RSS FeedHow exactly did Blue Mountain Cards survive the dot com crash
Have you heard of Blue Mountain Cards? Back in the 90s there was a huge rush of companies trying to provide online ecard services. Im not sure exactly how they built a business model on the idea of giving away a free ecard, but they did. What you must remember is that advertising revenue models were seen as very acceptable 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.
Ecards are a difficult business space for me to understand. This is the space that is eating the lunch from the old paper greeting card space thats been around forever and a day. In some ways its a normal case study of technology advancement over a paper based product. But I dont think its that simple. An ecard is not the same thing as a paper card. You buy a paper card at a store and physically write on it. An ecard comes from a company like Blue Mountain Cards and is completely electronic. The products here are just not the same. So we are actually seeing technology change the wants and desires of the buyer here. You see this also in pcs, telephones, tvs and other electronic products.
So what exactly did blue mountain cards do that was so special? First, Blue Mountain Cards had a big 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 Blue Mountain Cards management decided to sell the company while everything was still red-hot. What a move that was.. Ill bet many people wish they had that type of timing.
So now its 2008 and what is a business model like Blue Mountain Cards still doing around? 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 think this accounts for why they are here today. They built a brand and have a name worth something. 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.