Scrapbook Business Magazine

Getting Media Coverage: A Case Study

Advertising is great. Free advertising is even better. Media coverage is the equivalent of free advertising, so learning how to work with the media to get coverage can be a valuable tool for your business.

Helen Rittersporn of Helen’s Scrapbooking Studio in Hampstead, North Carolina has been really making the most of her opportunities for free media coverage in the past few months, both in local media and trade publications.

Throughout 2009, starting with the studio’s opening, Rittersporn courted coverage in the area’s Topsail Magazine. The studio was mentioned or featured in three articles throughout the year, including a profile of the business and also having Rittersporn’s custom Topsail Island sticker set featured in a product pick article.

Rittersporn and her dog Cuddy, who is her studio’s mascot, were featured on Dec. 18th in an article in the Wilmington Star-News about local portrait photographer Dick Parrott who shoots pet portraits. The article quotes Rittersporn extensively, and includes references to her studio and an upcoming Humane Society fundraiser being hosted there. The article is a great example of a combination business profile/public interest story that will have a much higher chance of getting press coverage than just a simple event notice. Coordinating the profile of the photographer so that it was actually also a mini-profile of Rittersporn and promoted the fundraiser was a brilliant move on both their parts because it added a unique twist to a traditional business profile.

But Rittersporn didn’t stop there with her publicity blitz. She told Scrapbook Business magazine the story of how she started up her somewhat unusual scrapbook store, which is more focused on events and custom album scrapping than a traditional scrapbook store is. Their profile of her business – which is more a very informative article that reveals some of the secrets of her success than a biography – appears in the January/February 2010 issue of Scrapbook Business. That issue is currently hitting subscriber mailboxes and will be distributed at CHA-Winter 2010 as well. If you’d like to get a sneak read of the article, Rittersporn has made a pdf available on her website.

And to top it all off, she inspired Scrapbook Update to write about her too, by telling me about all the media she has been doing and impressing me with her example.

Rittersporn is making the most of media opportunities…are you?

[FTC Disclosure: The lovely Helen is my roommate for CHA and if I'm not nice to her she might hog all the hot water and closet space. But I'd think she's brilliant anyway.]

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Junkitz Bankruptcy Teaches Lesson in Credit Insurance

The Junkitz bankruptcy is moving toward being finalized now that the company’s assets have been disposed of at auction and the auctioneer’s report filed with the court. On June 20th, the bankruptcy trustee filed his application for compensation with the court. Once that is approved (the hearing is scheduled for August 20th), then the court can distribute the remaining funds to the company’s creditors as required by law depending on their status as secured or unsecured creditors and the amount of funds remaining.

Part of the filing for compensation by the trustee contains a statement of “Anticipated Distribution to Creditors” – and a lesson for any company that does business by accepting credit from its’ customers. The anticipated distribution in the Junkitz case is: Attorney 100% of claim, Secured Creditors 4.06% of claim and the line for General Unsecured Creditors is…blank, meaning they will get nothing.

Approached for comment about the upcoming resolution, several Junkitz creditors declined comment. Former Junkitz designer Teresa Collins issued the following statement:

It is always sad to deal with situations such as this. I knew as a unsecured creditor that I would never receive payment for all the designs and artwork that I created. I am sorry for all the creditors listed, both secure and unsecure that will not be paid. It has been difficult for all parties involved.

The lesson in the sad saga of Junkitz is that if you are extending credit to someone as part of your business you really should consider the option of purchasing credit insurance. Credit insurance works so you buy insurance against the possibility of someone defaulting on a debt owed to you due to circumstances such as bankruptcy. You would then file a claim for payment from the insurance company instead of from the debtor.

Credit insurance can actually be be very affordable, and can save your business if you are cannot afford to write-off (or even suffer a lengthy wait for payment) on credit you are granting.

If you would like to learn more about credit insurance and how it might be useful for your business, I wrote an article about it for the March/April issue of Scrapbook Business magazine that included an interview with Gene Goudy, Senior Vice-President of brokerage firm ARI Global and a well-respected expert on credit insurance. That article is now available online by clicking on the link above and going to page 64-65, or is on page 63 of the print version of the magazine.