Creative greeting card entrepreneur is finding success through Amazon
LANSDOWNE » In 2009, when Liz Moorhead of Lansdowne was getting ready to marry her husband Joshua, she had a lot of paper products that she needed to buy, including invitations and thank you notes. She was turned off by what was offered in the greeting card market — lots of overly embellished, froufrou styles that didn’t reflect her taste. Moorhead wanted something cleanlooking and simplistic, but was unable to find it. Armed with a pencil and watercolors and frustrated with the mass-produced greeting cards on the commercial market, Moorhead decided to make her own.
Proud of the finished products, she mailed them out. Friends and family complimented her on the unique cards so she took it one step further and began making cards to sell on Etsy, the global commerce internet site where handicrafters and artists make, buy and sell their items. She painted each card, and sold them for $4 each.
“I couldn’t help but notice just how saccharine, sentimental, over-designed and overwrought storebought greeting cards had become,” Moorhead explained. “At the same time, I needed some type of creative outlet and was looking for a chance to create. I became eager to provide folks with simple, minimalist greetings, so I opened the Betsy Ann Paper shop in 2009 as a parttime hobby.”
Moorhead, formerly of Southwest Philadelphia, attended Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts before moving to Collingdale to graduate from Academy Park High School in 2003. She then graduated from Philadelphia Biblical College, Langhorne, in 2008. She was making and selling the birthday, thank-you, and holiday greeting cards online while teaching English full time at her alma mater, Academy Park High School in Sharon Hill.
“The eco-friendly cards, produced on high-quality recycled paper, are more about the message than the card itself,” Moorhead explained. “I wanted the sender to write in their own personal message so the receiver would remember the message, more than the card itself.”
Soon after son Joshua was born, Moorhead was looking for a way to stay home with him so she began actively seeking additional ways to market her cards created through her newly formed company, Betsy Ann Paper.
As luck would have it, Moorhead took her cards to exhibit at a national stationery show in New York, a show that she attended only that one time. Unknown to Moorhead, delegates of the Martha Stewart American Made shop on Amazon.com were perusing products at the show. They liked what they saw in Moorhead’s handcrafted cards, and asked her to feature them on Amazon in the Martha Stewart American Made shop. More than half of Amazon’s total unit sales come from third-party sellers. Since that break, Moorhead’s products have sold briskly through Amazon, and what began as a parttime hobby for Moorhead quickly morphed into a fulltime career with a loyal customer following. In addition to pleasing individual customers, the Betsy Ann Paper 3 ½ x 5 inch greeting cards were also selling well in the wholesale market.
“From my very early Etsy days until now, my business has always been about
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