Blue mountain cards still standing
09/17/08
What is Blue Mountain Cards? Back in the 90's there was a huge rush of companies trying to provide online ecard services. I'm not sure exactly how they built a business model on the idea of giving away a free ecard, but they did. Business models based on advertising revenue were quite frequent back then. This has no changed with people wanting to know where the real revenue is coming from. However, there are some painful similarities in web 2.0 to this idea of building big applications that will make money only from advertising.
The ecard space is a funny one. This is the space that is eating the lunch from the old paper greeting card space that's been around forever and a day. In some ways it's a normal case study of technology advancement over a paper based product. But I don't think it's that simple. An ecard is not the same thing as a paper card. Paper cards come from a store and require you to mail them. Electronic cards are bought online and never touch paper. In this way, it's a real product transition. So in essence, the technology is really impacted the very product. You see this also in pcs, telephones, tvs and other electronic products.
So what exactly did blue mountain cards do that was so special? I'm not entirely sure, but I think that Blue Mountain Cards had a serious lead going into the game. They had a good plan. The top management at Blue Mountain Cards seemed to know that the ride would not last forever. So the company was sold while things were still really really hot in the dot com sector. What a move that was.. I'll bet many people wish they had that type of timing.
How is that in 2008 Blue Mountain Cards is still a going concern? One view is that the original builders of the business picked an once-in-a-lifetime period to exit the business and made an unprecedented amount of money.. However, these were experience people who were also making a serious move in a serious industry. The greeting card business is huge. Flawed business model or not, Blue Mountain Cards made a big dent in a market worth billions. I am betting that this is why they are still around today. It's a textbook case of building a brand in a new market. The part that is not text book is how Blue Mountain Cards got out at the top of the market. We should all be so lucky in our careers.