Krystal Banner, like many millennials, recalls that her family didn’t often send Christmas cards when she was growing up. “The holidays were a big deal, but only occasionally would we buy a box of cards from Walmart,” says Banner, 38, an artist who started designing and selling cards on Etsy in 2017 after realizing “there was no diversity in content or people” in the card industry.
Banner’s small Washington, D.C.-based company, Kaleidadope, is flourishing as millennials have their moment with holiday snail mail. The holidays are the biggest card-sending time of the year, with about 1.6 billion holiday cards purchased annually, according to Nora Weiser, executive director of the Greeting Card Association.
And although millennials once may have pooh-poohed the tradition, as they move into their marrying, child-rearing and pet-owning years, they are spending more on cards each year than baby boomers, averaging $6 per card, Weiser says.
“Millennials respond to the analog nature of things. Cards are kind of an organic and pure thing that is anti-digital and really a throwback, sort of like LPs,” says Patrick Priore, Paper Source’s chief product officer, who says 2021 holiday card sales are up 14% compared with 2019. “They think, ‘Oh, our parents used to send these.’ They are cool again.”
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