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PG’s 25 Year Anniversary
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YEARS 1991 - 2016
By 1991, Forever Friends was a Right: A young Stephen Haines (then a major high street brand as the British rep for Andrew Brownsword), before he female consumer went into a Forever set up Carte Blanche and kicked-started the Me to You phenomenon. Friends frenzy! Major licensing deals followed, the plush spin offs sold in their hundreds of thousands and some enterprising independents even set up dedicated Forever Friends shops that only sold FF merchandise. Very soon it was reported that Andrew, in those years of mouth-watering publishing margins, was making £12 million of annual profit, and in the early 1990s he featured regularly in the Sunday Times’ Top 100 Rich list. But they say ‘timing is everything’ in main US Hallmark board (until he left and now business and as ‘ABC’ (as it became known) is a major hotel mogul, owning some of the rapidly increased its UK market share, while most exclusive pampering venues in the UK). at the same maintaining a massive profit, Like nearly all fashion trends, Forever Hallmark, the world’s largest greeting card Friends could never have been expected to corporation, came a-calling. Andrew maintain the level of its popularity, and went Brownsword played his hand brilliantly, in to a steady decline. rejecting increased offer after offer to sell to Having reached such a peak, the the Kansas-based monolith until, in 1996, he prevailing industry’s view was that there accepted a rumoured package that was would never be another cute phenomenon estimated to be near to £200 million. As part to reach the scale of Forever Friends, but of the deal, Andrew also took over the they were wrong. running of the UK Hallmark operation for a Someone who had ironically been a time, and became the first Brit to join the young salesman for Andrew Brownsword in
the early 1980s developed another cute concept that has even outstripped Forever Friends in terms of global sales. This of course is Stephen Haines, founder and owner of the Carte Blanche Group, home of Tatty Teddy, the star of the Me to You brand. For nearly ten years until 1995, Carte Blanche had achieved a fair degree of success on the back of a character called Tatty Teddy, who started off as a cartoonish brown bear, but became a more vulnerable looking grey fellow with a blue nose. Then, with the financial assistance of industry business angel, Duncan Spence, Stephen and his team came up with a cute plush version of Tatty that had both a design feel and that vital ‘aah factor’. Clintons got behind the concept big time, and for years Tatty Teddy also became a staple card and plush sale for thousands of independent retailers. Unlike Andrew Brownsword, Stephen Haines has resisted purchase offers for his company and remains fully committed to Carte Blanche till this day, and Me to You is all out to celebrate its 21st birthday big time this year (see pages 90-91).
Death Of The Greeting Card
As we enter 2016, the industry does face some demons. The decline of the high street is not being helped by the growth of retail online; anything that threatens the postal system will have a knock-on effect on card sending; plus the younger generation needs to be coaxed into the habit of sending cards, while maintaining buying/sending levels of existing card consumers. While finding growth, whether on the publishing or retailing side of the market, is tricky, there is certainly no shortage of greeting card choice for even the most demanding consumer. Added to the publishers who were in their infancy when PG was ‘born’, such as Paperlink, Paper Rose, Abacus, Woodmansterne and Really Good, are those who came along in a strong wave around 20 years ago, such as Belly Button, Five Dollar Shake, Wendy Jones-Blackett and Blue Eyed Sun. So, without wishing to be complacent, having seen off so many threats to its very existence over the last 25 years, the humble greeting card sector hopefully will see off a few more, giving Progressive Greetings lots to write about in its forthcoming editions.
As long as Progressive Greetings has been published, there have always been harbingers of doom predicting the death of the greeting card, yet in the last 25 years the size of the market at retail has more than tripled! In the early 1990s, many said the retail recession would bring the greeting card market crashing down. And over the years, whenever there is a high profile retail failure, whether it be Athena in 1996 or Clintons in 2012, some (normally male) business journalists prophesise the death of greeting cards. Yet, when clothing retailers or grocers go bust, no one predicts the demise of clothes or food retailing!
From postal rises, texting to ecards, emails to Facebook the death knell have been rung over the years. As it has turned out, some social media have actually helped greeting card buying and sending by encouraging new and reinforcing existing social bonds. And then came Moonpig.com. A few years ago you could have got the impression, by reading the financial press and watching breakfast TV, that Moonpig was taking over the greeting card industry. In essence, this was down to its high profile TV advertising and earworm jingle. Yet, even now, Moonpig and the other print-on-demand operators only account for 5% of the card market. Above: David Hicks, founder of Really Good, having all of his long locks cut off whilst holding a Happy Hefalumps card, one of the defining contemporary ranges of the last 25 years. Left: Michael McIntyre (right) hosted The Henries in 2008 just as he was starting out, presenting an award to Wendy Jones-Blackett’s founders Wendy and Steve.
PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
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