Faking it til’ you fulfill it – My first wholesale order!

 I’m headed to NYC to debut my pun filled brand at the National Stationery Show this weekend! Wholesale is a lot of work but the reward of walking into a store and seeing your product is absolutely priceless!

My wholesale card selling journey started with an e-mail from the owner of a gift shop with multiple locations. At this time I was running my shop out of a storage container on my living room couch. I was printing cards in very small quantities and expecting to sell one or two a week. While reading the e-mail I got lost in acronyms and spent hours on google trying to interpret and figure out the cost to charge before responding. I actually had NO idea what I was doing or how to price my product for wholesale but I said YES and trusted my resourcefulness to figure it out. The buyer wanted these in 5 days, of course! Thanks to a background in marketing I knew what kind of printer I needed to work with and I sent them a request for an estimate as if I were my own client! I quickly sourced envelopes, packaging and canceled my plans so I could package and fold these cards and meet this buyers deadline. 

ACouplePuns was supposed to be my fun creative outlet and not something deadline driven but this felt natural so I didn’t even notice at the time. I’m used to making sense of chaos to get client work out the door so before I could even realize what I had just done, I shipped the package priority and opened the door for high volume wholesale PUN sharing!

I’ve since done my homework and buttoned a few things up but not much is different. I was able to quickly assess the cost per card, retail market cost, wholesale cost and minimum order needed to profit before I responded to that first request and my prices have stayed the same. It was a little luck and a little trust in my resourcefulness that helped me totally “fake it ‘ til I fufilled it” and now look at my hobby like an actual business. Fast forward a year later and I am selling in over 30 shops in Texas and a few others nationwide. I have a predictable monthly revenue allowing me to invest in storage space, print my product in bulk and be ready ready to jump when a rush request comes in!

Ok, so back to the Stationary Show and the video I’ve shared below!

I wanted to produce something for my booth that will leave an impression and also provides a behind the scenes glimpse at the personal touch and a little bit of puppy filled chaos that goes into your order when you buy from my shop. I figure video was the best way to stand out in a space filled with paper collateral so I recruited a local production company, shared my idea and in one Saturday put my process of fulfilling orders into a fun video. I hope you enjoy ?