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CARDSHARP
The
Aussies Are Coming! Inset: Australian, Angus Young of band ACDC. Below: Typo in Westfield, Stratford set up by an Australian company.
The world and his wife travelled to the Olympic Stadium in London’s Stratford back in 2012, and this impressive sporting venue is now being put to good use, including as home to West Ham Untied FC. Out that way recently, Cardsharp visited a very different ‘stadium’ adjacent to the ground – the Westfield Shopping Centre, where once again the ‘world and his wife’ were out in force, enjoying the great sport of shopping. Cardsharp said ‘hello sport’ to a few Aussie-based retailers that have entered the card and stationery league. Being a ‘cardie’, Cardsharp is always tempted by bit of a comparative browsing, which is very easy in Westfield’s East London mega ‘stadium’. Last Saturday, Cardsharp popped into a flagship Card Factory store there, which was packed with queues at the tills, having only just unveiled its Christmas box offering, that was truly spectacular in terms of quality and value for money. Then, it was straight into a very crisp looking Clintons, one of the best Cardsharp has seen recently in its portfolio. And then he spotted a Typo! No that is not a mistake! Typo in Westfield opened at the tail end of last year, the first outlet in the UK for the Australian stationery chain, which is part of the Geetong-based Cotton-onGroup (that Cardsharp confesses he had never heard of ). Typo is a really buzzy retail experience. It sells a quixotic mixture of quirky colourful stationery, gifts, homewares,
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PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
travel accessories and, most notably, greeting cards. There are now 140 Typos trading in 11 countries, as diverse as the UAE and The Philippines. It expanded into the US in 2012 and recently opened its second UK outlet in the Bentalls Centre in Kingstonupon-Thames.
The greeting card display in Typo was certainly interesting to Cardsharp. Displayed on modern slatwall, full-face were a selection of cards that all seemed to be own brand from China. To Cardsharp’s eye, the designs were something of a poor man’s ‘Paperchase-esque’. The cards were not expensive for what they were, but not Card Factory cheap! The store was packed and the tills were ringing, and it was obviously a great place to go for early Christmas present ideas as the product portfolio extends to everything from novelty animal head pens to bath robes and duvet covers, alongside greeting cards. Typo is just another example of a recent trend of retail ‘Reverse Colonisation’ in which our Antipodean cousins are attacking our already highly competitive retail market.