Happy Festive Friday! Landing like an early Christmas elf eager to help out just before the much-needed retail reopening in England next week, Progressive Greetings’ November edition is packed full of news, views, retailer insights, product launches, some tasty treats from the recent GCA Conference and AGM and lots more.
The greeting card industry’s esprit de corps really came to fore in the last month as retailers and publishers joined forces with the GCA in a push for greeting card retailers to be recognised as ‘essential’ and be allowed to re-open. MPs listened, and the media aired the plight. OK, so the exemption all petitioned for was not granted, but that takes nothing away from what was great collective action. (Click to pages 6-7)
The industry’s community spirit was live and kicking (albeit digitally) at the recent GCA Conference and AGM (Click to pages 16-17), with attendees treated to a jam packed agenda covering the environment, diversity, the retail climate (Click to pages 24-25) as well as launching the new all singing all dancing website.
The event also saw the unveiling of the findings of the GCA UK Greeting Card Market Report, which confirmed that while there has been a slight dip in market value, the British public still spent an astonishing £1.7 billion on cards in the last year. (Click to pages 28-29)
As Amanda Fergusson, ceo of the GCA said in her opening speech: “2020 has turned into the year none of us could have imagined, and we can still have some challenging months ahead. However again the resilience of the greeting card industry has shone through.”
Something else that was ‘shining through’ in the physical copies of the magazine was a beautiful ‘open invitation’ to The Henries greeting card awards event, which this year is taking place virtually on the evening of Thursday 10 December, and everyone’s invited. While The Henries are completely free to attend, everyone wanting to be there will need to register. Registration is now live. Just click here!
Just as the GCA Conference and The Henries have had to move onto a digital platform for this year, we’re all having to learn new tricks as we continue to adapt to the changing landscape and the opportunities as well as the challenges that presents.
The news that two major publishers – Emotional Rescue and Paper Salad – have unveiled a major long term collaboration which sees them pooling their respective talents in a whole raft of ranges, is just one of these opportunities. (click to page 10-11).
PG’s columnists Cardsharp and David Robertson both adopted something of a political stance in this edition. While Cardsharp berates PM Boris Johnson for not allowing non-essential retailers to remain open during Lockdown 2 in England (Click to pages 22-23), JP Pozzi’s David draws some uncanny similarities to 1983, when John Major was in power with the current situation. (Click to pages 20-21).
Showing how greeting cards are providing much food for the soul, is an extended article on the traditional words and sentiments sector. (Click to pages 30-31)
Shining their spotlight on some of their best sellers, four leading retailers reveal what products have been hitting the hot spots in their respective stores in the popular What’s Hot? feature (Click to pages 42-43) while the Innovations section is a celebration of great new card collections that are all set hit the card racks. (Click to pages 34-35)
Meanwhile the talented artist Debbie Monson shares her inspirations in Art Source. (Click to page 40-41).
All this and more in the pages of a lovely glossy magazine and supplement. Wouldn’t you like to hold them in your hands so you can flick through and read them wherever takes your fancy.
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