Side Hustle: Millennial Couple Taps LGBT Greeting Card Market

Stefanie MacDonald had always skewed creative and made cards for her parents. “They still have stacks of them in their bedside table,” she said. So when MacDonald had an impossible time finding a card for her aunt, who was getting married to another woman, she designed one herself. It’s a stylized image of two females accompanied by the words, “Let’s grow old together.”

On that day, she identified the gaping hole in the supply of greeting cards for LGBT relationships. MacDonald, 28, took the leap and went pro in the fall of 2015, joined by her boyfriend, Lucas Rowe, 27. They're both based in Halifax, Canada. (All dollar amounts in this story are USD).

“I got excited about the idea and started creating. I came up with 25 designs based on my own real life relationships and experiences,” she said. Her cards also include gender-neutral and male-female designs.

The first step they took was to go where everyone does to learn more: Google. MacDonald simply typed in “how to start a card business,” and found the advice and checklists she needed. For about $2,500, MacDonald and Rowe launched their company, Halifax Paper Hearts. Their biggest expense went toward the cards and envelopes—about $1,400. They also shelled out for a website, business registration, accounting software, display gear, photography and branding.

Today, Halifax Paper Hearts cards are carried in 30 stores throughout Canada and the United States, and MacDonald's goal is to reach 100 outlets by the end of the year. They’ve sold more than 5,500 cards for about $18,000, and recovered their initial investment in about 45 days. The business is debt-free.

Still, they’re not ready to leave their full-time day jobs. MacDonald, with a degree in management and focus on entrepreneurship, works as a regional manager of marketing and research for Cushman & Wakefield Atlantic; Rowe is a business analyst and his business degree with a major in accounting made him the obvious partner to handle the bookkeeping. “Our careers are very fulfilling and rewarding, and expose us to a higher level of learning and experience than I feel we could get on our own.” MacDonald said.

MacDonald works on the card company 30 to 40 hours a week and Rowe spends five to 10 hours a week doing accounting, ordering supplies, and packaging cards. They find time before and after their regular work, at lunch, and on the weekends, sometimes multitasking in front of the TV. “I find that when I am working on it I feel fulfilled and my heart is full, so it doesn’t feel like work,” MacDonald said.

How they achieved early success

MacDonald keeps the initial 10-step to-do list from Pink Olive School she’d found in her initial research pinned on her office wall “as a reminder to just take it one step at a time.” The critical elements included:

• Focus-testing designs among a small group of Facebook friends. “I launched the ones that received positive engagement, and created more designs that cultivated the same feeling of connection.”
• Creating a logo by collaborating with a local wedding stationary designer.
• Registering with an e-commerce platform and opening retail channels on Etsy and Facebook.
• Hiring a photographer to do branding and product photography.
• On-the-ground market research: “I started by asking 10 stores locally, and once we had a few on board, it gave me the courage to reach out into other markets.” MacDonald said.
• Asking for help: When some stores asked for barcodes and stands, she took to Twitter to find a retail mentor. She was then connected with people that helped her to create universal product codes and retail displays in less than a week.
• Cultivating press relationships: She found the names of writers who had covered topics related to her business, and wrote personal notes to those reporters. Every single one responded, and several wrote stories. (Including this one.)

Advice to others

MacDonald’s advice is applicable to anyone who wants to start a business or side hustle, no matter what’s for sale.

• Keep it simple: “You are going to want to throw every idea, thought and intention into what you’re creating. Focus on what connects you to others, and what delights your consumers ,” she says.
• You can do anything, but you can’t do everything: “It truly does take a village to raise a business. From day one, we have been so fortunate to have the support of entrepreneurs in our region. Whether we needed guidance in retailing, exporting, branding, finance or law, business professionals in our region make time for aspiring entrepreneurs. We also have had tremendous support from our colleagues, family, friends, and of course, our customers.”
• Ask: “This is truly the one thing that has made the biggest impact on the success of our business. I have asked for advice, feedback, opportunities to collaborate, retail partnerships, and press opportunities. When we get stuck, I seek out experienced entrepreneurs that epitomize success and I ask them for help. Things don’t just happen on their own. It can be tempting to look at someone’s success and think, ‘they’re so lucky,’ but there are so many hours spent asking for the opportunities that you see happening for them.
• Aim for progress, not perfection : "When we launched this business, we only had three or four designs in each collection. I told myself for months that I needed to wait until I had 50 designs until I could share them with people. Truly, I was just looking for any excuse not to have to hit ‘start.’ ‘Start’ meant people could judge me, ‘start’ meant being vulnerable. Perfection is just fear dressed up in pretty clothes; the stories you tell yourself about why you cannot start now are simply not true.”

It seems like it was perfect from the start, but that’s only because they asked for—and got help—every step of the way. Sometimes we tell ourselves stories about how ‘they won’t write or call me back,’ but it’s just not true. You really never know until you ask,” MacDonald says.

The worst setback was a computer virus that wiped out her archives. “We lost every single design file I had made for Halifax Paper Hearts. I had to recreate everything from scratch, but in the end it only made me rethink every document and recreate better materials,” MacDonald said.

In addition to expanding her retail base, MacDonald says her absolute win would be “revisiting the stores that I searched on the day of my aunt’s wedding, and seeing our LGBT designs on their shelves.”