[Case Study] Crude Cat Cards — when vulgar sells better than fancy
We love showing off our clients’ stores. Most of them are so ingenious, we wish we had thought of them ourselves. Some are cute, some are smart, some elegant or breathtaking. And then there’s Crude Cat Cards falling solidly in both the Hilarious and I-Can’t-Believe-They-Can-Sell-That category!
I was able to reach out to Mitch McLeod and Nikki Robertson, the co-owners of Crude Cat Cards —
*record screech*
I should actually probably warn you that this post uses language some might find offensive. If you don’t like informal phallic terms, this is not the case study for you. You should go check out our case study with Logan Zanki of Cozy Bump.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, back to Crude Cat Cards.
Crude Cat Cards create unexpected adult humour prank cards. They’ve got cards that have everything from glitter shooting out at you to popup dicks in your face.
I wanted to know more about Mitch and Nikki and their store, so I emailed them a few questions:
Mitch told me he’s always been interested in building and creating new things. From playing guitar, to renovating a house, designing cards or learning to code. He’s happiest when learning something new.
Nikki has a bachelors degree in Criminal Justice and enjoys reading and watching crime documentaries. She also loves creating handmade greeting cards, “not like the crude ones we make ha!” She shares them on Instagram (@cardsbynikki).
“I also enjoy spending my time with my cat Cedar, who is the inspiration behind Crude Cat Cards.”
Here’s the rest of our interview:
Hey guys, what was your inspiration to create Crude Cat Cards?
We first started a shop on Etsy and we kept getting censored for having dick cards. During Valentine’s Day we were coming up pretty high in the Etsy search and got in trouble from Etsy.
We then decided we should explore other options to create our own website where we don’t have to censor our products.
How did your business get started? Give us a rundown of the history
Crude Cat got started one night as a joke. Nikki makes fancy handmade cards as a hobby and we joked that people would probably rather buy dick-themed greeting cards instead of the fancy handmade cards.
One thing led to another and we ended up designing a few adult-themed greeting cards to put on Etsy. We got our first sale a month later and then we found a few online stores that were interested in working with us.
Since then, we have expanded to our own site and a house full of cards and card making equipment.
With regard to your house full of card-making equipment, do you think you will continue to fulfill orders yourselves or would you be looking into fulfillment partners?
We are currently still able to keep up with demand for our cards but are definitely getting to the point where a fulfillment service is something that we are looking at.
We have also been looking at automating some of the manufacturing of our cards. We are currently working with a couple of individuals to design and build machines to help us out.
One example is the fart cards that we are about to release. These cards are brutal! When they get opened, they break a seal and release the worst fart smell that you can imagine. We’re really excited about sharing these with the world.
What advice would you have for others who are finding their homes taken over by their stores?
Organization is a must! Everything has to have it’s place if you want to maintain some sense of freedom in your own house.
Can you tell us more about your recent experience with Storetasker?
We tried working with a couple of different e-commerce websites before settling on using Shopify. The amount of support, apps and ease of use made it our number one choice to use.
We purchased a theme to make our website look a lot more professional but we still needed to make a few tweaks to the site. We know a little bit about coding a website but decided it would be a lot easier to actually deal with professionals.
Page Mill Design created the basic “Palo Alto” theme for our store. We liked the simplicity of the design and a lot of the features that we were looking for were already a part of that theme.
We messaged the theme creation company who highly recommended Storetasker. On their recommendation, we decided to give Storetasker a chance and were extremely impressed right out of the gate.
We submitted our list of tasks that we needed to do and within 5 minutes, an expert claimed our job and messaged us right away.
After a few clarifying questions, our expert Andrew Durot, gave us an estimate of the time required to complete the job along with the fee. We approved the estimate and within a few days, we had a fully functional website.
Since then, we have used Storetasker to make a few more changes and will definitely be using them again in the future. The website is very user friendly and the experts definitely know what they are doing.
We would highly recommend Storetasker to anyone.
Tell us about one recent major success and one recent epic failure.
One recent major success has been using Storetasker. We were able to envision what we had in mind to make our website look legit and Andrew was able to create exactly what we had in mind.
One recent epic failure is that we hired someone to help us with Adwords and it turned out to be a total flop.
We then talked to someone else who does Adwords and they told us honestly that our products weren’t a big enough item to benefit from using Adwords.
What is one piece of advice you would give to yourselves if you could have a conversation with your previous selves?
We would tell ourselves to stay focused and just keep going!
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Thanks for reading this case study, hope you enjoyed it!
If you are interested in buying some Crude Cat Cards, just follow this link to the store.
If you’re looking for more information about Page Mill Design’s Palo Alto theme, check out their website here for more info.
Want to work with Andrew Durot? Select him as your preferred expert when you post a job on Storetasker.
Storetasker is the fastest, easiest way to get in touch with a vetted Shopify expert who can help fix your store.
If you want to boost your sales and improve your Shopify store, post a job and be chatting with an expert in minutes! (*actual time may vary)
