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Company: The Card and Gift Company
Project: The Card and Gift Company

http://www.thecardandgiftcompany.co.uk

Dates: Jul 2007 to Feb 2008

How did the project start?

During a holiday to the USA, I noticed a company near to our hotel that provided a greeting card writing service.

I was amazed how busy they were! Clearly allowing people to buy a greeting card on-line, handwriting the customers own message and posting it for them was a want many people had.

Back in the UK I did lots of research and engaged with Business Link. It was clear that nobody was offering this service in the UK to a professional level.

What options did you consider?

I was already convinced that the market for greetings cards existed in the UK - we buy over 1 billion of them per year in the UK.

The question was would customers find it more useful if they could also add a gift with the card. Further research and market analysis showed a significant percentage of our customers would like the gift option. As a result we included gifts along with cards.

The other options to consider where:

1) do we have an on-line shop style website (simply adding items to a basket) or a more sophisticated website that allows a card and gift to be ordered for one delivery address/date, and then a further card to go to a different address/date and so on.

While no doubt this second option was more expensive, it allows our customers to shop for all of their cards and gifts in one session - some people ordering a year in advance. Each card has its own message, gift, delivery date and delivery address.

What help and expertise did you receive?

We had excellent support from Business Link, who both introduced us to an excellent supplier as well as gave us financial assistance.

Our supplier who built the website (Wharton Bradley Mack ltd) were absolutely fantastic. I know we could not have done it without them. However, it was their Internet Marketing expertise is what has really made our business successful at such an early stage.

Did you face any challenges or learn any lessons?

I think the most underestimated issue with a website project is the volume and complexity of Internet Marketing required to make the business a success.

We were very fortunate that the supplier we used was able to hold our hand through this. We now spend a great deal of time implementing these marketing techniques in order to continue to grow our business on-line.

I had naively not appreciated just how much work it takes to make an Internet business successful. At times it feels like you are in another world with all of the new phrases and Google terms you end up learning!

It really is great fun and very rewarding when you look at what we have achieved in such a short time.

What are the outcomes and how has it improved your business?

We now have a website I am really proud of and daily I get positive feedback from our customers.

We now have a top 3 spot in Google UK for all of our main keywords, (Birthday cards, greetings cards, personalised greetings cards, personalised birthday cards as well as many of the actual card categories).

According to Alexa, we are now one of the top 4000 UK websites, as ranked by traffic.

In the last week we have written and dispatched over 2,300 greetings cards and gifts on behalf of our customers. We continue to grow week by week and see no sign of the growth slowing for the foreseeable future.

It has been an amazing ride in a short 6 months since launch.

What are your plans for the future?

I am now in discussions to take on two more team members and am looking for larger premises.

Our initial target was 1000 cards per week, but now we have seen the size of the market this business could be significantly larger than even I hoped.