Greeting Cards

It is gratifying when you see immediate results for a change. This morning at our Frankston newsagency we moved the table and other units displaying boxed cards to at our main entrance. The result was an immediate kick to our already good boxed Christmas card sales.

We undertook the move as part of our commitment to regular change – too many newsagencies are set-and-forget businesses where little product is moved once it is set down. Beyond the table in the photo you can see how we’ve embraced a column in the shop, in front of the counter to the left, with more boxed cards.

We are chasing double digit year on year growth for Christmas cards – so far so good.

We had this display unit designed for our Sophie business – we’re using this at the store entrance to display boxed cards. We wanted a unit which felt like a hall table – so that as people enter they feel like they are entering a person’s home. We also wanted units which did not act as a visual barrier to the rest of the business. The key goal, however, was a unit which efficiently displayed considerable stock which was accessible. While we are yet to put the hooks on the front, the unit is already working very well in each location. The shelf down below helps with storage too.

After Christmas we will use the units for gifts and social stationery suited to the impulse opportunity.

We have a card supplier who, once they have sales data on Christmas-card designs which work, visit and move cards in their boxed packs to put the popular design on top – thereby maximizing sales for the rest of the Christmas season. This is an extraordinary level of service and excellent use of sales data for mutual benefit.

In this era of focus on rebates, it’s good to receive such practical and valuable service.

Our Christmas boxed card sales are up extraordinarily this year at Forest Hill and Frankston and this is, in part, due to the efforts of this supplier.

It is great to see more card companies introducing music cards into their everyday ranges. It’s enjoyable hearing songs play out when the cards are browsed. One challenge is how we display these cards since they are bigger and thicker. Another is how to uniformly show that they are music cards – especially when you have more than one supplier represented in the range.

Boxed card sales are stronger than ever based on data I have seen from at least six newsagencies. By going out early, some as early as four weeks ago, they have been able to grab excellent card sales. We did this at our Forest Hill store and the result has been excellent.

The key appears to display the cards as if they are a promotional line – i.e. on tables and not in the more attractive card company stands.

Done right, (which means having a great range) newsagents can own boxed card sales in their area. This is our third year of strong commitment to boxed cards in our Forest Hill store and current data guides an expectation sales being up 25% on last year. What makes this year better is that we are not running an outpost away from the store. Instead, we have negotiated a small extension to our lease line, thus avoiding staffing and other costs associated with an outpost.

We are experimenting with a new approach for cards not in our everyday range at our Sophie Randall store. With space a premium and a desire to better serve customers we have started a self-managed doubling and tripling of card pockets.

For two weeks we have been testing our approach with 99 pockets. Customer feedback and sales both suggest that in the Sophie store the idea will work well – customers browse for longer than in a newsagency, are prepared to work to find what they want and we have the labour resources to manage the pockets daily to ensure we’re not out of stock. With only two of each design in each pocket, daily checking is essential.

Once we have extended this to our full face card display wall we will cover 243 facings and have capacity for over 700 designs. This will help us through seasons such as Christmas where fixturing for lifestyle cards is lost to the seasonal display.

We don’t plan to test this approach in our newsagencies. The consumer mindset when shopping for a card in a newsagency is very different to what we see in a Sophie store.

Greeting card companies can be frustrating sometimes. One day they will go to extraordinary lengths to help your business and the next they will throw up a barrier which hinders your business. I saw this first hand recently where several suppliers to one business did not work together to create an integrated Christmas Card display. The result, while visually attractive, was not browser friendly.

Customers looking for, say, a Gradnmother Christmas Card will look in the first place they find the header card. They would not expect the retailer to locate these cards in three or four locations – depending on the number of card suppliers.

While we now often see integrated displays in the everyday range, several times this year I have seen non integrated seasonal displays. The browser is not served well and the retailer suffers.

Using the Ask500People website I posed the question: Do you think online and text greetings will replace print greeting cards? As you can see from the graph, 70% said no. As with earlier survey questions I have mentioned here, there is no demographic information, making the poll of passing interest only. Still, I was expecting stronger support for online/text from an online community.

It looks like we made a mistake with our shop fit three years ago at Forest Hill when we created a boxed in window in front of our card areas.

While it was nice to have the window space for wonderful displays, sales growth of cards and related items since the wall of the window was removed two weeks ago tells us we made a mistake. We thought this might have been Christmas related but data analysis shows this is not the case.

Whereas in the past customers saw a boxed in display, now they see through to the shop. Now I am asking myself – what were you thinking?!!!

We are still feeling our way with the new space – we have spinners in the window at present to stop our customers walking into the glass … yes they have been, ouch!

When the Hallmark merchandiser was refreshing the stock at our newsXpress Watergardens store she noticed a Nanna birthday card from another card company. Since Hallmark is the only brand in the store it was an odd discovery. Either someone stole a card from somewhere else and dumped it in our store or they purchased (or stole) from an other store and replaced it with one from our store.

We have replaced the website for our Sophie Randall business. The new design better reflects the focus and values of the business. Not all pages are up yet, it’s a work in progress.

I passed on carrying Wellington Bear when I first saw this new offer from Hallmark. We were committed to Forever Friends and didn’t see the need for another plush story from Hallmark.

Two weeks ago, I took the time to listen to the Wellington Bear story and, finally some would say, I got it. I got that this bear was different. Wellington has a back story – printed on every Wellington product except the cards. This story provides context and helps us (me) better understand those likely to purchase Wellington.

With so many new products pitched to newsagents, invited and uninvited, it is challenge to pay sufficient attention to each. Of course every supplier says this is the one, the product which will beat all others. What I am more interested in is the purpose of this product. This is why I (belatedly) like the Wellington story.

This photo shows a small part of the range of boxed cards we are selling from our Sophie Randall store.

Settling on the range was a challenge given that traditional card suppliers do not have the broad rang we wanted for year round giving.

Now that we have the range and sales to match, I am confident that at least some of the range would sell in newsagencies if presented appropriately and located between social stationery and greeting cards.

Boxed cards are big in Europe and the US all through the year while in Australia, in most stores, they remain a Christmas focus.

Even though our range is small, these foreign Christmas cards sell very well.

Our view is that if we want to be a destination for cards, we need to cater to all possible niches, including foreign language cards. We do sell foreign language newspapers after all so it makes sense.

What we have not mastered is how we can locate these cards near our foreign language newspapers to maximise the up-sell opportunity – not that we need to as they sell very well.

A call for greeting card category standards

While magazine publishers and distributors long ago reached agreement on category standards, greeting card companies continue to fail newsagents. The lack of standards makes store level reporting, within the greeting card category, challenging. In our software newsagents have exceptional reporting tools – return on floor space, return on shelf space, supplier comparisons, ROI – there are many angles from which newsagents can analyse data gathered by the system. It is impossible for newsagents to determine the best card supplier in their store. This denies them the opportunity to be business like.

Some newsagents are so frustrated by this experience that they are planning to place barcode stickers on cards before they are placed on the shelf.

Card manufacturers must act urgently and together to sort this out. Every month the current situation continues is another month newsagents are not able to have the best possible information available to build their business.
The IT standards necessary to manage this already exist.

This is what I wrote to greeting card companies in the Tower Systems newsagent supplier newsletter in October 2006. I was writing out of frustration – having worked with card companies for more than two years of the data project with little real progress to show for the effort.

While I initiated the project with the card companies first in 2004, getting the 15 or so publishers to agree is where the time has gone.

The Tower newsletter generated significant action and finally, based on meetings we had last week, we can see that standards between card companies are close to final agreement.

Newsagents are set to benefit significantly from this project and it won’t matter what software they run – when I first took this to the card companies I made it clear that we had to approach this the same way we approached the MPA standards in the magazine area. While the smaller software companies benefit from the pioneering work of others, the borader industry benefits and that is what really matters.

paidContent reports that American Greetings (parent company of John Sands) is paying $45 million to acquire Webshots, a big photo sharing site. I can see good synergy between the two businesses. I’d expect more acquisitions by card companies as they pursue online opportunities.

Boxed Christmas cards have changed considerably in Australia over recent years. This year, more than ever, it is a charity story with each of the major publishers embracing charities centrally in their pitch. The charity brand pulls focus from the brand of the product itself.

What was a point of difference for one or two card companies in 2005 is now me too. Card companies will need to find other ways to distinguish their offering since there must be considerable competition for charity endorsement.

In London last November I noticed that every boxed card offering from major publishers had a charity connection. That is true here this year for the first time. While I support the charity contribution, it makes for a noisy marketplace. I wonder if we ought to do more at the retail level to engage beyond selling the product.

Last month I blogged here about how successful music cards are in the United States. The new range from Hallmark, while too small, is selling very well in our Sophie Randall store. Once browsers open a card and hear the song they smile. Some play it again – that’s when you know you have them. It’s good to hear people interacting with your products. I’m confident this range would work well in newsagencies.

This is a surprising deal from Nextra – 50% off John Sands and Ink Group cards for a week. While I’d expect Sands to be rebating newsagents at full retail, it is the message to the consumer which I question.

The discount might grow sales but will it add to business? At best, I’d expect it to pull card sales forward of when they might otherwise be achieved. People only so many birthdays, anniversaries and the like to buy for in a year. This 50% discount will not increase the buying occasions. But maybe the folks at Sands and Nextra know more about card buying habits than I do.

Nextra has a good Card Club. I think it would have been smarter to better promote this since it supports the habit basis of card purchasing. The Card Sale locks out this loyalty promotion – read the small print on the poster.

I’d rather leave these chunks discounts to the likes of Target, K-Mart and others. They are known for category wide discounting. Newsagents are more known for card quality and range than price. If someone really wants to buy a card on price they will more likely go to the Reject Shop or similar.

Rosh Hashanah, Jewish New Year, starts sundown, September 12. We usually have cards for sale but they were water damaged and Hallmark has no backup stock. It seems that for these small seasons the major card companies only import firm order requirements. Based on the questions we have had in my newsagency and other retail outlets I know of, these small seasons are an excellent opportunity. The card companies ought to have backup stock to enable a quick response.

My experience this year has me looking for another card company partner which can handle smaller seasons such as Jewish New Year and us builld our credentials as the card experts beyond the high volume seasons.