A greeting card featuring a puppy may be cute, but it is not necessarily fitting if the card recipient is a cat lover.
At least one Penn grad has recognized the need for cards that others can relate to.
"I felt like there was a lack of representation for African Americans in their most natural element," said Tiffany Webber, 28, co-founder and distributor of Around the Way greeting cards.
With a Penn master's degree in hand, she created her own line of African-American-themed greeting cards, complete with poems and words of praise and encouragement. She came up with the plan in 1999, but it took five years to get the business off the ground.
"It focuses on just expressing our natural beauty. We do everything to promote positive energy," Webber said. "One thing ... people have trouble with in day-to-day life is communication, and part of what I'm saying is things that people need to be saying to each other."
The collection includes 38 cards, targeted to an audience between the ages of 18 and 45. She is working now to create 45 to 60 new designs for a more general audience to provide more of a selection.
"The idea of having African-American cards I don't think is a bad thing," Center for Africana Studies Program Coordinator Onyx Finney said, adding that cultural representation is important in a diverse society.
Finney said that Hallmark already has a line of cards targeted toward blacks. She added that the idea of creating cards for specific groups of people is not new, as cards are created for bar mitzvahs, communions and other occasions.
Nevertheless, Webber says the cards have been a success in the black community. Webber is finding that the cards are selling well and has received positive feedback from a number of individual consumers.
Webber even found that "a lot of men were involved in purchasing cards because they could relate to the language," she said.
A poet since the age of 15, she had little desire to go into business.
"I felt like it was a whole lot of work," Webber said. "The funny thing is, it is a whole lot of work, but it's my baby."
