Receiving a personalised Moonpig card is less like opening a greetings card and more like unwrapping a surprisingly well-chosen present. The sight of your own photo staring out from the card, surrounded by cover lines referring to your life in the manner of a spoof magazine cover, is certainly not what you would expect. Or, in the words of one recent recipient, 'I was laughing until lunchtime'.
It is this gift of surprise, plus the feeling that the sender has spent time and effort creating the card, which has made Moonpig.com a cult website. Regular users have been known to email founder Nick Jenkins asking him to remove the Moonpig details from the back of the cards so that their source is not easily identifiable. Regular recipients include Tony Blair and the Queen.
Jenkins, a former commodities trader, who spent much of the 80s living in Russia, freely admits that his six-year-old company was transformed by adding the spoof magazine cover facility 14 months ago. They now make up 30% of the company's turnover, which he estimates will be £1.2m this year.
'I'm kicking myself we didn't do it much earlier,' he says. But his timing is better than he admits - the spoof covers appeared just as consumer demand for digital cameras and broadband internet connections reached critical mass, meaning that photos could be easily taken and uploaded to the website.
The magazine-cover idea was inspired by a card that Jenkins was sent for his 30th birthday. A friend had mocked it up in the manner of the magazine Country Life, calling it Dacha Life (dachas are Russian country homes).
Time was spent refining the visual identity of the brand, the name of which is also suitably personal having been Jenkins' nickname as a child. An earlier incarnation featured a much bigger logo, with a pig surrounded by rockets. Jenkins toned it down after realising it would be a mistake for the brand to be too closely identified with humour as its cards cover everything from Jewish holidays to sympathy cards.
Personalised cards are, however, the focus for Moonpig. Jenkins can be regularly found in the office where all the collating takes place, flicking through piles of products and marvelling at his customers' inventiveness. Moonpig also does a healthy trade in producing invitations from customers' uploaded photos.
Designers have created about 200 spoof magazine covers, with all manner of hobbies and interests catered to, from Dog Monthly to Homes and Estates. A few are obvious, cheeky rip-offs - Oi! and Vague for example. Vogue's owner Conde Nast was not amused, however, and Vague is shortly to be removed from the website.
The doubling in turnover in each of the past two years has meant Jenkins has been able to expand the Moonpig brand overseas. An Australian arm opened a year ago and US consumers will be able to join the fun from this month.
The US launch is relatively straightforward for the company as it can produce and send out the cards from its offices in Chelsea. 'It's just as cheap to send a card from here as it would be from within the US,' points out Jenkins.
Geographically, this is as far as Jenkins sees Moonpig's ambitions stretching, as the culture of sending greetings cards is limited to Europe, the US and Australia. However, there is still much to play for within these territories.
Jenkins estimates that he corners 0.1% of the £670m UK cards market, but believes this could be built to 5%. He advertises on search engines, while regular users of Moonpig are sent periodic email newsletters about the service. There is also a facility for consumers to set up an email reminder system for friends' and family members' birthdays.
The company's small printing outfit in Chelsea - a room the size of a lounge containing three machines - usually produces 3000 cards a day although Jenkins claims it could handle 16,000.
If that were to happen, though, one can't help but feel that the Moonpig team would need a sympathy card for having to stuff all those envelopes.
TIMELINE
Aug 1998: On an MBA course, Jenkins evaluates various business ideas. He comes up with online greetings cards after realising that 'short of cash, greetings cards are the most valuable thing you can print on paper'.
Aug 1999: Jenkins signs up greetings card publisher Paperlink as an investor in the business. The deal gives Moonpig the rights to sell its card designs online. Product manager Jo Foley is Jenkins' first recruit.
Jun 2000: Moonpig is launched.
Aug 2004: The company puts customisable spoof magazine covers on its website, later adding a facility for customers to upload their own pictures onto them.
Dec 2004: Moonpig starts operating an Australian site.
Oct 2005: The company launches in the US. Turnover for the year 2005/06 is predicted to be £1.2m - a 50% rise on the previous year.
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