Graduation Cards

Graduation greeting cards can mean a mint for stationary stores

By Nikki Davis

Like Christmas, graduation season rolls around every year, and parents all over this country seek out graduation cards. For those in the stationary and card stores, this can mean an increase in business on those particular items during the graduation season.

As retailers, you can offer graduation announcement cards, graduation greeting cards, graduation thank you cards, printable graduation cards and many other graduation supplies not only to the parents but to teachers, to gift-givers and to the students themselves.

As a retailer, you can find and sell graduation cards through many avenues:

1. Work with a greeting and graduation card representative from the company of your choice.

2. Order your inventory online.

3. Purchase printable graduation cards and personalize them for your customers.

Carry a name brand line of graduation cards in your stores

Most major retail operations will let you carry one or two product lines in your store. From funny graduation cards to money holders, you can work with an area rep to come and stock your inventory on a regular basis.
Try: Contact Hallmark to see what opportunities are available for various product lines. American Greetings sells their cards wholesale through a program called InterGreet.com. You can also sell popular brands like Mary Engelbreit through your business.

Choose an online retailer for graduation announcement cards

Most popular graduation announcement card distributors have large portions of their inventory available for online viewing. They work through you, the business, to sell to your customers and generally will not sell direct to your customers.
Try: The Graduation Cards Shop sells graduation cards and announcements for preschool, kindergarten, middle school, high school, college and home school. They also sell matching thank yous so your customers can carry their graduation party theme throughout. Also consider Carlson Craft, a company from which you can have your clients custom order their announcements or cards. Jostens, a popular name in yearbooks, is another big name in the graduation card industry. InvitationPaper.com carries custom order announcements.

Send graduation cards online

As a business or a school, you might think to send a graduation sentiment via free online e-cards. Obviously cost effective (in other words free), they also are in sync with today's web-based generation of grads.
Try: Send graduation e cards through AwesomeCards.com. Their cards stand out because they feature animation. 123Greetings.com also offers free graduation cards in an electronic format.

Bulk up on graduation cards and supplies

Stock your store with wholesale graduation party supplies and cards.
Try: Check out the wide selection of graduation cards and other items as well as additional featured links at the Wholesale Party Store. Party Celebration and BulkPartySupplies.com also sell in wholesale to help you stock your store.

Consider offering photo greeting cards through your business. They are personable and eye catching.
If you plan to carry brands like Carlson for your graduation cards, you will have to make a monetary investment in the product binders. They display nice and are a wonderful hard copy reference for styles to your customers.