Lockdown Smiles

Send your smile. Make them smile. The easiest way to send personalized cards to your loved ones and friends.

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Inspiration and the Problem

We're both creative guys and we wanted to create something fun and hands-on. Andrea is a graphic designer and I'm (David) a Web developer. We decided to put our skills together to come up with something relevant for this time and still have the ability to expand in the future.

We got inspired by a round of back and forth brainstorming. I've always wanted to develop my own e-commerce related business, and Andrea, a great artist is always looking for a way to help out people in need. By breaking down the key problems we've identified, we combined our strengths and this is what resulted. It wasn't the original idea we've set out with, but as entrepreneurs know well enough, most of the time the original idea doesn't always turn out as planned.

Lockdowns and social distancing have resulted in Lonliness Epidemic. People can't visit their friends or family members and haven't in a while. This has resulted in extreme loneliness, and anxiety. Felt especially hard by the elderly and vulnerable, but also by parents who haven't seen their kid in a while as they work in the health sector or other sectors that require quarantine measures. As well as children who haven't seen their grandparents. Technology does address this problem extremely well, however there still many without access to it.

If a person wanted to send a photo or card to someone currently, it's quite hard to do as it requires in going outside and finding the right place to print it, then possibly having to buy stamps from somewhere else and finally having to go to a post box. Lockdown Smiles solves this in the simplest easiest way.

What it does

Its value is in its simplicity. Being able to send as many cards with your photo to as many people you want to over the world through your phone or computer in the comfort of one's home. There is something special about a traditional photograph, capturing that special moment with special people. It transfers emotion in a way a photo posted online isn't able to do.

Through an easy to use UI we recommend uploading a family photo, of past memories with the receiver or just something dear to them, write in your message, payment details and send, we'll do the rest. Sending your smiles to make them smile which is definitely needed right now.

How we built it

Brand design

We wanted to do something fresh and modern while at the same time being relevant to all audiences. Use of smileys and round fonts and shapes as those the least threatening shapes. Andrea started drafting until we came to something we were extremely happy with.

Website

The website is designed for mobile-first based on a custom made WordPress theme. Make it as easy to use as possible for anyone with a phone. Using the brand design it too had some extreme changes from it initial concept, and many featured plan still yet to be implemented.

Cards

Started off with choosing the right materials, something cost-effective that we would be able to get a high supply of. The initial idea was to offer traditional cards or postcards. Keeping in mind we had a wide audience, we tried to target all symousltaniusly, and came up with a hybrid of both. Andrea then designed templates and we came up with an efficient way of crafting them on a high scale.

Challenges we ran into

Challenges are only challenging until they are solved... With a couple of hours of head-scratching and a few trips to the coffee machine, we eventually came up with solutions to problems that now seem quite silly. The most challenging part was product development and how to be able to develop them in a small office efficiently on a large scale all while keeping costs low and bringing out the best quality.

Other problems included finding resources to make the cards as the majority of places are closed. An issue with finding stamps which had seemed to have all been sold out this weekend. Waiting for payment gateway applications to pass which too are disrupted by the global pandemic. I had a couple of issues with development complication and clashes and Andrea a few getting the design software to configure to the printer.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of being able to have been able to do so much in such a short time. Getting a simple idea to what it is now in a couple of days, the website up and running and finished product. They still require further work however they are functioning and do what we set out to do. A long night is ahead as we've promised a close friend that they'll be the first official customer tomorrow (Monday).

What we learned

It's a small scale simple card business, but you would be amazed at how many business principles it covers, finding and suppliers over the phone, cutting costs, designing SOPs and handling logistics. The teamwork literally turned us into bros, throwing ideas and feedback back and forth in order to further improve the business and product quality. Learning allot about ourselves in terms of literally jumping obstacles, finding new ways to solve problems, sacrifices and never stopping or giving up no matter what.

What's next for Lockdown Smiles

Lockdown Smiles will be available for friends and family in the first week in order to get feedback and use it continue to improve the quality, speed and introduce new options. After a couple of long nights more, in the second week, we want to start our digital marketing campaign, get on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. A couple of gorilla marketing strategies are also in mind for the near future. We plan to upgrade the server for when the traffic and bandwidth raise to cope with all the photo uploads. Hopefully, reach our goal to help make people smile when they most need to.

We also wish to reach out to care-home institutions as we want to give out free cards to residents that don't or can't rely on their families. Cards may be personalised by their carers, many times their second family.

Send your smile. Make them Smile :)

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