Small Business Spotlight: Briton betting English greeting cards translate to sales

John Jarvis is hoping that English charm – so popular in tea shops and movie actors – might work in the greeting card business, too.

“In England, greeting cards are still very much a tradition,” said Jarvis, owner of English Charm Greetings. “They’re very sentimental, more nostalgic” than their American counterparts.

English Charm Greetings also offers to print a customer’s message on the card, using a machine that produces an elegant handwritten-like font, and mail it to the desired location.

Jarvis hails from the British Midlands, near Leicester, where he worked on his family’s farm and ran a small-town gift shop. He married a Wichita native and moved here about two years ago.

Jarvis said that when American friends and relatives saw the greeting cards he received from England, “they were really blown away by the quality and style. It gave me the inspiration that something like that could sell over here.”

Jarvis said all his cards come from England and are not available, to his knowledge, elsewhere in Wichita.

“England’s got a lot of independent (greeting card) designers and manufacturers,” he said. “It’s a very artistic kind of industry.

“You’ve not got necessarily huge companies – they’re more small to medium, which gives it a great feel. There’s not really one leader that’s designing everything.”

He debuted his cards in a display at the Riverfest Marketplace earlier this month, then opened a kiosk at Towne East Square last week, activating his website at the same time.

“The plan is to be in that location for the foreseeable future, see how the product goes and look to move into a bigger store after that,” said Jarvis, who also carries a selection of gift bags.

But he hopes eventually to do most of his business through his website, where people can pick out cards, have them addressed and sent.

“It’s a real convenient service to people,” he said.

Most of the cards are priced $3.99 to $5.99, the handwriting service is $1 extra (maximum 400 characters), and mailing is included in the price.

Customers can choose from three fonts and several ink colors in having their messages written.

“It’s a sophisticated piece of machinery,” he said. “It doesn’t print the card. The card feeds through it.”

One interesting challenge he will face next spring involves cards for Mother’s Day.

“In the U.K., it’s ‘mum,’ ” he said. “The actual word ‘mom’ is something that’s not produced in the U.K.”

Nevertheless, he thinks some Americans might enjoy sending a card to their “mum” as well.

This story was originally published June 22, 2016 at 12:37 PM with the headline "Small Business Spotlight: Briton betting English greeting cards translate to sales."