Blue Mountain Cards Changed the Way We Send Greeting Cards

With its now signature style of soothing nature illustrations and freeform poetry and prose, Blue Mountain Cards offers a wide and popular selection of greeting cards for any occasion. A large portion of the company business comes from its online Blue Mountain Cards greeting card products, which are delivered through electronic mail over the Internet.

Blue Mountain Cards was founded by Boulder, Colorado husband and wife team Stephen Schutz and Susan Polis Schutz as Blue Mountain Arts, originally as a vehicle for them to spend time together sharing their hobbies. Stephen and Susan combined their watercolor and poetry design into posters that appealed to the early 1970s hippie culture and convinced a local bookstore to carry the posters, which quickly sold out. Other stores soon began to carry their posters as well. The Schutzes then directed their attention to the development of Blue Mountain Cards greeting cards and introduced the blank all occasion greeting card for personal handwritten messages. They also changed the content of preprinted greeting cards from the then prevalent rigid and formalistic poetic style to the expressive freeform poetry that Susan favored. The product line eventually expanded to include calendars, stationery, and gift books, and their customer base grew.

Blue Mountain Cards entered the Internet age in 1996 when it launched its website offering free electronic greeting cards. The idea to offer electronic cards was conceived when one of the Schutz children went off to college and the family began communicating through email. The family would send birthday and holiday greetings to each other in this manner, and the Blue Mountain Cards electronic greeting card industry began.

Blue Mountain Cards started with 35 basic birthday, graduation, thank you, and emotional support designs. The sender chose and personalized a design from the Blue Mountain Cards website, and an email notification was sent to the recipient, who then accessed the card through a pick up window on the website. What set the Blue Mountain Cards products apart from its competitors was that they were free of charge and capable of being edited to include a personal message from the sender.

Blue Mountain Cards has since expanded to include over a thousand different designs that cover every conceivable American holiday and those of other cultures and religions, with French and Spanish language accessibility. By the end of the twentieth century, Blue Mountain Cards had become one of the most visited sites on the Internet, largely through word of mouth and testimonials of card recipients.