Setting up a Greeting Card Business Part 2 - Selling Wholesale or Retail?

Ok guys, on to part two of a series of posts on setting up your own greeting card business.  In this post I'll cover - What mix is right for you?  Wholesale?  Retail?  Both? Is your goal to purely sell your cards to make some pin money, or to make a full time profession/business out of your paper crafting skills?

In future posts we'll cover designing card ranges, packaging your cards ready to sell. pricing, tax issues, potential places to sell your cards, and pitfalls!! 

Is selling your cards right for you?

Before setting up a handmade cards business, it's a good idea to think about the reality of what that business will be and what mix would be right for you.  There are two main options - to sell your cards at full, retail prices directly to family, friends and colleagues, or decide to expand the business further and look to selling cards at wholesale prices to shops.  If you want a part time income for your craft, or some pin money to supplement the amount of stash you've been buying, you probably want to just sell your cards to your nearest and dearest. 

Selling your cards at retail prices - local selling. If selling your cards at retail prices only is your goal, there's lots of places to consider for selling your cards.  Consider some ideas such as:

• Leaving a box of cards with prices on them in you or your partner's office or at your child's creche.  99 people out of 100 will pay for any cards they take, and you can just drop the box off in the canteen or reception area on a Monday, and collect on a Friday.
• Trying out some local farmer's markets to sell your cards.  The price for a table at a local market is usually around 40 euros for the day.  Try these markets particularly for specific occasions during the year such as Mother's Day, Father's Day, Valentine's day and even St. Patrick's Day.  At these times customers are looking for a special card and will be very willing to consider a handmade one.  Also it's worth trying out any local car boot sales - several of our forum members have had good success with these.
• Sending an email to friends and family to let them know you're selling is a good idea too.  If you have technical skills, try putting an album of photos of your cards up on the web - try www.photobucket.com, www.picturetrail.com/ or picasa.google.ie for free uploading and storing of your photos.
• Why not throw a card party where people come to your house for drinks/cakes and can purchase cards as well if they wish to.  If you're nervous, try teaming up with a friend who's a crafter and have both your wares for sale at the party. Everyone loves a chance to meet and chat, and the cards are a bonus for everyone.  My sister threw me a card party in London when I first started out, and it went really well - tons of cards sold and I got some great feedback as to what people were looking for.

Selling your cards Wholesale to shops.  Going to the next level to sell your cards directly to shops means selling larger quantities of cards, more regularly, and at lower prices.  It gives you a better chance of making a full-time living from your craft, and a fantastic buzz when you see your cards sitting in a shop being purchased by unknown customers!

Selling wholesale also means needing to be organised when it comes to collecting payment for your cards (Irish shops are notoriously difficult for paying bills), and being prepared to visit your shops on a regular basis to offer more stock or show new designs. 

When thinking of places to sell your cards wholesale, it's not all about card shops.  Walking into a card shop and seeing the type and finish of the cards in there, can be very off-putting and you may feel you can't compete.  When we had our cards business, the card shop chain was the last place we approached - after we had 30 other shops already buying from us.  Here's some examples of the kind of places you can sell your cards wholesale to:

• Gift Shops (to go with the gift - a good idea to promote birthday, wedding, anniversary cards etc. in these shops)
• Flower Shops (when people purchase flowers it's usually for an occasion and will often pick up a card as well)
• Baby/Children Shops (new baby cards and young age birthday cards - the majority of clothes for children are purchased as gifts!)
• Post Office
• Craft Shops - we had some great customers from craft shops in Christchurch and Greystones among others.
• Book Stores - try independent ones in particular. 
• Galleries - particulary ones with sculpture as well as paint/oils artists
• Interior Design Shops
• Stationery Shops - they often have racks of cards in shop

We sold cards into all these kinds of shops with our Cara Cards ranges - see HERE (there were about 10 more shops that never made it onto the site :)). 

Selling cards to shops also means repeating the same design many times - shops will wish to purchase the most popular cards in larger quantities, and it's likely you will at some stage get bored of making the cards!!  This, together with price limits, puts some crafters off selling their work to shops. It's all about balance though.  A good idea is to sell half your stock to family and friends now and then, for example, take custom jobs also from family and friends to keep your interest strong in your cards, and also have a few shops selling your cards on a regular basis.  Mix it up to avoid boredom while also achieving a regular income.  You can also consider giving some card making classes, making some wedding invitations a couple of times a year and essentially dabble in a number of areas and ways to make money from your craft.

Setting up a simple Website. If you are considering selling wholesale to shops as a full-time business, I would recommend getting a very simple website to promote your work.  Our www.caracards.com website allowed people to purchase directly on it, or contact us with wholesale inquiries.  We rarely got many direct sales through the site (though we did get some) but we did get a lot of wholesale inquiries from it (at least one a month when the site was actively in use) and many of our bigger orders from the USA and UK originated from this site.  Yahoo offer a very easy to use website building tool and a free website that's good if you just want a simple brochure-style site to display your cards.  Another good one is www.freewebs.com which gives you a free site and also supports integration with Paypal so people can place orders on your site also. Both of these will give you free sites that have some banner advertising on them as well.  If you want your own site with no advertising and your own domain name, you will need to pay to register a domain, host the site and then build it.  You need to pick and purchase a domain name, purchase a hosting package (please note links are to just one host provider of many), and then design and upload your site.  Some host providers give you a tool for creating sites also. If you're interested in more information on how to set up a website - try the message board on www.irishbusinesswomen.com where there's been lots of discussion on the topic in the past.

A quick side note while we're here about confidence.  We have hundreds of crafters posting their work up on our crafter's forum, but none of them think it is as fantastic as it actually is.  If fear and confidence are the biggest things standing in your way, make sure to listen objectively to what other people say about your work - and take it on board.  If people are willing to pay for your work - be they friends, family or strangers - it means it's worth buying.  Take heed of that and take it on board!!  If you find it difficult to get shops to take your cards at first - consider giving them the cards on a sale or return basis.  Take stock of what you leave, and come back in a month to see what's sold and give them a bill for them.  If it goes well, convert away from sale or return after a month or two to have the shop purchase upfront instead.

If you have more questions on Selling your cards - please add a comment here, or visit the Selling Your Cards Discussion Forum on our crafter's forum!

Comments

[Ringo]

Wish I had all this very sensible and helpful advice when starting out. Well done Ais for getting it all down so succinctly. :]

[jacqui]

I notice that most cardmakers do not include verses inside their cards, is there a reason for this or is it just to cut down on time? I have put verses on mine some which I downloaded free from sites am I breaking amy laws?

[Melanie Cooper]

I am starting a greeting card company, and will be marketing and selling the cards myself. I am writing the text, and doing the layout, but have hired a great illustrator to create the artwork. I think my preference is to sell the cards wholesale, beginning with local shops and then expanding. However, when it comes to pricing I feel I am completely in the dark. Where can I go to get information on fair wholesale pricing?

[Office Screens]

I'm thinking on going into this kind of business. I will remember those tips from you!

[Angela Deasy]

Just finished reading parts 1 and 2 of Setting Up a Greeting Card Company and found the information very helpful.
I am interested in taking my card-making hobby to the next level and the tips on getting your work noticed and, of course, bought, are very instructive. I appreciate that there are a lot of things that can work against you, but I am willing to take a chance.
I have a friend who set up a wedding stationery business and couldn't make it work because of all the 'Bridezillas' out there who took what was a great job and made it a nightmare, so I am aware that it is not all sunshine and roses. Thanks for the great info.
Now onto parts 3 and 4.