Eureka!

I woke up this morning with some great ideas. I've been joking around about my greeting card business that I'm going to start when Ty makes a zillion dollars as a tax attourney. This is mostly borne of my indignation at how expensive greeting cards are, and shitty greeting cards at that. Throw in a greeting card holiday like Mother's Day or Father's Day and several step-parents and step-grandparents, and I've got a $50 donation to Hallmark twice a year. I refuse to participate in Valentine's Day for that reason.

I've also made the New Years' resolution to send all my nieces and nephews (all step-s by the way) birthday cards this year. I made an xcel spreadsheet with all my family's birthdays, organized by the order they occur through the year, and so far so good. But what if I forget to look at the spreadsheet? I need a reminder. Or a personal assistant.

So it ocurred to me this morning, what if I combined these two needs into one service online? Folks can just click and send birthday cards to all their family members. And the website can offer emailed reminders to customers that a birthday or occassion is coming up with a link to cards they can purchase and have sent for them. OR, for a package price, a customer can schedule all their cards through a year and forget about it the rest of the year, they are covered! Using Paypal, there is the opportunity to add cash or a gift card.

A drawback I've considered is the signature. However, maybe there is some technology I could employ to either upload a signature or have people select from handwriting fonts.

I need to start designing my cards. My first challenge is to do my sister's wedding invitations. That will be fun...hopefully.

Domain name: www.howthoughtful.com? "Your the most thoughtful person you know, specializing in cards for 21st century relationships"