We were lucky to catch up with Gina Peterson recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Gina , thanks for joining us today. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.

Scaling up was a concept that definitely didn’t happen overnight for us. About 7 years ago my husband asked me “What’s your growth plan? How are you going to grow?” And I remember looking at him blankly — at the time he asked me about 85% of our business was custom work. Custom wedding invitations, custom design work for small businesses, custom holiday cards, custom graphic design projects etc. 85% of our business revolved around me in every aspect of a transaction. Meeting with customers, designing every single piece, working with press, and delivering the product. The only way to “grow” was for me to keep extending my work and time. It was a very “busy” and demanding work environment that relied on me for every piece.

The year was 2016 and business was going well and growing. A slow growth, but growth. From 2011 to 2016 I worked out of our home and it was getting to the point that I was meeting so often with new brides and was needing more space to have our products on display and what we could offer customers. We built an open-concept studio/shop that year to move business into knowing that if the business was going to grow, it needed space to do that. That was the first step of the scaling process. My husband told me “if you want to grow you need to figure out a plan or model that allows you to not be a touchpoint for every single piece and designing every single piece.” I hired another designer that same year to help with all the weddings and projects we were working on. She was wonderful and helped a lot with the workload and not having to touch every piece. But, we were still designing every piece. He mentioned wholesale as a growth plan. Wholesaling our products. At that point in the business it felt like a good time to give wholesale a try while having someone else to help with the workload.

If we were going to try wholesale the best way to do it was to do it right. We attended our first trade show in 2017 for wholesale. It was the National Stationery Show in New York City. After researching and studying the wholesale side of business, I thought a full greeting card line along with notepads, gift wrap, and stickers would be a good fit for our talents and designs. The show went very well for being first-timers! Came home with a pile of orders and even a sought-after Louie award (an academy award-like in the stationery industry) for one of our custom save the date designs. The show was the perfect debut opportunity for us!

Fast forward to the year 2020 and the wholesale side turned out to be the perfect opportunity to scale. (Admittedly, I guess my husband knew what he was talking about) I am forever grateful that our business had diversified because once Covid came around… our custom work for events and weddings came to a screeching halt. We, luckily, had put the time and effort into our Ginger Mail subscription service, retail on our website, and wholesale greeting cards because those sectors took off. People loved sending and receiving greeting cards during covid, and it helped us to expand and focus more on growing the wholesale side of our business. It’s nice to find the silver lining in tough situations.

Today, our greeting cards can be found in over 1,300 independent retailers across the world and 4 large national retailers including Anthropologie, Barnes & Noble, Paper Source, & Trader Joes. I no longer have to touch every piece but rather we can focus on creating more greeting cards and products to value our Ginger P. Designs line even more. We continue to design custom work for weddings & events, but the wholesale side of our business has really helped diversify what we can offer to all customers and retailers. It’s a win-win for everyone.

Gina , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Gina Peterson of Ginger P. Designs and yes I often get referred to as “Ginger” – which can work too even though I don’t have red hair as it is a nickname given to me after college and when I first opened my Etsy shop in 2010. You had to pick a unique shop name (which I later found out you couldn’t change anyways) but “gingerpdesigns” was what I went with and it’s stuck ever since. Ginger P. has been catchy to our customers and supporters, it works well with our brand!

Ginger P. Designs started out as a custom stationery business where we offered custom wedding invitations, save the dates, small business design and so on. I loved doing my own wedding invitations so much in 2010 that I didn’t want to stop there; and from there the Etsy shop was started only to just be a creative outlet. That outlet turned into a full time business in less than 2 years. I left my marketing job knowing I was still young and if it didn’t work out I could always try something else. I never looked back. At the time, I felt like the market for weddings and other paper goods wasn’t modernized enough so our tagline was “modern and fresh paper goods” and it still is today. We pride ourselves in always having a refreshing and stylish approach to our work. Our customers have seeked us out over time knowing that is what they can get from us as.

Our custom work and illustrations gained popularity that over time has evolved into a full product line of greeting cards, notepads, and stickers that can be purchased at retailers across the country and world still under the Ginger P. Designs brand! One of my favorite things about the business that we built is that even though our shop/studio is in a very small town in Minnesota we have been able to work with similar independent artists all the way up to very large, well-known national retailers. A nice reminder that you don’t have to live big to dream big.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I think pivoting when owning a business is almost something you do every week and I’m not exaggerating. Some pivots are small and some are big. I would say any business owner must have the ability to stay calm because there are always unexpected curve balls thrown your way and how you react and lead through them is a big indicator of your business’s success.

I had 3 really big pivot moments in business. The first one was when my first child was born and I became a mom, the second was when my second child was born, and the third one was when my third child was born. Running a business and being a mom is a constant balancing act. Having kids gives you good perspective on what’s important to spend your time on and what isn’t. I used to stay up late “working” on busy work and things ALL THE TIME. Once I became a mom, and then an even busier mom of 3, I learned how important it is to put your time into items that can push business forward. And I am very grateful for that realization and “pivot”

Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?

We have heavily relied on e-commerce from the beginning — we started solely on Etsy! Ecommerce is an excellent way to start a business without much risk as it typically involves minimal start-up costs or time. It is important to find the best match for your products and what you are trying to sell. Even though I mentioned that we started on Etsy, we actually no longer use Etsy as we built our own website and it makes more sense for our brand to be housed there for direct to consumer.

In 2018, we joined Faire as it was a newer online, wholesale marketplace for retailers to shop online. Faire was necessary during covid to connect with our retailers.. since many in-person buying shows were not being held. Ecommerce has been, and will continue to be very essential to our small town business.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.gingerpdesigns.com
• Instagram: @gingerpdesigns
• Other: https://faire.com/direct/gingerpdesigns

Image Credits
Makayla Rae Photography