In preparation for this afternoon’s Tradeshow Bootcamp seminar about wholesale wedding invitation albums, I thought I’d share a peek behind the scenes at how to put together an invitation album.
It all starts with good designs! Once you have those down (gulp) it’s time to print lots of samples, get organized, and start up an assembly line. We built a temporary shelter outside behind the studio with lots of fans and ventilation so we wouldn’t croak from using so much spraymount. We went through at least five cases of the stuff.
The inside of our album is designed for the dealer first, the bride second. Why? Because if the dealer isn’t happy with the book it will never get pulled from the shelf! Things we include to make the album easy to shop:
1. A few pages of info … about the studio, a primer on print methods, tips on how to customize our designs, and pretty photos of our designs in colors other than sampled in the book. Pages of ink swatches, papers, fonts, etc. And, of course, simple, easy to use price pages.
2. A divider page to separate each design (we have 22!). The divider page has the name of the suite, a keyword that relates to the type of wedding we envision the design working for (i.e. elegant, romantic, whimsical), and a short story about the design — what inspired it, what type of wedding we think it’s best for, etc. The divider pages are all different colors, to help the dealer flip to the right page.
3. Foldout pages. The front page shows invitation and response cards. The inside shows detail cards, like accommodations, thank yous, menus, etc. On the right side we show party goodies (the details that make an event, in my opinion).
4. The back of the divider page has a schematic with thumbnails of all the items available in the design.
5. Perhaps most important for the dealer: an AS SHOWN card, listing all the ink colors and fonts used in the shown samples.
Of course we LOVE our dealers and want to make the sales process as easy for them as possible. If they are fumbling around the book looking for swatches and prices they aren’t focusing on the bride! So we made a separate Dealer Deck, with swatches of all our inks, patterns, fonts, papers, envelopes and more. It also has a FAQ card listing turnaround time, quick pricing for 100 invitation suites, and our contact information.
We also give dealers a disc with blog and website ready photos for their use, PDF order forms, and plenty of loose samples for display.
My biggest advice for putting together a wholesale wedding invitation album is to make friends with a local stationer, ask a lot of questions and do a bunch of research. Oh, and don’t underprice yourself. Make every order worth your time! Just because you’re an artist doesn’t mean you want to work for free. And trust me, the dealers are working hard too, and want each order to pay off, too.
For more pics and details about how we made our wedding album visit this post.
If you are a stationer interested in carrying the new Delphine Signature Collection wedding invitation album please get in touch. We have a few books left looking for a happy home.
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Today is John and my 14th wedding anniversary! To celebrate we’re offering 14 percent off our Meeting Street design — it was inspired by the street where we were married right here in Charleston, South Carolina. It feels great to be back in the city that we love on this special day. Cheers to love! xoxo, Erika.
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