Unique cards greeted with approval

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It is often a challenge to find the perfect greeting card.
Shade Tree Greetings Inc. hopes to help with that problem-it creates and designs greeting cards for all kinds of occasions, but with a slight twist.
Located in Brighton, the company was initially conceived by Jerry Infantino, CEO and executive creative director of former advertising agency Infantino McDermott.
“Jerry said, ‘I want to start a greeting card company, I want to start an outlet for more creative ideas,'” says Richard Cancilla, president of Shade Tree. “Our goal was to start a business where we were selling to multiple customers and to rely on that multiple customer base to help the business grow.”
Infantino, 57, and partner, Cancilla, 38, are co-owners of Shade Tree.
The firm officially was founded in 1992. Its biggest struggle initially was getting noticed by sales representatives in an industry rampant with competitors, Cancilla says.
The first line of cards the company produced was called Opening Remarks. The other two product lines the company offers are Actual Pictures and HumorUS. Actual Pictures uses colorized vintage photographs accompanied by humorous text. Cards, notepads and magnets are just some of the products in that line.
HumorUS uses everyday objects such as cell phones with jokes to convey messages. It also features cards, notepads and magnets.
“The line that really put us on the map was the Actual Pictures line,” Cancilla says. “It seemed to strike a chord with the baby boomer population.”
Shade Tree has received a number of honors. Its Actual Pictures line made the top 10 list of cards in Giftbeat magazine-a monthly gift industry publication-for two consecutive years; it ranked No.8 in 2003 and No.7 in 2004. In May, Shade Tree was honored again, as two of its cards, one from Actual Pictures and another from the HumorUS lines, were 2004 Louie Award finalists, the greeting card industry’s annual awards.
Steve Hallowell, Shade Tree’s vice president of sales, says that the awards have helped the company grow.
“It’s helped a lot with getting noticed by sales reps,” he says. “It adds more credibility to us for both bigger and smaller retailers.”
Shade Tree’s products are carried by more than 1,000 retailers in the United States and Canada.
Most of these retailers are small gift shops and novelty stores, Cancilla says.
The largest retailer carrying their products is the Cracker Barrel Old Country Store Inc. chain, which has more than 500 stores nationwide. Locally, Shade Tree’s products can be found at Parkleigh Enterprises Inc., a luxury retail store on Park Avenue.
Shade Tree faces competition both locally and nationally, but company officials say the industry is not like most others and it makes competition “a relative thing.”
“The greeting card industry is interesting,” Hallowell says. “There are two big companies, American Greetings and Hallmark, and there are thousands of smaller companies like us.”
Shade Tree employs 14 people. For the first decade the company grew roughly 20 percent annually but that number had dropped off to a slower steady growth recently, Cancilla says. Their recent honors, however, have been a plus; sales grew 35 percent in the last year.
The firm currently is working to improve its relationships with sales reps and their customers, Hallowell says.
“We’re doing a customer retention program where about seven days after the order is filled we call to check in on it,” he says. “I try to send a personal thank you letter, and then we follow up about three months later.
“I think it’s what helps set us apart.”
The company is looking to add to their distribution, mainly targeting the gift shop market.
“It’s nice to be a small company in Rochester that’s growing,” Cancilla says.
(Graham Jesmer is a Rochester Business Journal intern.)
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08/05/05 (C) Rochester Business Journal