Setting up a Handmade Greeting Card Business - Part 3 - Product, Packaging, Presentation
Finally getting a chance to update the blog after an incredibly busy few weeks! So...moving on with the series on setting up your own handmade greeting card business.
First to answer the comment on using verses on cards. The answer is yes - you should be obtaining copyright to use them I'm afraid. Unless the author has been gone from the world for either 50 or 70 years, then copyright law still applies for anyone copying works directly.
Where we're at: You've gotten to the point where you know you want to sell some cards - to friends, colleagues, shops or at markets. The next steps are choosing your product set, making sure the cards are packaged professionally, and tackling the issue of presenting and displaying them in shops, or even at card parties or markets.
The first thing to put some thought into - is the product. What ranges of cards are you going to provide? What materials should you use? Some points to take into consideration that we learnt from hard graft:
Materials
- Don't use inferior card stock or envelopes. Make sure the card you're using is at least 240gsm or so, not floppy, and looks and feels expensive to the touch. We find textured cardstock to often to be stiffer and looks more expensive as well. There is nothing worse than taking a a lovely card out of its wrapper only for it to feel floppy, bendy and cheap in your hand.
- At the same time, try to keep all material costs down - buy in bulk where you can (here's our bulk buy section with discounts on our crafts site :)). If you can't source locally or online, try a printers instead.
- Cutting and scoring your own cardstock can be a false economy. The highest cost in a handmade card by far is labour - it's the one thing you have to try to reduce as much as possible if you're to make a decent profit from your cards. While cutting and scoring your card may save you a few pence per card, it will cost you more in time and effort and can also be wearing and take some of the fun out of making cards.
- Avoid designs that involve a lot of labour. Use pre-cut die-cuts where possible - customers who don't make their own cards (who are all your customers - card makers don't buy cards they make them :)) do not know the difference between a shape you cut yourself and one that you purchased or cut from a die. Avoid techniques like embossing, decoupage or quilling. Keep designs as quick and easy to make as possible so you can make many cards in one sitting.
Design Ranges
Look at your designs you have with a business eye. Pick out the ones that are the most popular with family, friends or existing customers (not your favourites, but those that sell best!), and see how you can make slight variations of these to make design ranges of cards. A design range is a set of 6, 8, 10 or 12 cards all of a similar design and theme. Ranges of cards are good for several reasons:
- Designs of 6 or 12 cards display much better in shops than a set of 12 different cards
- If people like one card in a range a lot, they will often by 2 or 3 more to stock up and have at home
- Presenting a range of designs immediately creates an impression with shops that you are a professional and know what you're doing.
With Cara Cards my most popular design based on family and friends feedback together with some feedback from taking a stall at a market, was the Pink Handbag Card (left). On the basis of this I created a range called "Pink Birthdays" and extended the theme of handbags to dresses and shoes too. You can see the entire range here. At the time I didn't know that die-cuts existed, and wasted huge amounts of time hand-cutting various shapes for the cards. Later I met with a printer and had a die-cut made for the pink handbag and then had a huge number of the shape custom-cut for me. This card is still one of the most popular from the Cara Cards range (which has now been taken over by another card maker).
If your most popular card is one with flowers on the front, then look at ways to change the colours or layout of the flowers, add different embellishments but keep the whole theme of the design.
It's a good idea to keep each design range to an occasion e.g. Happy Birthday Girls Range, Happy Birthday Boy's Range, then an "other occasions" range such as Sympathy, Get Well Soon, Thank you etc.
You don't need a huge range of cards before approaching your first shop. Start with 3 ranges of 6 cards each, and go from there.
Packaging
Packaging your cards professionally is extremely important. All cards should be packaged in a clear polybag (or see here for bulk packs 100 bags). These come in either non-sealed or with a sticky sealable flap.
It's a good idea to brand both the card itself and the packaging - that way both the customer and the person receiving the card can see who made it. We used a site called www.able-labels.co.uk to purchase clear rectangular labels with our name, address, email, phone and website on them to maximise the marketing potential of the card itself. We used one on the back of the card and also one to seal the polybag. Some people get stamps made up to use also. Be sure they have contact details on them though - you never know who might see the card and like it.
Presentation
When we started out, the first question we were asked when approaching shops was "Can you give me a card stand?". Particularly as we were approaching primarily gift shops, flower shops and non-card shops who didn't have a stand already. Many shops will take your cards to start off with in a nice looking cardboard box that customers can flick through, but it doesn't maximise the display potential for your creations. We found the only stands we could get were ones we imported from the UK for between £60 and £80 each! It was a nightmare. When we started the craft supplies site, one of the first things I wanted to do was find a card stand supplier who could sell us re
asonably priced stands we could pass on to our customers. The result is below: a fantastic Cardboard Card Stand that's easy to make up and holds up to 100 cards. It's a great way to start.
Many card makers purchase these and then personalise them to further attract attention in the shops and also to help avoid the shop owners using them to display other people's products, which often happens.
A good idea is to offer a free card stand to shop owners with an initial order value > EUR 100 or so.
That's it for today. Comments so welcome as usual (it's nice to know someone's out there reading), and next in the series will be Pricing your cards and also touching on tax issues.
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