Starting a Handmade Greeting Card Business
Identify your Strength
Although there are many greeting card companies that sell a variety of cards for different occasions, there are people who prefer handmade cards. Browse through a few stores that sell greeting cards and identify those category of retail cards in which the designs are too plain. Most greeting card companies churn out cards for special occasions like birthday’s and valentines that have some great designs but miss out on “get well soon” cards or “congratulations” cards. You can fulfill this niche by coming up with some excellent designs in handmade greeting cards. Provide a good variety of greeting cards for special occasions too like birthdays and anniversaries so that your product line is more complete. If you make greeting cards with witty one liners or maybe a special greeting card sayings, then that can become your strength.
Market your Product Smartly
No matter how pretty or unique your handmade greeting cards are, unless you market them right you cannot make a sale. Word of mouth only helps in garnering business up to an extent, and unless you do some aggressive marketing, those cards will remain in the shelves. You can sell your handmade greeting cards in small gift shops and novelty stores. Most of these stores, will take a small percentage of the sales for displaying the cards or they might take a small fee. Take these costs into account while pricing the cards. Once your business booms, you can offer these shops (where you retail) a discount if they buy a batch of your cards. Another great way to market your products as well as increase sales is to sell them in craft fares and online craft sites like Etsy, ArtFire and Folksy.
Build your Brand
The biggest mistake that most novice entrepreneurs in a creative business do is to fail to mark a brand or logo on the product. Imagine that a particular customer liked one of your handmade cards, but since you have not developed a logo and marked it on the card, she has no way of referring about your unique card to her friends and colleagues. You can lose potential customers if you do not brand your articles. Create a unique logo just like commercial greeting card companies and stamp it on the back of the card. In this way, the logo or brand becomes instantly recognizable and it will set it apart from other handmade cards.
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