Interview: Its All About The Cards

Today I had the honor of interviewing business owners Elaine Lefton and Nicole Baring of “It’s All About The Cards”. These women have a lot of creativity to share with their customers and that creativity shines through every custom order—including their custom photo canvases! So without further ado, I’d like to introduce you to Elaine and Nicole…

How did you get into designing cards? And what makes your cards stand out from the competition? Anything unique about the paper, cost, designs?
Every year when it came time to do our holiday cards, we had several requests by friends and family to help us create a distinctive card for them. We had worked together for several years on our children’s school yearbook committee. We knew we had the same likes and dislikes as far as photography and design. With Elaine’s design and marketing background and Nicole’s photography expertise we decided to start our own business designing custom photo cards. That’s how “It’s All About The Cards” was founded.

Our cards stand out because we design custom cards at not custom prices. We saw a void in the marketplace where people could have a card designed around their family photo. Sure you can go to lots of the retailers and chose one of their styles of templates or cards and they can put your photo on it. That is not what we are about. We design a 5” x 7” card around the colors in the photos to perfectly match the style and personality of the family. We customize the font, colors, verse, and design of the card. We offer Holiday Cards, Birth Announcements, Birthday Invitations, Baby and Wedding Showers Invitations , as well as Wedding Invitations and the ever growing popular Wedding save-the-date cards. We can even design Thank you cards and address labels that coordinate with your custom announcement or invitation. What you send out is a keepsake that people will look forward to receiving. We have developed a hassle-free product where all the customer has to do is address the envelopes.

We started out designing Holiday Cards, baby announcements and Wedding Save-The-Dates. We realized that new Mom’s and Bride’s-to-be needed more products and would probably want everything to coordinate. A Bride-to-be can come to us for Shower invitations, Wedding Invitations, reception and response cards, Thank you cards and address labels. A new Mom can look to us for Shower Invitation, Baby Announcements, Thank You cards and address labels as well. We want to be “One Stop Shopping” for busy Moms and Brides!

Product businesses often have a lot of overhead. How do you control expenses, keep costs down, and still increase your profit margin?
Probably one of the biggest expenses a business owner can have is rent. We both have home offices where we do all of our designing. For now all of our printing is done off-sight. We have no intention of having a retail store so that will be a huge way for us to keep expenses down.

What types of advertising have you found to be the most successful and why?
Since we just started our business in the last month, all of our orders have been through word of mouth. We will be looking into other advertising vehicles, such as subdivision newsletters and directories, home town publications, and trade/craft fairs. Another form of advertising we will look into is on the internet. We have a beautiful webpage that has been designed by Damas Marketing and we are hoping that will bring us some additional business. But for now, it’s been amazing how word of mouth can keep you busy!

To purchase custom designed cards for your special day, visit It's All About The Cards today!