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cardsharp
The Class Of
2020
That fact that 2020 has been incredibly difficult for many in the greeting card industry is patently obvious. The majority, reflected Cardsharp, from publishers to retailers, from trade suppliers to agents have been adversely affected in some way. Hopefully, the greeting card will prove robust enough to bounce back strongly in 2021. But looking into his crystal ball, Cardsharp thinks this year’s events (or lack of them!) has left a black hole at the centre of our creative industry that will take some time to fill.
Cardsharp’s mind wandered back in time to the 1970s and early 1980s. Then a small cabal of major publishers (more manufacturers than publishers in reality) constituted the Greeting Card and Calendar Association. This GCCA was a bit different from the inclusive Greeting Card Association we are fortunate to have today. Without taking away the achievements of the former incarnation of the trade
association, Cardsharp has heard stories that the GCCA then, was seen as something of a price fixing cartel. Over long agreeable lunches, finished off with brandies and cigars, in oak-panelled private lunchrooms, the then exclusively male council members would apparently decide between themselves, what prices they were going to charge retailers for the coming year. It was however a time when established publishers definitely had the upper hand.
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PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
New start-up publishers were largely dismissed as ‘kitchen table operators’ whose presence was not required at the top table. All this changed though in the mid 1980s, with a surge led by a brilliant young entrepreneur, Andrew Brownsword and an equally talented young artist, Deborah Jones. They collectively came up with ranges of new contemporary cute and humorous greeting cards, the most famous of which were the Dino and Forever Friends brands. Andrew had no truck with any organisation that would have him as a member, and his stratospheric success, based on creative brilliance broke the old jelly mould, paving the way for the huge successes of further creative entrepreneurs, like Stephen Haines of Carte Blanche and many more. After that, the floodgates opened in a positive way. It was a period of ‘creative destruction’, as older staid companies disappeared or were absorbed by newer more successful players. It heralded a time of ‘creative construction’. In tandem with the spawning of retail stockists, the greeting card industry became the fast-moving design-led creative sector that it is today. Or hopefully still is? And this has kept the British public engaged in greeting cards to an extent unequalled around the globe. However, Cardsharp is concerned that the trials and tribulations of 2020 might have had a more damaging effect
Below: There have been plenty of empty classrooms this year, due to Covid-19, including in the greeting card industry ‘schoolroom’.
on our industry than is readily apparent right now. Elsewhere in Progressive Greetings, you can see all the fantastic ranges that have made the finals of this year’s Henries in all their glory. Cardsharp was gratified, but not necessarily surprised, that a quarter of these feted ranges hailed from publishers now recognised as being at the forefront of the industry, through a journey involving three crucial steps. These are namely: contacting the GCA; attending one or maybe two Ladder Club seminars, and then taking their first trade show steps by exhibiting at Progressive Greetings Live. Perhaps a simplistic view, but it seems to have helped the emergence of so many brilliant publishers over the last decade or so. The raison d’etre of The Ladder Club (co-founded by the late great Lynn Tait and PG’s editor Jakki Brown), as its name suggests, was to impart business advice to Left: ‘New boy’ of the 80s/90s, Andrew Brownsword (far right) with Simon Elvin (left) and Jeff Bottomley (former of Kingsley Cards). Below: The ‘Queen’ of The Ladder Club, Lynn Tait with her ‘not enough ofs’ list, detailing how a lack of certain elements she believed resulted in newbie publishers failing.