We recently connected with Laurie Necco and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Laurie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

A longtime good friend of mine, Toni, reached out to me around the Christmas season of 2017, asking if I knew where she could buy a Die Hard Christmas card. I thought about it and looked around but could not find one anywhere. We wound up getting together soon after that and started talking about how strange it was to not be able to find such a card. We were on our way to grab some lunch at a local pizza restaurant, we sat in the car, looked at each other, and said “Why don’t we create one”. Seriously, let’s do this! We both share a deep love for pop culture, horror, and art… it just made sense. We spent the next hour or so pouring over ideas at the table over pizza. And as it turned out, we accidentally had crashed a first birthday party at the pizza place. We were so generously given Elmo cupcakes while we finalized our business plan and next steps to make our business a reality!

Laurie, 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?

I got into art at a very young age. I loved coloring books and “how to draw” books as a child. It felt like a natural progression to continue studying art as I continued school. I took art classes, selected art as a major whenever I could, and even went to The High School of Art and Design. I suppose going to an art high school was the step out of “drawing is a hobby” and into “art can be a career” but it was at FIT (The Fashion Institute of Technology) that I started taking this seriously.

I graduated in 2004 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Illustration (Associate’s Degree in Fashion Illustration). I was lucky to find some art jobs right out of college. I worked for a screen printer while doing some freelance work on the side. I started to feel like I was losing myself a little after college, most of the art I was doing was digital and that wasn’t fulfilling me at the time. I wanted to create more on my own but knew I wasn’t a painter, and for some reason at that time, I had in my head that painting was the natural next step. But my medium of choice was (and still is) colored pencil. I didn’t see colored pencils as a medium to be taken seriously. I of course have since changed my tune. Not only have I had success with colored pencils for many years, but I know some ridiculously amazing colored pencil artists out there.

On the side of my 9-5 jobs as a graphic artist, I always drew for myself. The pieces were always inspired by pop culture. I did not think at the time that anyone would care about what I was drawing beside me because it felt so personal to exactly what I liked. I eventually opened up my own Etsy shop selling prints and stickers of my art and was pleasantly surprised that people did in fact like my work. so much so that some of my friends got my art pieces tattooed on them. There is no bigger compliment than that!

As I evolved, my art started leaning more toward the horror/sci-fi side of pop culture. I was using my skills with colored pencils to portray scenes and characters in horror movies. I liked the juxtaposition of using light and delicate colors paired with a darker subject matter. Naturally, this new style I was developing translated perfectly to mine and Toni’s business, Ghost Girl Greetings.

With Ghost Girl Greetings, it all starts with the greeting card. We’ve been lucky enough to make a business on what inspired both Toni and I, and we continue to grow by putting our art pieces on magnets, tote bags, stationary, and so on.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

When we decided on starting Ghost Girl Greetings we were only selling greeting cards. I had a pretty good printer that I was able to start printing cards. From there it was a little trial and error on the best card stock to buy and the best way to print the cards. Many YouTube videos were being watched. Some other products we manufactured ourselves were buttons/magnets/bookmarks. We even dabbled in candle making. But with Toni and I having full-time jobs, it was getting increasingly harder to manufacture all of that ourselves. We print what we can and try our best to work with other small businesses to create our products. We are lucky to be part of this wonderful community through Social Media where we can interact with other small businesses and fans/patrons of what we are creating.

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

I think we can all agree that many people, with businesses large or small, had to pivot during COVID. Toni and I not only have our business online through our website & Etsy, but we also travel to conventions and creative markets to sell our stuff in person. During COVID everything was shut down and we didn’t have those events to sell, meet people, or network. We had to focus more on the online business side of things. We got to work; learning how to reach more people, network, and market through social media, researching new products that work for our brand, and creating wholesale programs. Thankfully conventions and markets have been back, but we continue with what we learned, and continue to learn, to grow our business through social media.

Contact Info:

• Website: Ghostgirlgreetings.com
• Instagram: @ghostgirlgreetings
• Facebook: ghost girl greetings
• Twitter: @GhostGirlGrtngs