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In Conversation With… Claire Castle
CASTLE KEEPER One of the frustrations for greeting card publishers supplying multiple retailers and grocers is the seemingly constantly changing buying teams. No sooner is knowledge built up and relationships forged that card buyers are invariably moved onto other product areas. One ever smiling exception to this is Claire Castle, the long serving greeting card buying manager of the WHSmith High Street retailing division. As Claire celebrates 41 years at WHSmith, the majority of which involved in greeting card buying, PG enjoyed a personal trip down memory lane. With her family albums including sepia photographs of your ancestors’ retailing businesses, something her dad continued, taking on the Castle family bakers’ business, you might believe Claire Castle was always destined to join the retail sector, but her early experiences somewhat put her off that idea. “Running a bakers’ shop seemed like too hard work to myself and my three siblings. My dad, a master baker used to get up at 1.30am every day to light the ovens and we all had to help at the weekend. It didn’t appeal to me at all as a career growing up,” admitted Claire. However, thankfully she changed her mind. With no job advertised it was on spec 41 years ago that Claire sent her CV into WHSmith, stating her wish to work for the retail group. Not only was her wish granted, but it was to lead several years later to her clinching her “dream job” of becoming greeting card buyer for the High Street giant and vastly expanding its greeting card selection in line with the burgeoning sector. Having started with WHSmith as a Relief Team PA, it was when she was promoted to a PA with
Above: Claire Castle in WHSmith’s Reading store, one of the flagships. Below right: Claire’s Great Grandmother and her son outside their grocery store, R Castle in East Hendred circa 1870-80. Below left: Claire’s Grandpa Castle (right) outside one of his bakeries in Swindon in the 1920s/30s. Claire’s father carried on with the bakery until he retired 27 years ago.
the market research team, at the same time that the buying team was moving from London to the Swindon offices (where Claire was based), that it was mooted by a colleague that she should consider moving into buying. “I was 26 years old at the time and liked the sound of becoming a buyer, so I enrolled for an Institute of Marketing Diploma, funded by WHSmith and embraced the opportunities,” recalled Claire. “It was all done rather differently then compared to now. I remember as an assistant
buyer for arts and crafts, we used to see suppliers for a casual chat in the local pub. There were no spreadsheets or the level of data analysis we have at our fingertips now,” summed up Claire. In her early days of buying, as well as having responsibilities for diaries, calendars, frames and albums, Claire was also involved in a new concept store which WHSmith had opened in Thurrock, trialling a different product mix and retail execution. “This came under Timothy Melgund who was also heading up Paperchase, which was owned by WHSmith at the time. I was also involved in the Paperchase concessions, which gave me great insight into the importance of collaboration and respect of different teams and ways of doing things,” revealed Claire. One month Claire will never forget is August 1996 as it was to change her career path forever. “The company instigated a huge restructure and everyone in buying had to write down, in order of preference, the three product areas they would most like to buy. I had no hesitation in putting greeting cards in first place as I loved cards so much. I put pens PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE 39