Hello All!, I`m back again!

[Vrs_Ltd]

Hi Vrs_Ltd, No I hadn`t heard of it before, just had a very quick peep at it now, it seems to be a sort of co-op, do you use it etc?, How much does it cost to join?

£120 to join & Lanazzurra sumes it up well...

As I understand it, Cardgains is basically what's known as a Factoring service.

The idea is that you can buy from as few or as many affiliate card suppliers within the group as you want. Cardgains will then issue you with a monthly combined invoice listing all suppliers you have bought from and money owed. Then, instead of paying each supplier separately, you pay against one invoice to Cardgains who then, in turn, pay the suppliers on your behalf.

It's convenient for the retailer, particularly if many suppliers are being used, because he only has to keep track of one invoice and not several and pay only one bill as a result. It benefits the suppliers because it's Cardgains responsibility to collect the money and chase any outstanding amounts.

One important thing to remember is that you will still be subject to each suppliers specific minimum ordering requirements. You cannot split a minimum order over several suppliers for example. So you could end up with a massive, and maybe unexpected, bill each month if you're not careful. I can see that it would be all to easy for it to run out of control without you realizing.

Personally, with only dealing with less than a dozen card suppliers at any one time, I've never really seen the point of going through Cardgains especially when you can deal with each affiliate supplier direct anyway with no problem.

On the other hand, if you are running a dedicated card shop with many tens of suppliers then it might be worth considering.

It is VERY usefull if like myself you spend a lot with multiple suppliers - one payment pays all.......

You also get extra discount from suppliers using cardgains rangeing from 5% to 15%

 

[Digbeth Court]

Maybe it is just me but I would like a card shop where I could walk in, choose a card fill it in and have the shop take care of the postage and posting how many people have stamps handy?
This could happen at the time of purchase or give me a voucher/ID on the envelope or similar so I can sit in the cafe next door write my card and drop it back for sending (drop box towards the back of the store of course!
Simple and convenient, good for business, your bulk postage will be cheaper than them buying stamps, but you charge a round 50p for the service
You will need something like that though as I would hesitate to say that sending any from of paper based communication through the post is a growth area!

Really like this idea; maybe if you expanded your stock portfolio to include interesting or high quality postcards of the town/local area, you might get students wanting to drop a line to mum & dad the old-fashioned way, plus potential tourist trade (if there's any in your neck of the woods)?

 

[deniser]

Actually Ashbash has a very good point. Moonpig and Funky Pigeon type personalisation seem to be very popular.

 

[kelvin1950]

Without sounding awful, just an observation, Do you actually support anyone opening a B&M shop, you do seem to be overtly negative all the time!.

That would be because most of the regulars posting here have run B&M shops and made some/all/even more of the mistakes that are being pointed out to you.

What you're getting here is experience. You cannot buy that at any price.

Our B&M has been open almost a year, information from here has saved us money and, probably, our business.

 

[Stuart Bailey]

I hate to sound negative but I think you have to look closely on the figures on this idea, work out how many cards a day you need to sell to make a profit.

My concern is that people are sending fewer cards because of the cost of stamps.

Secondly do students send each other cards? I would have thought that most of them can hardly afford it and with the use of twitter and facebook they will send birthday messages but other means.

Best wishes

 

[emmylou74]

more and more people I know are now giving a donation to charity rather than sending a card to someone.

You really need to sit down and look at those figures. Are they really making sense to you? You have been given some really good advice here already. You need to get a business plan together, that will help you with working out if the numbers work for you.

 

[jarod74]

Thank you to all of you!, Many many Interesting & thoughtful points there!, I really don`t know where to begin!, So I`m off for a good read/ think/ google/ working out some figures....

 

[jarod74]

Thanks again for all your input. I like the idea of Posters, I`ve found one firm that supplies all the racks for free (as long as you stock there products) & the posters are on a SOR basis - which seems a very good deal & as someone mentioned they would be an ideal `impulse` buy.

In the town where I live there are two picture framing/ artist shops, so I guess between them they will have that trade sewn up. Postcards, now they are a good idea will have to track down those. I love the `stamp` idea, although I`m a little confused as to how it will work.....would I have to `frank` each item?.

I guess I will have to have a look at what the competition is selling & get some more ideas of what to offer alongside the cards. I suppose I could do with something that would go down well with the Uni crowd.

As for working in a Card shop, I`ve worked once `years` ago on the card concession in a busy supermarket. If I remember rightly it consisted of cries of "Do you have such a such a card", endless sorting out of the cards, elbows in my ribs, lot`s of "Tuts" while I tidied & fed up husbands / men saying to there wives, "Get that card, any one will do", alongside people asking where are the prices?, "How much???", when they match the code to the card & an endless stream of cards all in the wrong place....

 

[AlexanderR]

Well as for the uni lot, Students love posters! As i mentioned earlier, looking into course that the university runs would give you an indication on what they're interested in.

Sports, Arts, Science, Engineering all point to certain mindsets, so you could buy products based around things that popular to those subjects.

 

[kulture]

Look, if you want to target students, then find out what they want to buy. I suspect you will get more millage out of a comic shop than a card shop.

 

[Page]

Jarod you seem a nice person with some imagination and who is prepared to try and suck up offered information and help and so learn - that is a good skill and might save you a lot of money and your sanity and/or help you create a very succesful business

So for what it is worth

You need to be enthusiastic and realistic - without both of these you will not last. Dreamers and hopers however enthusiastic do not tend to last and away goes their money and hopes and dreams and sometimes health

You are talking about entering a market that seems to be declining rapidly - that does not mean it is not possible to make it work - but I would seriously suggest you have a very serious pause and think does this make sense. Businesses entering an established but static market place are taking on a tough job since everyone is already being catered for - so even in these circumstances you need to be taking business away from and so be even better in some shape or form than already established competitors. In a declining market ... well the task is even harder - so not impossible just more improbable.

If you do go ahead then you want to make sure you can get out if things are not going as expected and this should be a core part of your plan. So try to ensure that you have a break clause on the shop lease even if it costs you a bit more.

You can learn a lot from looking at businesses for sale that are in your sector and ideally ones that are localish to you so that you know the town and maybe even the shop. They are all online nowadays so it does not take to long. The code is that good ones tend to talk about profit and turnover while the bad ones tend to talk about turnover over.

Work hard on and dont rush the decision making and good luck if you go ahead with the business

For what it is worth the shop sounds a bit small to me and you should forget the upstairs taking much money - it is a lot of stairs for not much floor space when you get up there - so maybe do your sums as if all the sales were going to come from the ground floor and then see the upstairs as a bonus

 

[ThePublisher]

Could you combine your cards with sweets? We went to Cambridge which has lots of students (obviously) and there's a retro sweet shop which was absolutely heaving, could barely get through the door.

Most people like sweets and a lot are prepared to pay a bit of a premium for retro or foreign stuff you can't get elsewhere.

 

[14Steve14]

I wish you luck with your proposed venture. I to am thinking of opening a B&M store, and have read some sound advice here.

What no one has yet mentioned is supermarkets. Most people doing their weekly shopping will pick up cards at the local supermarket. What the supermarkets do not offer is card personalisation, which has been mentioned. That could ofer you your USP over all the other competition in your town, and may also work from a website.

Again all the best with your idea.

 

[warnie]

Could you combine your cards with sweets? We went to Cambridge which has lots of students (obviously) and there's a retro sweet shop which was absolutely heaving, could barely get through the door.

Most people like sweets and a lot are prepared to pay a bit of a premium for retro or foreign stuff you can't get elsewhere.

That idea is doomed from the start, it'll never work......

 

[David A]

That idea is doomed from the start, it'll never work......

It is so easy to decry a suggestion that has been made.

What is harder is to place any meaningful reasoning into why you consider the idea doomed.

 

[deniser]

It is so easy to decry a suggestion that has been made.

What is harder is to place any meaningful reasoning into why you consider the idea doomed.

I think it was a joke given that the poster runs a sweetshop....

 

[warnie]

I think it was a joke given that the poster runs a sweetshop....

Thanks Denise

you have to be so careful on here these days!

 

[David A]

Thanks Denise

you have to be so careful on here these days!

If you'd used a smiley, it would have got through my Monday-morning head!

 

[ThePublisher]

Thanks Denise

you have to be so careful on here these days!

So could a card/sweet shop be an option then given your experience?

 

[warnie]

To the OP, I've not read the whole thread, but in your shoes if the location is as good as you think it is, then why not sub let (if you can agree terms with the landlord) the upstairs or part of the downstairs to a florist or craftmaker etc.

It will lower your outgoing's, attract even more people to your shop and compliment your cards.

Just a thought..

 

[warnie]

So could a card/sweet shop be an option then given your experience?

Yes it works well in the right location, but the Op would have be willing to compromise on his ideal of picking everycard himself. Sometimes you need to leave at least some of it to the proffesionals, those that have the experience. It would also need a hell of a lot more preperation, money and time getting to know the best products and suppliers for the sweets as well as the trading standards requirements. Hence why in my previous post I thought It would be better to sub let part of the shop instead to start with.

We now let a 'proffesional' deal with out cards and gift bags etc as they have the experience that we just don't have yet. When I have that experience and time, then I will take them back on myself and enjoy the better margins.

 

[gr9ce]

Our local Post Office serving quite a large community sells cards and just about everything else and still not enough to be VAT registered.

Competition from online MoonPig, Funky, Blue Mountain.
A society more used to ecards and social networking greetings.

Massive hikes in postage rates killing off Xmas market.
Any card with a badge or embellishment is now a large letter at 69p / 90p

Ease of supermarket purchasing. Do you make a special trip and park, pay parking to make a low value one off purchase these days?

Cards are available in corner shops, newsagents, garden centres, hospital shops, post offices, chemists, markets, pound stores, department stores, book shops, charity shops, ethnic variety shops, ebay.

Parents often have nurseries, mother and baby groups and schools who sell cards by catalogue to raise funds for the schools.

Then there are the card shops.........little wonder Clintons and Birthdays folded.
Posters? who remembers Athena?
Local comic shop, movie theme shop lasted less than a year.

Positives
Personalisation as said
Consider other items that can be personalised as a service (warning already done by Asda and Tesco)
Consider items using digital photography favoured by the smart phone generation.
Kids age cards and key adult age cards still a good seller.
Consider themed kid party provision service. Party bags and items on a theme. These are done elsewhere too but sit comfortably with cards. Busy Mums can maybe order so many pre packed bags on a theme and party accessories.
Business card printing service
If in a University town they love fancy dress consider stocking the usual suspects.
ID photo booth students can never get enough of id's for everything
Themed cardboard flat pack coffins

Be prepared to work all hours without holidays maybe without pay

 

[jarod74]

Many thanks again for all your interesting comments. I didn`t know I had any until I just looked now. Well I`m looking at `my shop` tomorrow morning, So I should ask for some `free months` & a `get out clause`?. I`ll respond properly to existing responses later tonight....just off out for Tea & Quiz night!