While the multiples have yet to show their hands as to how their Christmas card sales stacked up, a great many indies have been more than happy to report a very merry Christmas trade, even compared to the last ‘normal’ year (2019) with the ‘shopping local’ having taken hold.
““We couldn’t keep up with the demand!” exclaimed Mark Janson-Smith, co-owner of Postmark, which has five shops in London. “For the eight weeks to Christmas we were up 18% LFL across the whole Christmas category with card sales up 15%, driven by packs and relations captioned single cards.”
Chris and Tracey Bryant, co-owners of Expressions, Cats Whiskers and Polkadot (in Swindon, Bishops Cleeve and Keynsham) summed up their Christmas trade verdict in one word -“Stupendous!” reflecting a 43% increase in their card and gift wrap sales across three shops for the final quarter, compared to 2019. “Customers were definitely shopping earlier, thereby justifying our decision to be out early and go bigger with our displays. Although footfall fell, average spend was well up on 2019/2020 levels,” said Tracey and Chris.
Up in Nantwich and Rugeley, Philip Neild, who co-owns Reflections with his wife Maxine said sales had “far exceeded expectations. We showed strong double digit growth. I do feel for our retail colleagues with shops in city and large town centres as it does appear that 2021 was definitely a year to shop local and seeking out the specialist card titles that supermarkets just don’t offer.”
“Santa-tastic” was how Roy and Julia Beswick, described Christmas trade in their shop, The Card Collection in East Molesey. “We had a feeling Christmas trade would be good, but it exceeded our expectations. We were flat out for the whole of December and Christmas Eve ended up being our busiest trading day ever,” they shared.
Up in Glasgow, Fiona Fabien, owner of Papyrus is feeling similarly buoyant. “Pretty phenomenal” was how she felt about her Christmas trade, far exceeding expectations. “We were 15% up on Christmas cards and 15% up on wrap/gift bags, which was roughly in line with our total takings.”
Over the course of the coming days and weeks PG Buzz will share retailers’ Christmas trade experiences in lavish detail.
Top: No pesky elves could scupper Expressions’ strong Christmas sales.
