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“Make a product people want to buy, not one you want to sell. You'll know when you have something great — it sells itself.”
Travis Peterson didn't have a childhood dream of making a non-stop musical greeting card — he studied finance and worked in investment banking, which he liked just fine. But life is funny. These days he spends much of his time on a little project that sells close to half a million dollars a year, built around an admittedly silly idea.
It came about when Travis and his brother Nick visited a relative who'd received one of those musical greeting cards that play an annoying tune when opened. Travis said, "This is really dumb," and Nick replied, "Right — but what if it didn't stop?" That was the extent of their market research. Their goal was to make $1,000 in profit from a prank card that loops non-stop until you destroy it.
Their Kickstarter raised more than $90,000. Once that happened, Travis gave it real attention. They found a manufacturer in China, made 1,000 cards, and began direct sales while reaching out to retailers — since most people buy greeting cards in person. That took a while, but once some stores stocked them, competitors noticed Joker Greeting and requests started coming in. Along the way they added flourishes: glitter that explodes when you rip the card up, and an eight-hour YouTube video of the card playing non-stop.
Not every problem was a laughing matter. Cash flow was a constant challenge, requiring careful projections about how much stock to buy ahead of prime card holidays. And two years in, disaster struck: about 10,000 units went bad, the batteries dying after five minutes instead of the promised three hours. Disgruntled vendors came back — including one with a $20,000 order that was mostly duds — and it took Travis a year and a half to rebuild that trust.
He had to decide whether to quit or keep going. He gave it four months — and two years later, Joker Greeting had rebounded in leaps and bounds, selling around 50,000 units a year and bringing in about $36,000 a month.
Travis isn't a fan of rules of thumb — no two businesses are alike — but he follows the "Keep It Simple" philosophy: start simple, prove the concept, and only then make big investments. He's applying it to a new card line he started with just $500. And his core lesson: "Make a product people want to buy, not one you want to sell. You'll know when you have something great — it sells itself."
