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Blue mountain cards survives

What is Blue Mountain Cards? It all started back when ecards became big in the 1990's. 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 is a difference with today's focus on real revenue. 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 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. eCards are not exactly the same product as paper greeting cards. 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. 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.

How exactly did blue mountain cards dig out of this hole? First, Blue Mountain Cards had a big lead going into the game. They planned well.. 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.. Looking back, there are many things I wish I had done differently.

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. 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.