Dear members,
Our last post has created quite a stir in the community so let us explain a bit more what BurdaStyle is, what it offers, and what the changes entail:
BURDASTYLE
BurdaStyle set out to be a community for people that love to sew or would like to learn.
We believe that supplying access for everyone to a platform where we all share our inspirations, creations and knowledge is the best way to improve your skills, get help when you’re stuck and earn reward and recognition for your hard work.
We want this community to be open to anyone and to continue to offer easy and cost-free access to all areas of the site that involve inspiration, recognition and especially exchange of knowledge.
PATTERN CHARGE
We do want to apologize if you may have felt upset by our recent changes.
We at BurdaStyle have always acted with our community in mind, which was also the case while making the decision to charge for all patterns, and feel that this is the point to give you insight into the larger picture:
Clearly our reason behind charging for ALL patterns is to create revenue, in order to produce new patterns, new content and new features and to keep the current site intact. Only charging for new patterns is not able to cover the cost for maintaining the entire content on the site.
BurdaStyle would love to offer you all patterns always for free. And clearly you, our community, feels very strong about our patterns and the resource of free patterns.
So why not join forces and work together.
Our plan has been all along to find partners that are interested in working together with us on a variety of activities such as contests, how tos, features and sponsored pattern downloads at times. If a partner chooses to sponsor a pattern we would be able to cover the cost and waive the fee for a certain amount of downloads.
We are in the talk with a fair amount of companies that showed interest in working with us.
Seeing your immense response we were thinking, what about joining forces with our most important asset, our community. What about YOU helping us find partners that are interested in engaging in activities for example sponsoring free downloads for the community
Anyone successfully creating a partnership would be rewarded with the thankful response from the community and a percentage of the partnership fee.
FEATURED MEMBER PROJECTS
Being floored by your talent and efforts creating patterns and creations we felt that you need to be included in our weekly project upload on the homepage.
From now on we will accept submissions of creations with instructions and/or patterns from which the best ones will be included in our editorial calendar and featured for one week on the most prominent spot of our homepage. Additionally these projects will have a mention in our newsletter.
Send submissions to team@BurdaStyle.com with the subject line: “Featured Project”.
MEMBER’S PATTERNS SALE
Starting with the new site members will be able to sell their own patterns.
We hope that you are looking forward to new challenges and opportunities with us.
We are looking forward to the year 2009 and many years to follow with our community!
Jan 7, 2009, 04.35 PMby EmilyKate
This is… kinda cool actually. I’m as sad as anyone to see the free pattern content go, but nothing lasts forever :o)…. this seems like an interesting idea, the potential of paying members for useful content they contribute to the site. It’s a super-interesting business model for sure, a very new idea most certainly and I think it’ll be exciting to see how it plays out. I’ll defintiley be keeping an eye out for the opportunities you have mentioned.
Here’s to 09.
Jan 7, 2009, 05.53 PMby Sew4my3
Thanks for the explanation. I did have an additional thought about getting better result from your pattern directions. Maybe you could send the un released pattern with directions to a few of the BS members to try out and make improvements to tweak the end result. You would have to put out applications for this ahead of time, but would be well worth it. As a payment for this service you could offer them a choice of a free pattern download. Just a thought. Anyway, I do hope that all the new stuff succeeds as I truly enjoy our little community here. Also, I was curious as to how one might go about getting sponsors for a design and what kind of cost would the sponsor be looking at? Maybe you could do a “how to” on just this subject to help all of us out. Again, we know all know you work very hard, I just think it was a bit of a shock to the system and the comments resulted from this shock. Change does not come easy and people do not like change, but often the result of change is in the positive, therefore I will be on board as I am guessing a lot of the members will be after they see the positive side. So lets get on with it and do this! Good luck!
Jan 7, 2009, 06.26 PMby AllyGally
I think this is a wonderful compromise. It’s very clear to me that a lot of thought has gone into how to keep Burdastyle going, and make it a quality product & community.
Thank you to the Team for all of their hard work.
I like sew4my3’s idea about doing a how-to for sponsorships.
I am looking forward to seeing the new site, thanks again for keeping us going!
Jan 7, 2009, 06.43 PMby minnietheminks
Thank you for explaining in more detail about your decision. The part of the site I use the most is the community and since for my studies I should be really drafting my own patterns maybe this new approach will work for me in the future.
I look forward to the new site :)
Jan 7, 2009, 06.54 PMby sunnyb64
I’ll go ahead and echo the thanks for the explanation. It is good to know that the sections like the community and the how-tos will remain free, and geared towards helping us all get better at this. I love the idea that members will be able to come up with patterns that may get featured. And I also wanted to state that I also really love Sew4my3’s idea about having “beta testers” for some of the patterns before release— not only for the feedback on instructions and how well the patterns work, but that would be a great way to have some pattern variations right from the start. Having some immediate options for how versatile a pattern can be might make it a lot more worth the purchase price for a lot of people, too.
Jan 7, 2009, 08.04 PMby isiskali
Not so fast.
You want members to find sponsors for you.
You didn’t give an explanation as to why you did this with no warning.
You’re still charging for flawed product.
It sounds like you guys needed to announce a beta period about 4 months ago to work out all the kinks before you start asking for cash. A nice note is just that – a nice note. Appreciated, but…
The point still stands – what is BS offering that is unique for the cost? Is the product that you’re charging for, at $3 to $5 per design, never mind materials, worth it to the customer? And I mean solidly worth it – not in esoteric terms such as “community” or “tutorials”. I can get a pattern on the Burda site with 3-4 possible garments for $10. Not so much here. I can obtain it for even less from the Big 4.
Also, there was a dress that was released at the end of December with a charge. It was ill-fitting and badly draped, with many comments pointing out the flaws. Please, please tell me that this won’t be the quality of product you’ll be selling, because this site will be gone in a year if it is.
Jan 7, 2009, 09.28 PMby erdronen
Thank you BurdaStyle! Personally, I think you got it right. If you need to create more revenue in order to maintain the site and offer cool features, I think this is the way to do it! Much better than charging a membership fee of any kind. This way, we pay only when we want to download a pattern, and it’s completely our option as members! Plus, I believe this site is about much more than just the patterns! Just as you said, it’s a whole community for learning and sharing and inspiration.
I also very much like Sew4my3’s idea of beta-testing patterns, to help make sure that the pattern instructions are of the quality people expect when purchasing a pattern. Great idea!
Finally, yes I agree that some sort of further explanation on pattern/content sponsors would be helpful.
Jan 7, 2009, 10.39 PMby victorS
Thanks for the free stuff its been fun while it lasted. Still think you’ve shot yourselves in the foot.
Jan 8, 2009, 12.29 AMby lauriana
A lot has already been said about charging for pattern etc.
However, I would like to thank you for the new thoughts on ‘featured projects’ and the opportunity for members to sell their patterns. Of course, with that, enabling some kind of beta-testing option would be great, and actually necessary. After all, one like to make sure that nobody ends up paying for a pattern that’s wrong or has incomprehensible instructions. (And in fact, I could really use some help writing instructions…)
Jan 8, 2009, 05.50 AMby doarkface
While there are some changes that I am really looking forward to, I don’t think now is the best time for Burdastyle to start charging for every pattern. Take a look at patterns such as Heidi, Sabrina, and Liz – all of them great patterns – which have been around for a small fee for quite a while. None of them were downloaded nearly as much as the free patterns by at least an order of magnitude. The new pattern pricing puts these as even more expensive at an ever harsher economic time – how much can you expect from your users? Again, I am very excited about the direction that Burdastyle is moving in, and I understand the necessity of charging for patterns, but I don’t think now is the best time for it.
Jan 8, 2009, 06.30 AMby Gertie
I know I’m way late to this whole discussion, but I just wanted to voice my support for more opportunities for users. The thing that has always excited me about this site is the challenges and contests—otherwise I never would have tried the Malissa pattern, and I wouldn’t be making a suit right now! I’ve never really found BurdaStyle to be cost effective for me, even if the patterns are free—they cost $15 to print at a copy shop, and for the time and frustration of printing and taping the patterns together myself, I’d rather just buy a commercial pattern! (Though I realize this is because I’m in the financial position to be able to do so, and many students, etc, are not.)
So, would you please continue to expand the challenges, contests, and opportunities for members? That will get everyone excited about downloading new material, even at a cost. I would also love it if you would give us more detail on how to submit a creation as a featured project. Does it need to have a pattern that we would upload? Just instructions? A how-to?
Thank you all for your hard work, and I hope we can all continue to grow together.
Jan 8, 2009, 06.49 AMby meljk
Thank you for the explanation, better late than never I guess. I think the challenges will become a little exclusive with the charging of patterns though, which isn’t very encouraging for the whole community or creativity. On the upside, I really like sew4my3’s idea and Sunnyb64 aswell. If they were to be applied to the sold patterns, I’d be much more likely to pay for a bs pattern. A couple of variations, quality pattern, fit and instructions would make a big difference. Thank you BS for creating a platform for such a wonderful community.
Jan 8, 2009, 06.59 AMby oonaballoona
have to raise my hand for sew4my3’s beta testing idea, i think it’s fabulous! to be honest, i don’t know how successful i would be at finding sponsors (haven’t the faintest idea) but beta testing patterns is something i could actually do, so it’s intriguing.
thanks for the details, BS-oona
Jan 8, 2009, 07.19 AMby oonaballoona
hmm, should always have my coffee and thoroughly wake up before typing, because on further thought i have to add…
haven’t we already joined forces with you in finding partnerships by littering the web with our praise of burdastyle? i think this is an area where members have continually done their part. i know we haven’t physically signed up sponsors, but sites like yelp and wikipedia know how valuable their member’s word-of-mouth is— it creates revenue and notoriety in itself.
Jan 8, 2009, 08.14 AMby FiftiesTwistDIY
Although, I am up for change, I don’t think charging for all patterns at this point is a good idea. Especially, since the economy is in a down turn. A few of the patterns that you have a charge for, I wouldn’t mind downloading, but since I am a college student, I don’t have extra money and only dream that one day I will have a little extra money to download the patterns. I use every portion of the site and contribute what I can in what little time I have available. But I will still be apart of this community either way, as this community is one of the best!
Jan 8, 2009, 08.27 AMby Polychromatin
I’m really upset about the new and abrupt changes here on Burdastyle. Lucky me I downloaded all the patterns before … And you not only want us to pay for the patterns, you also want us to do your work, searching for sponsors. Well, that’s too much for me, get a guy who does it.
The community here on burdastyle is great thing, but it is not your merit, it is the members’, who post their creations, help in the forum (which is not moderated or well organised …) , upload their How-Tos and patterns (well nice to keep those patterns from members free, how generous!). If it will be that there is another well organised platform for sewers (and there are some out there) I see Burdastyle becoming problems. The main attraction on this site were the free patterns! But now with a bunch of left free patterns, less members will sew with the Burda patterns, less members will upload their creations, less members will be online here, less members will click on the ads, … Burdastyle is now very popular with 150 000 members, but I’m not sure if it will continue this way.
Jan 8, 2009, 08.47 AMby nora
Hi everyone,
Thanks for reading and responding and your great ideas!
The idea of beta testing for pattern instructions is great, we would love to get your feedback. Originally we wanted to launch an instruction wiki, where everyone can help edit. But the development costs were too high. So, your idea to ask members to look over it is great and offer free patterns as reward is great, too. If you are interested, please send an email to team@burdastyle.com with subject line ‘pattern beta tester’. We’re also very glad that you’re excited about the options for members to sell patterns on the new site.
And also thank you Sew4my3 for the suggestion to create a ‘how to get a sponsor’ tutorial, we will do that! While the team is working on finding partners, anyone else who helps will get a commission. I think that’s a great opportunity.
Jan 8, 2009, 09.04 AMby catmagalhaes
I accept your explanation, but I still was hoping that you might reduce the charged patterns. Just put one or two garments from each category for free.
I will still visit the site to see the member’s creations, because I know I can learn with them. But as for free patterns, I know that I can’t expect too much from BS. I’m so sorry and So SAD.
Jan 8, 2009, 10.08 AMby MamaDiosa
I think that we should support Burdastyle in it’s changes. I have to admit that I have never bought a pattern but that is because I draft alot of my patterns myself. But i would buy one of the patterns, they are not expensive and they are convenient. Maybe the patterns that cost money are not downloaded as much as the free ones, but money is money so 500 downloads at $5 is alot more money that 2000 downloads at $0. This website is more than just free patterns, it’s a world stage to show off the creations that you work so hard on, it’s advice and a sense of belonging. If you love this website as much as I do, then you should support it to help it take of to higher heights.
Jan 8, 2009, 10.19 AMby sweet-saboo
Once again, with feeling…I agree with the ongoing questions and concerns voiced by other members, especially the comments of
Polychromatin and Isiskali. The friendly demeanor of the BS blog refers to
a ‘stir’ in the community, which devalues the sense of betrayal expressed by the majority of those who have chosen to express their
thoughts on the bungled handling of the recent policy changes. Yes, nice notes from BS team are a pat on the head, but is also a clear demonstration that our collective concerns receive only a polite,
yet dismissive response. I kind of get the sense that even the most
forward-thinking concepts offerred for consideration to possibly
modify this extrememly unpopular new pricing issue, fall on deaf ears
at BS central. Which is very sad. Now, you want us to find sponsors for you (aren’t you already paying someone to do that work?). And you want to sell member-contributed patterns, instead of having
member-contributed patterns to remain free? Which means again,
it’s an issue of “Profits Before People”…have the corporate
bean-counters started running things as BS? Certainly looks like it.
Jan 8, 2009, 11.00 AMby Vickles
I have to say I agree with Polychromatin and catmagalhaes and others before them. As a keen sewer with small funds, the additional time and effort of assembling the patterns (plus the costs of putting them together ie ink, paper and sellotape!) made it worthwhile as they were free, and consequently I was able to eagerly participate in the community. I couldn’t wait to see what people had put together with little money and a bit of ingenuity. However now that the majority of the free patterns have been axed, I dont feel that will be such a part of Burdastyle life, and has certainly for the most part closed that avenue off to me.
I fully understand that you need to make a living from us, to balance out the undeniable effort that you guys put in. Nevertheless, I think it would be beneficial (as some others have suggested) to have one or two basic patterns in each section, which were previously free, to still be free (eg Lydia and Anda – patterns that you yourselves have encouraged to be reworked). Otherwise you may find that a lot of the exciting creativity which helped to make this site all that it is, may be lost, and with that the member’s enthusiam for your site.
Jan 8, 2009, 11.04 AMby smvphotography
Of course I love the free patterns just as much as every body else. On the other side i totally realize that i’m sure many people just downloaded bunches of patterns they never intended to use and then used a bunch of space burdastyle has to pay for. i mean the burdastyle patterns are not more expensive than the ones you buy in the store. i’m happy to pay $5 if it means i get an awesome pair of pants (or lots of pants). i’m sure we’ll all together have a great burdastyle with a great future.
Jan 8, 2009, 11.20 AMby JJ1
I like to share my thought on your pattern sale. I’m not a business woman or anything close
but I’m one of the online customers that arm with credit card and paypal. While I was sewing
Bella pants this morning, I asked myself why I bought Bella pattern. My answers: this pattern was
in trends, fresh off runway. It looks hard to make or adapt other pattern by myself. It’s not in
Burda fashion magazine or big 4s. The price is fair. It’s good enough that I don’t care for perfect instruction, cut and paste, cost of paper&ink…………….. I think Burdastyle should not compete
selling similar patterns with Big 4s, let your Burdamode do that job. I think Burdastyle should
compete with smaller companies such as onions, hotpatterns and Marfy which target differents customers. These companies charge
arms and legs for paper patterns………….. Some sewers order Onions from Europe, some pay 15 dollars for
hotpatterns and some pay more for Marfy(Marfy came with zero instruction)………….. I think it would be great
if you can come up with designer pattern like in Patrones pattern magazine. Most of us can’t afford Prada, but I’m sure we’ll thrill to sew their patterns. I don’t know how Patrones done it,
but may be you could start with young designer like alison dahl?(Patrones is very hard to find in USA and other countries.)………………. Or sell special patterns that only available through mail order from Burda the German edition like what Elainmay made. orwell coat
which is from the designer Orwell, pattern in the 9.2006………….And keep feeding free patterns (basic) to new young students who are your future paying customers.
Jan 8, 2009, 11.28 AMby Julietta
Thanks for the explanation however I think that it was a wrong business decision. I’m sad because these decisions will reduce BS from a community of equals to a business and its customers. I fully understand that changes were necessary to pay your bills but the way the changes were carried out seems deceiving to me and make me feel like the members that substantially shaped BS are of little value and are disrespected by BS. You keep on saying that we should be thankful that the access to the site is free of charge however I don’t think you should even consider charging for something like how-tos or forums that is mainly provided by the members and not BS itself. In addition, it seems ridiculous to charge for patterns that are recycled from BWOF and can still be downloaded for free at the burda fashion site or modifications of patterns rather than to offer the modifications and patterns as one package. I will stay around a little longer to see how BS will develop, hopefully in a positive way. Nevertheless, I will expect much more from BS than it already offers from now on.
Jan 8, 2009, 12.00 PMby Carillia
Thanks for the slightly more realistic info. I fully understand the need to charge for patterns, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re advertised all around the net as a source for mostly free patterns by the most credible of all sources: The average Jacks and Jills that actually use the site. Don’t you see how this makes us feel like just pieces in a (admittedly extremely clever) marketing scheme? Also, how can you possibly say that some popular, simple and basic projects still will be free when you’re even charging for the sleep mask and the baby bib? That’s just insane! Let basics like Lydia, Anda and Sidonie remain free, and you’ll still be refered to as an “awesome source” for anyone in need of basics, but it won’t do for anyone wanting something more advanced.
Keep in mind that you’re dealing with a bunch of people who are largely of idealistic minds, who came here because of the feeling of sharing and community. I’ve only found a few patterns personally that I really liked, and haven’t uploaded anything, but I’ve recommended it at every chance, just because it was such an awesome and open site, and it made me buy several BWoFs that I didn’t really plan on buying, “Just because it’s Burda, and Burda is nice!”
Now, it’s just like any other moneymaking business site, and your idealistic light has been blown out. We can get communities and sewing skills all around, like Craftster and patternreview so I don’t see how you’ll compete. It’ll take a long time to build up a site that’s so good that I’ll go here for anything I need. It’ll need better forums, no download or login problems, and lots of simple things, like allowing line break in comments. (I know already that this comment will be annoying to read, why not allow the br tag?) The sewing skills and source for knowledge will have to be significantly larger than today too.
I’m very grateful for everything BurdaStyle has given me as a seamstress, but that’s not enough to keep me here if the present site doesn’t live up to the expectations. I sure hope you’ll get an awesome site here, but you’d have a much easier time getting people to contribute just a couple of days back…
Jan 8, 2009, 01.32 PMby FiftiesTwistDIY
On second thought, I agree with Polychromatin and Julietta. One thing that draws me to this site is the choice of free patterns, I can’t really see paying for a pattern if I don’t have any extra money to play around with. That is why I dislike other sites like hotpatterns. Plus, wanting us to find sponsors? That is what you are supposed to do. As, for contests, making the participants pay for the pattern is unfair. I loved when some patterns you charged as they had a lot of detail, but to charge for the ones that were free that is ridiculous! I think if you are going to make that move, you should keep the old ones that were free, free and just charge for the new ones you make. I am glad though that I downloaded as new ones were added.
This change for sure is good in one sense but bad in another. This couldn’t happen at a worse time. This takes the fun out of what BS is truly about. I don’t think I would pay to see how to’s as I can find them anywhere online for free.
Carillia made a good point. I spend alot of time on Craftster and love it! Craftster is one of my favorite creative outlets, I don’t think I will be spending much time on BS as my creative outlet as i feel that it is just another place that is out to take your money. Sorry, I am up for change but this is not the right way for change.
Jan 8, 2009, 01.55 PMby Polychromatin
I agree with Julietta, I sometimes recognize patterns from older BWOF-magazines, too funny we have to pay for them now again.
We all should not forget that Burdastyle is a business (as you noticed maybe recently) and yet it has a nice face (you guys are very nice!), these changes are made to earn money and I think to recruit the members for searching for sponsors to make evn more money is somehow exploiting them.
To be constructive: I once again want to suggest to create an option to donate for this site. It works for wikipedia and others. It will maybe not cover all costs, but maybe enough so that in future again some patterns could be for free again. People who have the money could support this site so that still some not so wealthy people, like students, like me, could download patterns. And it is another psychological aspect: people are not forced to pay money (which causes anger as we all can see here and in future viewer datas) they can generously give money to this site they love so much and get a good feeling, too!
Another way to make money is to check your ads on the site! I don’t know why I should click them, because they’re not very interesting for me (I get those “What women really want” – I guess they’re for firms and businesses?). If these would be links to online fabric stores (maybe even in my country) or an amazon link to sewing books or anything that is interesting for people who sew! I think you could improve the ads a lot!
Another fair move from you guys would be to make the patterns used for a sewing contest free of charge for the time of the contest. Otherwise I think not many people would take part in those contests if they have to pay for the pattern.
Jan 8, 2009, 04.17 PMby mamato7
I would like to add a constructive comment. I ‘m not happy with the pattern fees. How about putting click ads on the site to generate money? Many other sites do the same thing so that members who don’t have the funds can still enjoy the site. Or since there are 150,000 members..why not charge a 1 dollar yearly fee? Surely 150,000 a year would be enough funds to run the site??? Why not disclose how much it actually cost to run this site and let the members decide how to fund it?
Jan 8, 2009, 04.56 PMby sewer-sewist
Wow. I have to admit that I am quite shocked at your response. I read through all of the comments on the previous post, and thought there were many, many constructive comments—including my own—relating to the way you rolled out the change to your business model. It’s disappointing to read that you’re choosing to take no ownership of that mistake. The fact is, you should have given members warning of such a substantial change. To me, that is an inarguable fact. To turn around and ask your members to find you sponsors, rather than admitting an error in judgment is, to me, offensive. As I stated in my comment on the previous post, if I behaved that way in my business, I would lose my clients. And that’s the long and short of it. I think that you could have possibly salvaged some good will but admitting that the changes were very sudden, that you should have given your “150,000 members” more warning and then delay the implementation of these major changes for two weeks, or even thirty days. Instead you chose to be defensive and condescending, and that’s unfortunate.
Good luck in your future endeavors here on BurdaStyle.
~Sarah
Jan 8, 2009, 05.41 PMby doarkface
Mamato7 – I believe that BurdaStyle already has click ads on the website along the top and right sides of the site. Any more and it might start to be cluttered.
Several ideas were mentioned here that I heartily agree with, offering a few basic patterns for free (especially the ones that are still free on the burdafashion.com site), offering members a few free downloads and charging for the rest, and allowing the users to contribute funding ideas. I know that Linux Fund gives money to open source software projects – why not the same for open source sewing patterns?
On that note, a lot of open source software manages to circulate for free and be kept relatively bug-free and at high quality. There is probably a way for the same to be said of BurdaStyle sewing patterns. Of course, this requires a much more powerful member contribution to the available material, like the kind seen with open sourced software. I believe that a lot of members are hesitant to upload patterns because of the difficulty and technology involved in writing the instructions and scanning things in. I realize everyone’s computer is different, but maybe a how-to on creating quality patterns and instructions would help? Or maybe there would be other incentives to uploading your own pattern, for example a free download from the collection of priced patterns.
Just my (second) two cents.