CALMAR, Alta. – Some days the pizza boxes are piled high at the door of Lisa and Alvin Clark’s house.
They are not fast food fanatics. The pizza boxes are how Lisa packs items for her mail-order business, sending out scrapbook-making supplies from her home on a purebred cattle ranch south of Edmonton.
Business is booming since she expanded her home-based store by developing a website and going on-line in January.
E-mail orders come in from every province and most U.S. states and take three to five hours a day to process. There have even been inquiries from Europe and New Zealand. Their farm is about 20 kilometres from an airport, allowing a one or two day delivery rate.
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“I’ve been a scrapbooker ever since I was a teenager,” Lisa said.
“I’d cut out things from cards and wrapping paper.”
Then in 1990, a house fire and the death of two of their six daughters in a car accident made her realize “how important it was to keep a memory book.”
She now has 60 personal albums, but has done many others that she has given away for anniversaries and special occasions.
“My addiction became my passion and became my job,” she said.
In 1991, she and Alvin were at a cow show in Billings, Montana, where they met a woman promoting scrapbook-making as a business. They listened for hours – “we missed the banquet,” Alvin said- and Lisa went home with a suitcase of supplies. She recruited others and began running a supply shop and offering “cropping” events where women meet to talk, eat and compile scrapbooks.
Four years ago the Clarks acquired a picturesque quarter section near their other land and built a new house with a wall of windows overlooking a treed island bounded by Cache Creek.
But another important requirement for the new house was a second-floor loft where Lisa set up a larger supply store.
Stickers, paper, beads, metallic tags, trade magazines and other decorative elements are displayed from floor to roof, attesting that scrapbooks are not mere photo albums. Part family diary, part artwork, the books have become a popular hobby.
Alvin said a recent Wall Street Journal article reported that scrapbook -making sales grew to $1.4 billion US in 2000 from $500,000 a decade before. The Sept. 11 terrorism attacks helped spur the growth of a family-oriented business, Lisa said.
Her website brings in 80 percent of her sales and her inventory has grown to $50,000. She said women like her on-line store because they can shop at home in their pajamas with no restless kids to drag along.
“I have one lady whose husband has put her on a scrapbook budget. The first day of each month I get an order from her of $200.”
Lisa’s dream is to build a log cabin beside the house for her business.
Alvin is impressed with the success of www.scrap
bookcottage.ca.
“It blows my mind. I think positive. I never thought how big the internet would be.”
He said with a laugh that he’s quitting his day job, and when the new cottage is built, “I’m going to put my calving barn out there so she can watch them, too.”
Alvin was raised in rural Ontario and came west in the 1980s selling machinery for International Harvester. He met Lisa, a city girl, and traded careers for ownership of two auto glass stores in Edmonton.
When he comes home at 6 p.m., he starts ranching. He has a herd of Murray Grey cattle, selling about 45 purebreds a year, as well as a smaller group of black Simmentals to breed heifer bulls for his Murray Grey customers. The Clarks show their animals at events across Western Canada and the United States. Alvin is also president of the Canadian Murray Grey Association.
It is no wonder he decided to ease his time-pressed life by selling his haying equipment last month and opting for custom silage.
Drought was a problem last year, with one field that has produced 600 bales in the past yielding only 40 bales.
“It never fails,” Lisa said about the challenges that come with haying. “We’re at the Stampede when it’s the best haying time.”
Added Alvin: “We’re just going to do what we do best – purebred cattle.”
They have certainly had success. A bragging wall in the barn is covered in banners, ribbons and plaques for Willow Creek Cattle Co.
They are looking at where to fit in the framed photographs they received from Farmfair in Edmonton for having the best show cow and bull of all the Murray Greys in North America. The bull was sold to a California ranch.
Alvin is proud to note his daughter Megan’s accomplishment in 1999 as the young cattleperson of the year. It was a national competition covering all breeds and requiring judging, grooming and show ring skills.
“Megan has the eye for the cattle,” he said.
“She’s taught me lots. You can buy good cattle but the trick is selling them.”
Working with young people is another part of the Clarks’ busy lives. They each serve as leaders for local 4-H clubs.
“Half of our club are town kids,” said Alvin, who notes one Edmonton boy he helped in 4-H took an agriculture-related job as a farrier.
