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What's an economic explanation for why greeting cards are so expensive? 
I actually have a bit of experience with the supplier side of this. Having worked with other people attempting to get the business launched, I can shed a bit of insight. The primary reason for the pricing is that there simply isn't enough competition to warrant dropping the price any lower than it already is. Large companies such as Hallmark will typically buy card designs at 5% of the card's selling price. With their existing distribution network, this makes bringing in new and varied designs much easier for large companies that are already well established. Having talked with such designers in the past, someone working full time producing designs makes on average 30-60k annually from this, which is worth it to someone who doesn't want to jump through the hoops of actually getting into the business independently. The primary issue stifling competition is actually getting your product into stores. There are topics here that I cannot discuss due to NDA, but I can break down the overall outline for you: You need to start with a large number of designs, with enough variety that companies think could sell well. If you bring a handful of designs with you, no company is going to take your business venture seriously enough. You need to find a company that can stamp out a large production process for you. The company is going to need to be nice enough to take smaller purchase orders on the magnitude of several hundred cards, but also be capable of scaling that production to several hundreds of thousands of cards very quickly. For cards specifically, most companies want you to ship custom racks with your cards. Some companies may provide their own racks for stocking your product, but not all of them will. This will also cost a lot of money up front. You need to find a buyer for a company you want to sell your product to. This is important, and what killed our original business plans. Think Wal-Mart, Target, or even CVS Pharmacy. These big companies are going to have people who's entire job is to buy new products to put on their shelves. This is where networking is key, you need to find people with connections to these buyers if you're not already well established with them. You will also likely fail several times, either getting outright ignored, or through a broker that can't meet expectations. For example, we had a broker that introduced us to a buyer for a large store chain, and after several months of work we found out that this broker was just pulling our strings. Typically a company will want to test your product in a handful of stores to see if it will sell. For example, Target may want to test your product in 100-200 stores over 3 months and expect your product to sell at a minimum rate. Finally, you need to be able to scale your production. Suddenly you'll be asked to go from supplying 100 stores to supplying 1,800 stores with a deadline in 2 weeks. Buyers will even turn you down at this point if they don't think you can meet the production. All of this work takes at least a year, and typically takes several years to go from an initial product to having your product in every store. Without breaking the numbers down too much, we could make a profit of ~$1.60 for every $3 card that sold. That number doesn't cover the cost of racks and other overhead, that's just the per-card profit. Even then, people are more likely to go view the Hallmark or other big-name cards over your offering. Only when another company becomes a big powerhouse to be competitive will these companies be forced to drop their prices.