Independent retailers’ votes for the publishers they state are the tops on service have now been counted. The 12 finalists in the coveted Best Service to the Independent Card Retailer in The Henries awards have now been officially announced.
The finalists in this category of the greeting card industry awards are arrived at following a huge poll involving almost 1,000 independent greeting card retailers. Participants returned a pre-paid postal form detailing their first, second and third choice of publishers when it came to service provided over the last year.
This eagerly awaited and fiercely contested award category is sponsored by Cardgains, but the survey is sent out by Progressive Greetings to all greeting card independent retail stockists, not just those who are members of the Cardgains buying group.
The 12 finalists in alphabetical order are:
Abacus Cards
Cherry Orchard Publishing
IC&G
Jonny Javelin
Ling Design
Nigel Quiney Publications
Noel Tatt
Paperlink
Pigment Productions
UK Greetings
Woodmansterne Publications
Words ‘N’ Wishes
There will be three Best Service trophies – Bronze, Silver and Gold – presented at The Henries awards event on Thursday 5 October at the Royal Lancaster Hotel, opposite London’s Hyde Park.
The following publishers performed well in the retailer poll, but failed to make the ‘finalists dozen’, yet given the number of publishers on the market, making it into the ‘top 25’ is no mean feat. Their respective positions (13th-25th) are:
13th Carte Blanche Greetings
14th Second Nature
15th Wendy Jones-Blackett
16th Grassroots International
17th Paper Rose/The Art Group
18th Dandelion Stationery
19th Hallmark Cards
20th Tracks Publishing
21st Belly Button Designs
22nd Five Dollar Shake
23rd Cardigan Cards
24th The Great British Card Company
25th The Art File
Who will win the three awards this year? Last year the Gold Award went, for the first time, to IC&G, Silver to Noel Tatt and Bronze to UKG.
There is a huge level of high service consistency among this year’s finalists – 11 out of the 12 publishers were finalists in The Henries last year. And the one new entrant, Ling Design, has been a finalist several times previously.
