Henderson Greetings is a long-established Australian-based greeting card publisher that is part owned by Simon Elvin. In 2016 it acquired Waterlyn, a sizable distributor of many UK greeting card publishers.
Here Eulinid Stevenson, ceo of both companies (based in Dandenong South in Victoria) shares her views on the market conditions, and champions how the successful lobbying for newsagents to stay open as well as the inventiveness of the retailers has seen this channel at least remain buoyant on card sales through the Covid-19 crisis…
“The impact of the Coronavirus has been felt by all and like everyone, we’ve been very saddened to hear about the impacts on our suppliers in the UK and those closer to home, especially our customers.
Many retailers in Australia were forced to cease trading during the onset of this pandemic. However, many retailers have also been able to remain trading.
These retailers have had to come to terms with a heavy reduction in customers and set up many new safety measures and the quick and creative ways they’ve responded to this crisis demonstrates the true Aussie battler spirit.
To give some context on the overall market, NLNA and ALNA (our newsagency associations) lobbied hard with the local Governments in the days leading up to the announcement of Stage 3 restrictions to ensure newsagencies were classed as an essential service. This paid off and newsagents were allowed to remain trading as a result. Not surprisingly, many of those who remained open have seen a severe decline in sales – especially those with stores in the major shopping malls. Generally, standalone newsagents and those in regional areas have been less impacted, but are still hurting nonetheless.
A great example of retailers’ inventiveness was shown by the newsXpress group of 220 retailers, which has stores nationwide. It has been promoting the act of card sending to remain connected with many stores offering shoppers a free Thank You card if they buy two or more greeting cards.
Thankfully, supermarkets have remained steady throughout this crisis, especially those in standalone locations. Card companies have been able to still service stores while respecting social distancing and hand sanitation so card units have remained merchandised.
Other retailers, including clothes, gift and book shops, had little choice but to close their doors however it’s been heartening to see them gradually start to reopen in recent days with reduced trading hours.
Last week, our Federal Government announced that restrictions will now begin to ease and we’re seeing this occur across all states with the exception of Victoria where an announcement is due about easing Stage 3 restrictions here too.
Any retailer that has remained open has been required to implement safety measures to support of social distancing and limit the number of customers in store at any one time in proportion to their cubic space.
Government stimulus packages in the form of a “JobKeeper” allowance (designed to assist employers subsidise the wages of staff and keep jobs stable) and a “JobSeeker” allowance (designed to assist those unemployed) have now begun to flow into bank accounts and we’re starting to see some small signs of economic hope and an increase in spend in our category last week, assisted by Mother’s Day falling on May 10 in Australia.
Greeting cards continue to play an important role in this crisis. As part of this we’ve launched our own Care Collection of cards, developed with charity partner, the RUOK? Foundation. RUOK? is a well-known suicide prevention charity in Australia which has been sharing excellent advice with Australians about how to remain connected with friends and loved ones and paying careful attention to mental health. The creation of our Care Collection was a labour of love for the team during challenging days and we’re thrilled to have launched them to the market when Australians need them most.
And, inspired by what you have been doing in the UK, the AGCA (the Australia greeting card association) continues to be a great supporter of the Thinking of You campaign and has agreed to support the initiative with a PR campaign this year. Greeting card publisher John Sands has developed the POS for the event and both of our businesses are planning to execute this among customers in the coming weeks.
We placed large orders the week prior to your furlough, but we’re now looking forward to our UK suppliers gradually coming back online so we can get back to gradual growth among the gift and book stores also as they slowly start to open back up now. Seafreight is our only option to move stock at the moment due to costs and delays with any airfreight.
We dearly hope that the new case levels of the Coronavirus remains low so these early signs of a turnaround can continue to grow and that the worst will be behind us, however only time will tell. In the meantime, we will continue to do our best to provide customers with safe merchandising and a healthy supply of stock while appreciating the creative new ways they are finding to sell our product.
My best wishes go out to our friends in the UK and elsewhere around the globe. Keep safe.”
Top: Eulinid Henderson, ceo of Hendersons Greetings and Waterlyn.
