Greeting Card Business Plan, With a Projection

A greeting card business plan is a plan for many designs in small numbers. A card costs well under a dollar to make and sells for six at retail, but most cards are sold to shops at half that, six of a design at a time, and every design is printed in a run of a few hundred before the first one sells. So the plan has to show what a card costs, how much of the selling goes through shops, and the cash tied up in print runs across dozens of designs. In the example below, a card company in Rhode Island sells cards to shops, at markets and online, boxed sets and stickers, and ends its first year about $29,800 ahead on $64,100 of sales, before paying the owner for the designing. Below is a description example, each part of the plan, print runs, the first year month by month, the startup budget, and a free template.

The short version

• Describe the business in a paragraph: the style, the occasions, who buys, the goals.
• Cost a card: the printing, the envelope and sleeve, the minutes, the rep or platform fee.
• Shops buy at half the retail price, six of a design; markets and online leave the most a card.
• Print each design in a run, and reprint the ones that sell.
• Trade shows and samples are how shops find you; budget them.
• TaroStack keeps every design counted, reprints on a reorder list, and shop orders on one list. More below.

Part 1: the business description

Fox Point Paper Co., a made-up greeting card company in Providence, Rhode Island, I use in these examples, writes:

Fox Point Paper Co. designs illustrated greeting cards for birthdays, thanks, sympathy and the holidays, printed by a local press in runs of 250, sold to gift shops and bookstores, at markets, and online, with boxed sets and stickers.

Part 2: what a card costs

The designing isn't in the cost; it's the owner's work, and the profit pays for it. A card sold through a sales rep or a wholesale platform pays its commission, which is as big a cost as the printing. What to charge shops so it still pays is in how to price handmade items for wholesale.

Part 3: customers and prices

A shop that sells the card for $6 buys it for $3. At full speed the shops take nearly four cards of every five, but they bring about $2,600 of the month's $6,400 of contribution; the cards sold directly bring about $2,000 from a quarter as many. The shops are worth it because a card on a shop's rack sells all year without anyone standing beside it, and a shop that reorders is the steadiest money in the business. Shops order to a minimum, six of a design; how minimums work on both sides is in minimum order quantity, and the order form a shop fills in is in wholesale order form template.

Part 4: print runs

Every design is printed before it sells, in runs of 250 here, because a press charges a setup for each run and the price a card falls with the length of the run. Thirty designs at launch is 7,500 cards, envelopes and sleeves, about $4,350 before the first sale, and the plan's working cash is mostly that. At full speed the business sells about 1,900 cards a month across its designs, so an average run lasts about four months, but the averages hide the truth: the best designs sell out in weeks and the worst sit for a year. Reprint by what sells, and retire what doesn't. When to reorder is the same question as in reorder point example.

Part 5: the first year, month by month

Fixed costs are $1,155 a month: studio space ($300), design software ($60), a trade show averaged over the year ($400), the wholesale platform and website ($80), samples and catalogs for shops ($150), market fees ($100), insurance ($30), and software and card fees ($35). Sales start at 15% of full speed and reach it in month 11:

The year's sales are $64,056 and the profit $29,814, before paying the owner for the designing. The projection counts each card's printing when it sells; the first runs are paid for before then, from the working cash. Holiday cards sell from October and stop on December 25; plan those runs to sell out, because a Christmas card in January is next year's stock.

Part 6: the startup budget

At $29,800 a year, the $6,400 spent before working cash is earned back by month 7. A one-page sheet a buyer can order from is in sell sheet template.

Get the template

Download the greeting card business plan workbook. Four sheets: your cards, sets and stickers with price, variable cost and a month's volume at full speed; the first year, month by month, with sales, profit and cash; your fixed costs; and your startup budget with working cash. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.

Where this stops working

Forty designs, each with its own count, reprints of the twelve that sell, a hundred shops each ordering six of a dozen designs, a sales rep's orders arriving by email, and boxed sets made from the same cards. A notebook can't say which designs are down to their last 30, which shops are due a reorder, or whether a boxed set run will leave enough of the birthday cards for the shops.

How TaroStack does it

TaroStack keeps every design counted, reprints on a reorder list, and shop orders on one list.

Every design counted. Each design is an item with its own SKU, counted on a phone or with a scanner, so the cards left of each are a number, and reprints come up on a reorder list in days of cover, from how fast each design really sells.

Shop orders. Each shop's order is a sales order, with its six of each design, showing whether there are enough while you're typing it, and one picking list for the day's orders.

Boxed sets as a recipe. A boxed set is a recipe of eight cards, envelopes and a box, so a run of sets takes the cards off stock, and the birthday cards for the shops stay a number you can see.

Counting, sales orders, recipes and reorder lists are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.

Questions people also ask

Is a greeting card business profitable?

It can be. In the example, a card company selling to shops, at markets and online ends its first year about $29,800 ahead on $64,100 of sales, before paying the owner for the designing.

How much does it cost to start a greeting card business?

In the example, $11,400: a computer and drawing tablet, display racks, a trade show booth, photos and a catalog, a website, and $5,000 of working cash, mostly for the first print runs of 30 designs.

How much do stores pay for greeting cards?

Half the retail price, as a rule. In the example, a card that sells for $6 in a shop is sold to the shop for $3, six of a design at a time.

How many designs should a greeting card line start with?

Enough to fill a shop's rack and cover the occasions people buy for; the example starts with 30, printed in runs of 250, and reprints the ones that sell.