Starting a greeting card business sounds like a good idea, and it can have a lot of potential since many people out there buy greeting cards for just about everything. From birthdays to get well wishes, why aren’t you capitalizing on this industry?
If you’re thinking about starting up a greeting card business, I want to give you the low down on how you can start one as early as today, and you can see what it’s going to take in order to become successful in the industry.
Estimated Start Up Costs:
Starting up a greeting card business can be rather expensive. Since you’re not going to want to print up your own cards on a ink jet printer, you’re going to most likely want to invest into a professional printer. The bigger you get, the more space you’re going to need, so an office may be likely in the future as well. The printing press, as well as everything else can easily run you $5,000+.
Recommended Skills:
The skills required here is really creativity, and illustrations. You want to be creative, funny, unique, and you want to create something that’s going to make people want to buy your card. What you can do is start up by looking at cards in your local stores, and see what makes them stand out to you.
Training Needed:
If you do decided to manage to purchase a printing press to print things such as greeting cards, you’re probably going to want to get training done on this machine. It shouldn’t take you more than 2 days to learn how it functions. Usually, when you purchase a machine like this, you can get someone to come out, and help you set up, and manage it.
Marketing Tips:
A greeting card business is a tough one, because many people are going to go out to the store, and purchase them. You can either work your butt off, and distribute to major stores, or you can try to create your own online store. You can sell on places like eBay, the Internet, and more. Honestly, with a business such as this, connections are going to be huge, if you want to get your brand out there in the markets.
If you wish, you can also take the freelance route, where you can work for major greeting card corporations. You can create the art, the sayings, and everything else. The pay generally isn’t that hot, but you can make a small living by doing it.
How much can I make?
If you’re going to do freelance work, you can usually make anywhere from $25 to $250 an assignment, depending on how good you are. If you’re going to take it to the next level, and distribute your goods, the profit potential is endless. If you were to say, get your cards in a place like Wal-Mart, you could dominate in terms of revenue.
Recommended Books:
There are a few books that I think you should look into. They both go into depth on how you can connect in the greeting card business, and how you can start your business right away today.
