We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Angie McGuire. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Angie below.

Angie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Looking back, what’s an important lesson you learned at a prior job?

I started working at a scrapbook store in high school and ended up moving up in the company over 11 years. So much value in dealing with unhappy customers. I learned a lot about the value of retaining customers. Replacing missing packages, offering free exchanges, quickly responding with info on international packages. The time and cost to accommodate customer needs is (almost) always worth it.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Angie and I am so proud to own this all female greeting card business since 2013. I grew up in Eden Prairie, MN with a love for pretty things and clever words. Using skills learned at my previous job as a designer at Archiver’s, a Minneapolis based scrapbook company, I started adding my own sense of sarcasm and profanity to my handmade greeting cards. The response from friends was so positive that I decided to sell them and it’s just boomed since November 2013!

I take inspiration from movies and pop culture and scrolling the gram, but mostly just from personal occasions that I need a card. When a friend has a milestone birthday or my brother graduated or my cousin’s dog passed away—a new card is written and added to the collection. We now carry over 300 styles…many dirty but we also offer Clean Mud (cards without profanity).

My team is made of moms (who get the enjoyment of working from home…in pajamas with wine if they so choose) includes Abbey, Amanda, Karla, and Shana who all work on hand assembling, packaging and shipping each card. They also help out at each of the pop-up shows we attend throughout the year.

As we’ve grown as a company, we have put a greater emphasis on going green and using sustainable products and shipping materials. We use recycled paper and locally sourced recycled envelopes. Even the plastic sleeve each card is stored in comes from a premium eco plant-based PLA (polylactic acid). The shipping boxes and envelopes are made from recycled materials and the ink on the packaging is plant based (algae, actually!).

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

As the pandemic hit, nearly all the stores I sold cards to were closed (at least temporarily, some permanently). I started thinking it was time to take a break and slow down on cards since they didn’t feel important in the grand scheme of what the world was dealing with in 2020. But I decided to actually ramp up. I wrote more cards about empathy and support and missing people and friends and just funny cards to help people feel more connected when they couldn’t be with their people. It was a big turning point. Because as my wholesale business plummeted, I was able to reach a huge audience of first time buyers that started buying directly from my website for the first time. Our Covid collection had that largest influx of new customers of anything I’ve ever released. I’m so glad I decided not to sit back and wait.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I’m so proud that all of the people that follow us on social media have decided to organically. We haven’t paid for any services to get likes or follows. The algorithms reward consistency so we try to stay relevant by posting current projects, behind the scenes, new releases, funny reviews of our products, funny compliments from customers and I always remind people that there’s a person behind the brand by using my name and face on occasion. We also have gained great traction at events by allowing people to spin the prize wheel for giving us a follow. People cannot resist a prize wheel :)

Contact Info:

• Website: https://muddymouthcards.com/
• Instagram: @muddymouthcards
• Facebook: facebook.com/muddymouthcards

Image Credits
Leah Steidl Phorography