Greeting Cards

I encourage newsagents to actively promote Easter cards on social media. With sales early this year, and strong, social media can play a role in encouraging purchases in this small but important card season for our businesses.

These are two of ten new social media content images provided to newsXpress members last week.

Easter is a perfect time to send a card to a friend, family member or loved-on, to remind them you think of them, love them and appreciate them.

While for many, Easter is a religious time of the year, for plenty it is more of a time for being close with those we care about. This is why an Easter card can serve a wonderful role in providing that hug for someone you may not see.

For the best range of Easter cards, shop your local newsagency. For fun Easter cards, shop your local newsagency. For spiritual and religious Easter cards, shop your local newsagency.

Yes, your local newsagency is the best place for Easter card shopping this year.

If you are not sure what you are looking for, ask for help. At your local newsagency you will find good and knowledgable help available. This is another reason shopping for Easter cards at your local newsagency makes sense.

From the funny to heartfelt to spiritual to family-centred, Easter cards at your local newsagency cover all sorts of situations and opportunities.

The right Easter card will be something they cherish, hang onto, and look at fondly years down the track. This is why card giving is so important – it’s not only about the greeting today, it is also about the wonderful memories you will encourage years later.

You can think of your Easter card as the hug that keeps on giving.

Just like people can spot flowers from a petrol station or no name brand chocolates from a $2 shop, people know good cards when they see them. They turn them over, learn more about the cards, where they were made. They can feel value. They can feel the quality they want to give through their keepsake card choice.

Your local newsagent appreciates your business. They appreciate that you have a choice as to where you purchase your Easter cards. They would love to help you share love this Easter with Easter cards purchased from their collection.

Easter is a perfect time of the year for letting others know how you feel and your local newsagent is the perfect retailer to help you do this.

Some card companies push $2 card spinners aggressively to newsagents, claiming excellent sales numbers.

My advice is ask for the evidence, ask for more than the anecdotes of sales people. Anecdotes are easy. Evidence does not lie.

Looking for data in one newsagency recently, a $2 card spinner generated 15% of greeting card GP whereas a smaller, less stock heavy, spinner generated 16% of greeting card GP. Considering the space and carry stock weight, the second spinner is the better investment for the business.

Sure, $2 cards give you a product with which you can compete with discount variety stores. To me, the big question is do I want to compete with discount variety stores? My answer to that is no … because if I do so, I set shopper expectations in a way that means selling gifts priced at $200 and more is challenging.

I get that sales reps are paid to sell. The thing is, that puts their needs ahead of yours. Data is key. In all the data I have seen from newsagencies for years, cheap card spinners, like $2 card spinners, do not serve newsagency businesses well. There are far better uses of floor space and inventory investment.

This all comes back to Blue Ocean Strategy. Swimming in the blue ocean is more enjoyable, healthier and valuable. Swimming in the red ocean is bloody. For me, $2 cards are a red ocean product.

If you are looking for Valentine’s Day cards and / or gifts this year, shop your local newsagency first.

Why? Your local newsagency has range. They most likely have fun Valentine’s Day cards, serious cards, traditional cards and quirky cards.

Your local newsagency is an easier place to shop for Valentine’s Day cards. They give you space, they let you shop the way you want to shop. In a supermarket the aisles are full and there are people often looking at what you are looking at.

In your local newsagency, the staff can help you choose a Valentine’s Day card. They know all about good old-fashioned customer service. Tell them what you need and they can make some suggestions. At a supermarket counter this is challenging.

The thing about Valentine’s Day cards is that while it is a commercial season designed to get you to buy a card, or two, for which we thank you, it is an opportunity to add a keepsake they will cherish. Yes, there are people who hang on to every card they are given, people who keep them and look at them years later. This means that the Valentine’s Day card you give today could be a heartwarming memory tomorrow.

Newsagents are more likely to have the cards that will provide for better memories as they have range.

Fun fact: newsagents will sell more Valentine’s Day cards in 2021 than any other retail channel in Australia.

Newsagents go further, too. If you need somewhere to write on the card, your local newsagency is likely to help with this. Hey, if you need help working out what to write on the card, there will be team members in your local newsagency who can help with this too. This is what shopping local is all about, it is how local newsagents help more shoppers for cards express how they feel to those about whom they care.

For Valentine’s Day cards in 2021, shop your local newsagency and see for yourself how this local Aussie retail channel makes a difference in lives and communities. See how relevant newsagencies are today for cards and more.

While there are plenty of retail businesses selling Valentine’s Day cards, your local newsagency is the best place to shop. Go!

Click here to access a MP4 of this generic video that I have created for newsagents to use on social media. It pitches our channel as a go to retail channel for people who want to express themselves.

Anyone can create videos like this. There are several online platforms for doing it.

There have been several articles about greeting card sales I the US during the pandemic that are worth reading:

• Fast Company: Remember greeting cards? They’re making a COVID-19 comeback.
• St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Greeting card sales stack up in pandemic. ‘It’s quarantini time!’.
• Newsday: In a season marked by the pandemic, Christmas cards make a comeback.

As I go through data for the Q4 2020 newsagency sales benchmark the results in Australia are similar to what you will see in the above articles. Not in all stores but most. The growth was most prevalent in the stores with a stronger gift and giving success as the two go hand in hand.

The card category has had a good covid. Sales are up, hopefully in a way that sticks through 2021.

Across in the UK, the news is not so good with City A.M. reporting a tough year for Card Factory, the card retailer now supplying the reject Shop in Australia with cards.

Closed stores over the Christmas period meant Card Factory suffered significant losses, sending its shares down 4.1 per cent this morning.

Card Factory experienced a year-on-year decline of over 38 per cent, where forced store closures prohibited openings for 37 per cent of available trading days.

Sales over the eleven-month period fell from almost £425m in 2019 to £281m in 2020.

The greeting card retailer said it expected to report a loss before tax of around £10m for the year, compared with a pre-tax profit of over £65m a year earlier.

Executive chairman, Paul Moody, remains convinced that Card Factory resonates strongly with its customers and will bounce back from a tough year.

He said: “Despite the obvious uncertainties in the first half of 2021, I am confident that we have the opportunity to return the business to sustainable profitable growth and will do all that is necessary in the near term to ensure that we can maximise that opportunity.”

Card Factory’s online services performed very strongly, achieving like-for-like sales growth of 137 per cent during the same period.

Talking with retailers over the last couple of weeks, it is clear that the charity support and being Australian made and made are the two most important factors for boxed Christmas card purchases in shops that have products from three and more suppliers. Design comes in a close third.

Okay, it is not a scientific study with enough data to say it is accurate across the board, but, it feels right based on what I have heard. The charity connection is especially key. Card companies get it – they promote the charity being supported on the front of their card boxes.

In my own experience, the more we promote the charity connection the stronger the sales. This year even more so that in the past. This is especially true on social media. Support for a charity can see that charity promote your post to their community, which expands the reach of your business.

Here is one example from a range of socials produced for newsXpress members this year.

Customers are loving this card:

A newsagent colleague once said to me that they never give cards and don’t understand people who do.

It was funny at the time. Then, their card sales were falling and they had one less reference point for understanding why.

To me, a test of the card range I have in-store is how many cards I would happily purchase from my business. While there are, for sure, occasions when I will want a niche card that I am unlikely to stock, for everyday type purposes I should be able to buy from myself.

Of course, it starts with being a card giver. Be this person and shop in your own shop and it will influence decisions you make about your card range. My advice now to any newsagent who says to me that they are not a card giver is that they are missing out on valuable consumer research.

I guarantee that if you start buying cards from yourself and actually sending them you will seek to drive changes in your card range. This is good for your business as it engages you in card range decisions. Often, newsagents do not have themselves situated in this role.

It’s your retail space. You pay for the inventory. You bank the results of sales. It makes sense that you are in the driver’s seat for the best margin product category you have in the shop.

This past weekend I wanted a thank you card. I needed something that set a specific tone. I found the perfect card. The search revealed some changes that could broaden the reach of what we have. While I may have noticed the need had I been looking to buy a card, I suspect it is that I was looking as a customer that helped me see more.

if you are not a card giver, be a card giver and be open for what you learn from the experience.

We have been selling boxed Christmas cards online since June as pre-orders. Once we had stock, we shifted to same-day postage.

Sales in June were good. Over the last month they have spiked.

What’s interesting is that sales have been terrific without a single cent spent on advertising. Getting icing on the cake revenue for products we carry in-store regardless is terrific and yet another reminder of the value of an online strategy.

We stared with boxed Christmas cards thinking that they would be an add on to another online purchase. While this does happen, we get more sales from people purchasing only cards, often 4 and more boxes at a time.

It is fascinating to see, and to learn from. We will be more engaged with this opportunity next year, and earlier, too.

A Reject Shop in a major shopping centre has tons of empty card pockets. It seems an apparent greeting card supply chain challenge for the Reject Shop is unresolved. This would usually be good news for the newsagency nearby but they, too, face supply challenges.

On the one hand, empty pockets show which cards are popular while on the other hand, retailers can’t bank anything from an empty pocket.

Customers are commenting positively about the elimination of plastic from boxed Christmas card packaging.

Several suppliers have made the move and it is being noticed. It is also helping drive sales as people can feel the cards. For some treatments this seals the purchase.

Full face placement leverages the tactile opportunity presented by the open boxes.

While we have used social media to pitch the better environmental story, it is in-store where the change is noticed.

Boxed Christmas card sales are strong in our experience, considerably ahead of this time last year. I think Covid is a factor in this. Indeed, I suspect Covid will be a factor in Christmas card sales overall to be up this year compared to last year. I know we are not alone with this experience, which is terrific.

Even though the Christmas card season for 2020 has barely started, we have enough data to indicate that, once again, religious card sales will lead this year.

Indeed, some religious designs have been so successful rely that we have reordered already as we will have sold out in the next week or so.

I suspect that this year we will see terrific growth in Christmas card sales, in singles as well as boxed. I suspect, too, that we will see even greater growth in religious Christmas card sales – based on the early results so far.

For us, having Christmas cards on the lease line is key, as is having a small and changing selection at the counter. These placements along with an occasional pitch with newspapers and a pitch on social media combiner’s to drive good results for us. I’d also add that we have seen terrific sales online, too, with customers adding a box or two of cards to other purchases.

While it’s early, I’m hoping for somewhere between 10% and 15% year on year growth in unit sales of Christmas cards.

Now, for anyone thinking it’s too early to talk about Christmas 2020, we know for sure that some majors like Kmart kick off Christmas 2020 in just over a week so being ahead of them with cards and other Christmas items is useful in serving the organised early shopper.

We have rolled out a full-face card pitch in one of my stores as part of a card refresh designed to make card shopping easier and to leverage the full design of each card rather than only the top 25% of the design.

We have taken our time with implementation, having looked at plenty of card retailers overseas over the last 2 years and completing a comprehensive dive into sales data.

As part of the move we reduced overall SKUs but anticipate growth in sales due to improved shopability and broad range refresh. We have pursued a reduction in SKUs considering pocket turn and other data points. The long history of greeting card supply into Australia has been such that it has fed, and too often continues to feed, inefficiency.

The acrylic fixtures overlay traditional card fixtures, enabling the change to be implemented without he need for a shopfitter.

The changes have been in place for two weeks and early indications are terrific.

People are loving this card. A couple of times now people have bought it as their second card, their fun card bought for a reaction. Indeed, the second card purchase is a trend for Mother’s Day, too. Not a huge trend, but a trend nevertheless.

We have pitched the card at the counter, where it is easily purchased on impulse.

It’s been another weekend of reasonable greeting card sales in Melbourne with all other categories challenged. In my own experience, checking basket data, people are buying 2, often more. Some are buying and many as 10 in a purchase. There is good caption depth in the basket too.

Whereas card sales crashed in the early days of COVID-19 in March, this time around sales are down but they have not crashed. This is based on data from a handful of stores.

There is no doubt that the situation is ‘helped’ by other card outlets being closed. That said, even our regular card shoppers are purchasing more. Father’s Day card sales continue to be strong.

More broadly, though, in Metro Melbourne newspaper sales have declined significantly, 50% in some cases, more so than magazines, which are down too.

Stationery is doing okay with home office supplies and similar necessities doing well.

This Proudly Australian Made shelf-talker, in the card department, attracts shoppers, it starts conversations and brings appreciated comments of kudos at the counter. The artwork is smart and noticeable.

This Australian made pitch works in other parts of the business too, which feeds into social media messaging. It is topical.