185 – Greetings! Get Your Ideas Out to the World with Adam Donato of Card Isle

You're listening to gift biz unwrapped episode 185 the experience of

signing the right greeting card.

It's pretty miserable and it hasn't really changed in decades.

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Sue moon Heights.

Hi there,

it's Sue and thank you so much For taking a little

bit of your time today and joining me on this show

and Oh,

are you going to be so glad you did?

I'm going to be introducing our guests shortly,

but you just need to know that Adam has so many

good tips that he's going to be sharing today that apply

to all of our businesses.

Grab yourself a pen,

grab some paper.

You're going to see that.

I'm going to say a couple of times through this episode

that you should go back and listen to it again.

I know I will be,

but before we get started,

I want to make sure you know about my newly released

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This masterclass is also for you to check it out.

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I look forward to seeing you over there and for now,

let's get into the show Today.

I am thrilled to introduce you to Adam Denato of card

aisle. The greeting card industry hasn't really seen anything new in

the last 50 years except for the cards that play music

when they're opened.

Cardell is a company founded by three engineers that changes that

they've captured all the magic that comes from a tangible greeting

card, even in the digital age,

and simply made it easier to find that perfect card.

Whether you run an eCommerce shop,

take most of your orders over the phone,

or have a brick and mortar store Cardell set you up

with more selection than a hallmark store.

It also eliminates the headache of guessing what car designs will

sell. Adam,

I am so excited to get into this story.

Welcome to the gift biz unwrapped podcast.

Yeah, thank you.

I'm psyched to be here as well.

So I met you at a convention a little bit ago,

maybe few weeks or so ago,

but I really don't know the story behind Cardell so we're

going to get into all of that.

But before that,

I want to get to know you a little better too.

We do this in a creative way.

I told you that in the pre chat,

but if you were to describe yourself through a motivational candle,

what color would your candle be and what would be the

quote on the candle?

I was actually laughing with my wife about this last night

trying to figure out,

this was just a very different question that I'm used to

answer again,

what ended up coming to as far as a quote goes,

the quote that has been sticking with me recently,

something that that's really made me think is the guy who

says it can't be done,

shouldn't get in the way of the guy doing it.

Oh, I love that.

It captures so much of why so many of us are

entrepreneurs that it's not that desired escape or to make a

ton of money or anything else.

It's that I like creating,

I like doing things that other people haven't done before and

so often you run into when some kind of structured organization,

people saying,

no, this is how we've always done it.

This is the only way we can do it.

That's so limiting.

Yeah, and then as far as the color goes,

this stumps me a little bit more.

My wife and I enjoy getting outside a bunch.

We do a lot of rock climbing,

mountain biking,

backpacking, stuff like that in the mountains out in Virginia.

And towards sunset.

If you look out and you can see the mountains on

the horizon,

they get this two dimensional kind of look and you get

this bluish green color that sort of the mountains take on

that color I think would be really neat.

If you had one of those thicker candles where the wick

burns down in the center and you see the light shining

through the candle through that bluish green kind of coming outwards

I think would be a really amazing glow.

Oh, I love it.

I can actually see that.

So I have to ask you,

did your wife agree with your quote in your color?

She thought they were good.

Yeah, she and I laughed.

We came up with a lot of funny quotes,

but I think that this was one that we all settled

on. You got to have one that we can use on

the show,

so that's fun.

I hope it led to some interesting conversation.

That's fun.

All right,

let's get into Cardell.

You knew your talk about with your quote,

the fact that if it's not done the same and people,

you know it's not something that's been done before.

People really challenge you and question it.

And Cardell is definitely different.

So you're saying that it's founded by three engineers,

so that's kind of curious.

That gets me questioning.

But talk about the story behind the creation of card aisle.

Yeah, so I was doing a PhD in mechanical engineering and

had gotten to the point where I was all done with

coursework and was just doing research at this point actually just

come off the discovery channel was doing this reality TV show

about engineers and flown out to LA and done some neat

stuff with that and came back and buddy mentioned this idea

of this new class that was being funded by the national

science foundation and they had run into this problem in academia

where they've been dumping tons and tons of money into research

and the research isn't gaining commercialized.

So they've been trying to figure out how do we teach

academics, how do you take these great ideas that do amazing

things in a lab and convert it into a commercial technology,

something that can benefit people kind of in a big and

a large way and should they create this class and because

it was through the engineering department,

it had this brilliant and creative name.

It was called the startup class,

so you knew exactly what you were getting and they had

four faculty members for 30 students.

There's like brand new class that we're trying all sorts of

new things and day one of the class we showed up

and everybody had to have an idea,

had to have some kind of business concepts that we were

going to run with and because much of my research was

with supercomputers,

I pitched day you basically a better version of Google,

which I still stand by.

I has some strong merits,

but that was what I pitched.

One of the other guys,

David, who ended up being one of the other founders,

does a lot of sailing and he pitched a technique for

taking salt water and converting it into fresh water,

like good solid engineering solution.

And Stephan,

the third co-founder stood up and said,

well we all buy greeting cards.

We all receive greeting cards.

But the experience of getting that greeting card and finding the

right greeting card said it's pretty miserable and it hasn't really

changed in decades.

Said this is an opportunity.

There is something here.

There has to be a better way of doing this.

And halfway through the class there was this intermission,

it was one of these like three hour long classes.

And at the intermission we had only heard half of the

pitches and David and I made a beeline right over to

Stephan. So we like your idea way better than our idea.

And the very next day we got together and started rolling

with us.

So one of the big focuses of the class and this

like as an engineer is someone who likes building things.

This was hard.

Big focus was go out and talk to customers,

go out and find what problems customers are facing,

find what actually needs to be solved.

Because so often it's easy to come up with the solution

in a vacuum that it turns out you're the only one

that has that problem.

So we went out and we interviewed somewhere in the ballpark

of about 700 strangers.

We got thrown out of a mall twice for solicitation.

We had like,

it was an experience.

So Adam is for clarification,

you're a customer at that juncture was the end user.

So the recipient of a card,

not someone who would supply the cards.

Exactly. We were heavily focused at that point on the end

user and yeah,

as you have uh,

alluded to,

we ended up shifting towards like longer-term towards the retailer.

But at that point we were looking at the end user,

the person buying the card.

And what we ended up finding,

we saw a consistent message and I think there was this

one grandmother who embodied the message better than anybody else.

And we ran into her and it was in one of

those big box stores and she had the list of five

or 10 grandkids that were having birthdays that month and she

was picking out the perfect card for each kid.

And she told us stories about every kid and like it

was clear she knew these grandkids much better than someone who

only sees their grandkids the big holidays.

So she was looking for the perfect card for every kid

and just like warm and rosy and really friendly woman.

And when we asked her what she thought about the process

of buying those greeting cards of actually finding the perfect card,

like not what happens once you have the perfect card but

getting there,

she went off on this litany of obscenities that would make

your hair curl.

Oh that's funny.

She'd been to four stories that morning and she was at

that moment struggling to find a card for a middle school

aged boy that wasn't obscene and wasn't childish.

And ah,

she was frustrated and we saw this theme time and again

the people love getting the perfect card but it is often

so hard to get that perfect card.

So at that point we had collected this data.

We had seen there is a problem,

there is a large market for this.

So the first idea that we had was we said,

all right,

what if we kind of meld some technology into getting the

perfect card?

And so we reached out to a bunch of local artists

and got some phenomenal designs from these artists and we got

some money from the national science foundation day of the class

to buy some printers.

We got one of those tents that people set up,

soccer games and whatnot that you can or tailgating that you

can kind of hang out under.

And we set up in front of the engineering building just

a little before mother's day.

And what we were doing,

we had,

it was the junkiest setup.

People basically pointed at the card they wanted,

like one of these designs that the artists had.

They told us what message they wanted on the inside.

And then we typed it out around a computer.

We had a printer sitting right there and we'd hit print.

And the big thing we were testing was if we can

offer convenience,

if we can offer with these local artists,

we can make it much easier to get cards that really

fit the people we're targeting.

And we were at Virginia tech,

so talk about a university that is very proud of being

Virginia tech.

So being able to get the local artists,

the locally themed cards,

making it easy for people to find the card,

making it easy for people to access this.

We were right there,

it was convenient.

And then the personalization that still gets you a professional quality

card at the end.

And so we ended up,

we had to shut down early because we had so many

orders, we couldn't print the orders fast enough.

So we were writing down dorm numbers and petty shut down

and we were delivering cards to the students' dorms afterwards because

there was such a line.

Wow, I'm going to stop this story right here.

It's so coating Adam and I don't want to lose it.

I want to because there's so much here.

I want all of our listeners to capture all of this.

I've gotten four points in your evolution of this business and

we're not even to really what car dial is yet.

Totally the thing.

Have you ever heard the term blue ocean versus red ocean?

Okay, so you totally have a blue ocean business for sure.

Do you want us to describe blue ocean for the listeners

or should I do it real quick?

Okay, so blue ocean you guys is,

you know there's a red ocean or there's a blue ocean.

Oh, red ocean means it's shark-infested,

if you will.

There's so much competition out there because there are so many

people doing something similar to what you're doing.

So it could be in the way you're describing your product.

You make cupcakes,

for example.

There's not a lot of difference.

There's a lot of other cupcakes out there.

What could you do to make yourself different so you're not

in those shark infested waters?

Another way you can do it,

which is what Adam's done.

And it was Stephen,

Stephen, Stephen,

Stephen, Stephen who identified a blue ocean opportunity with the greeting

cards. If they could change the experience of acquiring and what

that greeting card was.

No one else is doing that.

So it's kind of like if you can stay with the

ocean strategy here is you go into this blue ocean where

you're just swimming free.

There's not a lot of competition and it makes things easier.

Although Adam,

I know it can be challenging too,

so we're going to get to that in a minute.

But, so the first thing was just identifying an opportunity and

this opportunity was sitting right in a blue ocean.

So that's the first thing.

The other thing that they did was they went out and

they did some research.

It was kind of like a checkpoint to see if what

they thought was such a good idea really was I.

E. The story about the grandmother.

Then they went out and tested a little bit further and

this is a big point to you guys.

You heard how he's just describing on the campus,

they didn't have the refined end product yet.

They hadn't spent all the money and done everything yet.

They've brought it to a point where they could bring it

to market and test it as like the first step of

development. And I know there was some investment there already,

Adam, but it was the first step of seeing whether this

was spin to fly.

So a lot of things moving into what would end up

being the company they also saw,

and this was 0.4

demand. Yeah,

you can have the best thing in the world.

It's cool,

it's solves a problem.

But if people aren't really interested in it,

it doesn't matter.

You're not gonna sell any.

So opportunity research and a checkpoint,

developing the product,

kind of in a rough scale,

checking it out,

testing the market,

and then seeing that their demand are the four steps we've

gotten through already.

So Adam,

I'm loving this story.

I hope you don't mind that I interrupted,

But I wanted to catch all those points for everybody.

Not a problem at all.

So we're at the point where you guys are delivering the

cards because there was so much demand you had to shut

down early.

And so you guys had to be excited.

Like you guys were college kids yet.

Did you go at guys go out and have a beer

and celebration that night or what?

We were all definitely,

yeah, over 21 at that point.

Celebrations. There you go.

That's good because you're like,

because you were probably thinking,

okay, we've done all this stuff.

No, all this work and it's really working.

Yeah. Well and it was working better than we expected it

to work too.

Like that was part of the excitement too.

Sure. Okay,

so carry on.

So everyone got their cards,

what happens next?

Yeah, so at that point,

the two big things that we identified that we really wanted

to hone in on where the personalization and with that personalization,

like access to local artists and being able to upload your

own photos and being able to really get the message.

And what we ended up seeing was even amongst college age

guys, there were folks that were excited about this personalization.

We even saw guys bragging to strangers about the card they

had just designed because it was so perfect and it was

something like we stepped back and we were thinking,

imagine if you were in a hallmark store and some millennial

age guys starts bragging to you about the card that he

just picked out.

They'd be creepy.

Like that would be so outside the normal.

And we were seeing that I would not have expected that

either. So that personalization,

like that ability to make it easy for people to get

to the right card.

And then the other thing we saw was being able to

meet people where they are already being able to provide some

sense of convenience.

So for this,

what we ended up and as engineers we said we can

build anything.

We ended up building this.

Basically the ideal was around like a Redbox for greeting cards

or an ATM for greeting cards.

So something that would be completely automated that we can set

up anywhere.

And the very first one of these that we built,

it's still operating today.

It's still printing cards and it very much looks like three

engineers built it.

There is no design aesthetic at all.

Like there's a screen at the height that you stand at

and a card comes out the bottom.

And honestly refilling this thing with anchor card or anything is

a burden that involves disassembling most of the kiosk.

Oh my gosh.

We basically went up and down main street in Blacksburg,

Virginia, where we're based and talked to a number of different

retailers trying to find a home and eventually found a home

with this.

It's an organic grocery store and great location,

great spot.

That kiosk did well,

does well today and then from there we ended up,

the next thing we said,

okay, there's one of these,

or like this,

it's an organic grocery store,

but it's a very unique organic grocery store.

And we said like,

there's no way this is going to scale.

We need to find something else.

Going back to the university ended up convincing to put two

kiosks on the campus and it was something that they basically

said yes.

So we went home and scrambled and built two more kiosks.

Did they look the same for they?

The big red box type things again now.

So the first one was that that first one in the

organic grocery store is this light funny shade of white and

blue and it's got enough paint on it that the whole

thing looks like it's made out of plastic because our woodworking

skills were a little mediocre.

The next one looks kind of like something that would fit

in a Cracker barrel.

It's very like stained wood.

It's again has way more pieces than necessary.

And then the third one we worked with some design students

at tech and got connected with a local cabinet maker and

that one actually looks fairly professional.

It's got much more of a present,

it has clean lines and that the design that we ended

up basically tweaking from then on.

Got it.

Yeah. She,

we ended up got a couple of kiosks on Virginia Tech's

campus S and these continued to do well at this point.

We went out and did a small fundraising round from some

friends and family that got us to the point where we

were able to get a fair number,

more kiosks out at different local stores,

a handful of other colleges,

a couple of other universities,

and then we got a really cool opportunity with Rackspace,

which is this big tech company.

It competes with Amazon and Microsoft in different fields and with

Rackspace they have this huge headquarters down in San Antonio and

something like 10,000

employees. One of the big challenges we were facing with universities

is that for a third of the year they're empty.

So a corporate campus provides a lot of this team feel

of a college campus.

It's just not empty.

It's also full of people that have much more disposable income

than college students.

So we set up with Rackspace.

That went really well,

started scaling that into a number of other corporate campuses where

with like Intel,

we've got a kiosk recently with Cisco.

From there we started scaling into military bases,

so primarily army and air force bases.

And after doing this for about a year or two,

we ended up getting connected with some convention.

There was a fellow that came up and said,

I've got this eCommerce website,

I'm selling gifts,

and he said,

I would love to be able to offer a greeting card,

so I would love to be able to do something because

at this point we've got 9,000

designs and all sorts of core personalization and everything else and

it's a really nice card when you print it out.

And he said,

I want to be able to offer that,

but I want to be able to offer that through my

website. So we went back and worked with our developers and

ended up building a solution that was really easy to plug

into a website and something that all of that smooth design

experience that we had provided for the customers that had been

honed over years of working in different locations and being able

to find something that even the most helpless guy in a

rush could find a card that his wife would be happy

with it.

We had that already and we were able to take that

and plug that into this guy's website and he was thrilled.

So what we've been doing since then is we've actually seen,

it looks like this is just kind of the way everything

is shifting.

There is such a huge market right now.

You talk about ocean,

no sharks,

where there is this huge opportunity to be able to partner

with all of these different retailers who are in some kind

of gifting business.

And one of the things that really helps a gift to

stand apart that really makes that gift unique and personalized and

lets the recipient know just like exactly how you're feeling is

that personalized greeting card.

And we make it easy for any retailer of any size

offer greeting cards.

Wow. So do you still do the kiosks then also and

the online or has everything now transitioned to online your eCommerce

platform? There are still key asks out there,

the rush stoke kiosks doing business.

But the vast majority of our resources right now are going

towards either folks with like a website placing orders or weave

in about a week or two we're going to be launching

this system that makes it easier for folks place an order

over the phone for them to be able to design a

personalized card brief in brick and mortar shops.

But it's something that's very much moving away from that focus

around automated kiosks.

Got it.

So the automated kiosks are kind of in maintenance mode because

you've got them out there,

but you're seeing the opportunity is leaning the other way.

Yep. And to use the wonderful entrepreneur term we are,

we're pivoting the company in the direction of these standalone as

opposed to automated kiosk solutions.

Well and much more scalable for you and also maintenance-free.

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Share With everybody so they truly understand.

If they were to be producing one of the cards,

what's the process that you go through to make a card?

Do you do this as if you are the person who

has card aisle in your store or do you do this

as a customer who's online?

I'm not sure which you take it whichever way it's supposed

to go.

I'm not sure.

Yeah, so I'm going to take it from the perspective of

the retailer just because that way you can see both sides

and so your customers come to your online shop.

Just the way they would make any purchase and we can

set it up for your customers that they have two avenues

to buy a greeting card.

One option is just like any other upsell,

so if a customer has the option of,

you know,

maybe they wanted to change the shipping,

maybe they want faster shipping or maybe they want to add

a of wine to a gift basket or a Teddy bear

to a floral arrangement or anything else like that.

They've got the option of adding a personalized greeting card.

And so here there's just going to be a nice button

on your page that says add a personalized greeting card.

When a customer clicks that button pop up appears in that

popup, they can search for a card much the same way

you would use Google to search for images or anything else.

And they can search by occasion.

They can search by recipient,

they can search.

You know,

if you're looking for a card with rainbows and unicorns,

you can search for a card with rainbows and unicorns.

And we have a fair number of those.

I bet you do.

They also have the option if they want to upload their

own photograph for their own image,

they can do that as well.

Oh wow.

And one other thing that,

just as a brief aside,

they can do all this from their phone as well.

So this is something,

it looks good on a computer.

It looks just as good on a cell phone.

So important Adam as you know,

cause everyone's mobile now.

And that's also where most people have their photographs.

So if they want to upload a photo,

there's a really good chance of that photo is on their

phone already.

Right? So they pick the cover on the inside.

All of our artists will offer three suggestions because we found

there's nothing more terrifying than a blank card where you have

to come up with your own story.

So the artists will offer three suggestions and then then the

customer can personalize it.

They can pick one of the suggestions,

they can edit it.

And what we see is most customers will pick one of

the suggestions and then tweak it to personalize it.

So they might add like an inside joke,

they might put two,

Bob loves Sam and they've got the card.

Then they click add to order and they're done.

So it's basically they pick the cover,

they personalize the inside and they hit add to order.

From the customer standpoint,

that's it.

They're done.

The one other Avenue,

as I mentioned,

like they can do it as an upsell.

They could also do it if they just wanted to buy

a greeting card and they do that exact same process.

So they pick a card,

they personalize it,

they add it to the order.

Once the card has been added to the order,

you get the,

as the retailer,

you would get the purchase order,

you can choose specifically,

these are all the things that this customer ordered.

Here's the shipping address,

here's all of the information that you need to fulfill that

order and in that information we'll provide you this unique five

digit code.

You take that five digit code you entered into the printer

that we've sent you and the printer that we stent is

like the easiest printer in the world was set up.

You don't even need to connect it to a computer.

It's simply a printer that sits on a shelf anywhere you

want. You connect it to the internet and you're done.

You enter this five digit code into the printer.

That five digit code uniquely identifies as that card card print

out for you.

You've got that card on the nice high quality cardstock that

we provided you with.

You've got these nice envelopes that we provided you with.

You put the whole thing together and however you're going to

fulfill that order,

whether it's in a box or hand delivery,

you don't have the card to go with it.

Wow, that's incredible.

Adam. So let me ask you this.

So I can't buy a car directly from aisle.

I would buy a good card from someone who has the

process within their shop.

Right? That's what we encourage.

We do offer,

if anybody wanted to buy a car directly from us,

they could do that.

But we would much prefer to pass that business out to

out to all of our retail partners.

And the big goal is pretty much like,

as you mentioned in the introduction,

we want to give the partners that selection of basically more

selection than a hallmark store,

but without having all of that inventory and needing to worry

about is this card going to salary,

is that card going to sell?

Because the cards,

they're not printed until somebody buys the card.

Right. So it opens up floor space for someone who has

a brick and mortar too,

which is always important to have as much floor space for

displays as you possibly can,

but then someone as a consumer could also,

let's say I had three cards that I needed to send

out. I could just do it right from my own home

because of brick and mortar or online.

Same. You could just buy the card only if you wanted

or you could buy the card and the product.

Any options.

Exactly. Wow.

All right.

I want to walk through because we started with the steps

earlier. I want to walk through and continue after we talked

about the demand,

I don't know if you guys listened to this,

but I'm hearing this from you,

Adam, this whole way through and give biz listeners.

I would love for you after we're done,

take this from the top and really listen to how Adam

talks. He continually is bringing in the benefit for the consumer.

He was doing it when they were researching and he does

it even when he's talking about the product.

He talks about the ability to personalize where they can utilize

local artists,

meeting a customer where they are already.

So being right in the same footpath,

which obviously makes it convenient towards a purchase.

So he's always talking about benefits.

Then they tested their first model,

so remember they had that kind of more rough draft on

a college campus.

Then they tested it with the kiosks,

three different versions there too,

which was interesting.

And Oh my gosh,

your story,

you have so many great things at them.

Then fundraising,

so you notice where that came through within the system.

They had a concept developed,

they'd done a lot of testing before they actually went out

and did fundraising.

So really important.

I'm not sure we're not going to go into fundraising here

because there's so many good things here.

We can't do everything,

but I just want people to recognize where that was in

the process.

Then step-by-step with the kiosks they started getting into Rackspace,

some significant corporate buildings,

military bases,

et cetera.

So again,

step-by-step, you see how it keeps elevating up and up and

up. And then really significant point here is that you were

listening when that person came and said,

what about online?

What about e-commerce?

Cause that like you could have so easily discounted that idea

and said,

no, you know we are knocking it out of the park.

Look at the names of the places where we have,

you could have just stayed with that,

but you guys were open enough to listen and look.

Now it pivoted into the biggest opportunity available to you right

now. Right,

which is online because you can virtually offer this to the

world. And I would,

I don't know this for sure,

but I would think in a much easier way cause you're

not having to make these kiosks now maintain and support them,

et cetera.

This platform being online is so much easier in that vein.

I'm sure there's other things too that aren't as easy.

So again,

give his listeners,

I would love for you to go back and listen to

this and here because even when we got into the online

platform you were starting to talk about what those benefits are.

You know in terms of being able to do it right

online you don't have the floor space you need like all

the benefits.

I just wanted to run through that now.

So here you are.

You've got the systems in play,

what's happening now.

So right now we're continuing in this spirit of experimentation.

We are looking largely at retailers that do some level of

gifting. We just this past weekend went to floral trade show

out in California,

met some amazing florist.

It was a very similar feel to what we got at

the gift basket conference where we met you Sue that just

amazing entrepreneurs doing really interesting things and the kind of folks

that are interested in trying new things and looking at better

ways to serve their customers.

It's a lot of fun being around like minded people that

are looking to go out there and basically shake up the

same industries that we're looking to shake up.

And so what we're doing right now is we're pretty much

in that stage where we've got a really solid product and

we're looking to scale,

we're looking to find out which industries this works best in.

And we're also looking at how do we set up our

existing retail partners to be even more successful.

So one example of that,

we've heard feedback talking mentioned very early on with the 700

interviews, we're really focused on learning from the people that are

using our product,

what's working from them.

And we've been hearing from a lot of the folks that

have our e-commerce plugin that they do a significant number of

their orders over the phone.

So we were saying,

how can we help you be successful with those orders over

the phone where you can include a greeting card?

And so some of the ideas,

and we're still in this experimental stage,

so anybody who is existing like existing retailers that we're working

with or other folks that are interested in trying something out,

we're totally game to run experiments and what we're looking at

right now is something where when somebody places an order over

the phone,

there's either an email address or phone number that goes with

that order to be able to allow you to follow up

with that customer afterwards.

We can do it.

Once that order is placed,

we can set it up that you get one button to

push and we're looking at integrating this into a point of

sale, so nothing new to learn,

nothing new right there you hit add a greeting card.

That customer buys the greeting card.

When they placed the phone order,

you then hit that button,

send them an email.

whatever you determined as the time would they design the card?

They now design it at their convenience and you know this

customer is looking for that personal,

that high quality experience.

That's why they called you in the first place and now

you're able to elevate their experience,

make their life easier,

make their gift better,

and you make a little more money off of the sale.

Perfect. This is a perfect segue because we're,

I wanted to go,

you must've been reading my mind Adam.

Okay. This is something that has not existed before.

How did you start thinking about a pricing structure?

Again, with the spirit of experimentation,

we tried stuff out.

We reached out to some local folks that we knew that

we had a little more of a relationship with,

found out what they were paying for similar kinds of products

and said,

okay, if that's what you're paying for a similar product,

here's how we can either meet or beat that or here's

how we're going to provide you something that offers so much

more value than what you currently have that you're going to

be game for paying a little bit more.

Okay, so you weren't just looking for a low price play

for sure.

Cause the whole experience is different.

The interaction and the result is different.

It's so customized.

People are willing to pay for that.

Exactly. And we ended up finding in the greeting card market,

if you're looking at the end user,

there's actually not that much price sensitivity.

And you'll find a lot of people whine and complain all

the time about how expensive greeting cards are.

But at the end of the day,

most people when they're buying a card,

they need the card so they're going to buy it.

So our mentality was we said,

okay, there's the option to gouge customers,

but that's not really in our company ethos.

That's not the culture we want to build.

So we said we want to look for what's a fair

price. And so for most customers,

somewhere in that ballpark of about $5 seem to be something

that people would pay it.

It would feel fair,

they wouldn't feel ripped off,

they'd be happy with it and everybody could move forward.

Well not only that,

but I'm kind of feeling from your description,

cause I haven't actually seen one of these cards yet,

is that it's also a keepsake.

It's not just a card.

Now, granted I get that there are a lot of people

out there who keep and retain their cards.

Right. But this if you're able to add a personal photo

or for sure sayings like all of that,

this is something that people are gonna really keep and maybe

even display the photo.

You never know.

So it's way more than just a card.

Exactly. Yeah.

And the material is you mentioned without seeing the card to

just describe it briefly.

We actually did again,

as with everything else,

a fair amount of customer research trying to find what's the

best card stock.

And as I'm sure many of your listeners are aware,

there are innumerable options for ways that you can buy card

stock. And our initial plan was as engineers we figured more

options are better.

So we gave people about half a dozen options for cardstock

and it turned out most people know nothing about cardstock and

half a dozen options just like shut them down.

It's too much.

It's too much.

And it's one of those things where we've got a bunch

of cart designs on the cover.

The average consumer is really good at picking.

I like this design and we're really good at processing a

bunch of visual information quickly.

So we haven't seen that slow anybody down.

But choosing instead of like 9,000

cards, that was easy.

Nobody had any problem.

And we provide really easy search tools.

So you're not looking at 9,000

cards at once,

but picking that card stock that shut people down.

So what we ended up going with was we found 90%

of our customers liked this one particular card stock after they

had a chance to feel all of them.

So like I got to interact,

I got to play because that feels almost like what you

would expect from a small boutique store where it's got on

the cover little bit of texture.

It's almost like a canvas type texture.

And then on the inside is a nice smooth matte finish.

And what we've found is that photographs or vector graphics or

any other image looks really good on the cover.

And it's something where even when folks are uploading photographs,

because every now and then you'll find someone that only has

that low resolution photo of grandma,

but that's the photo that they love of grandma.

It smooths out that pixelation a little bit.

So every image looks really good on the cover of this

and it feels good when you hold it.

Well that worked out really well too because then someone who

has this printer doesn't have to have multiple different cards because

then just in terms of the consumable,

it would be more expensive.

Exactly. And it's another element in processing.

What if they don't put it on the right card stock,

you know all of that.

So it ended up,

your research really went in your favor too.

It did on this one.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I love the fact that you're talking about with pricing,

you weren't looking at being the lowest price,

you weren't just going to compete on price,

but you also recognize that what you're providing with the customization

has greater value.

So it sounds like your price point is absolutely perfect,

but I want to take,

there are so many places we can go with this story

and such limited amount of time.

So I want to talk a little bit about some of

the rough patches cause it's not all beautiful story.

As you progress through all these steps,

there had to be some challenges.

Can you share with us one of those stories?

Yeah, so one of the things that you need when you

get an automated kiosk,

you need some way of accepting payment.

And so we had these credit card Raiders initially and the

credit card readers are designed for vending machines like a Coke

machine or a snack machine.

And if you've ever seen inside a Coker machine,

this is not high tech fancy anything else.

This is like stone age kind of technology,

but it works and it's really robust.

But what we had was something,

we had a computer,

we had printers,

we had a lot of much more modern technology inside our

kiosk. Well you also probably had to accept credit cards.

You're not going to put in $5 worth of coins.

Oh yeah,

yeah. Without a doubt.

It was only credit cards that we were accepting.

So we had that card swipe on there and so we

had taken these card swipes from vending machines.

We had worked with the manufacturer and he assured us that

this would work with just through like a standard USB connection.

And so we had these credit card readers plugged in and

it was again,

like I did,

this was not a smooth customer experience.

There was the little screen on the credit card reader and

at some point in the process we had a big arrow

that told customers,

you know,

look down at that screen because we couldn't actually do any

interaction because it was just this very simple credit card reader.

And the first one we got,

it worked great.

That first credit card reader we put on the first kiosk,

no problems.

The next one we got for whatever reason worked 70% of

the time.

Oh, we had set it up on this kiosk at Virginia

Tech's campus and had that credit card reader set up there.

And we sat in,

babysat that kiosk for like two weeks.

Well we tried troubleshooting so this was pretty much any time

during normal business hours one of us would be sitting there

in the student center watching the key class.

Oh no.

And we were doing like all sorts of things working with

the vendor.

The vendor shipped us a replacement,

turned out the replacement also had this same bug and finally

sorted out.

But it was a lot of hours of hanging out in

the student center watching pupil and Oh my gosh.

What year was that Adam?

about the time when some of the mobile card readers came

out. So it was probably right at that time or just

before? Just before.

So there really wasn't a lot of that technology available yet.

Exactly. Yep.

All alright.

So you guys are sitting there.

So talk about customer service right there.

Although you got a chance to talk with the people who

were interested.

So that's kind of good cause you could do a lot

of research.

Then also if you want to look on the bright side

of that problem,

really hard to find the bright side.

Yeah. So how did this all get resolved?

So we ended up finally after having these two troublesome units,

we said,

why don't we tried switching the unit with the switching the

credit card reader off of the original Kia.

It's the one that had been working and bringing that over

and that ended up basically illuminating it right there.

That turns out we managed to get very lucky or unlucky

depending on how you frame it and getting to bum units

one right after other.

And Yeah,

after that it turned out because of the way that we

were using the credit card readers,

it was a little off label.

So when we were working with the vendor,

the credit card readers that didn't work for us still work

fine for the vending machines.

And so he would go through and he would actually test

every credit card reader before he sent it to us to

see. Is this one of the ones that will work with

the USB connection or is this one of the ones that

only works in a vending machine?

Gotcha. One boy that talks about the quality of your vendor

too though.

It does And important for all of us.

That's just a good little side note is having vendors who

will go the extra mile for you.

You only need those card readers not to work a few

times, especially when you're getting into some of the larger named

companies where they're going to say,

just get this out of here.

We're not interested.

Exactly. And so now today I'm assuming that the card readers

are running nice and smooth.

Yeah. We're actually not using those card readers anymore.

Yeah, we built our own system from scratch now.

Yeah. Okay.

So already you,

David and Stephen all still partners in the company.

We are still partners in the company.

Yep. Share a little bit of insight in terms of how

that works because I know several for sure,

but I'm sure there's way more than that of our listeners

are in partnerships and sometimes that can be challenging.

And you know I think of a partnership is maybe two

people. You guys are three.

So what advice do you have for people who were in

partnerships? Yeah,

so one of the early thing is that we ended up

finding was having the partnership because all three of us are

folks that going through school and whatnot,

we were not people that liked working on teams and getting

that right partner makes a world of difference and so having

someone that you can count on,

someone that you can trust,

someone that you can really go to bat for and know

they're going to do the same for you,

that's huge.

And then along those lines,

by having somebody else,

inevitably you're going to come on rough times.

You're going to come on times when you're hanging out for

two weeks watching kiosk or when revenue's not where you want

it or anything else,

and having somebody else who's in the trenches with you,

having somebody else who is the error and feeling the burn

just the same way you are.

I feel like for us that is a significant reason why

we're here because this is,

as all of us are aware,

like this is not a journey for the faint of heart

By any stretch.

Yeah. One other thing that was kind of counterintuitive to us

initially, but we started out with no hierarchy.

We were all three equal partners in this and all decisions

were made kind of by unanimous vote and this worked well

initially when we were kind of small,

kind of moving slow,

but as we started to scale,

this gets to be unwieldy,

but it was something that internally,

none of us were the ones that were going to make

waves. We didn't want to be the ones to change it

and when we went out and did like after that friends

and family round of investment,

we went out and a much larger round of investment from

handful of angel investors and some institutional investors and the things

that they shared and they said this isn't a mandate,

but something that would be really good if it happened is

you need to come up with a CEO.

You need someone that's going to be taking the rain,

somebody who is going to make the tough decisions and someone

who at the end of the day is the one that

really owns any of those tough decisions and the responsibility.

That was rough.

That was something that changed the structure a lot.

And honestly the way we ended up doing it was we

flipped a coin and said whoever wins gets to be CEO

for a month and if it works well for a month,

you get to continue being CEO.

And I won the coin toss and still CEO today.

Well, congratulations on that.

I was expecting you to say Stephan,

because it was his idea initially.

Yeah. Well,

so one of the other things that we found that's interesting

is that in the startup world,

ideas are almost cheap.

Like there's a lot of people that have ideas.

A lot of people that have different brilliant ideas.

They come up with anybody that's watched shark tank that said,

Hey, I came up with that idea.

However far back you realize that ideas have been around,

but at the end of the day it's the execution.

And it's how do you take that idea and turn it

into something like real and tangible that really sets things apart.

So the idea was like clearly that was huge,

which that made a world of a difference,

but that's step one of many,

many, many steps.

And so have you also then divided responsibilities?

So everyone is heading a certain function within the whole We

have and it's something,

one of the things that I really like about working with

David and Stephanie is that we have a rough breakdown,

but there are different times when something big comes in where

we're able to really shift and kind of overlap a lot.

So there isn't like one task that only one person can

do And if there's something that happens or comes up that

someone has a real skill in being able to handle,

then you just send it over there.

Exactly. Yeah.

Wonderful. Oh my gosh.

Okay. So I loved your comment that you just made,

which was about,

it's one thing to have an idea,

it's another thing to be able to move forward on that

idea and then actually have it work.

Because just like you're talking about all the different steps and

all the pivots and adjustments and testing and all of that

that you've done to get to the point where you are

now and to hear you saying you're still open to new

ideas, other testing,

you know,

wherever this is going to lead you in the future is

spectacular. It's great words of wisdom for someone who's just starting

out, what else would you say to somebody who is thinking

they have their idea,

they're thinking of moving forward.

You've given them a million ideas right here,

so that's fabulous.

But what would you say on a motivational side for someone

who just hasn't taken that action yet?

So coming from academia,

that was my original plan.

I told you at the beginning going for the PhD.

My original goal was I wanted to be a mechanical engineering

professor. And that's still something like somewhere in the future that

will likely happen.

But one of the big differences that I saw between academia

and the world of entrepreneurs is the willingness of entrepreneurs to

help other people.

And it's something that I don't know if it's the realization

that we all know just how hard this is and we

all know just how little we'd be able to accomplish without

the help of other people.

I don't know quite what it is,

but it seems like in this world of entrepreneurs,

there is such a culture of being able to help each

other and being able to support each other and being able

to figure out ways of collectively solving a problem together and

going out and being willing to go and talk to these

folks. Being willing to find mentors and being willing to find

the folks that can help you be successful.

I think it's just going to save you so much time

because there's so many things that other people have done,

other paths that they've been down that they've been down the

path. You don't need to reinvent that wheel.

Yeah, you can walk the path so much faster.

Exactly. Perfect.

I love that advice and now because you've shared so much

with us,

we would like to share with you,

I'd like to present you on behalf of myself and all

the listeners a virtual gift.

It's a magical box containing unlimited possibilities for your future.

So this is your dream or your goal of almost unreachable

Heights that you would wish to obtain.

Please accept this gift and open it in our presence.

What is inside your box?

So I love creating,

I love starting things and I love especially with the ear,

like I love being an entrepreneur.

And so inside my box,

this is pretty much the ability to build a career around

entrepreneurship, to be able to continue to do this,

to have it something where Cardell is one of many startups

that I get to do over my lifetime.

This is just the first,

right? This is just the first.

Okay, so we're going to keep our eye on you to

see what else comes up along the way.

For sure.

Is there one single place where you would direct any of

our listeners who are out and about right now and just

want to touch base and see a little bit more about

what car dials about,

where's one single place that you would send them?

Our website,

so it's cardinal.com

and one of the things with the name,

just as a quick side story,

initially when we were doing research,

we kept talking about going to the car dial.

Like in the grocery store you go to the car dial

and me,

I'm married to an English teacher so I know how to

spell words correctly.

My other founders as engineers kept spelling aisle like a grocery

store aisle I SLE.

So when it came time to come up with a name

for the company,

we kind of enjoyed the idea of card aisle,

but I L is spelled ISL E and the logo,

it has a nice colorful to can and would go with

the Island theme a whole lot.

So the website is cardell.com

and with IO spelled ISL Lee.

I love that.

That's kind of a jab and give his listeners,

you know that there'll be a show notes page attached with

also the links to social media sites and anything else we

decided to put on there as well as the top point

in this very,

very valuable interview.

I hope you guys go back and listen to this again

and again because there is so much here for all of

us. Adam,

thank you.

I really,

really appreciate connecting with you today and talking about your whole

story and I look forward to seeing what comes next with

you. I know it's going to be great.

Thanks again.

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