Meet The Man Behind The Multi-Million Dollar African-American Greeting Card Business
Perkins said the company invested in a 20,000-dollar phone system to record the amount of incoming calls and other data.
“My mentor, John Maxwell, says you have to look at the scoreboard to see how you’re doing,” said Perkins, also a football coach. “Business is a lot like sports. You have to see the game and make adjustments.”
Even as a million-dollar company, African-American Expressions is experiencing its share of challenges as the economy and discretionary spending take a hit and e-mail and e-cards gain in popularity.
“Big companies have the contracts in the major stores. They buy floor space in the supermarkets,” he said. “It’s always been difficult, but we’re a specialty product and you can’t find what we offer.”
The company started out selling greeting cards, but has since expanded to include a specialty gift line where products are sold primarily through the company’s website black-gifts.com. Perkins recently launched a new company called Charise, which he said is Greek for “favor.” The new company is not just geared toward African-American consumers, but all consumers interested in Christian gifts.
“We sell to a lot of Christian book stores and we had these relationships already so we decided to create a more general product line,” Perkins said. “It’s for mainstream stores as well as Christian bookstores,” he said. Inspirational products are one of the fastest-growing arms of the gift sector, Perkins said.
Diversifying the company is a strategy for Perkins, which he said helps soften the blow of dips in sales of certain arms of the company.
“We’re continuing to look at market trends and possible new product lines,” Perkins said. “When I look for development we try to look at a need. For example, we launched a luxury tote bag series featuring black art and decided to add an iPad holder.”
Perkins said his company has grown because it fulfilled a need in the market.
“I like to say that we’re authentic,” he said. “We know what African-Americans want to buy because we are African-American.”
