The Greeting Card Business: The Next Big Thing?

In-depth industry knowledge is necessary for anyone who's thinking about making and selling their own handmade greeting cards on a wholesale basis. Even someone who's interested in just selling a small number of cards to friends, family, and colleagues will benefit from basic knowledge of industry trends. After all, with the global greeting card business poised to exceed US$30.4 billion by 2015, serious competition awaits would-be greeting card makers.

Every year, about 7 billion greeting cards are purchased, with annual retail sales estimated at more than $7.5 billion. To break it down even further, analysts compute an average of about 30 greeting cards purchased yearly per household. Judging from these figures, the greeting card market certainly shows no signs of slowing down in the immediate future—a factor you can definitely take advantage of if you're really dead-set on starting your own greeting card empire.

If you truly plan to tap into this business opportunity, then you'll have to educate yourself first by loading up on all the necessaryfacts and figures as well as by conducting in-depth research about your target market. You might also want to learn about how established greeting card companies managed to grow and sustain their market share over the years.