I'm so glad you stopped by this morning!
2010 is going to be a great new year. How do I know that? Because I've been planning it for weeks now! I'm excited to announce this morning that, as of today, it's a whole new world for us here at the Cartolina studio.
If you've been following along for the last year and a half you'll know that there's seldom a weekend that goes by that we're not working hard in the studio taking care of everything that needs to happen to keep a small publishing company up and running smoothly.
Cartolina is 3 years old now. We started as a small collection of everyday greeting cards - but we came out of the gate really fast - growing to a substantial sized line, with multiple categories, in a very short period of time. It's been a steep learning curve over the last few years and, just like every other small business owner, I've had to wear multiple hats in the studio - everything from designer to accountant to shipper and marketing director! I'm a firm believer in mastering all aspects of your business whether it be changing the ink in the printer or writing code on the website.
At some point in the last few months I realized that Cartolina had grown bigger and faster than I ever would have expected and I had to start planning for 2010 - that meant hiring the right people to take care of all my sales, distribution, marketing and shipping so that I can concentrate on designing. It took a lot of research and negotiating(and a few sleepless nights) but I am very proud to announce today that we are expanding our global reach with wonderful new distribution partners in Canada, the US, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. A whole new sales force to take care of our retail buyers and great customer service to back up our product. As of today, all our US orders are will be shipped directly from Oregon - so, no more costly international postage rates from Canada - and of course shipping is way faster now too! We have great new prices and lots of pretty new product - we are excited to be licensing our imagery this year for some fabulous Cartolina Home products - I'll have more info on this soon.
I'm hoping to have a lot more time to design and to blog. I think that Cafe Cartolina has some room for growth and I'm planning on making a few fun little changes around here - now that I have time! So now you know what I have planned for this year - how about you? What do you have planned for 2010? Why don't you leave me a comment below . . . .
To start things off this year we have some exciting trade shows - If you are a retailer and you are planning on attending any of the following shows why don't you stop by our booth and pick up a fun little gift that we have for you? I'll be at the Toronto show and I'd love to say hi!
Here's the spring schedule so far:Top Drawer, Earls Court in London, 17-19 January, Booth H45, CGTA Show in Toronto Jan 31 - Feb 4, Spring Fair, Birmingham, 7 -11 February, Booth W06 Hall 3. Contact me if you need any more info on these shows.