Paper Culture vs Minted

Always like to follow companies who offer holiday cards, baby announcements, baby shower invitations and other stationery. Minted.com put out their holiday press release today. They do some things very well and I do like their design contests where they get some great designer participation, but I had to laugh at their press release.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/10/prweb3004254.htm

"Minted's signature paper is the thickest paper in the photo card industry" . . . which they later define as 12-15.5pt thickness. Paper Culture by comparison prints on premium paper that has a minimum thickness of 16pt and goes up to 18pt.

"Minted is the only major online retailer that offers photo cards printed on 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper" . . . Paper Culture prints **exclusively** on 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper. Furthermore, Minted charges customers extra for the 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper. With Paper Culture the premium recycled paper is included as part of the baseline cost.

Minted will apparently offer a rounded corner option this year. Our guess, once again, you'll have to pay extra for that. With Paper Culture, 100% of the cards come with the "delicate rounded corner option."

And I suppose the argument will go that Paper Culture is not a "major online retailer" - and coming from Snapfish where we had 40MM registered users years ago, I think that's a very fair comparison. So relative to Shutterfly, Tiny Prints, Kodak Gallery - I think that's a fair distinction . . . it is also true that while Minted has been around for 2 years and Paper Culture is only a few months old, however, according to compete.com, Paper Culture's had 18,369 unique users to Minted's 25,796 unique users . . . I'll be honest, neither has achieved "major online retailer" status in my mind, but given our 3 months vs their 2 years, I think I like our numbers better.

Holiday Cards from Paper Culture

Paper Culture's holiday cards: Christmas cards, holiday photo cards, Hanukkah cards, and New Year's Eve party invitations. http://www.paperculture.com/