VentureBeat

Greetz, a Netherlands-based greeting-card service has attracted $9 million from ePlanet Ventures of Palo Alto, and existing shareholder Prime Technology Ventures of the Netherlands. The investment is primarily to strengthen Greetz’ position in the Dutch market and expand online worldwide. Greetz lets users personalize greeting cards at its web site, then it prints the cards and mails them to the customer. Customers can also schedule birthday cards for the entire year and link into social networks.

The greeting card market may seem like an odd and low-tech investment for Venture Capitalists in Silicon Valley but it could be a sign that VCs are turning their focus from Web 2.0 companies to mature, low-tech, multibillion-dollar markets in the ailing economy. There are an estimated 500 million e-cards sent each year. And the Greeting Card Association claims that for every e-card sent, 20 paper cards are sent.

For players like Greetz who sell paper cards but leverage internet tools — such as letting customers upload their own photos and providing scheduling tools to remind customers when to send cards — there are some strong business opportunities.

“The traditional market for greeting cards is enormous, with healthy margins, yet the current printing-on-demand market share is only approximately one percent,” said Dennis Atkinson, managing director of ePlanet Ventures. “The expectations are that this market share will increase to more than 10 per cent by 2012.”

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