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respect where it’s due The Brit Awards brought media glory to UK music artists, where is the Aretha Franklin-esque respect for the UK greeting card scene? Below: City types don’t seem to understand what a success story the greeting card industry is.
Cardsharp has many a bee in his bonnet, but one that particularly irks him is the condescending attitude of the media and City types towards our greeting card industry. Hopefully one positive from the serious debate on the future of the Royal Mail and what is to happen to Universal Service Obligation and six day delivery will see more mentions of the importance of greeting cards, especially given the sterling efforts of the GCA. Seeing the media bombarded with coverage of The Brits music awards recently, further rammed it home to Cardsharp that there doesn’t seem to be a rightful recognition of the greeting card sector’s contribution to the creative industry in the UK. There’s no acknowledgment of our role as a world leader when it comes to greeting card design and per capita send and no mention of our contribution towards exports. Instead, we as an industry get sneered at and patronised on many occasions. Every year prior to
26 PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
Christmas so many journalists parrot the mantra that ‘Christmas card sending is dead’ only for our industry to surprise all outside expectations. This last year was a particular case in point with many retailers reporting better than expected Christmas card sales, despite a lack lustre festive period for most non-food bricks and mortar retailing sectors. Cardsharp has been absorbing some of the figures. December saw one of the biggest downturns in retail sales for three years (and remember that was in the height of Covid), with The Times newspaper commenting that this was an “Unhappy Christmas for UK retailers and households”. This has been reflected in a huge increase in profit warnings emanating from UK listed companies, the largest number since 2008. The combination of increased wage, energy and transport costs, higher interest on borrowing and downbeat consumer spending has created a near perfect storm, reflects Cardsharp. Stir into this mix Cardfactory. Now, Cardsharp knows that our largest specialist bricks and mortar retailer is not universally popular with all of the industry because of its mainly vertical integration strategy which
means it can sell its cards so cheaply. But Cardsharp thinks certainly since the economic meltdown of 2009-2011 it has served a real benefit to the industry. In the last 15 years, household incomes have remained largely static. Without Cardfactory being able to offer greeting card at affordable prices, it could be argued that a large section of the UK’s population may have been priced out of buying cards and worse still lost the card sending habit altogether. And indeed PG’s recent Retail Barometer showed only 6% of independent retail respondents cited CF as a ‘serious threat’ indicating that they recognise they each offer something different while still championing greeting cards. Furthermore, with the shrinking of Clintons’ store numbers (though things will improve under Paul Taylor’s ownership) and the complete collapse and disappearance of Paperchase (living on only as a brand within some Tesco stores), Cardfactory has become the only specialist greeting card retailer in many city shopping centres and high streets. So, given the unfavourable economic winds, Cardfactory’s recent Christmas trading figures were truly excellent. It delivered double digit like-for-like sales growth to £479 million as store revenue climbed by 7.8% in November and December. It even saw single Christmas card sales increase by an incredible 37% year on year. And given the strength of this great performance, Cardfactory expects to deliver full year profit at the top of the range of market expectations, between £58million and £62 million.