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In Conversation With... Noel Tatt
Tatt That Trio The UK greeting card industry is well blessed with plucky entrepreneurial businesses, but you’d be hard pressed to find a story that would match that of Greeting Cards by Noel Tatt, the unlikely origins of which all started at RAF Stafford, when teenager Noel, then editor of the airbase’s newspaper boldly decided to print 8,000 Christmas cards to make some extra money, selling them at tuppence a piece. PG ventured to Canterbury to discover more about the past and present of this respected third generation greeting card publishing business. There is no denying that publisher Noel Tatt is a mainstay in the UK greeting card industry. The wall of Henries trophies that take pride of place in the publishing company’s main office stand as testament to the incredible level of service it gives to its 2,000+ independent retail customers. The £110,000 it is has just sent to the Help group of charities takes the company’s donations to well over £2 million as a result of the sale of its range of Christmas cards, while its Impress Publishing side provides a publishing and fulfilment service to over another 30 charities. Continual investment in its publishing programme (of over 1,000 new designs annually), from its stalwart Cube photographic range to its latest stream of contemporary Murano and Zari collections as well as ongoing development of its planning services puts Greeting Cards by Noel Tatt firmly in the heart of the mainstream UK greeting ard industry. “With the exception of the Covid year, we are very fortunate to have grown year on year for the last two decades, thanks to the support from our customers,” states Jarle Tatt, managing director of the family business that was started by his father Noel. Sitting next to him is the company’s operations manager, Andreas Tatt, Jarle’s 46
PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
Above: Noel Tatt’s first ever Christmas card, printed in 1948. Right: (right-leftt) Noel, Jarle and Andreas Tatt, outside the company’s Canterbury premises. Below left: The latest metal stand for Noel Tatt’s Christmas boxes. Below right: Murano is one of the latest ranges from Noel Tatt.
son who joined the business in 2018, following a period of working in Western Australia as a project engineer for an iron ore mine. While Jarle has no intention of retiring anytime in the near future, thinking ahead he gave Andreas five years to think about whether he would be interested in joining the company, thereby providing something of a third generation succession plan. “It was never a boyhood dream of mine to run the business, but having spent some time working in America, for Burgoyne, a respected publishing business, I wanted to put into practice the things I had learned with our business,” says Jarle thinking back to his own experience. Likewise, Andreas says he is so glad that he is able to bring the lessons he has learned from his
work elsewhere into the business. “I thought seriously about Dad’s proposal for me to join the company for a few years and then on Christmas Day 2017 gave him my answer and I certainly don’t regret it. Weirdly there are a lot of shared skills needed in iron ore mining and running a greeting card company