As N&Q prepares to celebrate belated 40th anniversary, its VP shares what’s been happening Stateside
“We found the US market for greeting cards was really strong in 2021 with retailers seemingly selling cards faster than before the pandemic hit,” reveals Vanessa Harnik, vice-president of Notes & Queries, the leading distributor of UK publishers in the States, that was founded some 42 years ago by her father Alan Harnik, now company president.
“I remember seeing an article about the resurgence of greeting cards and all I thought of was – greeting cards never went away!” That said, as elsewhere in the globe, Vanessa freely admits the last year has also brought its challenges, along with some positives too.
Here as part of PG Buzz’s series of globetrotting reports, Vanessa shares her take on the US greeting card scene as well as some of N&Q’s developments.
What have been the main challenges?
“Ah…so many challenges. The costs of everything – materials, labour, shipping – have gone through the roof.
The worldwide massive paper shortage has profoundly impacted all companies and has affected supply. Shipping costs are triple or quadruple what they were before Covid. This has also meant that almost everything takes longer. It used to be that we could get inventory generally within two to three weeks. Nowadays, we average four to six weeks to get stock. In addition, finding additional staff has been extremely difficult. Even my father and I were pulling and packing orders for six weeks in the autumn, we were that desperate!”
“On the positive side of things, the demand for greeting cards and related stationery products is great. The flip side of the supply-and-demand issue worldwide is that we have had new retailers contacting us for product, and new product categories last year who we had never worked with before, and business with many existing retailers has increased because retailers have not been able to be get inventory from other core suppliers. I also would like to think that our ability to fill many of these requests during in 2020 and 2021 has served us in good stead as retailers remember the suppliers who supported them. Over 40% of our business comes from independent retailers who have bought our ranges for over 15 years.
I have come to truly understand that our employees are such a great asset to N&Q. With that said, of course, we are nothing without superb design. I find that the quality of work that we were shown by many UK publishers in 2021 was extraordinarily good and that was supported by the strong business they generated. Retailers are savvy – while they enjoy working with us, they would not order designs they could not be successful with. Dad and I feel so lucky to work with such great publishers.”
Have you noticed any changes in card-buying habits?
“I think there is an understanding generally that there are massive supply issues across the board so buyers and consumers have been trying to plan ahead a bit. We saw Christmas sales and reorders much earlier and much higher in 2021 than we did in 2020 as a result. This might partially be as a result of the experience of massive USPS delays in December 2020 with consumers not wanting to go through that again. Many gift companies were marketing with a similar message – ‘buy now because you might not get it later’.
On the design front, we have seen consumers gravitate towards cards with more colour or brighter colours. It feels as though consumers are buying more greeting cards too – as a result of the possible supply and demand issue.
Get Well and Sympathy cards continue to do really well while we’ve also seen a total uptick in New Home cards and wedding cards – people are planning for weddings this spring! – and we continue to see a huge increase in sales in blank and occasion cards.”
“Life would be busy even without the pandemic, but Covid has complicated all sorts of changes at Notes & Queries. It was in 2020 that my father had planned to move to working part time at N&Q – focusing on product, design, and relationships with our publishers. That was the plan, but Covid changed that as it required an all hands on deck response which continued through 2021.
On 13 September, 2021, which was my 25th anniversary of working full time at N&Q, we moved our entire warehouse/office to a new facility – 10 minutes south of where we were initially. It was a terrible experience. Not only did the move take substantially longer than expected, but we were moving at our busiest season at our highest amount of inventory. We were already behind in shipping before the move started and we promptly discovered after we started to get settled that we were actually massively behind in shipping (a six-week delay) and it took us an additional two months to find employees.
My father flew in to physically help do whatever it took (pull orders, rally the troops) as we worked nonstop every single day for over 58 days. In fact, every staff member worked a substantial amount of overtime. I learned how to pull and pack orders, receive inventory, assist in customer service and order entry, and stage key account work. At one point, I enlisted 10 friends to come in with all of their children to help sticker orders for several weekends. I hired four high school students to help out on weekends. It felt never ending and it was hard to see a way through it. But eight weeks later, we finally caught up and we found two new employees to join our team. It was a fairly traumatic experience, but my father and I learned a lot about what we do right at N&Q and what we should do differently.”
What are your hopes and dreams for this year?
“That we continue to sell lots of really gorgeous stuff to really nice retailers, designed by some extraordinarily talented people. We sell a product that generally costs less than a cup of coffee! Aren’t we lucky? So, my hope for 2022 is to continue to push the envelope and develop deeper partnerships with our retailers and publishers.
My father will be moving to a part-time position to focus back on product development and design review while I continue to take over as owner of N&Q. It will be an adjustment for all, especially as no one can think of N&Q without thinking of Alan Harnik.
I turn 50 years old in May 2022 and I love and miss traveling. It would be my hope that I will travel to the UK more often to meet with our trading partners personally to see where there might be opportunities. I find the one-to-one meetings really helpful and inspiring.
I am also hoping to try to carve out more space and time to really reflect on what the next steps are for N&Q. I feel we are lucky to represent the best of the best in design without being the ones who are doing the designing work and work with really great and loyal sales reps and retailers. But how does the expression go…the harder you work, the luckier you get?
I would also hope that we do a lot of celebrating in 2022. Not just because of my personal milestone birthday, but because we never really properly celebrated the achievement of still being in business and relevant after 42 years. It is a huge achievement – especially for my dad who needs to be celebrated – so, Dad and I are planning some parties to do just that!”
Are you coming to PG Live in June?
“Both Dad and I have booked our tickets for London this June and absolutely plan on attending PG Live. Can’t wait!”
PG Live takes place 7-8 June at London’s Business Design Centre, bringing the whole greeting card world under one airy roof. To register to attend, click here.
To find out more about exhibiting, contact Warren Lomax on warren@max-publishing.co.uk or call on 07977 572086.
Top: Vanessa Harnik with her mum, dad and brother
