The greeting card business is cutthroat. It's not all dreamy sunsets and cinnamon scented candles. Make one wrong move, the long knives come out and the hair flies.
So how does a tiny card and gift shop like Yours Truly (959 Cherry St. SE) survive in East Hills? Owners Susan and John Walborn have a passion for the power of greeting cards to share an emotional connection. They created their own niche and developed an innovative business model that allowed them to make it through the recession while expanding into three related stores.
Susan and John opened Yours Truly eight years ago in a modest space on Cherry Street. Yours Truly would have to be different to compete with the gift card chains. The major card companies thrive because they offer consistent quality and thoughtful messages for every occasion, even those that they invented. Worried about seeming cheap, buyers have been reassured by the motto, "When you care enough to send the very best."
Susan knew that some people were looking for better than the very best. They were looking for the perfect card. Yours Truly would have to offer cards that were of the highest quality and unlike anything else that could be found at chain stores.
They stocked the store with cards from independent companies. The cards had character on the outside and memorable inscriptions on the inside, from funny to weepy. The shop found a community that appreciated its eclectic selection of cards and gifts. Eventually, the shop expanded into a bigger space and then the YT Galleria for fine art and furniture and David & Bathsheba for boutique clothing and body care products.
Despite the success, something still bothered them. While their cards were fun and different, they were the same fun and different cards being sold at other independent shops. That situation had to do with how the greeting card industry is organized.
Card companies design and print the cards, which are sold to brokers. The brokers hire salespeople who sell the card to the shops.
"You could tell which salespeople worked with which stores," John says. "They all had the same stuff."
After everyone in the supply chain takes their cut, the artists who design the cards are left with peanuts. That didn't seem fair.
Susan began looking for local artists to design art cards for the store, hoping these unique cards would give the store an edge. Over a two year period, Susan worked with about 100 artists to help them design and print cards to sell. It was exhausting work, and of all the artists, the Walborns ended up working with two. It turns out that the artists were not business people. They treated the shop like an artists co-op.
Creativity was also hard to find elsewhere. Artists on websites like Etsy were doing all the same stuff. Major trade shows like the Merchandise Mart were not much help either. So, Susan started over. She began looking for artists who were entrepreneurial.
"An artist can only sell a painting once," Susan says. "But you can sell cards based on that painting over and over again."
That's where the real money is. She recruited a group of artists with unique artistic visions.
Susan saw
Jacquelyn Kroll's illustrations while she was still enrolled at Grand Valley State University. Susan admired her delicate floral illustrations and liked how Jacquelyn marketed herself at her university gallery show. Her graphic flower designs in pastel colors make greeting cards that are bold, yet sweet.
Another Yours Truly artist is
Ann Willey. Indian miniatures, early American portrait paintings and Latin American folk art influence her childlike paintings. Recurring themes such as family, being nurtured, memory and the life of animals translate naturally into greeting cards.
Norma Baker Blair is completely different. She is a folk artist who creates collages of animals and people using dried leaves, herbs, sticks, flowers and moss that she finds by her home in the Barry State Game Area. Her image of a spry rabbit made out of Lamb's Ear flower petals is magical as a greeting card.
Once Susan finds a new artist she spends two hours interviewing them. If she decides to proceed, she walks the artist through the entire process to design and sell professional quality greeting cards. It can take up to three months to develop a line.
They go far beyond creating the cards. Susan shows them how to make card headers with logos on the front and re-ordering information on the back. Headers are important, because they hold the cards up in the rack. They develop order forms, design catalogs and put together sample card decks. Everything a greeting card company has, they have too.
They discuss presence and how to maintain a card line. The next challenge is to design note cards. If you can sell a greeting card profitably for $4, then can you sell a pack of six note cards for $10? The goal is to continue to expand the artist's brand.
As the artists develop, they mentor newer artists and share equipment. There is no need for each artist to buy a scoring machine, for example. They buy supplies in bulk and share design ideas. As the group grew, Susan and John created Yours Truly Michigan to organize them into a consortium. The consortium now has 12 artists.
A salesperson was hired to rep the artists in the consortium. Every time a card line was sold to a store, the sales rep takes a commission and the artist gets the rest. No fees flow back to Yours Truly Michigan or Susan or John.
If they aren't making money off the consortium, why do it? Susan answers that the shop gets something just as valuable.
"We get access to their newest cards before anyone else," she says.
The artists are loyal to Yours Truly and the shop always has something new. Susan and John couldn't depend on card companies or distributors to provide them with the stock, so they created it themselves.
John cautions that they are not completely altruistic.
"We are running a business," he says. "We are much smarter business people now, because of the recession."
Yours Truly has survived the economic crisis thanks to the relationships they have built with the artists and their customers. Susan and John would like to continue adding artists and expanding the Yours Truly Michigan consortium. Ideally, they would like the salesperson to work full-time repping the cards throughout the Midwest.
Once they have enough business, Yours Truly will establish a high-end letterpress. Having its own press will allow the consortium to print cards at a volume and finally make a profit. They will be able to do print work for other artists. The press would also create job opportunities.
Yours Truly will continue to compete with the national card companies and chain stores from their little corner on Cherry Street in East Hills. They will do so by inventing new ways to sustain the business while creating opportunities for artists to sustain themselves.
As John says, "It's not enough to get to the top of the heap. If you haven't brought others with you, you have failed."
Steven Geoffrey de Polo, a resident of Grand Rapids, works in nonprofit fundraising. He also serves on the board of the Kids Food Basket and writes a monthly column for Revue Magazine.Photos:
Various works by Yours Truly artists
John and Susan Walborn (2)
Photographs by Brian Kelly - All Rights Reserved