Shapiros is a well-established Cape-town based card distributor who works with many publishers, including Hearts Designs, Laura Darrington, Ling, Paperlink, Paper Rose, Portfolio, Second Nature Quire, and, as from the start of this year, The Art File.
Basil Shapiro, owner of Shapiros shares views on the market and what this year promises.
“We had a fantastic year on greeting cards at Shapiros in 2017, working with publishers such as Second Nature, Paper Rose, Ling, Quire.
We target the higher end of the market as South Africa is dominated by SA Greetings. (The UKG of South Africa).
The highlights for me last year was that we were able to bring lots of new looks and feels to the market place even though they carry higher price points that we usually can achieve. I have found that if you are a little fearless and do things that nobody else is doing and it works you get market acceptance very quickly.”
The South African market: “Living in South Africa, politics changes all the time but you have to go with the flow.
I do find it frustrating that lot of my customers still don’t really understand the card market and they think that as long as they have some cards on sale they are okay, which drives me crazy, as there is potential out there for new looks.
Our card sales are showing a lot of growth because the designs that we carry are hitting the mark with the consumer. Not sure whether we are gaining a bigger market share or if the market is growing. The offering of cards out of the UK is so vast that we can always find new ideas everywhere.
Card size is a major problem for us importing from the UK, as the South African market prefers a standard 5”x7” or squares. There are too many ‘funny sizes’ on offer from publishers that we can’t buy, although many of the designs are amazing.
Humour remains a constant challenge as a lot of ranges available to us are just too weird and don’t sell here.
Our best supplier is Second Nature. Its handmade cards out sell everything else we carry, because people understand them and they are not ‘scary’ for consumers.
For 2018 the new ranges that we are seeing from publishers already makes me feel that the card market is in good hands.
As for our country’s bigger political challenges, we will have to wait and see!”
