In 2024, Dalton Laluces acquired Calypso Cards and Nelson Line Publishing . He saw a golden opportunity to expand these two already successful greeting card businesses using his tech startup skills and social media know-how. Happily, he’s tasted success with help from Cin7.
Calypso Cards and Nelson Line have been in business for a little over 20 years and almost 40 years respectively, and when Dalton, the new CEO, found and purchased them, he knew that they were exactly what he was looking for.
According to Dalton, Calypso Cards is a traditional greeting card company offering locally made, eco-friendly cards featuring art by designers around the world. Nelson Line, also a greeting card company, also offers stationary, calendars, and giftware. As the exclusive licensee for The New Yorker magazine, Nelson Line puts the famous art on its greeting cards, notebooks, journals, and other items for customers in the U.S., Canada, the UK, the EU, Australia, and New Zealand.
On paper, buying established businesses with ready-made customers who love their products should have put Dalton on easy street, but there were some roadblocks.
“Nelson Line was relying on systems with old-school technologies. One of the biggest pain points was having our inventory system not connected to our e-commerce platform or FAIRE .”
The on-premise solutions Dalton had inherited were holding him back. So, he replaced them with Cin7.
Having a 40-year-old company running on an inventory management system that didn’t connect to the internet caused inventory discrepancies as well as order management and infrastructure concerns.
“From day one, I knew I wanted to move the inventory management system onto something that’s in the cloud. The old system ran on a server in-house. You couldn’t really connect it to anything. It was very 90s old school.”
Needing to solve these issues so that he could grow and scale the companies efficiently, Dalton set to work evaluating his various ERP options, including Fulfil and Cin7.
“Cin7 was the gold deluxe option. It had all the features I needed to migrate to more modern technologies plus vital integrations, like QuickBooks and FAIRE. It was also affordable for small businesses like us.”
Decision made, Dalton deployed Cin7 for Nelson Line via Cin7’s Focused Implementation package, which offers one-on-one virtual training with a dedicated Cin7 expert.
“The onboarding process really set us up for success right off the bat!”
After the Nelson Line implementation Dalton chose Cin7’s Accelerated Implementation package, for getting Calypso Cards up on running on Cin7, which is designed to get businesses up and running quickly through structured group sessions.
“The Accelerated package gave us enough time for us to really get into the details if we were experiencing any issues with setting up inventory or accounting on the second implementation,” he says. “It covered all the bases.”
Before Cin7 Dalton’s lean team spent too much time jumping between platforms, manually entering orders from FAIRE, independent sales reps, and their e-commerce site, and generally working harder, not smarter. But Cin7 smoothed out those processes and got those cards moving again.
“Now that we’ve migrated both companies to Cin7, my team is able to go back and forth with a click of a button. My Nelson Line order entry person can pitch in with Calypso ordering easily and vice versa. I can have one team member manage inventory and purchasing for both companies.”
Having a single person fulfill the role of two people, thus being able to grow his companies without adding headcount, is a huge greeting-card worthy benefit as is Cin7’s FAIRE integration.
“That’s primarily one of the reasons I was looking for a new solution, and when I found Cin7, I solved that problem. The fact that all those orders can come in automatically is a gamechanger,” Dalton raves. “Now my order entry team members can spend their time and resources working with the sales reps and individual customers.”
In addition to FAIRE, Dalton says they sell their quality greeting card products through independent sales reps, their current storefront, and on their e-commerce storefront. They also recently started selling through Cin7’s B2B Portal to the list.
“One of the struggles with Nelson Line was trying to manage our wholesale and retail customers in one place. It was a pain to determine how many B2B sales we have versus direct-to-consumer, how to manage different price points, and how to manage wholesale minimums as well as promos. Opening the B2B portal has been fantastic!”
In fact, he says it’s been a massive win for them and their sales reps. The B2B Portal has also eliminated the need for manual order entry, saving them time and improving order accuracy. And customers can come into the B2B Portal and purchase items whenever they want while also having access to all their open invoices in one place.
The wins of implementing Cin7 kept coming, including Dalton’s decision to utilize Cin7 Pay and Cin7 Capital.
With Cin7 Pay, he and his team replaced the need for customers to pay by phone or check. “Cin7 Pay has been a big, big win for us because we get paid faster. We also embed the pay links into the invoices we send out so they can pay right on the invoice as well, improving the customer experience. And we’re able to save our customers’ payment information directly in Cin7 Pay, which has been awesome.”
As for Cin7 Capital, Dalton says being able to tap into vetted funding to finance invoices without having to visit a bank was incredibly helpful. “I’m always about self-service, so Cin7 Capital was an easy decision. I wasn’t too concerned about using it because I’ve used Plaid and other similar technologies. It’s nice to know that we have funds available if we need it.”
Specifically, Dalton used Cin7 Capital to bridge the gap between when they get paid by their customers and when they need to pay vendors.
“Other business owners should try Cin7 Capital,” he says. “The fees are reasonable, it’s very convenient, and it’s something you can easily access. You can do it in your pajamas on a Saturday morning, if you want to.”
For Dalton and his companies, the future is unfolding as if written for a greeting card. Growth and profitability are ongoing, and Dalton praises Cin7 for helping him make it all possible.
“With Cin7’s reporting feature, I’m able to pull insights, such as who’s buying from us, what categories are we selling the most in, and what’s our gross margin for each one of those. I can drill down into these and other questions and improve upon them,” he explains. “I can use that information as a foundation for future planning.”
And Cin7 is on hand to help Dalton’s plans to expand his business in the UK, empowering him to grow internationally without requiring additional boots on the ground.
“Before Cin7, we were in the dark, like in a cave with our little candles trying to get work done. Now, it’s like someone turned on the lights. We’re able to do more with the people we have today, and that’s because of Cin7. Having payments, inventory, order entry, and accounting all in one place is what we needed!”