Couple Hopes to Hit Pay Dirt in Old West : Entrepreneurship: Line of specialty greeting cards with Western theme is produced out of office at North Hollywood home.

Laury and Sheridan Wolfe weren’t counting on the recession when they quit their advertising and public relations jobs to free-lance out of their North Hollywood home.

So when the economic slowdown put a big bite in their income--advertising and PR budgets are quick to get cut in hard times--they were forced to get creative.

Now their new company, the Wolfe Pack, produces a line of greeting cards, most of them with Western themes, out of an office in the back of their low-slung ranch house.

They’re not turning a profit yet, but they sold about 25,000 cards last year, and their line is carried in 125 stores nationwide, including The Card Factory in Burbank and the gift shop at the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum in Los Angeles.

“We’re really targeting people who want to be cowboys in their imaginations,” Sheridan Wolfe said.

Both Wolfes come from the West--Laury from Colorado and Sheridan from Texas--and their own hope is to own a ranch some day. The images in the cards, Laury Wolfe said, are from that dream ranch.

Certainly competing in the greeting card industry promises to be tough.

The $5 billion business is almost entirely dominated by two huge companies: Kansas City-based Hallmark Cards and Cleveland-based American Greetings. Those two companies, along with dozens of smaller competitors, produce so much inventory that retail card shops have little room to add newcomers like the Wolfes.

That, the couple said, is one reason to stick with the Western theme--it fills a less competitive niche and means the cards can be sold outside of conventional retail card shops.

For example, the Wolfes are targeting Western wear shops and souvenir shops in Western-themed tourist destinations, such as dude ranches and towns in the Old West.

“We like them a lot,” said Susan DeLand, director of merchandise operations for the Gene Autry museum. “Because even though they’re contemporary, their designs are very simple and straightforward and very cowboy-ish. And we like the idea that they’re using music” in the captions.

DeLand said the cards were selling “quite well,” but she would not provide exact figures.

The cards are designed and drawn by Laury Wolfe on a computer in the back room the couple use as their office. They are whimsical in their approach, relying on bold colors and simple lines.

So far, all of the cards available for retail distribution are birthday cards, and each one is based on a line from a Western song.

One card based on the song “Home on the Range,” features 18 red, purple, yellow and pink buffaloes and the line, “Oh give me a home.” Inside, it wishes the recipient a happy birthday “where the skies are not cloudy all day.”

Another, featuring a barbed-wire fence against a red sky, purple and white mountains and green grass, says “Don’t fence me in . . . ‘til I’ve wished you a happy birthday.”

When their business started in October, 1991, the Wolfes made cards with pictures that had environmental and issue-oriented themes, as well as a line of holiday greetings.

Besides selling them as blank note cards, the idea at that time was to persuade nonprofit organizations to use them to announce donations that had been made as gifts in someone’s name.

But that effort was less than successful. The California Abortion Rights Action League signed on for a multicolored card that read “Choice” on the cover, but environmental groups were slow to respond.

“We found that many of the environmental groups wanted cards that had realistic pictures of the animals, not conceptual portrayals,” Sheridan Wolfe said.

So last year, the Wolfes hit upon the idea of Western cards, and in June, they released a line of 12 Western cards.

To get their business going, the Wolfes relied on savings and help from their family. They also enrolled in the entrepreneurship series offered by the Valley Economic Development Center. The center provided 10 weeks of training sessions and a mentor program. For their part, the Sheridans agreed to create at least one entry-level job.

Laury Wolfe, who is president of The Wolfe Pack, said the couple need to sell about three times as many cards as they are selling now if they are to make a steady living.

The Wolfes and their 7-year-old son can get by on savings for about another year, he said, but after that, the company needs to be able to stand on its own.

The price of cards is fairly fixed in the marketplace--a pack of a dozen Western cards sells for $10.50 wholesale, $21 retail--and 20% of the sales price goes to the Wolfes’ distributor.

Because the card business is so crowded and it’s so difficult to persuade stores to carry Wolfe Pack products, the Wolfes say that in order to make more money they need to constantly bring out new lines of cards, and perhaps expand beyond them to other products.

To that end, they are moving beyond birthdays and blank cards, and have developed a new line of Western-themed greetings for anniversaries and other special occasions. Those cards are scheduled for release later this year.

The couple is also considering making wrapping paper and T-shirts.

Laury Wolfe says he wants to run the biggest alternative card company in the U.S. Sheridan Wolfe says she just wants to do well enough to be a contender in the crowded greeting card field--and make enough to buy that dream ranch.

“The greatest feeling,” Laury Wolfe said, “was the first time we took our images just for feedback to a retailer. We hadn’t even printed up the cards yet. And she said, ‘I’ll take this one and this one and this one.’ And we went back out into the parking lot and said, ‘Wow. We’re in business.’ ”