Indie Roy Beswick shares his reflections on the last 25 years’ trading
Roy Beswick, co-owner of The Card Collection, East Molesey, is in full celebratory mood because, along with the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, it’s the 25th anniversary of his shop’s opening, and they’re also in the finals of The Retas 2022!
Here, he shares some of his thoughts on the past quarter century of trading…
As I write this, jubilee is the word of the moment with the whole country celebrating the amazing achievement of our Queen’s 70-year reign.
It’s also the word of the moment for us at The Card Collection as we enter our Silver Jubilee year of trading in our East Molesey store which is a cause for celebration as well as reflection.
So, what has changed over the last 25 years and what have we learned about this great industry that we are so lucky to have stumbled into all those years ago?
Well, one constant is the question that we are still being asked to this day: “What makes a good greeting card?” We still give the same answer from a retailer’s point of view, as we did in year one: “One that sells!”
You learn quickly that you can’t just stock card ranges you like, although that is still a major factor in our card-buying strategy. In actual fact if Julia, my wife and business co-owner, says she doesn’t like a range of cards then we go heavy on stock because invariably that range turns out to be the most popular in the shop! It still makes us both laugh that it still works even after all these years.
But, in all seriousness, the ingenuity of the designs, quality of board, print finishes and embellishments, etc, are all far superior today compared to when we started, so actually choosing which ranges to stock is far more difficult nowadays than it was when we first opened The Card Collection’s doors.
While there are a few companies who continue to be the backbone of our stock control, such as GBCC, Wendy Jones-Blackett, Woodmansterne, Five Dollar Shake and Emotional Rescue, the fun is discovering new companies and ranges to enhance our offering.
A large help is the trust and understanding we’ve built up with the various reps and agents who have been regular visitors to our store over the years. They’ve come to understand how we work and what makes the shop special, so we always listen to their advice. They also all love the coffee we always have ready for them!
Making the effort to visit trade shows, PG Live in particular, is also vital in keeping us up to date with current trends as well as to find new publishers that we’d probably not have discovered had we not gone to the show. The reaction of customers to new ranges is always exciting and the joy of ringing up the sale of a card that you only put out on the rack five minutes before is still as thrilling today as it was on day one in 1998. Some people never grow up!
We still can’t stop ourselves telling the customer what they’ve done and it makes them feel special that they are the first to purchase the new cards. It’s very important to us that customers enjoy and get excited by the ranges of cards we stock, and most appreciate the effort we constantly put in to make our shop feel different.
Over the years the shop has been brilliantly supported by the local community and we’ve played a part in lots of people’s lives by supplying cards and balloons for their milestone events, from their birth to their 18th and 21st birthdays, their engagement, wedding and birth of their own family. In hindsight it would have been brilliant PR to have photographed the balloons on each occasion but, 25 years ago, who knew…? As far as we were concerned back then, surviving the first year was a great achievement.
Those of you who’ve been in this industry for a long while might recall one of my highlight periods when I was writing my monthly Roy Of The Retailers articles for Progressive Greetings. Looking back, I felt so privileged to have been asked to do this but also very nervous because I’d never done anything like that before. I must have done OK because people still ask me about it and most comment on how much they enjoyed reading the articles.
Anyway, I’m really pleased that I’m being allowed to write this celebratory article – and I now have much more experience and knowledge of this great industry to call upon and babble on about. I hope you all enjoy reading this and hope I don’t have to wait for another jubilee before I’m allowed to write another one!
PS… It was a lovely surprise to hear we’ve made it into The Retas 2022 finalists’ list. We look forward to spending our Silver Ticket on some lovely new product at PG Live this week – tomorrow and Wednesday, 7-8 June, at London’s Business Design Centre – and meeting up with old friends and, hopefully, some new ones too.
There are so many great greeting card retailers out there so it’s really special to know that all our hard work and effort has been recognised by the publishers who supply us their fantastic products. With this being a very special year for us, if we are fortunate enough to win it would really be the icing in the cake. – but, even if we don’t win, The Retas awards event is a great day, full of fun and joy and laughter which sums up our great industry.
*The vast majority of this column appears in the current June edition of Progressive Greetings magazine.
Top: The Card Collection, East Molesey, is celebrating its Silver Jubilee this year
