn’t have to pay extra for wood blocks you aren’t using, or think it’s an environmental waste, well someone, actually ALL Stampin’ UP! customers would absorb the costs of the new automation that gives the customer the option of un-mounted or clear stamps anyway. So rather than a savings, the prices would increase across the board. That would not make me very happy! A better way to recoup some of the cost for the wood? Sell your unused blocks on the Buy/Sell/Trade forum or even Ebay- there is a demand for them. I’ve seen “ISO Wood Blocks” threads, haven’t you? Or… don’t buy SU!. There are a lot of different companies to choose from. Is it realistic for me to demand or criticize those companies for not offering a wood mount option? No and I wouldn’t ask. Sometimes I buy clear or un-mounted, sometimes I don’t. You, the consumer, have a choice. Stampin’ Up! would love your business… but they are what they are. And they’re good at their specialty- rubber stamps.
All the heated discussions and name calling on the SCS board (oh yes- someone was censored!) about whether or not SU should or shouldn’t offer clear or un-mounted instead of or in addition to rubber mounted reminds me of a distinctly unpleasant person I recently met. Last month at our semi annual Bodega Bay scrapbook weekend, we had guest fill in for a regular who couldn’t make it. Some background- Our regular group of 8 women consists of four current Stampin’ Up! demos and two inactive demos. We are close friends and I share my discount with the two inactive demos. We LOVE Stampin’ UP! because we think its quality can’t be beat. I also appreciate some of the acrylic stamps out there- such as Rhonna Farrer’s designs for Autumn Leaves. I have a couple CTMH sets. I am dying to get my hands on the new Lizzie Ann Jolies Fleurs. So, I have a few un-mounted sets, but truly… I don’t think they make as clean of an image as SU stamps. For me, the acrylic blocks are difficult to hold securely. And I do find mounting/un-mounting a pain. THESE ARE JUST MY OPINIONS! Doesn’t mean I won’t buy an acrylic or clear image I love, but I won’t love it as much as my SU stamps.
But I digress… back to the unpleasant guest. She happened to be a RABID CTMH demo. By rabid, I mean the gal who’s always right, knows best, thinks her brand is superior and will question your intelligence if you disagree with her, monopolizes the conversation and always brings it back to her view. (Sadly, she was like this about ALL things, not just stamping! She actually turned her nose up at a bottle of wine someone had bought because her husband apparently works for the only winery that is decent and we’re just rubes who don’t know anything!). She commented to one of our gals about how she really should be using the CTMH alphabet stamps as she could line them up straight, when the gal was using SU stamps and was PURPOSELY not making her title straight! She kept harping on how CTMH was better than SU, even after she found out we were all SU fans/demos. Not once did any of us blast CTMH. By day 2, I had enough and told her (nicely) that the acrylic blocks were just not comfortable to me and that I had a better grip on the wood blocks. She was baffled by that. SHIT! I had no idea I was sooo stoopid!
I write this because 1) I’m still in shock at how rude and nasty this woman was and still trying to figure out how her friend, one of our regular gals who’s as sweet as can be, is actually friends with this woman, and 2) to remind everyone that their preferences are just that- YOUR OWN PREFERENCES. Everyone has a right to that and for goodness sake- let us old, un-hip, wood mounted fans be!
