High Growth Tech Start-Up:
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allmyinvites
Industry: E-commerce, online cards and stationery publishing
Location: Tustin, CA
Website: www.allmyinvites.com |
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All My Invites: The Inspiration
Some things are valuable to you not because of how much you paid for them, but because of the memories and the smile they bring to your face - this belief was strongly held by Elif Hanna, an MBA graduate and former President of the Entrepreneurs Association at the Paul Merage School of Business at UC Irvine. Elif made this observation that women love sharing memories of their special occasions such as wedding and baby showers with each other in a very special way with elegant and personalized greeting cards which were not available in the desired way with the current options. It took off from this observation that Elif launched her first startup even before she completed her MBA. Relentless passion for online shopping, beautiful paper, fresh design and elegant stationery inspired Elif to launch All My Invites. Her objective was not just to offer the invitation cards as products but to provide a unique boutique-style customizable design service with an inviting, engaging and customer centric shopping experience. |
“All My Invites designs can be classic or modern but they all represent the emotions of our customers and reflect the mood of their events. Exceptional customer service will be our top priority. They will all be uniquely designed for All My Invites - a website that is fun to linger around just like grand bazaar or French flee market” – Elif Hanna
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Transforming a Dream into Reality
Unlike most of her MBA classmates, Elif was not in pursuit of a job to merely make a living and pay her bills. She wanted to follow her dream and do something which was more fun and creative. Being a single mom at the same time, she wanted to have a flexible schedule to take good care of her son, Lucas. Right after graduation in June 2010, Elif registered the company ‘All My Invites’ and acquired a functional website in Orange County which offered mass produced online wedding invitations. Elif hired a full-time marketing manager and a graphic designer to form a team of three core members to do the critical tasks whereas, she outsourced programming, user interface designing and printing to external vendors. Elif’s past experience as a Financial Analyst and MBA skills gave her a good foundation to start with her business but the learning never stopped.
Soon, Elif found herself doing unimaginable level of multi-tasking involving accounting, project management, social networking, customer outreach, marketing and even understanding the basics of website designing using different softwares and tools. The more she started getting involved, the more she enjoyed seeing her baby grow. These myriad tasks never daunted her or affected her excitement, persistence and patience to give a tangible shape to her concept. Elif has been following the simple approach of organic growth without the involvement of external Venture Capitalists. A lot of attention is being paid to differentiation and brand positioning and a lot of time is spent on creating each customized and personalized design from scratch – a design which cannot be printed at home, a design which is not trendy but timeless and unique.
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All My Invites: In Pursuit of Passion
Elif has a clear target market of educated and stylish upper middle class women in the age group of 25-55 who are willing to pay a premium price for a sophisticated and high quality unique wedding invitation collection. Recently, Elif finalized her company’s logo icon which has been inspired from an organic element transformed to a beautiful form with graphic design, representing devotion to our environment and design. This organic form also reflects the freedom and desire to grow organically with a unique style.
All My Invites has been launched in the United States and future plans include but are not restricted to launching sister website greetwithus.com and creating memories for her customers to form continuing relationships with them so that they come back to All My Invites for baby showers and other social announcements after their wedding.
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 “We enjoy working together and it will be our joy when our customers appreciate our work and become part of this dream by using our invitations and stationery to celebrate special days with their loved ones. We hope that one day in the future when you open up your keepsake boxes and find the invitations you created through this website, they will bring you back all the beautiful memories of your most specials days...” – Elif Hanna |
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Client Testimonial for All My Invites
“They have one of the speediest and most amazing customer services that I've ever dealt with. I recommend them to anyone!” -- Ashley J. from Indiana
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