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cardsharp
Hangover Blues Post lockdown boom? Frustrated by lockdown restrictions, a boom is what Cardsharp and most of us in the trade were so hoping for once nonessential shops were allowed to reopen. Well, it has not quite happened yet. Perhaps we were all too unrealistically optimistic. Just because we, as business people, were all desperate to get back to normal, that is not necessarily the case for everyone. Cardsharp thinks this first month of ‘freedom’ has revealed that some people are suffering from what could be called a Covid hangover.
Making stuff in the UK is booming at present. Many of those involved in the manufacturing sector of the economy have been working pretty much straight through since last March, albeit under Covid restrictions. But, Cardsharp observed, for the retail sector it has been a somewhat different story, and so he was interested to see the recent British Retail Consortium footfall report. The long and short of it is, that people are not visiting shops as much as they were, despite the reopening last month. High street footfall last month was down 44% on ‘normal’ levels two years ago, shopping centres were down 50% and
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PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
retail parks down 30%. London, apocryphally, is still very quiet as commuters continue to work from home. And while there was a mini boom for many publishers in late March with retailers keen to ensure they had the best product selection to open up with, things have been much quieter in the last few weeks as retailers look to shift all the stock they ordered in anticipation of pent-up demand. Our largest specialist greeting card chain, Card Factory, has been pretty upbeat in the last few weeks, claiming
Above: The Covid ‘hangover’ does not seem to respond to taking a couple of Anadin Extra! Below left: Cardsharp is interested to understand the extent of the ‘expectations’ of Card Factory that have been exceeded. Below: How there is a yearn for the throngs to return to our high streets and city centres.
that sales were well “above expectation”, but being a PLC, Card Factory has a depressed share price to boost, and Cardsharp wonders what its expectations were. Cardsharp has noticed this condition is common at present in some of his contacts and friends. They may have had their jabs or, in the case of younger ones, not be at any real risk of serious illness, but all the same they have become domestically institutionalised. In some cases, almost agoraphobic. It’s almost like they don’t want to face the world again (or maybe have forgotten how) and are using the Covid threat, however remote, as an excuse to not return to the real world.