Latter-day Village Square

Like the seeds in the parable, some of the things we have tried at LDV have worked fabulously, and some have fallen by the wayside and shriveled up and blown away.  I put a lot of time into setting up a Zazzle storefront and adding products to it.  So I was thrilled when the first orders started coming in.  I admit it, I like to check orders and see how they are coming, and see who is ordering what.  I started to notice a name repeating again and again.  This was pretty exciting because it meant someone had ordered, received and liked their Zazzle purchases enough that they came back again and again to order new items.

I contacted this customer and asked for some feedback about her shopping experience.  Here is what she said:

I am a seminary teacher and always looking for new and creative ways, that the kids haven’t already seen or heard, to get excited about seminary and their religion. You might remember the old stripling warriors (mama’s boys), Nephi, Moroni, David and Goliath posters, well by the time I came around and started teaching, many of the kids had had siblings that already had these posters or tee shirts. I was so excited to see something fresh and new and with lots of color come out. On the Zazzle t-shirts take the time to read what is said about sizing. Most of my girls like their shirts a little on the “baggy” side and with a little length. I think the shirts are great. There are SOOO Many selections of T-shirts to get. The Bella costs more but I personally like the fit. These make great seminary bucks gifts, the mugs I have personalized with each of the kids names on them.

I think our youth out in the mission field (so to speak) want ways to express their religion and are proud of it. Many (I see them out with their shirts) would take the SM verse in Romans 1:16 to heart. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.”

LDV- keep up the good work and know that there are many like me that love what you do. Thank you.

~Angelle W. in Colorado

Angelle is not the only repeat customer in our Zazzle Store, so I am thinking that this seed fell on good ground and I hope to nourish it by steadily adding new great designs!

Just having a Zazzle store is a way of letting our light shine, since it is not an LDS website, lots of other people see our high quality LDS products that reflect our values and beliefs.

~Debra

I just added a number of new products to our Zazzle store that I wanted to tell you about.  I had to create a couple new categories for these products:

• LDS Greeting Cards
• LDS Postage Stamps
• Added several products to our Home Decor Posters category
• Added several products to our Accessories category

Recently, Zazzle increased the percentage we can earn for referring people from LDV to our Zazzle store, or to any other products sold on the Zazzle website.  This has made the whole Zazzle system more attractive to us.  The more we sell, the higher the percentage we earn.  Pretty simple marketing technique.  So for the first time, I decided to browse the Zazzle website for other products I thought our visitors might be interested in, it now being worth the time it takes to create a new product if we can generate some sales.  I did a search for LDS products.  There were 34 pages of products with probably 10-15 items on each page.

I have to admit, most of them were not that great.  T-shirts with silly phrases and no added images.  I figure anyone can design their own custom t-shirt with whatever message they want.  They weren’t very professional or clever and I wasn’t going to bother with them.  But I did find some items I liked and thought you might like as well.  So I have put them in our store.

• LDS Postage Stamps - these are so cool!  They are actual USPS Postage Stamps with custom images on them.  The ones I found had beautiful photographs of temples.  These are great for wedding announcements!  These designs have to be pre-approved by Zazzle according to some rather strict guidelines by the USPS.  They come in sheets of 20 in three different sizes.
• LDS Greeting Cards - I found several different photographers who had a variety of nice cards, including beautiful temple photos.  These are high quality greeting cards that come with an envelope.  You can add your own personal message inside.  These are sold separately or you can save by purchasing in quantity.
• LDS Temple Posters - There were more, but I chose the ones I liked the best.  These are really beautiful and high quality posters.  With Zazzle, you can select the size and the type of material you want it printed on, and you can, if you desire, usually add your own text.
• Young Women Values Totebags - I found a set of very fun canvas totebags with a big fun image and YW Value on each one.  I thought the designs were cute and would be appealing to YW and their leaders.

Warning - Zazzle is a big public company that has certain standards of non-discrimination they both must and choose to abide by.  What this means is that on the one hand, they cannot allow inflammatory, discriminatory products to be sold, but on the other hand, they cannot discriminate themselves against any vendor who may have differing political, social, religious, gender etc views.

They enforce this not by pre-approving all their products - they do this by randomly reviewing products and by answering complaints that may be sent to them.  I found an anti-mormon vendor with products that were clearly anti - not just pro something I disagreed with.  I reported the vendor and the products and explained why they were discriminatory against latter-day saints.  Zazzle has removed those products from their site.

You have to understand that many valuable services that are available to one group, are also available to another group.  The same printing company may print political campaign posters for two opposing candidates, for rival businesses, and so on and so forth.  A bookstore may sell both pro-life and pro-choice books.  It is called freedom of the press, and though sometimes that means people with very different views than mine have a public platform to express themselves, if I remember right, our constitution protects their right to do so, as do our 13 Articles of Faith.

A visitor to LDV recently filed a trouble ticket with us stating that they were about to purchase one of our beautiful New Testament posters from our Zazzle store until they discovered some offensive products sold by Zazzle.  I did a quick search and found a vendor selling anti-mormon products, wrote to Zazzle who has since removed those products.  But I cannot ask them to, nor would they be bound to remove other products that may offend but are not strictly discriminatory.  I hope you understand the difference.

Zazzle offers a service that we have been looking for, at prices that are better than most places, and we are happy to be able to now offer many more of our designs on a wide variety of products than ever before, thanks to Zazzle’s custom / print on demand service.

If you see something that is clearly discriminating against your religion, you can inform Zazzle.  But you have as much right to find and purchase products that please you as any other consumer.  So I hope you will.  And wholesome products will become top sellers, rather than impossible to find.

~ Debra

There are so many great themes this year for New Testament study in Seminary!  We’ve had product lines for two great NT themes for over a month, and now we have added a new one!

“LET YOUR LIGHT SO SHINE” from Matthew 5:16 is one of my favorite scripture references and happens to be one of the Seminary Scripture Mastery Verses this year!

I tried my hand at designing a logo for this theme.  I wanted to use a lighthouse, but I also included a number of other “light” symbols.  You can see stars in the black night sky, and there are sun icons as well as two eyes in the borders of the image.  I also used arrows because the light points the way we should go.  I wanted to depict the contrast between darkness and light in the design, so I used a black sky.

Once when I was teaching the Primary song “I Am Like a Star” I had a neat discussion with the children.  I turned off the lights and turned on a flashlight that had a star cutout on the end.  I asked them why they could see the little flashlight glowing, and they said it was because it was dark.  I reminded them that we only see stars at night because it is so dark.  Even a little star shines bright in that black sky.  We sang the song and I asked them to listen for what it was that helped us shine like a star.  The words go like this:

I am like a star shining brightly
Shining for the whole world to see
I can do and say happy things each day
For I know Heav’nly Father loves me.

The reason we can shine like a star is because we know Heavenly Father loves us.  In this world of darkness, we shine like stars because of that special knowledge.  Those who do not have that knowledge can see the light shining from us and are attracted to it.  We can share that light with others by helping them learn that they too are children of God, and beloved by Heavenly Father.

I had that in mind the whole time I was designing this logo.  Also, I am an actress, and by nature, I have no problem expressing myself in public - but sometimes I’ve been accused of being a show off or big mouth (that was way back when I was a kid, but I still remember and feel self-conscious about it) so this scripture always brought me a sense of vindication and relief that expressing myself wasn’t such a bad thing.  I’ve taught drama classes for kids many times, and directed a number of children’s shows and youth plays.  I love getting to the end - the big performance - and watching the children who initially were shy and afraid shining like stars on that stage.  It tickles me to no end when one of my most resistant students ends up stealing a scene once they understand how great it is to hear the audience responding to them.  I’ve seen many a little life turn around from such an experience, and I love it!

I don’t know what it is about letting your light shine that makes it glow all the brighter - but perhaps it is like the parable - if someone had a candle and put it under a bushel, it would eventually go out, wouldn’t it - for lack of oxygen?  When you remove the bushel, and let it shine for all those around, the flame will actually increase, won’t it, when it gets that exposure to fresh air?  Yes, it surely seems to me that when we let our light shine it gets brighter - from my experience with performing, and also with sharing testimony.  As we share our testimony, it grows.

So there is a super metaphor in this scripture/theme.  But it didn’t stop there.  I also looked up “light” in the online scriptures - narrowing it to the New Testament.  There were MANY references and they were all interesting and powerful.  Of course the Savior is the “light of the world!”  to mention just one.

I created several products with this logo so far:

• Poster
• T-shirt
• Mug
• Totebag
• Keychain
  
• Sticker

SEE ALSO OUR OTHER NT THEME PRODUCTS

• Armor of God
• Fishers of Men

We’ve gotten a few requests for the artwork for  the New Testament Scripture Mastery Poster/Stickers/Clipart without the scripture reference included - to use as image clues once students have become familiar with the the verses - for games and quizzes.

NTSMIC

So I created a new add-on product with just the images and added it to our store for instant download.  I called it New Testament Scripture Mastery Image Clues.  It has each image as a full page png file that can be inserted into any document, and then I created a pdf file with a set of full page posters that are ready to print, as well as a pdf set of half-page flashcards.  I made flashcards with just the reference and flashcards with just the image, so you can play matching games.  It sells for only $2.99 (remember, though we have products in the store for under $5.95 - our cart minimum is $5.95, so you will have to bring the total up that far on a purchase - and we have lots of low cost items to choose from).

This product uses the same artwork as our:

• NTSM Posters
• NTSM Stickers
• NTSM Clipart
• NTSM Shrink Charms

Happy Scripture Chasing!

Debra

A competitor of ours in the LDS resources market makes this claim on their website:

“[domain name] is now the largest collection of helps anywhere online.”

Here’s another one: “Welcome to [domain name]: the largest repository of LDS-related content on the internet.”

We beg to differ. It is a given that lds.org is the single largest collection of LDS helps on the planet. Who can really compare with the resources the church provides; e.g., years and years of magazines, music downloads, images? This is a very good application of our tithing dollars in my estimation.

Who then comes in second? I believe that position probably goes to one of the online LDS libraries; LDS Library or Gospelink, both of whom boast thousands of book titles indexed. LDS Library, my favorite, even indexes much of the lds.org material; Gospelink advertises the same.

Latter-dayVillage.com is not even in the same volume league with those sites; however, we specialize in focused content in certain areas. For those markets, we have some impressive resources (counts as of 7/1/2008):

We continue to expand our online store product line, with the latest additions from our new line of Zazzle products. Our product line includes 885 products now with more on the way. We are working with several new vinyl products vendors and will add their products shortly.

So perhaps we will just claim to be a ‘pretty good LDS resource’.

*General articles are free with a membership registration and include everything from FHE, homeschooling, and Relief Society to Young Women.

** Includes more than just LDS specific clipart. A large majority of our clipart collection comes from open source image repositories that we have formatted in more industry accepted file types.