The following article is taken from "The Flourish Magazine" Issue II . You can purchase the magazine here or decide not to purchase it over here.
When I started thinking about the second issue of The Flourish magazine, I knew I wanted to introduce a new section. It was while searching for sponsors that the idea came. Not from me, but from Richard Pot (you might know him as EndersGame_Reviewer, the man behind thousands of playing cards reviews and the person behind the famous website PlayingCardDecks). He was the one that put Charles Levin and I in contact, “I think the two of you can do something together.” he said. Somehow, I immediately knew I wanted to have a section in the magazine where we would interview card printing companies and take a peek behind the business. I mean, who wouldn’t want to know what it takes to build a printing company from the ground up? At least, I knew I wanted.
Here’s a funny story. A few years ago, I contacted Cartamundi to see what it would take to finance a business like this. It was at the same time I published The Cardistry Game, which they got (thank you!), but I was still surprised that they answered. After a bit of back and forth, the person I was speaking with just said,
“You’d need at least 2 million dollars.”
Fair. I was expecting such an answer. But then they added, “If you ever make the company, let us know. We might just buy it haha.” That, I did not expect. I love it when the people handling these social media accounts are more laid back and open to crack a joke or two (though, I think he was being fully honest).
That being said, let me introduce you to ShuffledInk and Charles Levin, the man that started a card printing company from the ground up and raised it to a million dollar business.
Our Interview with ShuffledInk
Playing cards go way back to the 9th century in China, and printing companies such as USPCC from USA and Cartamundi from Belgium have been around for hundreds of years, printing world famous cards such as Bicycle or Magic: The Gathering. With such titans ruling over the playing card world, one has to wonder, “how can anyone start a new company in this field?”
As I’m waiting in the Riverside server lobby, a pop up appears asking me to let Charles Levin in the room. As I click on allow, I don’t know what to expect. What does a card printing company owner look like? Does he have a cane and two bulldogs? Is he dressed all fancy? Does he live in a mansion? While the server loads up, I’m suddenly questioning whether doing the interview in my room at home was a smart decision.
Charles’ webcam fires up. White hair and beard. Black glasses. Dressed in a casual red polo shirt, sitting at his chair inside the Shuffled Ink manufacturing warehouse. Charles looks like he could be your favourite uncle or your most down to earth boss.
‘Good Day, Charles.’
‘Hey, Biz. How are you?’
Charles Levin is the owner of Shuffled Ink, a multi-million dollar printing company from Florida, USA. They print playing cards, card games and tarot cards for all sorts of individuals and businesses. I heard of Charles from a mutual friend Richard (known online as EndersGame_Reviewer) and quickly took the opportunity to interview him.
Charles and Melissa at the NY Toy Show in 2012
Biz: So, Charles, can you tell me how exactly fflyou started Shuffled Ink?’
Charles: I had this marketing company that I built in 1983. And in 1989, I sold that company to my largest client and then managed it for the next 4 years. After these years were up, I didn’t really have to work and from there I just did select consulting jobs for the next 15 years.
In 1987, I was blessed with the first of my 5 amazing children. It was my childhood dream was to just be a father and spend every day and night with them. Needless to say, my dream came true.
As the years went by and they started to grow up and start to have their own friends, they basically outgrew me. So, now it was like, what am I gonna do? A completely random thought came to me, with the marketing theme in mind, “What if I produced custom playing cards for individuals and businesses?” Everybody plays cards and playing cards have been around for more than a thousand years and they would be great for branding and marketing. Thus, I thought it was a viable business. I can tell you the excitement and potential I thought the business would have has only grown every day for the last almost 25 years.
Biz: So, then, where did you first start the business?
Charles: Yes, so I started the business basically in my dining room of the house. I just wanted to market and sell the cards and never contemplated becoming a printer/manufacturer. The kids would help me create samples and prototypes while my wife would yell at me to go out and get a real job! She wanted me out of the house and out from under her feet while I annoyed her with my excitement of how great this business was going to be.
I had the opportunity to sit down with Lisa, Charles’ youngest daughter, who takes care of all customer service (and much more) for Shuffled Ink, and asked her what she remembered of this period.
Biz: ‘So, Lisa, I talked with Charles about the entire adventure of the company from 1999 up until now. And I’m very curious what your memories are of your dad starting the company at home. What do you remember from those days?’
Lisa: The biggest thing that comes to mind is that prior to starting the company, he traveled a lot. So then, once he started this company, the very first time he had an office, it wasn’t even an office, he just set up his computers in a hallway that separated my room from my brother’s.
Being able to finally see him every day was amazing, even when we weren’t spending personal time together, it was like, I got to see him every day when I was getting ready for and coming home from school and things like that. Forget the actual success of the business - it was amazing being able to know that my dad was in the hallway or the garage working. He was always there, which was so different from the first five years of my life.
Then, when we were first started manufacturing and stuff, I remember having to hand glue boxes together. We were little kids just wanting to help out and working at our dinning room table, putting together all kind of decks, what have you, that he was working on. But, it was amazing. It became our family pastime that we would help out.
So, how does one go from producing playing cards with the family in your own garage to owning a 20.000 square feet building, 25 years later - you might be wondering.
My conversation with Charles lasted for 2 hours, during which I discovered that he is the kind of businessman that places everyone else first - family first, clients first, collaborators first. The more I listened, the more I understood that Shuffled Ink’s success had been an architecture of love, good business practices, pinpoint marketing and plenty of magic.
The Breakthrough
Charles: So, we would take the orders, we would get phone calls and emails and we would process those orders. The orders would be printed either in China or my local printer. And then the domestic orders would be printed and cut and brought to my house where we would pack them and ship them.
This went on for about 14 years. The business kept growing larger and larger. The China portion was actually doing a much bigger business than the domestic, but you know, in ‘08, ‘09, we had the recession and the handwriting was on the wall that if we don’t shift our emphasis on domestic production we were just not gonna make it. So that’s what we started to do. I started buying equipment and moved that equipment into the local printer’s building. So they were printing for us and the equipment I got was for cutting, round cornering the cards and cello-wrapping. This equipment was was a game changer for us, because now I could offer my products at a competitive price and produce them within days as opposed to weeks.
Biz: What year was this?
Charles: That process, that progression and change started around 2009, you know, at the peak of the recession. I bought the finishing equipment in ’09, which was a real turning point. It’s a machine that cuts the cards into rectangular squares, and then it goes through a punching station that rounds the corners. And then it conveys it into a cellar wrapper. So you put the printed sheet at the beginning of the machine through a feeder, and in six seconds, out comes a cellar wrap deck of cards.
Biz: Where would you get your paper from?
Charles: So, I had the relationship with China manufacturers going back to early 2000s. So I would get, when I started printing, I’d buy my paper from them. I would buy the hard clear plastic cases from China. And I paid for the moulds. And so they were my moulds, but they were making the cases for me. But now I had this equipment changing the whole game for us.
Unfortunately, that’s when my local printer saw that I was growing really fast and so they kept raising prices on me. He squeezed us more and more and wanter a bigger piece of the pie.
So, I had to make the decision that if I don’t start printing it myself, we’re not going to make it. So, I bought my first digital press and coater. This was the birth of a whole new level that really set us on the path we are traveling today.
In 2012 I moved out of the garage and into my own 4,000 square feet warehouse space. Within six months, we were able to take an additional 4,000 square feet. About 6 months later, we had to take the bay next door to go to 12,000 square feet! Our business was exploding and I continued to buy more and more equipment so that we could become self-sufficient.
Since 2016 we have been producing everything under our roof.
In 2017, I think the most significant company event that took place was a phone call from my son, Matthew who called me to let me know that he had just received a six-figure plus bonus check and that he was moving back home.
He told me he gave his notice and was coming back to take over my business and that he was going to fire me within 6 months! I told him if he made it 3 months he had a deal!!! Long story short, in less than a year he had learned everything and was virtually managing the company. His contributions have been immeasurable and he has taken our business to places I never could have.
By 2019, as we had outgrown our rental space, I bought property and began design for our own production facility. In 2022 we moved into our new 17,000 square foot building, which we thought would be enough for at least the next 3-5 years of growth.
Covid hits... Business booms
Biz: What did you do when the pandemic came?
Charles: This is really amazing what happened. We anticipated we’re gonna have three to five years worth of space that we will grow into the building. But then COVID came. And because I was dealing with Chinese manufacturers and we had become friends over the years, I had a great relationship and they started telling me about COVID and what’s going on. And they warned me that it’s going to come to the United States and it’s going to go all over the world.
We used to buy and keep an inventory of paper for about three to four months. Just before COVID hit the USA, we made a risky and strategic decision that we’re going to buy as much paper, materials and supplies we need - you know: coating, glue, just every material, every component we need to produce our products.
We went from buying three, four months at a time, to ordering enough for the next two and a half years.
Biz: I think the people that you were ordering from thought that you were crazy.
Charles: They said, “what are you doing?” and I replied, “We’re expanding.” We didn’t say anything about COVID. Now we had all this material incoming so we ended up having to lease an additional 4,000 square feet of space right across the street.
Biz: How much was the whole investment?
Charles: It was every penny we had, exhausting all our credit lines, personal savings and more. I would say it was around two million dollars.
Biz: Since you’re a family business, how did you take the decision to invest so much?
Charles: It took Matt and I about 10 seconds. Because if we were wrong, we knew we’re going to use the materials over time anyway.
The paper has about a three year shelf life and the other supplies last indefinitely. So, while we were strapping ourselves for cash and putting us into massive debt, we knew that we’ll be able to cover it in time. And sure enough, we took delivery of all these materials in January of 2020 and about six weeks later, China’s closed.
Soon after the US closed down, US playing cards closed for months. All our competitors were closed for months. It was like we hit a gold mine because people that were going to China for card games and other products we made had nowhere to go to manufacture them. So they started contacting us.
Clients were saying, with a prayer in their voice, “Are you guys open?” And we said, “Yes, we sure are. ”And can you produce my order?” And we said, “We sure can!!!”
It was like a miracle. We started receiving an avalanche of business from all these companies that were dealing with China. And ever since then they’ve gotten a taste of the quality of our service and products and with fast turnaround times to boot they have stayed with us.
Success
It’s one thing to raise a business from nothing and another to have it continuously prosper. There’s many elements that factor into the success of a brand: the quality of the products, the wide range of customisations, who they collaborate with or how they market themselves.
Brands like Apple focus on the product and user experience, Walmart on their prices and clothing brand Patagonia on culture. Each company has a strength which they’ve cultivated in time. And it’s many times this very strength which has made their brand flourish and taken it through hard times.
So, I asked Lisa what she thought were the elements that helped ShuffledInk grow.
Lisa: There’s multiple things that obviously have contributed to our success and our growth and everything, but I think it really is just like how much we care about our clients. We do genuinely care.
You know, it’s such a rare thing. You go online shopping and whether it’s for clothes or whatever, you can’t pick up a phone and call somebody or really speak to a real person. So that’s like the first barrier. But then if you do speak to somebody, they just don’t have the customer service skills that people need for such a job. And it just seems like they don’t care.
It’s what really sets us apart from everyone else. People will spend more money to get the service and love and care that we provide to people. And that started with my dad from day one.
Last thing I asked Charles was his advice to someone who wanted to open shop.
Charles: I would say you don’t want to go balls to the wall and do everything all at once in the beginning. I’d say you start out slow and let your success dictate your growth. The most important thing in this business is the ability to market. I don’t care what kind of equipment you have - without that, you’re dead in the water.
So, the first thing to do is to establish a marketing plan that’s going to get you off the ground and get going. Then you have to decide: What support systems are you going to provide to your clients? Are you going to supply the artwork or do they? Are you going to have live customer service? What infrastructure are you going to have in place to support them? Will they add their design on your website or send you the files?
So you need to decide what model you are going to bring to the table to offer your clients. And then if you’re talking about anyone in particular that is thinking about it, I would say that you want to use someone like us to consult you. Which, if you’re in another country, I’d have no problem with.
Closing Words
Charles: Oh, a few more things which are very important. When COVID hit my daughter Lisa left Universal Studios to come with us and she has had a massive impact on our business on a whole and our customer service in particular. Lisa has brought a work ethic and level of integrity to Shuffled Ink that has been so awesome there simply are no words to describe how incredibly fantastic she is. Then, in 2022, my son, Jonathan came into the business and he has added a dynamic to our production efforts and financial demands that has changed our world.
I would also like to mention my daughters, Lori & Melissa. Although Lori has not come to work for Shuffled Ink, she was a massive source of inspiration and support for me and the company. There have been many times where Lori’s insight, reason and love were major contributors to our growth and success. Melissa worked at Shuffled Ink for 3 critical years from 2011-2014 handling everything from customer service, international sales and most importantly me!!! There is no doubt the company would not be where it is without Melissa’s contributions.
Also, Richard Enders has been the most amazing supporter, friend and promoter of us. He’s a phenomenal guy and he’s played a huge part in helping us grow particularly over the last five years we’ve been associated. And so I would like you to mention him as being an integral part of our growth and success. He’s been fantastic.
You can contact Shuffled Ink and they can make your dream deck of cards come true.
They were also so kind to do a story on The Flourish magazine as well! You can read our story on their website.