Funded: £10,492
Campaign: Pretty Post: A Year of Gorgeous Cards, For Every Occasion
Zoe Lacey, owner of calligraphy and stationery studio The Golden Letter, wanted to create a beautiful and classic box of luxury-stock cards – twenty different ‘all occasion cards’, to cover birthdays, thank yous, celebrations of all kinds, and lots of multi-use cards that work for all the other times you need a card but don’t have one.
Zoe ran the campaign single-handed, and needed to meet a minimum production run to make the printing costs worthwhile: “If I wanted to make 1 of these boxes it would cost me only a tiny bit less than if I made 200. Not an exaggeration. Plates have to be made for foil for each design, each job has to be set up and printed separately, it’s a long old process. Short runs in the print world are very expensive.”
When I started thinking about a crowdfunding campaign it seemed incredibly overwhelming. I wasn’t sure where to start, if it really was the best option for me and how much I would need to raise. But when I launched, I smashed it in six days! The budget spreadsheet Jo provided really was eye opening – to be able to play around with it, work out shipping and fees and not get stung. I also used the campaign as market research and a way to test different price points, so now I know exactly what I should be charging in phase 2. Without Jo’s help I would have very likely aimed too low or not run a campaign at all.
Zoe Lacey
Since funding:
After sending the first round of card boxes to campaign backers, Pretty Post got up and running, and now offers a beautiful range of cards, stationery and gifts – including an updated version of the box that started it all.