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OVER THE
COUNTER
BY DAVID ROBERTSON OF JP POZZI, ELGIN AND BUCKIE.
The Winning
Hand? The UK psyche has an obsession with success. In the last 18 months there have been some undoubted winners and losers with the Covid situation and this continues to be the case right to this present day. You don’t need me to tell you that some businesses have seen huge growth as people have been forced to shop and live in a very different way, while others have watched years of hard work simply disappear. So, which camp are you/your business in…success or failure or something in between? Our sector is one which has always benefited from a decent margin as well as the fact that Brits love greeting cards, which combined has made us quite robust. Sure, those publishers who have supplied the supermarkets and non-essential chains over the last 18 months have enjoyed a spike with so many indie specialists closed and people forced to buy their cards elsewhere. At the same time many smaller publishers found it hard with the ‘open/close’ scenario. Covid has altered everything, with footfall in the large cities being a fraction of what it was (as evidenced by the demise of Cards Galore, which has been trading in administration since April) with the public’s confidence/office population still at a very low ebb. Cards Galore’s stores had traded successfully for many years from a tested formula but suddenly it just simply did not work. Circumstance made them fail. Its model was so reliant on footfall, but no-one could have predicted a country being shut down. 22
PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
Above and bottom left: Success or failure or something in between? Left: Rumit and Rajesh Shah, director of Cards Galore appearing on BBC News to highlight how Covid-19 caused the 30 year old business to fail. Below: Elizabeth Day with her best selling Failosophy book.
In figures released recently through Sky News it was estimated that 50 stores per day closed down across the UK during the first half of this year. Some 8,739 outlets went out of business, across high streets, retail parks and shopping centres between January and June, but 3,488 opened during the same period, resulting a net decline of 5,251 shops. Many of these were fashion, charity and betting shops, but sadly the data does not show how many were smaller owner/operator type businesses. These will all go down as ‘failures’, but there is of course more to it than that. As well as facing competition from ‘essential’ stores now stocking cards, gifts
and balloons in order to take advantage of the lockdown, we (as indie specialists) have also faced competition from many small makers of cards and gifts who have instigated online ‘shops’ to supplement their income. So we are being attacked from both sides and I have spoken to many within our sector who are finding it hard to keep going or at least keep motivated. I believe that many of the smaller stores that have closed have done so because the owner has simply had enough of fighting and working very hard for little reward. Throw in the added challenges of deliveries/stock levels