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1. Visit http://cayennepaper.com.
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Open to US residents.
Contest ends at 11:59 PM EST on Sunday, November 22, 2009.
Meet Katie from Cayenne Paper
Tell us a little about you . . .
I’m Katie Tardiff and I am the owner and designer (and only employee) of Cayenne Paper: Invitations, Stationery, and Personalized Gifts with FLAVOR! I am also a mother of 2 ½ year old boy/girl twins and work full time as a speech pathologist and preschool special education teacher. I am originally from New Orleans (hence the name of my company) but we now live in the DC metro area.
What is your business and where can we find it?
Cayenne Paper is an online store specializing in anything and everything monogrammed! I have a large line of products ranging from invitations, stationery, sterling silver jewelry, purses/totes, children’s clothing and shoes, towels, tableware, and much more! You can find all of my products on my website: www.cayennepaper.com
Is it mom-owned, invented, created . . .?
I am the sole person behind my business and do it all myself (with the occasional help from my husband to tie bows at the last minute!). I have always had a love for stationery and paper products and found myself as a teenager browsing through the aisles of paper stores and spending my allowance on personalized stationery. Later on, I started making my own stationery to save money and to customize it to my style. Whenever a friend or family member needed an invitation to a party or shower, I was right there to volunteer to make them. After a while and a very bad day at work, my husband mentioned that I should try to make this into an online business, so that’s exactly what I did.
A little about your entrepreneur journey so far?
My husband is an attorney, so naturally I let him take care of all of the logistics of starting my own business. He found out just how easy it is to set up an in-home business, so after a trip down to the county office with some paperwork, I was officially in business. I had no idea how to even make a website, so I bought some software which I had NO idea how to use. I purchased a manual for it (over 500 pages), browsed through the basics of how to get online and made my site with about 30 products for sale. Most of my orders were word-of-mouth, but I did manage to get orders from around the country. Now, I have over 1500 different products online and keep adding more daily! The best thing I have done for my business is to join the community at Merchant Moms (www.merchantmoms.com) for my webhosting and e-commerce store development. From there, I’ve learned a few tricks about how to get traffic to my site and it is starting to really pay off!
Where else can people find you?
I have a blog attached to my Cayenne Paper website and also am on Facebook and Twitter.
