Sad loss of popular industry veteran
Long-time cardie Chris Holmes has died from leukaemia in his 70s.
Well-known for his kind and friendly demeanour Chris worked for several greeting card and stationery companies over his 45 years in the industry and also served on the GCA council.
Chris described himself as an “aging cardie” in his reaction to recent moves in the industry to take ageism out of greeting card designs.
“My gripe was that those who have surpassed the biblical three score years and 10 want to have fun while they’re able,” he told PG editor Jakki Brown last year, “and not be presented with 75th birthday images of ships sailing into the sunset or the same bunch of flowers they can look at through the window.”
Always a northerner, Chris’ career in the greeting card world began back in 1972 at Image Arts Of England where he spent seven years working with Simon Elvin and Jeff Bottomley, which he described as “great and exciting times being part of the cute revolution in design and a time of great innovation within the industry”.
New products over that period included the launch of Picture Poppets followed by Pretty, Perfect, and Perfect Padded Poppets all accompanied by lots of pink elephants in champagne glasses, and single boxed satin padded cards were very popular at that time so Image introduced a huge version of these with added jewelled attachments.
He then moved to Waldorf to set up a sales team for a new direct-to-retail range before leaving when Deeko bought the company and moved its base south. House Of Camelot was his next job, then Arnold Barton where he worked with Derek Meloy, known as a genius in marketing innovation and design selection and Chris said: “Working closely with him earned us the titles of the sorcerer and his apprentice.”
After a takeover by Fine Arts led to the launch of Hambledon Studios where Chris became national sales manager helping it grow to a £40million turnover, he then re-joined Jeff Bottomley at Kingsley, before spending 10 years at Tallon International where he retired in 2018 as business partnership manager.
Even when he retired Chris maintained a keen interest in the greetings industry, and was an avid reader of PG magazine where he felt compelled to disagree with the Age-Old Fun article talking about better birthdays and how those jokey cards about getting old and decrepit may be sapping the confidence of the recipient without them realising it.
He told Jakki: “My wife and I have visited many independents, supermarkets and department stores in search of a suitable card for friends who have beaten the prophets by those magical five years. Even garden centres who lure us to their emporiums with bog-offs and special afternoon tea offers on a rainy Wednesday at best offer a couple of flowers or a ship plus a bonus 75 numeral on a dismal background if you’re lucky.
“Despite the publishers’ image of us sitting dribbling in our assisted living armchairs we like to enjoy life to the full. We’re delighted to take the piss out of ourselves describing the contortions and effort required to get up if we sit on the floor or the mathematical effort we need to count our pills into the right daily boxes!”
