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No Bah Humbugs Please… Right: On the positive front, there are lots of worthy Happy Santas award recipients.
Left: There are several key contenders for The Humbugs negative awards.
By the time you read this Christmas will have come and gone and we will have welcomed in a New Year. But penning this a week before Christmas, and despite dire predictions, Cardsharp’s reading is that trading has gone quite well.
...Just Happy Santas By the time you read this Christmas will have come and gone and we will have welcomed in a New Year. But penning this a week before Christmas, and despite dire predictions, Cardsharp’s reading is that trading has gone quite well. So, with this in mind Cardsharp is launching two of his very own awards - The Happy Santas, which highlight and recognise many of the positive things that have given support to our greeting industry in this key time, and (boo and hiss!) The Humbugs, those nasty stories and actions the greeting card community could well do without.
the inappropriate timing of its research window. It certainly will not have helped JLP or any other retailers’ Christmas card sales for that matter. The fact that some of the media seized on this as indicative of Christmas card sales across the board, was certainly not helpful.
No doubt the true picture about Christmas trading will emerge, as always by the middle of January, but with there being a Monday and Tuesday (when most people won’t be working) before Christmas Day on the Wednesday, hopes are high, that despite the poor economic news, it will be an okay, if unspectacular season. So, donning his awards presenter’s bomber jacket, Cardsharp thinks we should get all the negative stuff out the way first with The Humbugs, and unfortunately, they are rather a lot of awards to be presented. Firstly, a Humbug goes to John Lewis for dismissing Christmas cards as ‘products
Above: Daniel Kr�etínský has now added Royal Mail to West Ham and Sainsbury’s as companies he has his fingers in.
18 PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
people said goodbye to’ in 2024. Its Shop-Live-Look Report, that it published on December 13, proclaimed that sales of Christmas boxed cards were 23% down on 2023 levels. Why do that and put out a negative trope at such a key Christmas card selling time? Surely this just reflects on the retail group’s own Christmas selection or Below: The John Lewis Shop-Live-Look-Report includes some Humbug reading on Christmas cards.
A second a big Humbug goes to Ofcom, the organisation that is supposedly meant to protect the interests of the customers of Royal Mail, but at times seems to do exactly the opposite. It recently fined Royal Mail £10.5million, after it substantially missed its First Class and Second Class service targets. But why announce this in December, just as the Christmas card sending season is warming up? This was guaranteed to suggest to some consumers that the Christmas cards they were planning to send may not arrive in time, which is precisely not the message the greeting card community wanted conveyed. Why didn’t they hold back on this announcement until January when it would have less of a negative effect?