As seen in the Chicago Tribune!
We were recently featured in the Chicago Tribune, our local newspaper the Naperville Sun and featured on Glancer Magazine's Website to share our story about our teacher postcards. You can read the original article HERE
Or we have posted it below for you to enjoy! All of our teacher postcards can be found in our store: https://www.amandacreation.com/product-category/shop-postcards/for-teachers/
Naperville stationery business hit hard by pandemic finds success in teacher-student postcards
Postcards teachers can send to students while they study at home during the coronavirus pandemic pulled Amanda Wittenborn’s Naperville stationery and party supply business from the brink of failure.
Owner of AmandaCreation.com, Wittenborn said the governor’s stay-at-home orders issued in March hit her 4-year-old small business hard.
With gatherings across the state and country prohibited and people no longer in need of supplies for birthdays, showers, confirmations, holidays or graduation parties, prospects for making money quickly dried up.
“Our business totally crashed,” Wittenborn said. “As a party company we basically lost 95% of our sales and income once the lockdown started.”
“I love running my own businesses,” Wittenborn said. “I asked myself, what could people use right now?”
Talking to friends who are teachers, she learned how much they were missing their students.
“They miss their classrooms. I see the struggle they’re having,” she said. “I started to think about how I could use my creativity and talents to help them right now.”
That became the genesis of a line of teacher postcards Wittenborn decided to make, featuring cute messages, like “You’re a Llamazing student” and "'Taco’ about an awesome student.”
The postcards were an instant hit.
In the first four days the cards were introduced in April, Wittenborn sold 500.
“I typically sell party supplies in my business. In the past four years, my best-selling invitation would sell under 1,000 in a year,” she said. “This is the first time we’ve sold postcards.”
To date she said she’s sold more than 600,000 individual postcards, and the teacher line is listed on Amazon as a “best seller.”
“We hit ‘best seller’ in five or six days,” Wittenborn said, adding it’s a status the cards continue to maintain.
The postcards apparently struck a chord with teachers, she said.
While they can see students in virtual meetings, Wittenborn said, “it’s not the connections they’re used to. ... I love that this provides something that everyone still needs right now: connection."
Her postcards show children someone really cares about them, she said — “My teacher took a minute to send this to me.”
With the popularity of the cards, Wittenborn said she created a line of funny, pandemic-related postcards for people to send to family and friends, such as “I miss you more than toilet paper.”
“Who wouldn’t giggle at that?” she said.
The demand for her cards meant enlisting the family -- husband David and their sons, Zach, 14; Josh, 10; and Ben, 5 -- to help fill orders.
“When this blew up, I got the kids involved. I told them I need your help,” Wittenborn said. “When the boys finish online schoolwork, they are also helping to put stickers on the envelopes. ... It reminds me of when I first started my business.”
Wittenborn estimates she and her husband have sent out about 7,200 packages. “We’ve never done anything to this scale before,” she added.
The work involved has made quarantining easier, she said. "It’s been a great distraction,” she said.
As a result of the postcard boon, she’s not only been able to pay bills but to hire back staff, she said.
“We are doing better that we did before. I couldn’t ask for anything more,” Wittenborn said. “We are truly blessed.”
