posted
Today I had to look up a merchants phone number so I went to the merchants page. I was quite amazed at a whole bunch of merchants I have never heard of or didn't know much about.
The thought came to mind, why don't some merchants do more to become part of Letterville, interact like a hand full have becoming well known and always on the mind.
I just seems a waste to be a merchant, have your ad on a page and do nothing. Maybe if there was a Merchant of the month or Merchant of the week thing where a certian merchant was highlighted as to what they offer.
What a wealth of resources on the merchant page. I bet most people here hardly go there, but if they did, would they know who you are? and what you offer?
Please speak out and let us know who you are and what you offer!
-------------------- Bob Rochon Creative Signworks Millbury, MA 508-865-7330
"Life is Like an Echo, what you put out, comes back to you." Posts: 5149 | From: Millbury, Mass. U.S. | Registered: Nov 1998
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posted
The last few times any merchant took an actual hands on approach to posting here,or i should say the last few times, within an hour its turned into a monkeysh*t fight zoo and they pretty much got run off....people divide up,take sides and simply will not accept that fact that another opinion on the issue that differs from theirs could be right in any way,shape or form.....noone listens they're just quick on the gun to tell em how and why they're wrong,and will go to any length to explain why no matter how impractical or half cocked their own solution is. Click on search and see,then decide on if you blame them or not.
-------------------- Gavin Chachere Plotter in the garage,New Orleans La.
"Sgts Shugart and Gordon again request permission to rope down to crash site two" Posts: 1223 | From: new orleans.la. | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
Which is a shame because that isn't the case at most other forums. I can tell you first hand, as can Bob, that Gerber, Signlab, Flexi and many others post and provide online tech support on a regular basis at forums we both go to.
-------------------- Fred Weiss Allied Computer Graphics, Inc. 4620 Lake Worth Road Lake Worth, FL 33463 561 649-6300 allcompu@allcompu.com Posts: 427 | From: Lake Worth, Florida | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
I would also like to see more merchants post here.
I don't necessarily buy from most of the merchants for the obvious reason that many are U.S. based and getting stuff cross-border is really time consuming lately. As far as Canadian merchants, I do patronize them, but only if I need their specific services or products and can't get them locally.
I am afraid that I really can't remember any merchants being "run off" per se. Most of the ones who do post on a regular basis add valuable info, IMHO.
-------------------- Dave Grundy retired in Chelem,Yucatan,Mexico/Hensall,Ontario,Canada 1-519-262-3651 Canada 011-52-1-999-102-2923 Mexico cell 1-226-785-8957 Canada/Mexico home
posted
For what it's worth, I just bought some gilding supplies from the Percells. Certainly not because it was more convenient, (I could buy a lot closer to home) but because they were merchants.
posted
Hmmmmmmmm. No one acutally said "get Out" But, some of the replies could be percieved as something less than welcome..
-------------------- Leaper of Tall buildings.. If you find my posts divisive or otherwise snarky please ignore them. If you do not know how then PM me about it and I will demonstrate. Posts: 5273 | From: Im a nowhere man | Registered: Jul 2001
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Most other forums are nothing like Letterville Fred. Over the years we have had all the suppliers you mention here in Letterville, but things never worked out.
Letterville's first priority is to promote Letterhead Meets and give small sign shops a place to meet and network together. There's always been National and Regional Sign Associations, but the number of independant sign maker members is very small. Most consist of huge outdoor and/or electrical plants along with a bunch of suppliers to the trade.
So along comes Letterville. 9,070 sign shops have registered in our database. Another 4,842 have registered to post in this forum using their real names, company names and locations. We can only imagine how many follow this forum daily that have not registered. The possibility exists that this may be the largest unofficial organization of sign makers and related trades that never existed.
Up until a few years ago, suppliers reached us via trade mag ads and live trade shows. Now we have the ability to interact one on one via the Internet. It's scary! The ads talk back! Users can ask questions, make suggestions, and yes, I regret to say they can be very arrogant at times. We believe it is a wonderful thing if Merchants are savy enough to meet their customers and listen to what they are saying.
Our goal is to put a face on all our Merchants. In many cases, we've been very successful. Think of Jim Dogget and you think of Summa, Howard Keifer is the voice of Graphtec, Estimate is Mark Smith. The list goes on. When you give your Letterville customers the same attention as your show customers, the idea works.
There is a situation that sometimes happens with bigger corporations. They have a hard time appointing someone to act as their voice, and in many cases, the voice is heavly censured, and sometimes replaced. There's a them vs us mentality that is difficult to overcome.
You must also realize that Letterville is owned and maintained by small sign shop owners. The website had become a fulltime job, but in our hearts, we are still sign makers first.
Letterville sells or distributes no products, publishes any magazine or officially represents any organization. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe we are the only sign related website that can say that. Even those with their own websites such as Fred and SignWeb are regular posters in this Forum. We're glad to have their participation. They know where to go when you want to reach a huge number of shops!
Despite the success, we need to do a better job at bringing suppliers and end users together. The current Supplier Database and Merchant Page is a mess. ASAP we'll redo it to reflect who has what and where.
A recent renovation is The Letterville Merchant's Forum. Merchants are free to use this new area to offer daily, weekly or monthly Specials. Dave Butler recently showed us all how to attract user to his website via a clever contest.
Let's get real folks. You Marketing whiz kids are missing the boat when it comes to Letterville. You spend tens, many times thousands of dollars in glossy ads and live shows in exotic locations, yet virtually ignore an online forum that draws 12-15,000 readers daily. The Buffet isn't as tasty, but there is nowhere, or no way, to reach so many for so little.
You've invested a small fortune is that jazzy web site. If you are really smart, you have an online catalog and ordering system. All you need to do now is intice your new and existing customers to visit your website. How are you going to do that?
Here in Letterville, we have all sorts of attractions, but the biggie is the BullBoard. It's a soap opera that users cannot resist returning to again and again. You can take advantage of our traffic to draw users to your website if you give them a reason. What about a contest? What about a freebie like you give out at tradeshows? Are you involved in our Monthly Resident Draw? That will get you extra exposure!
Are you changing your banner ads regularly? Things get old real fast at a popular website like this. What about that moving message at the bottom of the screen? When did you last change that? Have you experimented with the new Merchant's Forum yet? If not, why not. Try and pay as much attention to us as you do your trade show crowd. Fact is, there's many times more of us here.
Here's a link to a poll we did back in Dec., 2004. The number of responces were disappointing, but you can see some clear trends. I was personally amazed at the low number of shops that subscribe to sign mags these days. It's time we had another look at these statistics.
As usual, I've given you much more info than you asked for. We regret whenever a Merchant gets upset over critism or users that insist they know more about the product than the manufacturer. I don't believe we are troublemakers. We're all small business owners ourselves and know full well that mistakes sometimes happen. Letterheads are not some fringe cult of weirdo artists. The vast majority here have yet to attend their first meet.
At the end of the day, we have to help you succeed in order for us to succeed. We're here and available 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. Call us at 519-787-2673 if you need help. You won't get to play games with some fancy voice mail or leave messages that never get returned. You'll get to talk to the Boss herself! Don't all sign websites do that?
Damn I like to talk!
-------------------- Steve Shortreed 144 Hill St., E. Fergus, Ontario Canada N1M 1G9 519-787-2673
posted
Merchants, please get involved! The majority of us prefer someone we feel like we know. It gives you more credibility. I have a stack of cards of reps I've met at shows, couldn't put a face on them if I had to and doubt I'd call on them. There is 1 merchant here in particular whose voice I recognize on the phone and will call for stuff before I look to see if they even carry it!
I'd be willing to bet that the costs to be a merchant here for a year and to stop in for a few minutes everyday is far less than the cost of 1 signshow. I'm more likely to call someone whose face I see every few days here than someone I met for 30 seconds at a show.
-------------------- Chris Welker Wildfire Signs Indiana, Pa Posts: 4254 | From: Indiana, PA | Registered: Mar 2001
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Steve, most of what you say is true. And I reply cautiously because I don't want to be taken as anything but an admirer of yours and Barb's accomplishment here. Or to have anyone feel that I am trolling for members at my forum. I intentionally do not include it in my signature here and neither will I refer to it by name here.
You said: Letterville sells or distributes no products, publishes any magazine or officially represents any organization. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe we are the only sign related website that can say that.
I can tell you that my forum carries no ads, does not sell merchandise, and, since we have no merchant members, is totally unbeholden to anyone. We get regular responses from manufacturers and independent experts on a variety of technical and sign related issues.
In the last 12 months, we have grown from 450 members to 1,411.
So on that issue, we differ.
Returning to the point of this thread, however, I do feel that you might benefit from examining why this discrepency is happening.
Perhaps these very useful participants feel threatened by the environment here. Perhaps it just a size thing. Or, perhaps they just need to be invited and provided a way to monitor or be notified when questions or discussion commence that involves their products.
The lack of categories in the Letterville forum makes it difficult for most manufacturers to follow the volume of posts here. The forums I see that are getting participation either provide categorized posting and check boxes to subscribe to them .... or they are highly specialized around a small range of interests. So, for example, a category on Gerber products can easily be monitored by a designated person at GSP. Especially if by checking a box, they can be notified by email that a post has been made.
Just my 2¢
-------------------- Fred Weiss Allied Computer Graphics, Inc. 4620 Lake Worth Road Lake Worth, FL 33463 561 649-6300 allcompu@allcompu.com Posts: 427 | From: Lake Worth, Florida | Registered: Feb 2003
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If you look at the top of the BullBoard, you will see a link where you can notify someone if a topic they need to address is being discussed. Whenever this happens, at least one of our Merchants, and often times several, are notified and requested to respond. What more can we do?
There is no need to feel threatened, but things have changed. Small shops are no longer isolated. We learned that lesson just last week when a question on vinyl shrinkage was discovered. My only disappointment in that case was that the company lawyered up instead of discussing everything in the open. I'd hate to see one of our Letterville Merchants behave like that.
Now it is true Letterville does not have many catagories compared to other websites. There's a reason for that. Letterville is not about suppliers, products or a specific machine. We've never considered it a sign industry website.
Letterville is interested in people. Small business people that make signs for a living. We ran a small sign shop ourselves for 25 years and may actually start it up again at some point. I see lots of opportunities in the new digital imaging technology.
During our time in the sign business, we seen lots of products come and go, lots of company reps that have no product loyalty and will jump ship constantly. We met wonderful reps during our 25 years and a few that couldn't give a rat's ass about the history and passion most of us here feel for what we do.
There are all sorts of websites and mags that are only involved in this game for profit. Everyday my email contains more and more spam from sources that sell or rent my email address to the highest bidder. There was a time that was considered bad taste.
We'll do everything we can here in Letterville to put our users and Merchants together, but I don't believe each Merchant needs their own Forum. That's what their website is for! Our job is to educate and work with advertisers to insure their investment in Letterville is effective.
We're always looking for ways to do better. Thanks for any suggestions.
[ November 30, 2004, 02:30 AM: Message edited by: Steve Shortreed ]
-------------------- Steve Shortreed 144 Hill St., E. Fergus, Ontario Canada N1M 1G9 519-787-2673
quote: No offence taken Fred. I must however point out that you are a vendor yourself. Allow me to give you a free plug.
Thanks Steve, but to be clear, I wear both the hat of a vendor and the hat of a sign maker. I operate a fulltime sign business, do some clipart publishing on the side and also run a forum for sign makers at a different website. When I visit Letterville, my hat is 99% sign maker and the same is true at my forum.
-------------------- Fred Weiss Allied Computer Graphics, Inc. 4620 Lake Worth Road Lake Worth, FL 33463 561 649-6300 allcompu@allcompu.com Posts: 427 | From: Lake Worth, Florida | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
What about featuring a Merchant for a time period? a day? a week? a month? that way we can see who actually IS a supporting merchant, who they ARE and WHAT they offer.
I go along with Steve about the people aspect. The best connection you have with any certain company is solely based on its representitive.
Fred you can agree when Gerber changed it's representitive on 4 edgetalk things were very different.
I started this post because I saw a lot of merchants on that page that I haven't seen or heard boo from on this site. A positive example of an active representitive was the face of One-shot, Frank Manning. When frank was seen at a meet, or on this website, you couldn't help but thinking about One-shot as your friend or as a company you can approach.
Fred this is not about this site versus other sites, there are merchants here so they must see the value of being here. I just wish they would take an active approach to selling. It's not our jobs to invite them.
[ November 30, 2004, 08:50 AM: Message edited by: Bob Rochon ]
-------------------- Bob Rochon Creative Signworks Millbury, MA 508-865-7330
"Life is Like an Echo, what you put out, comes back to you." Posts: 5149 | From: Millbury, Mass. U.S. | Registered: Nov 1998
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posted
With regards to the setup of this site ...why fix what isn't broken?
I've visited other forums and always wind up back here. There's just no contest for me. Personally, the flood of topic forums on other sites leave me dizzy.
I can't help noticing EVERYBODY winds up back here.
That a vendor, or even an existing merchant, chooses not to use the tools available on this site for their benefit is an unfortunate oversight. Perhaps the ideas Steve sites in his first reply may offer some a lightbulb moment.
One of the greatest draws to this place is that it does get down and personal. Sure, it ain't always pretty .... but let's face it, life ain't always pretty. That's what back bones are for. You are not just a nickname in a crowd here. We get to know each other ... merchants, visitors and residents alike. We create history with each other, and we readily welcome new input everyday. Most importantly ... we are representative of the general public.
From a marketing standpoint, what a field day can be had with such a huge audience in one place on a daily basis! Why a vendor would overlook this arena as a viable source of exposure escapes me. Talk about bang for a buck!
If a vendor is afraid to venture out to better understand their customers, or to publicly back their products, than it leaves me wondering about their priorities in business.
I appreciate the merchants here for knowing the score ... especially the ones that really apply themselves on this venue.
Steve, as usual I really enjoyed reading your replies. Sure do have a lot of respect for you.
Nettie
-------------------- "When Love and Skill Work Together ... Expect a Masterpiece"
quote:Fred this is not about this site versus other sites, there are merchants here so they must want to be here. I just wish they would take an active approach to selling. It's not our jobs to invite them.
I agree Bob. My remarks regarding participation were not from a perspective of inviting them to sell their wares .... rather to encourage participation in areas like answering technical questions or pointing to a product or feature that could be a solution to a question posted by someone else or remarking on anything of interest to members and visitors here.
A forum such as Letterville is a community. If it is a community of just sign makers .... well that's okay I suppose. If it's a community made up of members of the sign making industry, then that includes sign makers and vendors and anyone else with a community interest.
If a community chooses to separate into factions and isolate any segment from its mainstream .... to assume that a vendor has no interest in anything but selling .... the resulting lack of participation is both predictable and inevitable.
-------------------- Fred Weiss Allied Computer Graphics, Inc. 4620 Lake Worth Road Lake Worth, FL 33463 561 649-6300 allcompu@allcompu.com Posts: 427 | From: Lake Worth, Florida | Registered: Feb 2003
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I was writing my reply while you posted your last one.
The merchant of the month sounds like a cool thing. I think monthly would be less maintenance for Steve and Barb. Maybe one way to handle that would be to have merchants write up a little profile on themselves for S&B to have on file for when their turn comes up, it could just be put up as a monthly post. This could be required of any new merchants when they sign up.
Keep in mind that the motive of this site is mainly to promote signmakers. I remember when they actually did a profile of individual signmakers each month. That too, became a time consuming thing to keep up with, and sadly fell by the way side. The behind the scenes work for the draw alone are a monthly upkeep too.
Again I want to reinterate that the tools are here for merchants to promote themselves better here in various ways. Some terrific ideas are listed in Steve's first reply.
-------------------- "When Love and Skill Work Together ... Expect a Masterpiece"
posted
I like merchants to chime in for many reasons. Sometimes I don't know they exsist. Sometimes they have an answer, idea, or product that saves me time or money and that is great.
Did you know you can use Rapid Tac as a cologne? Just ask Roger.
I think Roger is a prime example of a very helpful and honest merchant. If he can help, he will. He wants to know our opinions and test and failures to make his product better for us.
-------------------- Phil Steffen, 29 Van Rensselaer St City of Saratoga Springs DPW Saratoga Springs NY 12866 Posts: 563 | From: beautiful Saratoga Springs NY | Registered: Aug 2001
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Ok, so it's a dead horse, or I'm just PART of the horse...view this as you wish.
As a representative of SignGold, I always tried to be involved with this website, both on the bullboard, as well as in the chat room. It's unfortunate that it didn't last, as I KNOW it was mutually beneficial.
I still maintain that being a merchant in Letterville, is about the best $500 a vendor can spend.
I apparently misinterpreted the ground rules, as described on the "Become a Merchant" page. While I never billed SignGold for 90% of my posts (in which I tried to help, or offer suggestions on subject ranging from pinstriping and surface preparation (yer not the Lone Ranger Mr Diaz, someone tried to crucify me too) to substrates and collecting money; I did invoice SignGold for time I spent answering SignGold related questions, and by making myself available to do the same in the chat room.
Steve made it clear that the reason for discontinuing the Chat Night program, not allowing me to answer SignGold related questions, and not letting SignGold remain a merchant "as long as I was their representative", was because I got paid to be here.
Steve did, on numerous occasions, invite me to be a part of Letterville, as a fellow signmaker, but not a merchant.
So why don't more merchants get more involved? Maybe they don't know enough about this forum, or it's options. Maybe they saw the fallout of letting Steve know I was being compensated (and who wants to have to operate "behind the veil"?...). My own take on the Avery situation that has gotten so completely snow-balled here, is: who, at Avery, draws the short straw, and has to come here and become a crash test dummy, to the mob mentality. (Please, this is MY opinion, NOT Avery's)
I still lurk every day. I miss the interaction with many of you. But perhaps if, when someone offers advice, that you don't agree with, rather than issuing your public condemnation, you phrase your disagreement in a civil, professional manner. And I stand by my belief that there is nothing wrong for being compensated for being here. This is the "Sign Business" were involved in here.
I had to respond to this post, to serve the purpose of encouraging other merchants to get involved, but to make sure they understand Steve's rules.
Again, it was a bargain at $500.
On an only marginally related note, I agree with Bill Diaz on his preperation process, and admire Gavin Chachere for being more concerned with honesty and getting his message across, than with grammer and structure.
Keep on keepin on,
Posts: 465 | From: / | Registered: Jan 2000
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Fred, I'm not so sure it's the size of the place. I know of several times in the past few months where merchants here were alerted to threads and asked to please respond. They didn't.
Some of the merchants are great, very helpful, nice friendly faces. Others simply will not participate be it fear of lawyers, no one at corporate will decide "who" should respond or whatever. It's these ones that won't participate that I think this thread was addressing initially. If more merchants would participate, they'd put themselves in our minds and be called upon more.
While I think Avery could have been more open about their situation, I also applaud their personal contact, which I'm sure others do too. Instead of a post telling us to fill this form out, fax it here while standing on your left foot facing north..... people got a phone call from a real human being.
-------------------- Chris Welker Wildfire Signs Indiana, Pa Posts: 4254 | From: Indiana, PA | Registered: Mar 2001
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Brian hit the nail on the head, Mob Mentality.
Yes, it would be great if more merchants had reps actively participating. However those reps have to be very careful not to get involved in any discussions that don't relate directly to their product. Things get personal real quick.
In the same respect, forum users tend to feel when a merchant is so easily accessible, it's OK to abuse that access. Everything will be A-OK for a while but then there's a problem with a product, it gets posted online instead of dealt with in private, and before you know it that merchant rep has become the whipping post for everyone's frustrations.
-------------------- "If I share all my wisdom I won't have any left for myself."
Mike Pipes stickerpimp.com Lake Havasu, AZ mike@stickerpimp.com Posts: 8746 | From: Lake Havasu, AZ USA | Registered: Jun 2000
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