Dear John,
I bought a Create-a-book for my first and second children 11 years and 9
years ago. I have always loved reading them to my children and they have
loved listening to them. Even though they have always been available to my
children to read at any time - being stored on the book shelves with all the
other books - they look almost BRAND NEW. I just thought you would be
interested to know this.
Now on to business...I would like more information in becoming a
member/distributor. I wish I had done it 11 years ago when I first saw your
books. Please email me all the information that you can.
Thanks so much.
Kristin - very satisfied Create-a-book customer who now needs
create-a-books for our 3rd and 4th children.
Dear Mr. Hefty,
We just wanted to let you know about our great news! We have recently landed an account with a very large school book fair company. They will be buying sticker books from us with the first order of 500 to 1000 books. Then reorders possibly up to 2000 at a time. We are very excited about the potential of this new venture.
Thank you for giving us the idea about book fairs, we are also setting up dates with large doctor offices. We are enjoying ourselves, and since we started this in Nov. 97 we are doing quite well and have a lot of ideas for the future.
Sincerely,
L K and B K
Dear Create-A-Book Team:
I just wanted to write a quick note to let you guys know that you have been doing an excellent job. I started my business in July of 1997 and it is really going well. I am doing mostly home parties and boy are they worthwhile. My average party has had four guests, takes around two hours, plus about an hour or so to make the books, and I am averaging about $150.00 per party. People love these books when they see them first hand!!! One thing that I will say about home parties is that sometimes it is hard to get bookings, so you have to offer a very good deal to the hostess. I normally give the hostess one free book for having the show, $10 toward books if she has 10 guests (no one has received this benefit yet), $5 toward books for each guest who books a party, plus 20% of her show sales in free books. This sounds like a lot, but look at it this way, if someone has a $150 show with one booking, they will get three or four books, about a $50 value, however it really only costs the dealer about $16. You can still net approximately $90, how many jobs pay $30 an hour?
Right now I am working a full time job and doing my parties on the side, but I am trying a lot of different avenues to be able to quit my current job. I am very interested in any information on ways to improve my business.
Thank you to everyone at Create-A-Book for all of the support!
CWB
Hi!
A success story. . . Our business is located in Sheboygan, situated right between Green Bay and Milwaukee, Wisconsin on the shores of Lake Michigan. sheboygan has a population of 50,000. Kohler, Wisconsin, famous for Kohler Company sinks and toilets, is located about 3 miles due west of Sheboygan. It is a very small community of about 2200 people. They are a McGruff Community, so we went to meet Officer Larry Leonhardt of the Kohler Police Dept. to show him the McGruff books and get his support. He was delighted and suggested we approach the Kohler Kiwanis Club for sponsoring the Give-A-Book program. We had already approached Dr. John Egan, Kohler School Superintendent to apprise him of our ideas and find out how many 3rd graders were in his school. Last night, we met with the Kohler Kiwanis Club, presented ourselves and the McGruff materials. We also left them with a copy of the 20 major concepts of safety discussed in the book. They apparently really liked what they heard because they called us today to inform us that they will sponsor all 35 books for the 3rd graders!! We're ecstatic! what a wonderful way to get kids to read and be safe! Our business has only been up and running since Nov. 26, 1997, so this is a real feather in our cap. Just thought you might like to know! This is such a wholesome business. We are very proud to be a part of it and proudly announce the Hefty name whenever we can.
Thank you to Ed and Chris for all their support. We look forward to visiting this web site often.
C B and C B
To: Create-A-Book@hefty.com
Just thought I would drop you a note to let you know about my first major project. I recently got online, even though my project was almost a year ago.
As a former elementary school secretary, I still hold dear the staff and students at my former school. So I decided to "treat" them to the McGruff books. I hit the streets and solicited local businesses in our town to offer the books to every student in the school. There are 275 students in attendance. I did not realize what a huge project that was.
The production isn't what took the time, it was the soliciting. But it was a win-win situation for all.
The local police department brought their McGruff costume and the police officers gave a brief program in conjunction with the books. The children were delighted. I not only made sure that the media was in attendance, I told the teachers that I had one request in doing this project. Not only did I want the children to 1.-learn safety, 2.-be proud to read about themselves, thus encouraging an eagerness to read, I added a third aspect to it. I asked that each child write a personal thank you to the sponsors for their contribution. A request, which I might add, delighted the teachers. When I ran into the business people later, they were all so very pleased with the letters they received!
I have decided to cut back and instead of doing this project on a large scale, I now work on an individual class basis, or a grade level. It is much easier to do so, and I have found that the first time I tried it this way, one business sponsored a whole class! This is very encouraging to me, and I figure with over 35 elementary schools alone, I will be busy for a long time to come.
I also recently assisted another dealer with the holiday rush and craft shows she has been swamped with during her years as a dealer. I found that we were a wonderful compliment to each other. She and I benefitted immensely from each other's ideas. And, though during the year we go it solo, we definitely plan to work side by side during the Christmas season.
Best to you all, and thanks ever so much for all the help when I need you!
R M
Just wanted to drop a line, and let you know that we have been dealers for over almost 2 years now....Last year we set up a display in our local mall for Christmas, we went into it with a partnership with JC Penney, in which we paid them $3.00 for each book we sold, and they provided the space right at the entrance into the mall...the response was overwhelming.
We even had TV coverage, since I had faxed them a press release on This great new company in town, they came out and did a live remote...Now that was exciting..and great FREE coverage.
This year we did the same thing, and we had old customers coming back and made a lot of new ones.
Although we could only set up Fri-Sun, due to the fact that all of us have a full time job, we easily sold $1,600 every weekend, and the overflow of that lingered throughout the year, because those books that were used as gifts, well you can imagine the calls we got after Christmas requesting catalogs, and throughout the year.
We have also managed to secure ourselves in numerous Hospitals to promote our Baby Book, we have contracted with over 27 hospitals in 3 states.
It is work, but it does pay off with persistence.
Thanks Again,
E L
Dear Mr. Hefty,
Here's a tip a friend of mine observed at a Discovery Toy home party she hosted last week. Perhaps it could help "C.W." whose letter appears on your Dealer's Comments section of your website...The person selling the merchandise had made up a list containing the names of family members and friends, etc., and alongside the list of names she left a space for important dates to remember. When she handed each person attending a copy of that list my friend said that a lot of them filled out the list at that time and bought ahead for future birthdays, etc.; something they had not intended to do when they arrived that morning for the party. Some people are a lot more clever than I!
Sincerely,
K H