'Calling Cards' Go Beyond 9 to 5; Bereft at Kinko's
How many business cards does a person really need? Maybe more than you think. Increasingly, people are carrying multiple versions to reflect different aspects of their lives.
While the classic white card is fine for corporate conferences and rubber-chicken luncheons, it's not so hot at social events, where people swap more personal info -- about their blogs, Web sites and side gigs. As a result, the business-card business is seeing a miniboom: Crane & Co., the stationery giant, says the cards are among its fastest-growing segments. Office-supply chain Staples has a new in-store service that produces cards in 30 minutes. Online retailer VistaPrint offers 250 cards free.
Designers Vera Wang and Kate Spade have their own lines of "calling cards." Some companies even offer unique cards manufactured out of metal, wood or plastic.
"We see a lot of business from 'slashers' -- folks who have multiple careers," such as accountant/artist, says Rob Schlacter, vice president of business services at Staples. The requests run the gamut, he adds. "We had one order from some ghost hunters, and another from a doggie dentist."
We decided to test a range of services -- from a trendy high-end one to a cheapie -- to see if they could make us look fabulous in two square inches. Our goal: to create an eye-catching card to hand out to new people we meet at, say, a party or cocktail hour.
We started with Kate Spade, the handbag and accessory designer who expanded into custom stationery through a deal with Crane's. After finding a local retailer at Crane.com, we headed to the store. A clerk there directed us to the Kate Spade samples, which included oversize square cards with elephant or bumblebee motifs, and miniature rectangular ones with bright-colored borders. We picked a standard card with stripes in signature Kate Spade colors (green, pink, red, brown) on the back, and letterpress type (the kind of printing that feels indented) on the front. The clerk helped us try out different fonts and motifs -- a peacock, a penguin -- on a computer screen; he thought the dragonfly was "cute."
When we asked what kind of information we should put on the card, he said anything goes. We kept it simple -- name and email address -- and chose the design on the Kate Spade sample: a classic typeface, no motif. We figured she's the designer; she knows best. But we changed the ink color to red from brown. Fifty cards cost $214, plus a $12 charge for shipping to the store (100 cards will set you back $300). A few days later, we asked if we could change the email address on the cards, and were told yes. When the cards arrived, they looked classy; but with the whopping price tag, we couldn't help but wonder: Would anyone actually know the cards were Kate Spade?
Next we tried a lower-cost option at FedEx Kinko's, which offers professional design services. We brought in a little cartoony sketch to represent a personal "logo," and asked a clerk for help scanning the image and designing a card. He said he would need to send it to another shop for that, and would email a proof. We had to do a little prodding to get that proof, and when it arrived, there were three typos, and the design looked rather unpolished, in our opinion. When a second proof came, it had a fresh typo and the same general look. At this point, we canceled the order and went to the store to get a refund ($28.77 for 100 cards), but a clerk said to come back in two days and see a manager.
Brian Philips, chief operating officer of FedEx Kinko's, says the company "takes quality control and customer experience very seriously."
For a more traditional service, we surfed to classic stationer William Arthur's Web site and found a nearby retailer. A clerk at the store recommended that we put our cellphone number on the card, because it's more personal than email. "I'm a voice person," she noted. We decided to stick with email, and then flipped through a book of motifs (a typewriter, an old-fashioned telephone, a vintage car). We chose a whimsical picture of a flying paper airplane to embellish our cards.
A William Arthur designer sent a proof, for $22, a couple days later. We thought the email address on the card looked a bit long, so we changed it to a shorter one and paid $16 for a new proof. Not including the charges for proofs, 100 letterpress cards came to $168, plus $17.50 for shipping to our home. The cards showed up in a few days and looked charming.
Next up was online card-maker Moo.com, which lets customers upload their own photos to be printed on the back of the card, with type on the front. We uploaded five different arty black-and-white shots, and cropped each one on the site. Note: Moo's cards aren't standard-size: They're dinky (around half the size of a regular card), so it's important to pick designs that will work in that small format. We spent $19.99 on 100 cards, and $39.99 for express shipping from the U.K. (standard shipping is $6.99).
One of our five designs turned out well -- because the photo was the most stark and clear of the bunch -- but the others weren't as strong. So the key here is to pick simple photos.
We also checked out the freebie offer at VistaPrint.com. The price was right (250 cards for nothing. You pay only a shipping-and-handling fee). The company's strategy: to win customer loyalty and get people to come back and buy fancier cards next time. But after we glanced through the 42 free designs on offer (including industry-specific ones with illustrations of cleaning supplies or haircutting scissors), we couldn't find one we liked.
Melissa Crowe, vice president of marketing services at VistaPrint, says the free cards are so popular, "there are more than 2.5 billion in circulation." So perhaps we're too picky.
By Abigail Pesta
Wall Street Journal; March 6, 2008
