Never miss an occasion again with our greeting card and gift subscription service.
INVESTMENT SOUGHT: £100,000
Silver Deer intends to offer design-led greeting cards and stationery with commercial appeal. As a disruptive brand we aim to become the consumers choice for the easiest, coolest way to send cards and gifts to loved ones via one of the worlds first card and gift subscription services.
The Card Concierge will offer the consumer a chance to become a member and subscribe or pay as you go (PAYG). When joining The Card Concierge members will login to a user friendly member area where they can build a list of all the occasions they may want greeting cards and gifts for. Our automated technology will then email and text them ten, seven and three days before each event reminding and directing them to the member area to ‘pick a card’ for that specific occasion. They can then ‘add a gift’ from carefully selected brands and have it ‘gift wrapped’. We can then deliver it to them or directly to the recipient. If on a PAYG they will be billed immediately, as a member they only pay for the gift as the card is part of their membership. Members would benefit from no checkout process, we’ll simply charge the credit/debit card attached to their account.
We believe in both our business as usual (BAU) products and our Card Concierge service. We hope that The Card Concierge becomes THE way for consumers to arrange loved ones occasions. We anticipate creating an APP for our service, too. Imagine getting a notification reminding you that it’s your mums birthday or your brothers birthday in 10 days and having the ease of going into our app, picking a super cool card, adding a super cool gift, having it gift wrapped and then delivered to you or directly to them all with the press of a few buttons. Even payment would be super easy as we plan on using Stripe as our payment gateway, so all your payment details will be secure and ready to use at the push of a button.
We intend to become a disruptive brand. Just like Uber and Warby Parker have made it easier to order a taxi or get glasses at great prices. Silver Deer will make life amazingly easy for organising cards and gifts.
With The Card Concierge we have two target audiences. One is your everyday, tech savy, busy person who will love how easy it is to use and take care of special occasions. The second is corporate companies. We have found that the culture has changed with more companies looking after their staff with small but meaningful gestures, like birthday cards and gifts or staff member of the month cards and a gift. With The Card Concierge this aims to get easier and we believe the receptionist will love you for it. As a member you can fill out your list with all the staffs birthdays and then it’s super easy to pick a card and have it delivered in time, plus no need to pay as it’s covered under your subscription. We aim to make bosses look awesome!
Ultimately, we aim to create a service that becomes the number one way in which consumers and businesses organise special occasions.
– Funded the build of our Magento store www.silverdeer.co.uk
– Successfully soft launched personalised wedding stationery and greeting cards from Sept 2014 – Dec 2014
– R&D of The Card Concierge
– Funded the front end build of The Card Concierge
– Developed all mock ups and designs for the FULL member area and automation of The Card Concierge
– Held successful talks with a number of brands for our ‘Add a Gift’ upsell with The Card Concierge. Brands include Scaramouche and Fandango, Willies Cacao, Bolin Webb, Chatty Feet.
Silver Deer would make money from the 2 main products once investment is gained. Our BAU products via www.silverdeer.co.uk including the greeting cards, stationery and personalised wedding stationery.
Personalised wedding stationery could be our 2nd biggest income stream, behind The Card Concierge. We have put a huge amount of effort and research into this and we believe that excellent margins can be achieved.
The Card Concierge would bring in annual recurring revenue for us which should add great value to the business thus increasing the valuation. Although we will make the higher subscriptions a cheaper/better saving, we anticipate making around £1.10 per card and with consumers on the PAYG around £1.60. .
First and foremost we will use funds to develop the full member area and automation behind The Card Concierge. And a small amount of funds on stock. After this we anticipate hiring one customer service advisor who will help with day to day running of the business and also picking and packing initially.
The largest portion of the funds will go on marketing Silver Deer and The Card Concierge. We have a very comprehensive plan for The Card Concierge and our personalised wedding stationery. And with Ian (Non Executive Director) our marketing strategy is being guided by an award winning executive creative director, who has created campaigns for TopMan, Vodafone and Heineken.
The Card Concierge will be aimed at 2 audiences. One being the personal member, a tech savy consumer with a busy life. Who is looking for ways to stay in touch with family and friends and celebrate life’s moments, but currently struggling to do so. 25-40 they would be mobile and app users, enjoying design-led products and be on-trend. Second target for The Card Concierge will be the corporate company. Companies ranging from 10 staff to 100 staff, we believe that creative and digital agencies as well as banks, finance and law. Companies that recognise staff morale and how bosses interact with staff is important.
Target market for the BAU will be lovers of quality stationery and design-led cards as well as customers of Paperchase.
Our personalised wedding stationery targets young engaged females who again want something better and slightly more design-led than the current offering. We believe that the UK needs a wedding stationery company like minted.com or weddingpaperdivas.com in the US, there is simply nothing we have found like it in the UK, and this market alone is worth millions!
The UK greeting card market is worth over £1billion a year and in 2013 nearly 880million cards were bought, that’s 17million a week!! Moonpig who currently dominates the personalised single card market reported dispatching a premier league football attendance worth of cards each day.
Mothers day and Valentines day pull in around £40-50million a year each (all stats from the GCA).
In 2013 there were just over 234,000 weddings, that’s 4,500 per week. .
Silver Deer intends to reach the market by being laser focused on its approach. Understanding that The Card Concierge and Wedding Stationery require 2 separate plans.
The Card Concierge target audience intends to be reached via a marketing campaign including viral videos, PR, Adwords, Social Media, and SEO. We also have plans for a brilliant ‘year in the life’ video that will show a Card Concierge member going through all the occasions and experiences possible – presented in a unique conceptual way. We also understand that once we have gained traction, using ideas such as “Refer A Friend” seems vital to bring more of the market to us, as this also reduces the CPA of each customer.
Wedding Stationery audiences will be targeted via blogs, PR, PPC, social media and print. We have had a soft launch period with our current ranges and so we already understand the value of social media and being able to target females via the relationship status ‘engaged’. Couples also do a lot more research for this less impromptu purchase and so print based advertising and blogs have the potential to be viewed more by consumers.
We believe that the investment will help us build traction quickly for The Card Concierge. And that putting us out there as one of the first will help. Of course competitors may follow suite and try to copy our idea and certainly the process but we aim for market leadership quickly. We will also be a smaller more agile challenger brand that can make decisions on all aspects of the business quicker and easier.
We have trade marked a fantastic name in The Card Concierge and we will have the technology behind the automation. To stay ahead we will work hard on our card designs as well as the brands we partner with for gift ideas. We plan on not only stocking products but also collaborating with brands to offer monthly exclusives and specials deals (once we can offer them volume orders via a large subscription base).
Regarding our wedding stationery, as far as we are aware, we will be the first online brand that offers design-led personalised stationery that is created using real designers rather than online software on a large scale. We intend to introduce colour options to each stationery range, which is hugely successful for the US companies mentioned previously.
As well as the above we have just agreed a partnership with one of the UKs hidden gems in the print world. A company based in the South West (like us) that currently print all the packaging for the award winning LUSH brand. We have agreed prices on a print service that will increase the quality and style of our designs but keep costs lower than we currently pay for standard plain prints.