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It is the Christmas eve and many of you are preparing the last gift bargains. An Albanian-American who has come to the United States at the age of five has started her business with the least costly but most meaningful gifts - the postcard. After graduating for political science, Xhensila Velencia realized she did not like a regular office job that kept her in the chair for 8 hours and invested in her passion for creating postcards to convey messages that take the topic from politics or from everyday life. Her small company The Card Bureau sells products in 30 stores in Washington and in 13 US states.
"I started with $ 60. If you told me before I would go on selling postcards, I would never believe. I started the university for political science and international relations, I thought I would be a lawyer, but then I came here and became a journalist for several years." she told in an interview to Voice of America."Everything started as fun, I was shopping and trying to by a postcard for myself, I didn't found something I liked. And I thought that these are not good, but I can do better. And I told myself "Why not?"
I was hooked up with a friend who was an artist and I said to her that I had an idea to make some postcards and then see, she said okay. So we did some, went to some stores and told to sellers I had these postcards. They said ok, let's try it.
We started selling so much that I reached a point that I could not continue working as I made postcards, so I left the job.
Usually the ideas come to what happens in your life, or at the time we live. I see the things that happen around and express on the postcard, others are painters and express themself in other ways. In these times people are disconnected from each other because of technology, thus the postcards are more sentimental."