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Adding Birth Announcements to Your Inventory

There are two marketing strategies that most retail businesses can gain from focusing on:

1) Share of market – which often requires greater resources, larger advertising and marketing budget.

2) Share of Customer – is thinking about what other needs your customer may have that are feasible for you to add to your offerings. The decision to go forward with such add-ons is subject to inventory requirements, space availability and level of demand.

Historically a business will always generate greater results when promoting more products and services to your present and previous customers than to find new customers. For any business that sells products to expectant mothers, offering birth announcements and children’s stationery can be an easy and highly profitable add-on sale and does not require inventory.

Every year there are trade shows focusing on maternity and juvenile products that rarely feature a birth announcement supplier. However, The National Stationery Show, an annual event, taking place in New York City in May at Javit’s Convention Center is a tremendous resource of stationery suppliers along with other personalized baby items that do not require inventory.

Birth Announcement sample albums usually are an investment of $100 - $150, have the retail prices shown with a wholesale discount of 50%. On most albums one or two sales pays for the entire album, and the album continues to generate sales that range in profit from $50 - $500 depending on the price point of the product. Suppliers will typically update a store with new albums if a moderate sales criterion is met.

Many expectant mothers will normally shop for birth announcements right before birth or shortly after. You have the opportunity to expose her to announcements in advance of her buying cycle and often create the idea of sending an announcement when it didn’t exist in the first place.

With so many mothers knowing the gender of the child well in advance, there is no reason why a selection for the announcement cannot be made, with the font selection, color ink and basically just plug in the name, birth date and weight of the child when the child is born. She can leave a 50% deposit at the time of selection which can be months in advance, even contact you from the maternity ward to give you the details and finalize the order and pay the balance upon pick-up.

One of the key elements in the success of building this new category is exposure in the store. The product itself is harbored inside an album so it is very important to request loose samples of eye-catching designs that an expectant mother could relate to and certainly window and wall signage would also be very beneficial.

Comfortable seating is also important, as an expectant mother needs to be comfortable in the selection process. Perhaps building a table top against a wall with a few stools or chairs with the albums on a shelf underneath can be space efficient. Your salesperson can also take this unique opportunity to build strong rapport and determine other product needs in your store that you might be able to sell her.

The sales process requires some specialized attention but not undivided. The process can be lengthy but often the customer can be left unassisted for intervals of time. Thus that same salesperson can assist other shoppers but just need to be conscious of the birth announcement customer and keep a watchful eye.

Most birth announcement albums have multiple applications that range from baby showers, thank you cards, early birthday invitations, christening and communions. Thus the profitability and the opportunity for repeat stationery customers looms without any additional investment in product.

Fine Stationers and other specialty invitation businesses are currently the primary providers of birth announcements and there are also numerous websites. Theoretically, in order for them to maximize the profitability of that category that we need to incorporate some target marketing to expectant mothers at additional expense. That gives you a decided advantage in that you can streamline the process by adding birth announcements to any advertisements, directory listings or literature as you renew them without any additional costs.

Some manufacturers have branded turnkey web sites that have the same album available online with e-commerce capability, which can be an easy way to offer birth announcements to your existing website visitors. This category is very saleable online because the personalization is not very wordy and the convenience factor can speak loudly to late stage expectant mothers who may rather select online that goes out shopping in a store.

Brian Lawrence is Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Encore Studios, 2006 International Greeting Card Association Award Winner for best personalized invitation and announcement (www.birthannouncements.com) and is also the author of “The Invitation Business Report”