How to Start a Stationery Business Online – Everything I Wish I Had Known!

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hey guys welcome back to my channel today’s video is a business video and this is all about how to start a stationery business so when I started my stationery business a few years ago there was like no information about how to do any of this stuff at all and there’s still like no videos on this topic and I think it’s because it takes people so long to figure all this stuff out for themselves that they don’t want to like share the information what they haven’t because like well that’s not fair I work I took me forever to figure this out but I just want to share all everything that I know about the stuff with you guys because it’s a big hassle trying to figure this up for yourself when you’re trying to get your business started and so I hope this will be helpful throughout this video I’ll be linking relevant videos that I posted before on these topics I’m talking about up here so like as I’m talking if you see a video pop up here that’ll be a good video to check out on that topic to start I don’t wanna sound too snarky here but I’m talking about starting a stationery business like cards invitations paper etc I’m not talking about starting a business that does not move so if you’re doing a stationery business please make sure that you spell the word stationery correctly with an e not an A it’s just kind of like if a dentist spelled dentistry wrong you know there are two different types of stationery businesses that you can start basically one is where you design everything yourself the other is being like a dealer or opening a brick-and-mortar store where you carry other people’s designs this video is going to be all about how to start a stationery business selling your own designs so if you’re interested in being a dealer or retailer I’ll be posting a separate video on that topic so the first thing that you need to think about if you’re starting stationery store or selling your own designs is branding how are you going to stand out how are you going to be different there are ton of stationery stores out there you need to figure out a way to brand yourself in a way that makes you stand out there are a few different ideas that I thought I would mention for branding your stationery business the first way you can do it is you can brand your business by type so maybe you’re selling all stationery products for businesses so in that case you would sell like business cards letterhead things like that or maybe your story is going to be for all wedding invitations and everything wedding so you have like invitations RSVP cards save-the-dates signage for the reception table numbers and everything goes together and people can find everything that they need for their wedding at your store so that’s branding by type you can also brand by printing technique so if you are a letterpress printer or that’s how that’s the type of stationery that you’re planning on selling then you could sell all letterpress in lots of different styles and that’s how you could become known or you could brand yourself by aesthetic so maybe you sell all different kinds of things wedding stuff baby announcements stuff for businesses but it all has a very like soft feminine look to it so then that could be how you brand yourself as by aesthetic but in the beginning you want to brand yourself in a way that is specific and niche and makes you stand out you can always expand from there but to get started you want to like become known for something otherwise you will just blend into all of the other stationery stores out there and there are a lot once you have an idea of how you want to brand yourself you’re going to design your actual stationery line I would recommend creating like Pinterest board going through the whole branding process I talked about in this video and just kind of having an idea before you get started of like how you want your brand and your first line to feel to people like the vibe that you want to tap so you’re going to design your stationery line I would say you want to have if you’re doing like wedding invitations sweets maybe have like a line of ten different sweet designs it kind of depends on like what exactly you’re specializing in but you just you don’t want to only have like two things in your store that’s kind of obvious but you want to have like a page you know so take some time and do that right like don’t rush through the process of designing your line because that’s the most important thing so once you have your stationery line designed you have to figure out your printing and your pricing and when it comes to printing you can always print yourself or you can outsource your printing to a business that specializes in that when I had my stationery store I used a business called stationery HQ they’re not paying me to say this I wish they were that would be nice but that’s just who I use and there’s another business that is really good that I worked with a couple of times called prints well I’ll have links to both of those in the description box personally I when I first got started I tried printing everything myself and then when I found stationery HQ I started outsourcing to them and I was like I wish I would have done this from the very beginning because they have a ton of different paper options they have different printing options that you can do they can do gold foil they can do a little bit of letterpress they can do die-cuts they have like lots of different sizing options and printing at home I just don’t think you’re going to get the quality unless you really know what you’re doing like if you know how to do letterpress printing yeah or you have some type of like commercial grade printer then that’s fine I just think when it comes to having a stationery business the quality is really important and people are going to not be happy if they get something that seems like they could have printed it at home so my recommendation would be to outsource your printing to a company like stationery HQ or prints well but of course it’s up to you you’re going to have to create an account to get the wholesale pricing once you have an account set up then any order that you place will be with the wholesale pricing and you’re going to want to take that and create your prices based on their prices so I have a video right here about how to do that how to set your prices you want to make sure that you allow some room so that you can charge wholesale and retail prices that way if like a stationery business wants to carry your products you’re still making money you don’t want to set your prices too low I’ll go into this later but make sure you check out this video here so that you can learn about how to price your items correctly alright so the next thing you’re going to need to do is order samples from the printer so obviously if you print your own just print out a sample but if you’re ordering from one of these companies you’re going to order samples this is just my recommendation do not like launch your shop without ordering samples so that you know what the quality is like and you feel comfortable with that before you start your business obviously and I just think that taking actual photographs of your stationery pieces just amplifies everything it makes it look so much nicer so you’re going to want to have actual samples in your hands basically what I’m saying is don’t get so like hasty that you’re trying to launch your site really fast so you just do like mock-up photography for this kind of stuff I use mock-up photography for some things but if you’re selling especially things like wedding stationery like you want to be able to photograph the quality so that people can tell what it’s going to look like and also just you as a business owner you’re going to want to know the quality of your product so that you can stand behind them so once you have your samples and you’re happy with them you might have to do some tweaks to the design order new samples but then once you have your samples you’re going to photograph your products keep in mind as you’re taking pictures of your products you want them to have the same look as the brand that you’re going for so like if your branding is all about like I said before like soft feminine you know floral watercolor things like that then your photographs need to kind of reflect that so in like the styling that you do and I just want to go through a couple examples of really good product photography that is branded the first site is called beholden this is a website business by anthropology it’s like the same brand that owns anthropology started this I never knew for the longest time that you pronounce it beholden I always just called it V HLV in but it’s it’s beholden they’re clever like that but anyway if you go to their stationery section you’ll see how they have the exact same pink kind of like a blush pink background for all of their pictures and all of their photographs for their products have this same look and so even though a lot of these products are different and have very different looks themselves keeping that same blush background for all of the pictures just makes everything look really cohesive and nice and you get that same like soft feminine feel throughout the website that way when in doubt just use a plain white background you kind of can’t go wrong but if you are into more like styling and you want to just add subtle little elements to your pictures like a background that’s in a color like that or like a little organic element things like that it’ll just make your product photography more cohesive if a lot of your invitations are white then maybe don’t use a white background maybe you use a background knives like something like that but just the point is you want your pictures to look cohesive and to fit your brand most important things are you want your photos to be clear and to correctly represent the products themselves I’ll post a video here that talks about how to take product photography with your iPhone if you’re interested in watching that all right so now you have your samples you know your prices you have pictures of your products so now it’s time to actually start listing them and getting your online store launched my top two recommendations for launching an online store would be SC for Shopify I’ll post a video here that has the pros and cons of Etsy it’s sort of like an Etsy versus Shopify type of video Shopify cost a little bit more to get started but it will give you a more professional-looking website in the sense of it can be like your business name com whereas Etsy is always going to be hosted in Etsy and there are other pros and cons to Etsy but just check out that video if you’re interested in that whichever one you decide to go with they’re both good options but they just have differences you’re going to want to upload all your pictures and do all of your listings in whichever one you decide to go with and then you know you will launch your store now when it comes to setting like your shipping prices and packaging your products and things like that if you order from places like stationery HQ prints well which are going to be my probably my top two recommendations for a stationery business they can do drop shipping where you place the order and they ship it directly to your customer it kind of is like personal preference so you might especially in the beginning you might want to have them shipped to you first so that you can look over everything and make sure it’s okay before you ship it to your customer but then you’re going to be paying extra shipping costs so this is where you definitely want to have samples ordered so that you know exactly what your customer is going to be receiving if you do drop shipping it’s really easy to set your shipping prices because you can see you can like create a sample order in stationery HQ or prints well and you can see exactly how much it’s going to cost to ship and then just set that as your shipping prices maybe round up just slightly so that you can make sure you’re not going to be like losing money on shipping I never had any problems with drop shipping through stationery HQ so I would recommend it but like I said especially things like wedding orders you know it’s like they’re usually pretty expensive for customers so I don’t know you might want to order have it sent to you first and then like fancy it up with some packaging stuff it’s more branded it’s sort of like your call but this is where you definitely want to have samples ordered just so you can kind of like decide how you want to do it all right so now that your store is launched it’s time to get the word out about your stationery business and there are lots of different ways that you can do this obviously social media I would say for stationery business because it’s so visual things like Pinterest and Instagram are going to be your best bets also Facebook obviously you’ll be afraid to start local in your area and try to get the word out locally first because it’s just going to be easier you can see people in person you can show them your work in person and like with Facebook you can target people in your area specifically and then you can always grow from there if you have like complementary businesses in your area so if you’re selling wedding invitations maybe you talk to like a local wedding dress store owner and set up a meeting with with her and like bring in some samples of your work and things like that and then see if maybe you could have some sort of arrangement where she refers people to you for your further wedding invitations things like that just get creative this is where you’re going to have to kind of hustle a little bit to get going because like I said it is there are a lot of stationary businesses out there so if you want to get going and start making money you’re gonna have to just like be creative about it and don’t be afraid to get the word out and sell your business because if you don’t no one else is gonna do it for you also I recommend going to like local events maybe have like a pop-up store in your area maybe go to local craft shows if you have things like that you could go to and just get it going get the word out get some momentum built around your business once you’ve had your business going for awhile you might decide to create a wholesale catalog and this is something that there could be like a whole separate video for I don’t want this video to go on forever but obviously if you want to get your products into other stores other like brick-and-mortar stores or online stores you are going to have to sell things at wholesale so that requires creating a wholesale cattle a digital file of all your wholesale pricing and things like that I might do a separate video on this in the future but again that’s another place where you can approach local businesses in your area about selling your products and that’ll be a good way to kind of dip your toe into the wholesale world without it getting too crazy from there once you’ve been doing this for a while you might even consider having a booth at the national stationery show in New York City which is like the mecca of stationery and it’s where all of like the big retailers go to shop for their store like all the buyers and you can get some really big wholesale deals there if you’re selling your own designs wholesale is going to be a huge part of your business make sure that you keep that in mind especially like I said when you’re setting your prices because you’ll want to have enough room that you can sell things at wholesale and still make a profit so I think this covered pretty much the basics of how to start your own stationery business there’s a lot more information than I had when I got started so hopefully this will give you guys like a head start all of the relevant links will be in the description box below thanks so much for watching my channel is creative lifestyle I mix in like some blog so if you’re interested in anything like that just subscribe and please like this video if it was helpful and I’ll see you next time bye bye Chester hi guys [Music]