Thursday, November 21 – Confessions of a Serial Skinflint
I was a VistaPrint junkie. I kid you not.
For those of you who don’t know, VistaPrint is “an online supplier of printed and promotional material.” For those of you who had a small business or non-profit a few years ago, you’ll also know it was a place where you could order every kind of item you can imagine for FREE – you simply had to wait for the right special and pay the postage costs. If you played around a bit with the system, you could even find out what was the optimal number of items to order, so that you could get the lowest possible shipping cost.
I used to have a non-profit small business – Small Things: Books and Cats. (It started out as Small Things: Arts, Books, Crafts, and Delights – but that is another story.) The shop wasn’t terribly busy so I had lots of time to design promotional items and articles for sale. I made up Small Things business cards, brochures, banners, and calendars; I designed Small Things mugs, book bags, T-shirts and caps.
Very often VistaPrint would have 10 different items on sale for FREE, but you could only order one of each. So I would make up an order a day of five items – for about a week or two – and then just wait for them to all roll in. Truly, it was like Christmas every day – and like the New Year when I got my MasterCard bill. Gah!
Sadly (and a bit gladly) I don’t “run” a small business anymore. Because I go out of town a lot, Small Things was passed on to a group of fellow cat-loving volunteers, and to date I haven’t found an obsessive, socially-useful pastime that I can do in Sudbury, Arizona and St. Catharines (though I’m trying to come up with one. Ideas welcomed.) And cost-wise, that’s not such a bad thing. VistaPrint stopped offering deals where you could get 10 items for FREE. Now you’re limited to one – with a paid purchase. Sigh!
*****
There is a reason why I got to thinking about VistaPrint again today – and that’s because my Christmas Cards (actually, my “Seasons Greetings” cards) arrived today. It’s just a VistaPrint postcard – on the front is a puzzle of family pictures, and on the back is a brief description of what my family and co, and my hubs and I have been up to.
The card got a little more complicated this year. Laurence pointed out that I put my Mom on the card, but not his Mom. OK, I took out part of someone’s midriff and put in a head shot of his Mom. Then I pointed out we didn’t have a picture of his Dad and Stepmom. We’ll have to wait til next year for that since the only pic we have is one of Doug sleeping, with his mouth wide open. Not flattering.
What Laur didn’t notice is that I had a pic of my brother Jim and his wife, Dorothy, holding their grandchild Oliver. Once he did, I figured I’d have to include all his brothers and their significant others and possibly all their grandchildren. Our simple annual holiday card would have turned into an 8’ by 3’ banner. Not cheap, and hard to mail to over 100 people! So Jim and Dorothy were cropped (sorry!) – though Oliver is still in. I figure I can keep that one since he’s riding along on my Mom’s scooter!
Designing the card and getting the parcel from Canada Post – that was the fun part. Now I actually have to mail and distribute them all. When tempted to groan, I have to say to myself, “Jan, you have over 100 people you WANT to keep in touch with. That’s a very good problem to have!”
For those of you who don’t know, VistaPrint is “an online supplier of printed and promotional material.” For those of you who had a small business or non-profit a few years ago, you’ll also know it was a place where you could order every kind of item you can imagine for FREE – you simply had to wait for the right special and pay the postage costs. If you played around a bit with the system, you could even find out what was the optimal number of items to order, so that you could get the lowest possible shipping cost.
I used to have a non-profit small business – Small Things: Books and Cats. (It started out as Small Things: Arts, Books, Crafts, and Delights – but that is another story.) The shop wasn’t terribly busy so I had lots of time to design promotional items and articles for sale. I made up Small Things business cards, brochures, banners, and calendars; I designed Small Things mugs, book bags, T-shirts and caps.
Very often VistaPrint would have 10 different items on sale for FREE, but you could only order one of each. So I would make up an order a day of five items – for about a week or two – and then just wait for them to all roll in. Truly, it was like Christmas every day – and like the New Year when I got my MasterCard bill. Gah!
Sadly (and a bit gladly) I don’t “run” a small business anymore. Because I go out of town a lot, Small Things was passed on to a group of fellow cat-loving volunteers, and to date I haven’t found an obsessive, socially-useful pastime that I can do in Sudbury, Arizona and St. Catharines (though I’m trying to come up with one. Ideas welcomed.) And cost-wise, that’s not such a bad thing. VistaPrint stopped offering deals where you could get 10 items for FREE. Now you’re limited to one – with a paid purchase. Sigh!
*****
There is a reason why I got to thinking about VistaPrint again today – and that’s because my Christmas Cards (actually, my “Seasons Greetings” cards) arrived today. It’s just a VistaPrint postcard – on the front is a puzzle of family pictures, and on the back is a brief description of what my family and co, and my hubs and I have been up to.
The card got a little more complicated this year. Laurence pointed out that I put my Mom on the card, but not his Mom. OK, I took out part of someone’s midriff and put in a head shot of his Mom. Then I pointed out we didn’t have a picture of his Dad and Stepmom. We’ll have to wait til next year for that since the only pic we have is one of Doug sleeping, with his mouth wide open. Not flattering.
What Laur didn’t notice is that I had a pic of my brother Jim and his wife, Dorothy, holding their grandchild Oliver. Once he did, I figured I’d have to include all his brothers and their significant others and possibly all their grandchildren. Our simple annual holiday card would have turned into an 8’ by 3’ banner. Not cheap, and hard to mail to over 100 people! So Jim and Dorothy were cropped (sorry!) – though Oliver is still in. I figure I can keep that one since he’s riding along on my Mom’s scooter!
Designing the card and getting the parcel from Canada Post – that was the fun part. Now I actually have to mail and distribute them all. When tempted to groan, I have to say to myself, “Jan, you have over 100 people you WANT to keep in touch with. That’s a very good problem to have!”