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VIEWPOINTS
Below: A Noel Tatt Up With Paper design. Bottom right: Scribbler was up around 3%-5% on its Christmas trade.
Christmas trade is always vital for greeting card retail stockists but after such an unsettling year on so many fronts, Santa definitely needed to deliver. Thankfully (the wet weather and shifts in buying patterns aside), going by what retailers shared with PG, he did deliver in the main, meaning it was more ‘ho, ho ho’ than ‘no, no, no’.
John Procter
Joe Guest senior buyer (cards and wrap) for Paperchase: How did it go?: “Overall we had a good season, with sales coming through towards the end of our peak trading period.” Changing buying habits?: “Christmas trade was in line with our expectations overall. With Christmas Day falling on a Wednesday this year we did see a later peak in sales. We saw an interesting shift into Christmas boxed card sales compared with our packs; boxed card sales overall exceeded our expectations. As seen in previous years we saw our Christmas singles relations card sales spiking at the end of the season, we also saw the peak for Christmas packs last longer than in previous years.” Mitigating circumstances?: “There were a few mitigating factors this year the poor weather in Scotland impacting trade in those stores for a time. Also, we could see that customers were waiting for Black Friday offers to end before buying into Christmas product in a significant way. We reduced the number of promotions during our peak trade this year.” Star performers?: “Our selection of 3D and relations cards continued to perform well for us. Boxed Christmas cards were a surprising new entry into the top sellers this year with some options significantly outperforming.” Buying plans for Christmas 2020?: “All product categories are currently under review at this time to ensure we can continue to deliver growth within this category.” Above: Paperchase’s own brand 3D cards sold well for the multiple. Left: Joe Guest (far right) with Paperchase colleagues (centre) Daisy Enticott, assistant card buyer and Beth Flathers (assistant buyer for novelties).
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PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
co-founder of Scribbler: How did it go?: “Overall, though the numbers are not quite finalised, we were up by around 35%. However, some of this was due to an uplift in our everyday card sales (which increased 5% over the Christmas period). Our Christmas singles sales were flat, Christmas pack sales were down 10%, giftwrappings were down 10%, while our gift sales were up by 10%. We reckon that the constant rain in December will have cost us between 5%-10% of sales as we were actually on course to have a very strong Christmas performance.” Changing buying habits?: “There has been a seismic shift in attitudes towards sustainability and global warming which are significant issues that we as an industry have to acknowledge. These attitudes will continue to impact sales, especially over the Christmas period. Our customers are increasingly aware of the damage caused, for example, by excessive