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cardsharp
On Your Marks!
Get Set! The greeting card retailing race is primed and ready to go. We are just waiting for the chequered flag to come down on 12 April, reflected Cardsharp, but unlike Formula 1 where you can generally predict the winner these days (ie Lewis Hamilton), no one knows for definite who will be the greeting card winners as we return to a level of normal retailing conditions. But whatever and whoever are the card retailing ‘Grand Prix’ victors, it has to be better than the ridiculously distorted and abnormal retailing conditions of the last 13 months. Well, there has been no doubt who have been the greeting card retailing beneficiaries in the last 13-month period. The supermarkets have seen their greeting card sales soar. Some of the sales figures some greeting card publishers have experienced by supplying them are off the scale in terms of increases. And, after a few early blips last April, credit where credit is due, in most if not all cases, the
supermarkets, their brokers and participating publishers have done a sterling job when it comes to keeping displays fresh and well stocked with greeting cards. Not so much on the giftwrap and packaging fronts, where there do seem to have been real problems for many. Probably a consequence of last year’s Covid-related blip in Far East production. The £million question for Cardsharp is how much of these card sales will be retained once non-essential retail reopens? Cardsharp does not claim to know the answer. And then what of the boom in online sales through Moonpig, Funky Pigeon,
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PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
Thortful, Scribbler online and their ilk? For what it’s worth, Cardsharp’s view is that Moonpig’s City flotation was ridiculously over-priced and the claim that online sales would be 20% of the greeting card market in three years was over optimistic. But then Cardsharp has never been much of an online shopper. The one to watch by his reckoning is Thortful. Its marketing both online and offline is both innovative and effective and has obviously had an extremely lucky break. How long before its founder and serial entrepreneur, Andy Pearce, cashes in his chips and sells it on, adding another fortune to the ones he has made already? It’s also worth mentioning Amazon here, when it comes to greeting card sales, as it too has done rather well out of the last year’s events. It also looks as if Hallmark’s decision to work with Amazon seriously five years ago has paid off hugely for the ‘Big H’. Then of course there are all the smaller local convenience stores and post offices who, because of the arbitrary nature of the government regulations have benefitted from the ‘Shop Local’ necessity, and have been able to stay open when so many others in their
Left: We are all set for the off! Below left: The industry’s ‘engines’ are finely tuned, ready for the retailing ‘Grand Prix’ on April 12. Bottom: Greeting card retailers are so looking forward to having an ‘open’ sign on their doors.
locations have had their doors forcibly shut. The garden centres benefitted last spring when they could open before the rest of non-essential retail, but in many cases suffered from a shortage of supply as some publishers closed their doors. This lockdown it has been more difficult for many garden centres. Even if you are allowed to open your doors for trading, a garden centre in a bleak grey freezing February is not attractive to many punters even with the lure of buying greeting cards. WHSmith is a bit of a conundrum. Being a public company with a share price to defend, it put out a pretty Panglossian picture of its high street retail sales. It boasted of only a small percentage drop in like-for-like sales in January and February this year. How this related to greeting cards we will never know as traditionally Smiths never breaks it down into that specific a