Starting your own greeting card company is an exciting idea for a new business venture. The attractive aspect of starting your own company is the potential for making significant profits without the kind of huge up-front investment that is often necessary for many other types of new business start-ups. If you enjoy graphic design and like the idea of building a company from the ground up, then starting your own greeting card company might just be a perfect fit for you. Here are the things you need to consider to start on the path to owning a greeting card company.
Instructions
1. Create a business plan. Whether you intend to sell your cards online, in a shop or both, a solid business plan that takes into account the various aspects of a new start-up in terms of expenses, overhead, marketing strategy, competition and risk factors as well as the overall aesthetic premise for your company is vital. You will need to take into account the scope of your new business and your short-term as well as long-range goals and financial projections. Depending on your financial circumstances as well as your intended initial investment, you might need to look into obtaining a loan. The size of your loan will depend on the scale of your new venture.
2. Use a quality graphics program. Photoshop, CorelDRAW or another graphic program will enable you to create professional-looking designs for your cards.There are, however, a number of programs that are a bit more user-friendly, such as Microsoft's paint program and a wonderfully useful program for more "artsy" designs called Art Rage. If you want to create cards as your business, then learning use a program like Photoshop, in the end, will serve you well in creating more detailed designs that can incorporate various elements on different layers, allowing you to alter your designs easily and make changes that will not affect the other layers.
3. Create a Website for your new card company. One of the advantages of starting a greeting card company is the ability to utilize the Internet to promote your business. Whether you intend to sell your cards in shops or solely online, you should nonetheless seriously consider setting up a website to both promote and sell your products. If you are familiar with a program like Dreamweaver, then creating your own website might be the best option for you, as it will lower your start-up costs and allow you to design your site specifically to your aesthetic vision and needs. On the other hand, if you are unfamiliar with HTML coding or web design programs like Dreamweaver, hiring a professional web designer is your next best option. If you go this route, remember to review the designer's portfolio and compare pricing before entering into a contact.
4. Be ready to discuss the goals for your site and your design ideas with your web designer, including site structure and the payment options you will be using to process customer's orders. A useful site to search out qualified web designers is Elance. Elance offers a large number of companies from which to choose and provides a number of tools to determine which designer will work best for your project's goals. It is advisable to review both a designer's portfolio and skills ratings before contracting with them for their services.
