How to Create a Wholesale Greeting Card Line

1. How to Create a Wholesale Greeting Card Line: [MUSIC] Are you a designer with tons of illustrations and ideas for cards, but you're not quite sure what you need to open a wholesale shop, or perhaps you really want to see your cards for sale in shops across the country and just not sure what steps you should take first? This class might be for you. My name is Ali, I'm the founder and designer behind my brand Coit Creative, and I'm an illustrator and surface designer who grew a stationery business from just a handful of illustrations and learned a lot along the way. When I opened my shop on Faire, one of the online marketplaces to sell wholesales, I quickly became a top shop within four months with cards in over 25 shops. In this class, I want to break down the few steps to begin and how I recommend starting out if I were to begin this over again. I've learned a lot along the way and plan to share what I would do if I were to start over what I did right, and what I would change. This class does not cover the designing of the cards, but rather what to do once you have the handful of illustrations sitting in your studio or your documents folder on your computer. It is really for any designer curious about starting their own wholesale greeting card line. In this class, I'm going to cover the designs you need to open a wholesale shop, how to set up listings, and including things like tariff codes, which materials to purchase, what to consider when packing orders, and how to market your greeting card line. I also point out key mistakes I made at the beginning and how to avoid them when you are starting out. The project for this class is to pick one greeting card and upload the image, a title enlisting description to the project section below. If you want to go above and beyond, I have another class that walks through creating your own listing mockup images using Adobe Illustrator. You can find that link below in the About section of this course or under the Projects and Resources tab. Remember, you can't see the Projects and Resources tab if viewing this on an iPad or a smartphone. I've also put together a quick list of reference links for you in a downloadable PDF. This includes links to various online wholesale marketplaces, other helpful classes on the topic, I've put together, and a quick reference cheap for material recommendations. I hope you will join me in the class and learn a thing or two about creating your own wholesale line of greeting cards. [MUSIC] 2. Designs to Begin: [MUSIC] You may be wondering how many card designs you need to begin. Many people have different opinions, but I recommend starting with 20 unique designs. Don't use the same design and recolor it. I have made this mistake and talk about it later. But try to come up with a good variety of popular categories, like birthday cards, everyday cards, or holiday cards. Once you have chosen 20 designs to begin, list out all of the names, the category, and assign a skew or a stock keeping unit to each card. For example, you could name your card birthday polar bear, the sku is C, either a dash or no dash 0001, leaving your room into the thousands for more cards to come. Then it would be in the category of a birthday card. You could also create a simple system with a little bit more detail. For example, skew BC 0001, noting the first sku is a birthday card as opposed to number 2, the thank you Floral example where it can be TC for thank you card. This is entirely up to you, but I recommend just sticking with whatever system you create and being consistent within that system. I personally use the sku and card name as my file name with whichever suffix the file needs. For example, a.AI or.PDF or even a.PNG. Here's an example of that same birthday polar bear. I use all dashes in my filename, no spaces. This is a great way just to stay organized. When we organized by sku, the numbers should line up numerically in your documents or any folder that you're storing them. It should be easy to go back and figure out which card you need. Now that you've chosen your top 20 designs to launch a wholesale shop, let's discuss listing details in the next lesson. 3. Setting up Listings: [MUSIC] You will want to organize anywhere from two to five listing images for each card. It is important that the card design is very clear to see and I recommend using a white or transparent background. It can also help retailers to include an envelope behind the card. As you see in this listing example on the far right of this slide. Other images could include the inside of the card if you have texts, the current packaging to show if it has a sleeve or a sticker, styled photographs of the card with the background, or even your branding or box packaging can be helpful. The better your photography, the more professional you will look and likely to get an order. In these different examples here, the far right images seem much more professional to me than the left. But if this is holding you back, I recommend putting out something to the best of your ability just to get started and then hope to bring in some more professional photography as you grow. But if you can start off with great photos, I think that is the way to go. Retailers typically want to know a few details about the cards, including things like the size of the card, the materials, the packaging, where it is manufactured, what type of paper you use, and if the cards include envelopes, and even what kind of envelope. Here is a sample of listing in bullet point format where you can see I'm listing out some of the quick bullet points about the card that I can then duplicate for all 20 card designs. Now for the fun part, pricing, it's always a good idea to check the latest industry standard. As so many price standards are constantly shifting. Wholesale is generally about half the cost the greeting card may sell for retail. If you walk into a shop, you may purchase a greeting card for say $5.50 in US dollars. However, as the designer selling the card, you are going to sell it for half of that, so $2.75 wholesale. Just be sure each card doesn't cost you that wholesale price of $2.75 in this example to make, as you want, make any profit if it's costing you that much. This includes accounting for the card, the envelope sleeve, the belly bands, the packaging, and even shipping the materials to you although when you're shipping out orders, typically the retailer covers that. Lastly, when communicating each card designed to retailers for an order, transactions are typically organized by sku. This is standard in the industry and helpful to know exactly which card the retailer may want to buy. Additionally, if you plan to ship your cards internationally, you will need a tariff code and product dimensions. I use the code 4909.00 for all of my greeting cards shipped from the United States. I highly recommend purchasing a shipping scale online to weigh your products and packages. I think I bought mine for about $30 and it has been so handy for creating my own shipping labels at home and weighing every single package. 4. Materials: [MUSIC] Deciding to carry inventory to include a number of different materials and supplies. Before even thinking of the cards themselves, you will need to make sure you have a way to print shipping labels or packing slips and professionally prepare your files for the printer. I recommend using something like Adobe Illustrator or photoshop, Adobe Acrobat. Having a printer and ink can save you a lot of time, although you can always print at whatever shipping carrier place that you are sending out your packages. A pen to add your handwritten note, and a shipping scale, as I mentioned previously, is super handy to weigh every package or the products. When it comes time to order cards, I recommend ordering 15 of each design. This way you have the option to sell two cases with a few spares for either a direct-to-consumer or contingency for minor printing errors. It's standard to celebrating cards wholesale and little bundles of six, which is called a case. So you would have two cases available for each design, which adds up to 12 cards, and then you would have a couple of spares. You may also want to wrap those cases in something called a belly band. Many brands do this differently. I preferred cutting down craft paper and using a custom branded stamp for each of my cases. But if you were to scale this to be super large, that might be a little bit more time-consuming and it may be better to pre-order those. I would cut down craft paper and then seal them with a custom branded sticker as you can see in these images. Then there's packaging materials. It is nice to have packing paper to pad the order depending on how many cards the retailer orders. I find it helpful to include a little thank you card or postcard with brand information on it as well. I would often save brown packing paper from any order or packaging and shipment that I would receive in the mail, whether it was personal or for business. I also purchased a big craft brown paper roll of packing paper that came in super handy. You will need a box and packing tape, and oftentimes you can save time by purchasing shipping label stickers printed right at home. I've found compostable packaging labels that fit in a standard inkjet printer and will include the recommendation and the PDF that goes along with this course. These are the three box sizes I have found to be perfect for orders. This took a lot of trial and error and understanding what an average order was. When you begin wholesale, you are going to establish a minimum order amount in whether that's US $ or some other currency. Typically it hovers around the $100 mark for greeting cards. I believe my opening order was a $115 to begin, and reorders are a little bit lower, I priced mine at around $80. Again, you can do a little bit of research, but based on that understanding, these box sizes worked really well. Now, the small box is really only good for direct-to-consumer. Unless you're selling cards individually on your website or online, I would stick with the medium and large box sizes when opening a wholesale greeting shop. 5. Packing Orders: [MUSIC] There are several things to consider when packing an order. These four are my top recommendations to consider. Is it practical, are the card secure, packing slip included, and the box securely taped to travel? Are you representing your brand? Are you including any personal thank you note or contact information in the box? Do your materials reflect your brand values? Perhaps you find it important to use eco-friendly materials, in which case you probably shouldn't wrap your box with plastic packing tape. Who is your shipping provider? Do you have a drop-off location near your home or studio? What days and hours can you drop orders off? [MUSIC] 6. Marketing Your Wholesale Line: [MUSIC] I found sending email pitches to new shops, to be the best way to market your cards, and let shops know about your wholesale line. I would also include a link to my digital wholesale catalog, and where to shop my cards. Many brands will also send out physical mailers in the form of a postcard or even a full wholesale catalog, with samples to shops they're really trying to get into. You can always check big box retailer submission guidelines, as well as some of them, except submissions at different times of the year. Trade shows have been popular for any stationary shop to share their greeting cards with the world, and a larger pool of companies. I have listed a few of the more well-known trade shows in the industry here. And lastly, you can always try to hire a wholesale rep. Many representatives work in certain territories, and can promote your wholesale line to even more shops. 7. Lessons I Learned: [MUSIC] I'm not sure if you're like me, but I know that I personally learn the most by actually doing something and that always comes along with mistakes. In my very first launch of greeting cards, I made the mistake of printing more than one colorway of the exact same design. While it may be great to offer different color combinations in the pattern, in fabric world, it's not the smartest strategy when trying out new greeting cards. I would recommend picking the best version and only printing that card. Test the card by putting it up for sale and see if it sells well before even considering a new color variation if you honestly need one at all. I personally think your time is better spent creating an entirely new card design altogether. The second mistake I made was launching an online wholesale shop with only one listing photo for each card. I wish I had hired a professional photographer earlier on the process and uploaded at least three photos for each listing and probably more to give retailers a really good idea of the card quality and packaging. Third, I wish I had collected email addresses early on in order to build a wholesale newsletter list. Many online wholesale market places do not provide you with the retailer's email. They allow you to message them directly through the platform, but I always find it better to communicate directly and track your own emails. Creating a wholesale newsletter that went out once a month was really helpful to stay on top of mind and show retailers what was new, what was on sale or coming soon. While I made a lot of minor mistakes that I would adjust if I were starting over, I also started out strong in regards to my brand image packaging, having an organized and professional catalog and reacting to what was selling well. For me, one of the most fascinating parts of creating new products was watching which designs sold out. It was always a surprise, although I did get a good idea who was buying my cards and which card designs or categories were doing well. I would recommend paying attention to which designs sell and plan a design strategy around the data. 8. Next Steps & Course Project: [MUSIC] Hey, you made it through the course. I would recommend taking a look at these few next steps to get you going with your own wholesale line and to get it out into the world. Start noticing stationery shops or bookshops when you're in town, or traveling around. Most shops prefer exclusivity, which means they're the only shop that sell your cards in a particular zip code, speaking to US in particular. Collect the best email and person to contact. I think building up a list of potential shops to pitch to is one of the hardest or mediate, most time-consuming parts of the business. Once you get all of your inventory and packaging ready to go, it is time to launch. As always, if you have any questions or want to share your brand new shop to the world, reach out to me either through Skillshare, my email, or DM me on Instagram. I also have a lot of other free resources in classes for creatives. You can find out everything on my website by visiting coitcreative.com. Don't forget about the class project. It would be great to see one sample listing you've put together, including the listing image, the greeting card title, and a sample listing description. Upload your image and information below under the projects and resources tab, so we can all cheer each other on help each other out, and provide helpful feedback. Thank you so much for watching and best of luck launching your own wholesale greeting card line.