JewcyWrap: Daphne Yousem

Daphne Yousem couldn’t find nice-looking Jewish themed gift wrap last year, so she started making her own. Her inspiration to start designing wrapping paper came during the holiday season in 2006. Daphne and her husband were having breakfast at a restaurant near their home in Southern California. The couple walked to a nearby Cost Plus World Market, hoping to find some Hanukkah wrapping paper. “We walked in and started looking and thought, ‘There must be one little section for Hanukkah,’” says Daphne, “but we . . . found absolutely nothing. I found one roll of blue paper underneath mounds and mounds of Christmas paper. I think I found snowflakes.” The Yousems were amazed at the lack of selection. Daphne ran into a friend who said, ‘Someone needs to develop some really nice wrapping paper for Hanukkah.’ My husband looked at me and said, ‘You can do that.’” While driving home, Daphne came up with the name, registered the name of the site within the hour, and started working on designs. Just a short time later, JewcyWrap.com was up and running. The site sells gift wrap for Hanukkah and Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, greeting cards for all Jewish occasions, Jewish themed ribbons and other accessories, and is expanding to offer other related items.

Daphne’s background is in journalism, writing and marketing, but as she did that work she also needed to learn how to use design programs like Quark and Photoshop. She was able to take that design knowledge and get started immediately on wrapping paper. JewcyWrap has been open for six months now, and though this is the fledgling business’ first holiday season, people are ordering. “Can I say it’s paying for itself? Not yet, but I believe it will,” says Daphne. “People are finding us, it just takes time.”

The Yousems knew from the start that they wanted JewcyWrap to integrate fundraising. As a mom of school age children, Daphne was familiar with wrapping paper fundraising, but she was always disappointed with the Hanukkah selection. “We had to create the site in a way so that fundraising makes sense, and [MightyMerchant was] really good about working on that.” Currently, JewcyWrap has 50-60 schools involved with fundraising. “People tell us they love the product. There is stuff out there but it’s not very good. It’s the same stuff you’ve seen for 20 years,” says Daphne, referring to the lack of selection for Hanukkah paper, “which is a shame because there’s plenty of people who want a nice product.”

Daphne is using a combination of networking with Jewish organizations, direct mail, email, and attending gift shows to market JewcyWrap. Judaic stores, and higher-end stationary stores buy JewcyWrap when they see how great-looking it is. Daphne finds cold calling a great resource to find new sales leads, “even though I hate doing it.” “If you get on the phone and get them in front of the computer,” she says, “and once they click on the site, they’re sold. This is a very different product,” says Daphne. “It’s very niche, so just like anything else you cater to a specific audience and they’re going to buy it.”

The Yousems found MightyMerchant through another one of our clients. A friend of Daphne’s husband who does commercial real estate had been working with our client to find their store site. He asked Daphne if they had a website yet, and suggested MightyMerchant. The Yousems contacted several other companies as well, but chose MightyMerchant after the other companies did not seem receptive to their needs. “We needed that commerce side, and they were willing to work with my design, and other companies weren’t,” remembers Daphne. “The other companies were like, ‘Well, we have templates,’ and I was like, ‘I don’t care that you have templates, that’s not what I want!’ I was very specific coming from a design background, and MightyMerchant didn’t charge me more for that. We went with MightyMerchant, and I’m glad we did.”

Daphne is really excited about JewcyWrap’s potential, and gets a kick out of each new order and each new person who says they want to buy her products. Every time Daphne gets an order, she checks out the source. “When it’s just a straight organic search, that’s really exciting!”

Thanks for choosing MightyMerchant, Daphne!