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Comment by newobj | Hacker News Reader

You say that the industry has "insane profit margins". Have you considered what % of the revenue goes back into marketing? If you're trying to disrupt a space by pricing, you better make sure you can still afford to market at your lower price. If people are making a lot of money then you can bet that the CPC for your keywords are going to be high. So high perhaps that your CPA could exceed $25? At even just $1 CPC you'll need to convert at 4% or higher to turn anything resembling a profit. And the wedding invitation business is unfortunately not a repeat business. You may get referrals, but you'll never get the same customers coming back to buy again.

Just food for thought. Good luck!

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Definitely keeping that in mind. "You may get referrals, but you'll never get the same customers coming back to buy again." is a great point, and a big hurdle I got to jump over. One way to get around this is partnerships/licensing to the template makers, who are currently not taking advantage of what happens after they sell the template kits. Another is community building, since people who are working on their invitations love to show them off and critique others — keeping the people around longer than when they finish their design.

Thanks! :)

Don't listen to the naysayers, this is a great idea and it is an industry primed for disruption. It's a total effing scam. But I agree with others. The DIY version is only one angle... we paid for ours (through the nostrils), but if there were a 4x6 or moo type option? Absolutely.

As far as referrals go: they matter. You won't get much repeat business so acquisition will be a concern (even with an growing divorce rate!). But people get a ton of advice from their friends when the go through the process. The same DJ that played at a friends wedding, played at ours, and now seems to show up at every wedding we go to. People ask my wife about our venue, go there and then call to find out which florists we down-selected to, etc. Point being word of mouth is probably a disproportionately large source of demand. I think that can help mitigate a low customer lifetime value.

There are other similar products you could offer to happy users. I might want to also make thank you cards, or come back a year or two after the wedding and make birth announcements.

Exactly. I don't want to plan too big just yet - get a v1 one out, start making revenue, and find out then where I should expand to because there are tons of ideas and paths. One reason I feel so passionately about my idea is because it as so much potential to build upon itself.

Then get out in front of that potential. If you don't, someone better funded will take your idea and immediately run past your v1.

I am getting married in November and wasted about an hour looking through a "book" of over-priced invitations a few days ago.

I was disappointed this site was not live because I would have bought on the spot!

The biggest issue for me is convenience, as soon as this in-person process became a chore, my fiancee and I thought to look online (again).

Even though you will not get repeat customers, you will get repeat families, party-planners and friends. Our entire vendor list came from family and/or friends referrals..

Good luck!

Exactly my thoughts. I recently got married as well and I can definitely affirm that a good part of the wedding industry works off of word-of-mouth. This product could be huge. I definitely would have used it if it was available and well executed when I got married.

An idea: -Be able to include more than just an invitation and RSVP. Food choices, maps, registry info would be great. Perhaps you could even have contracts with stores that have registries.

Client of mine bought a physical wedding business thinking that the margins/prices were huge but sold it within a year. The margins were not as good as expected and a lot of the processes were painful. FWIW.

> a lot of the processes were painful.

Never been married, don't know anything about the industry - what specifically did the business provide, and what was the painful part?

My first thought is bitchy customers.

It was a woman who'd been married and, like anyone who has done so, marvelled at some of the costs involved, and especially at costs that were suddenly 2-3x as much as normal if you say "wedding" rather than "family get-together". So she bought into a business that provided chairs, chair covers, table centrepieces, etc.

But with weddings come huge expectations and issues of timing. You're usually working weekends and nights. You have to work in and around other providers, setting up at certain times and often dismantling well after midnight (because the venue has something else on the day after). Yet everyone grumbles about paying for crucial things like delivery and setup (sounds easy, but who in your wedding party needs to be setting things up amidst the dramas of the actual wedding?) and, as you suspected, tensions are high and customers are demanding (bridezilla-style).

Invitations are a tough space. Horrendously competitive and though everyone wants lovely invites, no one really wants to pay what they cost. It's rarely the design process that kills you. I bet there are loads of people who fall in love with letter press invites and then get a quote that knocks them over. Some invites might be $10 ea and for that price you can usually add another course to your reception dinner!

I married for the second time earlier this year (second time ever, not second time this year! ;)), designed the invites myself (though I'm a web designer rather than a graphic designer) and handled RSVPs and everything that goes with it through a custom designed and built site (now in post-wedding mode at http://www.march20.com.au/).

I am actually in the process of expanding my setup into a side-project (http://www.guestlist.com.au/) that actually touches on invitations. @limedaring, I would be more than happy to trade ideas and tips and even see if there's room to collaborate on a link between ventures if you wanted (email in profile).

That's how the idea started — people wanted to save money on invitations and ended up doing it themselves, resulting generally in a really poor product. I wanted to do something that allowed for budget consumers to do-it-themselves, but give them a better ability to make it typographically beautiful.

Weddings also often require all-day commitments, which is a huge factor in pricing. I am a photographer and make about 60-70% of my revenue from weddings. This is one of two reasons why we charge what we do; the other is the massive wholesale costs on albums ($500-$900 from the vendor we use).

The rest of my revenue comes from other types of shoots, which are much, much easier and a much faster turnaround. A family shoot can be redone. A wedding can't, so experience matters more than any other kind of shoot.

People don't want a quote for wedding invites, they want to know all the prices / price-breaks upfront and do it all online, if that's not already happening there is room for disruption.

I'd love to beta your guest list software (it would save me from building my own!). I am about to do the invites for my wedding so I am on the lookout for sweet wedding related web services.

I have a lot on the go so unless you're getting married in the distant future, I wouldn't bank on me having it all ready for you. Otherwise, thanks for the offer - hopefully one day I'll have it ready to show to the HN crowd and get some feedback on the concept.

  and a lot of the processes were painful

Really? What were some of the most painful processes your client faced? Do you think one or more of them would be experienced by others in that industry?

Mostly the physical ones from what I could gather. Things like needing to deliver and pick up things at very specific times, with customers who never appreciated that or wanted to pay for it. Giving up weekends, Saturday nights.

Marketing is going to be a huge challenge. For a data point, consider that TinyPrints (which owns Wedding Paper Divas), spent nearly $50 acquiring new users last holiday season (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/technology/internet/22sear...). Granted this was for holiday cards, but I would imagine that for wedding invitations, the spend for new user acquisition is still going to be quite high.

eh, i'm also in a business that is traditionally marketing heavy. Dramatic price differences can make up for a lot of marketing, in some markets. (Of course, my market is about as different from weddings as you can get, so a dramatically lower price might not make as much difference in that market.)

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