As part of its commitment to further improve its greeting card offer for its millions of customers, it has just been announced that Tesco has appointed UK Greetings as its category manager for the greeting card displays in all of its 1,000+ stores as from 1 January 2022.
UK Greetings will take over from Hallmark Cards who has category managed the greeting card offer for the major supermarket for the last five years.
Confirming the news, Sam Ody, lead buying manager for cards and wrap at Tesco told PG Buzz: “Following an extensive review, we have made changes to our greetings card supply chain. We remain absolutely committed to working in partnership with all our suppliers and will do all we can to support suppliers during the transition.”
In a statement from Hallmark UK/ROI, the company said: “Hallmark places tremendous value on our successful partnership with Tesco and we wish them continued, long-term success. We look forward to continue working with Tesco albeit in a different way, and continue to grow the brand across all channels.”
While the finer points of the new greeting card approach have yet to be finalised by Tesco and UKG, the new arrangement will involve both UK Greetings greeting card designs as well as those from many other greeting card publishers, who will supply Tesco stores through UKG on a brokerage basis.
This announcement follows a trial in several Tesco stores undertaken by UKG along with participating publishers over the last few months.
Persuaded by PG Buzz to comment, UK Greetings’ ceo James Conn said: “we are very happy to have been given the opportunity to partner with Tesco. We look forward to working alongside the Tesco team and other publishers.”
To his mind, while there are indeed ongoing challenges for all as we transition back to ‘normality’, he feels the entire greeting card industry’s resilience should be recognised.
“Like so many other sectors, our whole industry has been up against it during the pandemic, but the consumer’s appetite for greeting cards has been unabated. From major supermarkets to specialist multiples and countless Independents, all have shown their true mettle and we feel very privileged to have played a part in this by supplying them with their own distinct selections that best suit their respective customers,” says James.
Top: Tesco customers are in for a change on the greeting card front from Jan 2022.
