In light of the greeting card markets mercurial nature, why is business good now?
With Smart Alex, I have always used the philosophy “where people go, we go the other way.” To an extent, we have to go with the flow of what’s popular at the moment, knowing what’s hot now will not be hot in two or three years. But what we do is we really get an understanding of our customers, meaning both the stores and the people who buy cards in them. We work with thousands of stores in the U.S. and have a distributor in Canada. We pay close attention to what we learn from stores when they place orders. And we pay close attention to our reps, who are out there communicating with the stores all the time. How did such close communication with your reps and customers benefit you most? Let me ask you this. Did you know that adult stores customers are now mostly women? It’s a changing market! It’s no longer for dirty old men. Thanks to our reps — who like us because we come out with new designs every seven weeks, and the fact that we pay our commissions precisely on time — we were able
