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cardsharp
A Large Slice Of
Pie Please!
Cardsharp was thinking about pies recently. He was cutting into a delicious home-baked apple one, when he reflected that it’s not the size of the pie that’s important, but the portion you are allowed to take for yourself. This set Cardsharp reminiscing about the state of greeting card publishing of 20 years ago, compared to the present… Anyone remember any of the following publishers…Images and Editions, Regent Greetings, Gemma Designs, Kingsley Cards, Cartel, Second Generation, Wishing Well, Grassroots International and PopShots? To younger readers of Cardsharp, these names might not mean much, but back in the 1990s these publishers would all have had large, and in some cases double decker, stands at the Spring Fair. As publishing companies they have gone to that great greeting card heaven in the sky, although in several cases (Wishing Well, Kingsley and Grassroots) the brands live on under different ownerships as part of a brand portfolio. Is this all part of what the economist Joseph Shrumpeter calls ‘Creative Destruction’ or has something more fundamental occurred, mused Cardsharp? The 1990s (and early noughties) were the glory days of the UK greeting card industry. Bricks and mortar retailing in this pre-economic crash and the Top: How big a slice of pie would you like? Above: Card Factory now commands over 30% share of the market. Left: Birthdays was the forerunner to Card Factory.
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PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
internet was also booming. Margins were handsome, and although there were value chains then (Birthdays and Card Warehouse in particular), they were not so omnipresent as the Card Factory group is today. In those days, the largest hall at the Spring Fair, Hall 5 was jammed to the gunnels with hundreds of card publishers, with loads having massive stands. Many of them had ‘towers in the sky’. Cardsharp remembers one particular castle that International Greetings had built, that was three storeys high! In fact, such was the demand for stand space that potential new exhibitors were forced to exhibit at Autumn Fair, before they could be considered for a stand at Spring Fair. Even with space restrictions there were usually over 300 publishers exhibiting in those days. How things have changed? Since then, the greeting card sector has been moved to smaller halls while next year it is back to Hall 3 but contained in a much smaller space. And there are around 90 publishers on the exhibitors’ list at present. Yet, if industry statistics are to be believed, the UK greeting card industry is as large in terms of sales as it’s ever been estimated to be worth in the region of £1.4 billion, even during a pandemic.