28-29_Cardsharp.qxp_Layout 1 16/08/2023 14:31 Page 2
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A Clintons’ Clincher? It’s looking ominous for Clintons, arguably the UK’s best known historic greeting card retail brand. In effect Clinton Cards was formerly a generic for greeting card high street retailing, but now another round of shop closures is underway and another financial restructuring is being attempted. For Cardsharp the timing of these recent announcements was spooky to say the least. It was just last week that Cardsharp received several messages from some of his old publisher chums. These were former Clintons’ suppliers who had taken a hefty financial battering when the retail group went bust big time 11 years ago, back in May 2012. Somewhat bemused, at the end of July they all received some money from the administrators who liquidated the company back in 2012. The fact that these suppliers had long long ago mentally written off the debt, meant it was a rather pleasant surprise and reminded them of the glory days of Clinton Cards as it was known then. Then a few days later Clintons, as it is known now was in the news just like in 2012, but not to the same degree. In 2012 Clintons’ first business failure sent the whole greeting card industry into ructions. To many the latest news seemed to illicit shrugged responses of “not again!” How the mighty have fallen reflected Cardsharp? Clintons’ recent announcement that it is preparing to close a fifth of its stores in a large ditch effort to stave off insolvency was covered by all the media, but thankfully without any comment that this was the ‘end of greeting cards’! Advisors are understood to have put in place a restructuring plan under which its debt will be swapped for equity as it faces in its own words, “acute financial distress”. It has closed 158 stores since it was sold back to its American owners, the Weiss family in one of those morally dubious but legal fast track insolvency prepack deals in 2019.
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Since then surprise, surprise, it has struggled to restore its finances even though it has cut costs. What did surprise Cardsharp though and something he had not hitherto been aware of, was Clintons had been exploring a merger with Paperchase in December 2022. Of course, a couple of months later Paperchase went into administration, its stores were closed with the loss of 900 jobs and a mass of debt left behind. The proposed merger had been sought to ‘’benefit from economies of scale” and apparently broke down when Paperchase collapsed. To Cardsharp’s mind, this whole Above: Don Lewin (right) in the early days of Clinton Cards. Below: Everyone had high hopes when Clintons unveiled its new look store and branding in 2012.
projected scheme sounds a little bonkers. Putting together one hugely failing retailer and merging it with one going downhill rapidly, and expecting the union to form a profitable new entity was surely never going be a viable business plan. One does not need to be a financial whizzkid to see that this was a fantasy! Now with that plan dead in the water, and Paperchase now just a brand in Tesco’s armoury, Clintons is looking to shut 38 of its 179 stores in a restructuring plan to be negotiated with creditors. It has already cut about 1,000 jobs since its last insolvency, and its 1,400 strong workforce will be reduced still further. Ominously the plan states that Clintons will have no option but to commence formal insolvency proceedings if it does not secure a deal and to quote, Clintons “will soon no longer be