With the way cards are usually managed in newsagencies most newsagents would wait for their card merchandiser to take down Christmas stock from their permanent fixturing and replace it with all-year designs. In our case it will be another day before For Arts Sake get to us leaving a half empty Christmas display.
I’d like to see card companies work better with newsagents on this – they could empower us to take the stock down before now and train us on placing new stock up.
Really, you are not supposed to touch “their cards”. I am presuming you have paid for these cards? We should be so lucky to get our seasonal stock back to For Arts Sake within 2-3 months. One of our friends in a gift shop was not going to pay for his father’s day stcok until he had the rep come and take away the mother’s day stuff. We always have to fill our own rack with For Arts Sake. Don’t get me started on the giftware “that will walk out the door”. With the drought out here our shop is starting to look tired, even though we move stuff around as much as possible. I wish For Arts Sake would have sale or return on their giftware. They obviously don’t believe in it enough to offer that. Anyhow, I was just blown away that they come to you so quickly. The benefit of being one of their larger accounts I guess.
Clem, I should have added that Hallmark was in on Tuesday and replaced all their stock with fresh product. Yeah, our account is reasonable in size but I;d say we are not in the top 250 accounts. Mark