PercyVites is a Startup party planning service that enables users to make their own personalized, and thereby completely unique, invitations for parties, weddings, and other special occasions. In May of 2017, PercyVites announced its acquisition of several new licenses from Nickelodeon and Hasbro.
PercyVites CEO Julie Steiner overcame many obstacles to see her unique service find a niche in American and Canadian markets--and she is hoping to expand to other nations. Among the new licenses are Ninja Turtles, Paw Patrol, NERF, Transformers, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and My Little Pony.
Founder and CEO Julie Steiner left a career in film and television to pursue her dream of starting her own company. She struggled to launch the brand and has greatly enjoyed its recent successes. She was happy to discuss her Business and its evolution via an exclusive interview.
Idea
Blasting News (BN): When did you get the initial idea for PercyVites and what was the process of establishing the company like?
Julie Steiner (JS): The initial idea for PercyVites goes over fifteen years back to my twin sons’ first superhero birthday party. They were obsessed with Batman and Superman and wanted to have their birthday party in either Gotham City or Metropolis if possible. Many years later when we developed our video "personalization platform" this concept came back to me as a belated answer to their wishes!
BN: How did you raise awareness of your company and, so far, what have people's responses been like?
JS: We decided to partner with retailers who sell both party supplies and toys in order to allow them to offer PercyVites as their own branded digital invitation. Since the retailer also offers party supplies and toys this allows them to offer their customers a “one-stop” party approach with one-click access to party supplies from the host’s party dashboard, and one-click access for gift purchases from the guest’s party dashboard.
We’ve recently started our first partnership with Toys “R” Us Canada, which is exciting. Once people see our invitations the response is tremendous, so we intend to continue with retailers as they can get a lot more awareness for PercyVites than we can on our own. That being said we do have our own website and we mostly use social media, and word of mouth to drive awareness.
BN: You are starting to attain a lot of licenses, so how did that happen and how has it impacted your brand?
JS: We’ve been fortunate that people like what we’re doing, and we’ve been lucky to be championed by a lot of great people inside massive companies that have been willing to explain to their colleagues (often over and over) what we’re all about, and why they should trust us with their licenses. Each new license we sign is like a vote of confidence from other companies, which has allowed us to continue to add exciting new content that builds on our current roster of licenses.
BN: You just secured deals with Hasbro and Nickelodeon so what has it been like to work with these corporate giants?
JS: Working with both Nickelodeon and Hasbro has been really interesting as their organizations are so enormous. While we originally feared that it might prove challenging simply due to their size and complexity, we’re pleased by how easy they are to work with. We’re looking forward to tapping into their tremendous marketing muscle and have high hopes that their magic will rub off on us.
Offerings
BN: Might you one day branch out into offering original characters?
JS: We actually have our own character and brand mascot - Percy the Robot. It was created as a stand-in for any licensed character to demonstrate what we could do when we started the company. Also, we have a growing assortment of our own creations for life's milestones, with original invitations for baby showers, weddings, dinner parties, and more.
BN: How did you come to partner with Cakes. com and what has the collaboration offered you?
JS: Cakes. com is an innovative, interesting company. We met at an industry event and formed our partnership based on the fact that all parties have two things in common - there’s usually an invitation and a cake. We decided to partner on campaigns for the purpose of joint awareness outreach with characters that we both have in common, and hope to do more in the future.
BN: What's the best thing about working with PercyVites and how do you hope the company cloves over the next decade?
JS: It’s been exciting to watch PercyVites grow into a full-featured service that has created compelling content from increasingly higher profile brands.
My hope is that we continue to add not only great content partners but also additional retail partners so that we become the “one stop” birthday party planning platform of choice.
BN: Are you currently anticipating any news you would like to mention?
JS: I’m thrilled by some of the giant companies that we’re speaking with now and hope to be able to announce something big very soon, but until deals are done I can only smile and say “stay tuned"!
