Production and sale of postcards: profitable postcrossing. How to Sell Postcards the Right Way: The DoMyCard Founder's Business Story How to Start a Postcard Business

How to open, what capital is required, what needs to be acquired? These and other organizational issues for creating homemade postcards.

Everyone loves and desires to possess a unique and one of a kind thing. Whether it's an expensive mansion on a hill, a vintage dress, or an original handmade postcard. If you are thinking about working at home and decide to create postcards with your own hands, the women's magazine Women's Tricks will help and talk about the intricacies and features of this business.

Business idea from scratch: Why postcards?

Firstly, in a year there are at least 5 reasons to present a pleasant gift to dear and beloved people. A handmade postcard will only emphasize its significance for you, because it was chosen or ordered exclusively for him, especially if the postcard is personalized.

Secondly, affordable pricing policy. On average, the cost of handmade postcards varies from 50-3000 rubles, depending on the complexity of execution and decor.

Thirdly, an individual approach. You know that your friend is crazy about orange roses, so order a card with petals, buds or a picture of a huge basket of these flowers. In addition to the exclusive design, you can order a special text of congratulations, after reading which, it will be immediately clear that it was you who created it, and did not choose the first verse in the congratulations catalog.

Fourth. Quality and originality. Many masters work exclusively with environmentally friendly natural materials. If a person is allergic to chemical elements or he is an adherent of everything natural, such a card will be an insanely pleasant gift!

Who is this type of business for?

Undoubtedly, creative, creative and extraordinary people. The more interesting your idea is, the greater the chances for successful business development.

In addition to creativity and inexhaustible inspiration, you should have at least 4-7 free hours a week.

And also be assiduous, patient, responsible and ready for monotonous work of the same type, for example, with a large order of one type of postcards.

What do you need?

It is necessary to purchase material for creating postcards with your own hands - scrap paper and decorative elements. At first, you can use printing on a printer, embroidery and decor in the form of rhinestones, beads, ribbons, polymer clay, feathers, etc. Then switch to a more expensive type of decoration - real flowers, sweets, Swarovski stones, pearls, etc.

Sales

One of the most important and problematic aspects of the development of any type of business. Be sure to register and create special groups on social networks, forums and websites.

Participate in exhibitions, fairs, especially in special events in preparation for the wedding celebration.

Agree with wedding and flower shops about the partnership. They offer your product to customers and receive a certain percentage of the sale.

Post ads for the production of exclusive handmade postcards.

But for any of the options above, you will need to create a portfolio. It will become the main and decisive factor in ordering postcards from you.

Profitability

If you create a wide variety of postcard layouts (portfolio) and work to order, then at first you will need 2000-5000 rubles to purchase primary material.

On average, the cost of one postcard varies from $5-10. Let's calculate the profit at the very minimum cost of $ 5 and sales per month for 200 postcards.

So: 200*5$=1000$

We calculate the cost of buying material and decor, which is about $ 2 per postcard:

Total net profit per month from 200 postcards: 1000$-400$=600$

And this is far from the limit if you constantly expand your range and look for new distribution channels!

Business plan for a handmade postcard company

This business plan belongs to a Western company that is developing its own product line, which is distinguished by creative design and innovative solutions.

Six months before the official opening of production, a portfolio (examples of work) of the company will be prepared, which is planned to be used to work with stores and outlets in the region.

The target audience consists predominantly of women, who, according to research, buy more than 80% of all postcards sold. For this reason, the authors of the business plan intend to sell their products through small boutiques, specialty stores, flower shops and gift and souvenir shops. This business plan provides information regarding the product description, company management, development strategies and financial goals.

The business began as a hobby for two sisters who designed, printed, cut and glued greeting cards and envelopes for them. This hobby has grown into a stable source of income. Personalized unique handmade postcards are a good idea for a gift and expression of attention to relatives and friends. Handwritten cards remain the best way to express your feelings, as they evoke emotions.

The company produces only one product, which is divided into three types. Her goal is to create handmade greeting cards of consistently high quality, originality and uniqueness for any occasion. The mission of the enterprise is to increase the availability of this type of product.

Of course, the market for greeting cards has long been formed. A wide range of products is presented at retail outlets - from computer multi-circulation postcards to handmade postcards. The unit price ranges from $0.5 to $8.5. World-famous companies such as Hallmark and American Greetings operate in this segment. Moreover, in addition to postcards on cardboard, many companies produce postcards in electronic form, which can be found in large quantities on the Internet. New companies engaged in the production of greeting products successfully compete with others, choosing their own narrow niche in the market - their theme, price category, quality and location of production.

download western handmade postcard company business plan

Profitability calculator for this business

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Happy anniversary, Christmas, say hello, cheer up, ask for forgiveness, express feelings - all this and even more can be done with the help of the simplest postcard. For this and a number of other reasons, the business idea of ​​\u200b\u200bcreating postcards is one of the most relevant and in demand today.

Moreover, you do not have to open a whole printing shop, and you can create your product while sitting at home, combining it with other things or work.

"Hand Made" or Made with love...

Recently, handmade products have become extremely popular. And there is a simple explanation for this:

• First, there is a chance to purchase an exclusive product.
• Secondly, you can easily realize the most cherished dreams of the person to whom the card is intended.
• Thirdly, by presenting an exclusive gift, you emphasize the importance and respect for the donee.
• Fourthly, you can choose a postcard from natural and environmentally friendly material.
• Fifthly, a personal approach to each customer.

In addition to the above points, the business of creating postcards is notable for the fact that the pricing policy is available to absolutely every client. On average, the cost of a postcard created varies from 50 to 2500 rubles.

Who is this type of business for?

An excellent business idea for women on maternity leave and for housewives. They can also be engaged in creative, creative and extraordinary personalities. In a word, the more original and interesting your idea is, the more chances you have for successful business development.

However, be prepared for the same type and monotonous if you receive a large order for one type of work in the future. Also, you must have at least 5-8 hours a week.

What do you need to start a postcard business?

At first, you will need to purchase material for creating and decorating postcards - scrap paper, ribbons, lace, flowers, polymer clay, stones, and other other design elements.

On average, at first, 3000-6000 rubles will be enough for you to purchase primary material and create a portfolio.

Where to sell ready-made postcards?

The most suitable and accessible distribution channel is the Internet, here groups, forums, websites, social networks and blogs will help you.

Take an active part in fairs, exhibitions and other other events, especially in preparation for weddings.

You can also negotiate with flower, wedding and other salons about partnership. They will offer your product to their customers for a certain percentage.

How much can you earn making postcards?

At the first stage, your main goal is to create a portfolio, thanks to which clients will immediately see your work and choose.

So, the average cost of a handmade postcard is $7-15. Let's calculate at the very minimum cost of $ 7.

The cost of material and decor is $ 3.

Let's say you sell 100 postcards a month.

So, we get the following result from one type of postcards per month:

Monthly income from one postcard: 7*100=700$

Material and decoration costs: 3*100*300$

Total profit from one postcard per month: 700-300=400$

And this is far from the limit, but profit from just one type of postcards. Increase the assortment, look for new distribution channels and you will receive a solid income!

Even 100 years ago, when telephone communication and social networks did not exist, handwritten letters were the only way to communicate and notify. Now every person can daily send messages of different content and volume at any time of the day and place in the world by e-mail, but this did not force some people to completely abandon paper correspondence.

“How nice it would be to receive a beautiful postcard with warm words…”, the Portuguese Paulo Magalhesa once thought and created a postcrossing project that provides an opportunity for millions of people from around the world to communicate and exchange postcards.

The creative movement arose in 2005 under the influence of bookcrossing, a social movement whose goal is the free exchange of books that, after reading by their owners, can be left in a cafe, in a park, at a train station and a bridge, etc. Over the 12 years of its existence, 676,000 people from 208 countries have become postcrossers. During the same time, more than 40,000,000 postcards were sent.

The success can be attributed to the simplicity and accessibility of the project. To become a postcrosser, you first need to register on the official website. To do this, you must specify not only your name, email and password, but also all the necessary email data.

Before you send your first postcard, you need to write at least 5 messages, which confirms the account of a real person. The site determines the addressers randomly, therefore, when sending a postcard, the addressee does not even know to whom. When the card reaches its destination, its owner registers receipt, and the sender is sure that someone received it.

There are other ways of sharing when several people join the process or the postcard travels the world many times. The most active participating countries are Russia, China, USA, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Finland, Czech Republic.

The largest number of postcards was sent from Germany, Russia, the USA, the Netherlands and China. Thus, the popularity of postcards has increased, and they have become a sought-after commodity in many countries of the world.

Postcrossing is a creative activity that provides a special experience, but it can also become a profitable business out of a hobby. Such a movement turned out to be interesting and exciting not only for amateurs, but also for professionals - philocartists, who collect various postcards. They collect both exclusive old and original new postcards.

This business niche remains unknown to many aspiring entrepreneurs who have no idea how much money an active postcrosser can spend on postcards per month. Such people can become regular customers of a company that produces unique postcards in a small edition.

Target audience and business development options

The business for the production of postal and greeting cards can be developed in three directions, on which the target audience and start-up capital depend. The first option - opening your own printing house - is the most time-consuming and costly option. It will not be possible to implement such a project for less than 2,500,000 rubles even in a small town, since most of the budget will go to the purchase of expensive and high-quality equipment.

You will also need a room of impressive size, where you can place the equipment. A lot of time and effort will also be spent on finding highly qualified workers, who will need at least 50 people to put the production of postcards on stream and not incur additional losses.

The main expenses are covered by profit in 1-2 years, but during this time the enterprise may already go bankrupt. Of course, it is much easier to make money on postcrossing if you have your own printing house, because then it will be possible to set your own quality standards, control the supply of raw materials and avoid losses due to the fault of another enterprise.

In order to purchase a postcard, people of different ages and social status can come to the printing house itself, so this business development option covers a wide range of target audiences.

Attention! If you can buy a postcard in a store for 15 rubles, then its cost is about 8 rubles, and if it was printed in a personal printing house, then the price drops to 5 rubles apiece.

Opening an online store

The second direction for the postcrossing business is the opening of an online store. This method is simpler and less troublesome, it is suitable for start-up entrepreneurs who do not have large financial investments or do not understand printing standards, so they would just like to sell products already created by someone.

In the future, the online store can expand its scope and not only sell postcards, but also look for original artists, create postcard layouts and send them to print.

An online store can be run by one person who will create the site himself, but in the future, with an increase in sales and the development of the company, it will be necessary to expand the staff.

Ideally, for the prosperity of an online postcard store, you need 6 people:

• a programmer who will create an electronic resource, will maintain and modernize it;
• an artist who will produce ideas for a unique postcard design;
• a copywriter who will write about store news, make product descriptions, etc.;
• a translator who adapts the content of the site for buyers from other countries;
• an accountant who will professionally maintain the necessary documentation;
• content manager who will administer the store's social media pages.

The selection of qualified and experienced staff, as well as the provision of an original assortment, are the main stages on which the success of a postcard store depends. As a rule, people from 18 to 35 years old make purchases via the Internet, because they are not suspicious of electronic resources in the same way as the older generations.

Work to order

The third option for the postcrossing business is the search for rare custom-made postcards for philocartists. This area of ​​business requires not only a lot of time and acquaintances in certain circles, but also the ability to distinguish fakes from originals.

You have to be an expert to be in this industry. Those who do not understand old postcards can work for collectors of modern postcards. They "hunt" for exclusive postcards, which are issued in small print runs (100-200 pieces). The competition in this segment is negligible, and the costs for finding and selling postcards are low.

Legal subtleties

Beginning entrepreneurs most often stop at the second option for developing a business on postcrossing, namely the creation of an online store, since, in addition to the above advantages, it is also easy to formalize it legally. First you need to register as an individual entrepreneur.

There are four ways to do this:

• self-registration, after paying a state duty in the amount of 800 rubles;
• registration via mail is a lengthy process, but mandatory if the business is not opened in the city where the entrepreneur is registered;
• registration through a law firm is an expensive pleasure that allows you to save your time and nerves;
• IP registration by proxy.

The last three options relieve the novice businessman of the obligation to collect the necessary documents, but, knowing the list of necessary papers, everyone can easily do it himself.

To register an IP you will need:

• a copy of all completed pages of the passport
• receipt of payment of state duty;
• application for the transition to a simplified taxation system;
• application for state registration of an individual as an individual entrepreneur.

For ease of accounting, the owner of an online store can sell postcards, make a profit for it and deduct taxes under a simplified system or under a general one (STS or OSN).

You can also work according to UTII (taxation system for certain types of business activities), if the goods are paid for at the point of issue, and not on the site. This form of interaction with the buyer falls under the definition of retail trade under Art. 346.27 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation.

taxes

USN is best suited if the company has a small number of employees. With the simplified tax system, the amounts of taxes deducted will be significantly less than with the simplified tax system, and reporting is simplified, so small and medium-sized businesses choose the simplified tax system.

Under the simplified taxation system, there are two rates for taxes: 6% deducted from income, or 15% from “revenue minus expenses”. Rates are selected individually.

The first option is convenient if the cost of doing business is much less than income, and the entrepreneur does not want such information to pass through the tax service. For trading, a more acceptable rate of 15% is considered to be paid by the IP, after deducting the amount of expenses from income. In this case, documentary recording of all expenses is mandatory.

If the entrepreneur has settled on the simplified taxation system, he needs to submit an application in duplicate within 30 days after registration, and ideally during it. You can issue such a document by filling out the form in the form No. 26.2-1 (KND 1150001) manually or free of charge on a special electronic resource.

Important! The transition to the simplified tax system can only be carried out at the beginning of the calendar year. If you are late, then during the current year the entrepreneur will have to keep complex accounting and deduct large amounts of taxes.

To register a business, you must specify the OKVED code, which more accurately determines the scope of the new enterprise. You can specify several of them, so that in the future there will be an opportunity to expand the scope of business without monetary and time losses for reissuing documents. The universal code for all online stores is 52.61.2 "Retail trade carried out directly by means of television, radio, telephone and the Internet."

In addition to it, you can indicate in the papers:

• 52.6 Retail sales outside stores;
• 52.61 Retail trade by order;
• 52.61.1 Retail postal (parcel) trade;
• 52.63 Other retail sale outside stores;
• 72.6 Other activities related to the use of computers and information technologies.

If the assortment of an online store consists not only of postcards, but also of related products for them, then the entrepreneur needs to indicate other OKVED codes:

• 52.47.3 Retail sale of paper and office supplies;
• 52.48.36 Retail sale of philatelic and numismatic goods;
• 64.11.14 Other postal activities.

To produce postcards, which are then planned to be sold, the following codes are suitable:

• 21.23 Manufacture of stationery;
• 22.15 Other publishing activities;
• 22.22 Printing activities n.e.c.

Postcrossing business promotion

It is easy to tell potential buyers about a company that makes unique postcards and sells them, since the advertised product is simple and understandable, attracts attention with its originality and may be of interest even to those who are not postcrossers.

Social networks and contextual advertising in search engines are considered the best way to promote handmade products.

We promote in social networks

To photograph a product in style, to talk about it in an interesting way, to arrange a promotion or a raffle, to invite a respected blogger to recommend it to their subscribers - these are the free features of Instagram, Telegram, Facebook and Vkontakte, with which you can quickly tell a large number of people about manufactured and sold products.

Those who will search on Google or Yandex about how and where to buy unique postcards or other goods for postcrossing will definitely become your customers if you use contextual advertising services. A person in the background on different sites will be prompted to go to the site of your online store and get acquainted with the assortment. Such a fashionable and convenient way of promotion does not require special time and money.

The shops

When the company becomes recognizable at the city level, local book and stationery stores will gladly accept original goods for sale. You can talk about unique postcards at specialized fairs of handmade products. They are regularly held in almost every city, or at exhibitions dedicated to public holidays.

Instead of a conclusion

In order to finally decide whether it is worth doing a postcrossing business, how profitable it is, whether it is difficult to achieve success, it is enough to weigh the pros and cons.

The benefits of starting a business selling postcards for a novice entrepreneur include:

• low cost of goods;
• its relevance among postcrossers and philocartists;
• demand exceeding supply;
• ease of legal registration of business;
• the ability to advertise the company in a short time;
• low initial investment;
• a hobby that has grown into a business;
• work at home;
• low level of risks;
• the opportunity to realize their own creative aspirations.

Negative factors include:

• long payback;
• low income;
• narrow segment of the target audience;
• the difficulty of creating unique postcards;
• cooperation with third-party printing houses that do not always comply with the clauses of the contract;
• the difficulty of selecting an artist whose style will glorify the enterprise;
• the need to constantly replenish the range and make it original;
• the unsteadiness of predicting the demand for a certain type of postcards;
• some seasonality.

The disadvantages of a postcrossing business are not so significant and can only alienate an entrepreneur who places too high hopes on this area and, first of all, wants to earn money, and not create something unique and beautiful.

Start-up capital was about $1000. It could have been more, at the beginning of the journey you can always spend more than you have (for promotion, for production, etc.). But taking loans or lending funds for start-ups is a thankless task. Therefore, all capital our personal funds. We risked our own, we are also responsible for this ourselves.

We don't have 70 days yet. But the most difficult thing was to launch by February 14 - it was important for us to do everything quickly in order to capture a big newsbreak as long as possible. Now we are not in a hurry, and we are more carefully approaching our next product: we conduct surveys, tests, and attract specialists. Us it was not enough in the first month.

First month we celebrated by recording a small congratulatory video.

Our business does not have a quick profit. Everything that we earned on the first product, we are now investing in the next one.

Not a good idea, we need to actively work on its implementation. The main thing is not to stop and not be afraid of transformations, if they are necessary.