Finalists announced for The Henries Best Service to the Independent Retailer Award

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 (13^th-25^th) are:

13^th Carte Blanche Greetings

14^th Second Nature

15^th Wendy Jones-Blackett

16^th Grassroots International

17^th Paper Rose/The Art Group

18^th Dandelion Stationery

19^th Hallmark Cards

20^th Tracks Publishing

21^st Belly Button Designs

22^nd Five Dollar Shake

23^rd Cardigan Cards

24^th The Great British Card Company

25^th 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.

TAGS awards, greeting card, progressive greetings, service award, the henries