Tesco has reinforced its commitment to introduce the new look card department that first debuted last August into more stores, but its plans to introduce it into more stores have been postponed until next year.
It is understood that the retailer’s cost cutting drive (involving 1,200 job losses across the board at its head office), that were announced at the end of June, has caused ripple effects throughout the business, the roll out of the new look card department believed to be part of this.
Tesco, which won The Retas 2017 award for Best Supermarket Retailer of Greeting Cards started planning its radical overhaul of its greeting card approach three and a half years ago, initially ‘behind the scenes’ with Hallmark before the publisher was announced as its category manager in June 2015. As part of the ongoing arrangement, Hallmark also brokers in other publishers’ products into Tesco.
The new look was introduced into 20 of its stores with the initial plan being that if successful (as it has been), it would be rolled out.
Hallmark’s Angela Anderson, whose responsibilities include heading up the Tesco account informed PG Buzz that there has been a “confirmation of implementation to more stores post Christmas this year.” She also revealed that the “implementation will cover all three ‘layouts/formats’ again,” referring to configurations for Tesco’s very large stores as well as for its large and smaller stores.
