This time next week (December 25), Santa and his elves will be relaxing – as will the nation’s greeting card retailers. Whether they will have a big smile of their face rides on what happens in the next few days.
PG Buzz caught up with a trio of cardies to sense their festive trading hunch.
“Saturday’s epic rain certainly took the edge off a good day!” stated Miles Robinson, co-owner of Home Counties group House of Cards of the weekend downpour. Looking at the week’s trading as a whole, Miles was relieved to still finish up on the previous year “but it would have been a fantastic week if the weather had been kind”.
He and his team are bracing themselves for a frantic push “I think this week will go nuts (as usual). Next week obviously has an extra trading day, but it will be difficult to tell until Christmas Eve has finished how it has all panned out. Fingers crossed for everyone!”
Mark Janson-Smith, md of Postmark already has a smile on his face, but not as beaming as he would have liked.
“This weekend started brilliantly, but fell off a cliff as soon as the weather turned in the afternoon. Luckily we made most of it back on Sunday so over all it was pretty much where we expected it to be. Luckily the previous weekend had been a record weekend for us.”
Looking at the Christmas trade for the mini-group, Mark reveals that Postmark’s like-for-like sales for December are around 3.5% up. “Although this isn’t ground breaking, considering the current climate, we are happy to take it,” he said.
With a week to go until the ‘big day’, Mark reveals that Postmark’s card sales “on both packs and singles are near on identical to last year with the gains for the month made in wrap.” He anticipates this coming week to be good “with sales shifting more to singles, relations and even more wrapping. Our pack sales are really start to slow now which isn’t a bad thing as we don’t have that many left!”
Meanwhile down in Devon, Kevin Brooking of Occasional Cards and Party in Kingsbridge, says the weekend’s weather “impacted slightly” but is happy that trading overall in his store “is up slightly up on last year” reflecting the rise in average spend in the store.
While the indie’s box cards are on par with last year, in common with other card retailers, Kevin has seen an increase on relation cards.
“We are optimist with regards to the last few shopping days, however we could do without the forecast of heavy rain and floods!”
Top: The Oxford Street lights beckon shoppers to keep spending.