The Card Collection, Wendy Jones-Blackett, Pencil Me In, and Laura Sherratt Designs reveal Spring Seasons thoughts
The recent years of upheaval have seen cardies look at Spring Seasons in a different light so, with the 2022 events over for another year, PG asks greeting card retailers and publishers about the issues and developments of these significant card-sending events.
What could be done to improve sales, and what further potential is out there with other occasions that could be developed to further grow card sending?
Here, The Card Collection, Wendy Jones-Blackett, Pencil Me In, and Laura Sherratt Designs give their thoughts on the annual Spring Seasons sales, and how to improve matters…
Roy & Julia Beswick, The Card Collection, East Moseley
How important are Spring Seasons sales to you?
“Spring seasons continue to be a very important part of our yearly business and, year-on-year, the sales have increased across them all. In particular Easter has seen the largest increase due to younger families realising the value of sending and receiving greeting cards. Also, Easter is the only event apart from Christmas where it’s possible to send a card and keep in touch with the whole family and tell them any news that has happened since Christmas. The downside of Easter is that, like Mother’s Day, it moves dates every year – it’s significantly more popular when it takes place in April rather than March.”
What have you done differently this year/plan to do for 2023?
“We’ve always adopted the same attitude of putting our seasonal cards out as late as we can. We feel it’s lazy retailing to put your Valentine’s display out straight after Christmas and then Mother’s Day/Easter straight out after Valentine’s Day. By doing this, customers feel bombarded and pressurised by card-buying events. Our customers repeatedly tell us they appreciate the breathing space we provide and are aware we have great selections that are worth waiting for. We’ve always offered a wide selection of ranges for all the Spring Seasons and, again, this is much appreciated by our customers. If a customer is particularly desperate to buy and get a card in the post urgently then we’re happy to get a cross selection of whatever they’re looking out from our stockroom to give them a private viewing of the ranges we have.”
Is there anything you feel card publishers could be doing to help you on Spring Seasons?
“It would be really nice if publishers offered retailers bright, colourful header boards for our card racks. We appreciate a few of the larger publishers do this but it would be nice to have a choice of the headers we use from year to year. A really worrying trend is the news that some publishers aren’t offering a Spring Seasons selection at all for next year and some are offering a vastly-reduced range. As an independent retailer we’re now suffering the consequences of publishers not being able to make any money on Spring Seasons by having to offer full sale-or-return as well as discounted terms to the large organisations.”
Have you seen any extra occasions coming through and are there any you’re being asked for?
“We’ve always done really well with our New Year cards and it’s nice to see the selection of designs offered by publishers improving year on year. We always struggle to find St George’s Day cards and this year we weren’t offered any!”
What’s your go-to display once Father’s Day is over?
“We put the shop back to normal, which includes putting out the full range of humour and our large selection of male-themed cards.”
Steve Jones-Blackett, director, Wendy Jones-Blackett
How important are Spring Seasons sales to you?
“Spring seasonal sales, for both publishers and retailers, are an important source of post-Christmas revenue. Previously, Valentines’ Day has been the largest spring seasonal event, however, over the past few years we’ve noticed that Mother’s Day sales have caught up, with Easter and Father’s Day coming in third and fourth. I suspect the increased popularity of Mother’s Day may be an indirect consequence of the Covid-19 lockdowns where family members were unable to meet to celebrate events.”
How have you approached your Spring Seasons 2023 greeting card selection?
“As with previous Spring Season offerings, we use a mixture of traditional and contemporary imagery to provide a cohesive collection to our retail customers for all four seasons – Valentine, Mother’s Day, Easter and Father’s Day – straddling a variety of price points.”
Is there anything you feel retailers could do to further Spring Seasons?
“Retailers promote Spring Seasons by a variety of innovative approaches, such as window displays, social media, and buying events, so I feel unqualified to suggest retail sales initiatives when they already do such a great job!”
What changes in design trends with Spring Seasons have you tracked?
“Design wise, traditional imagery – ie hearts for Valentine’s Day, flowers for Mother’s Day, etc – still seem to be the most popular with retailers and sell through better than on trend images.”
Have you seen any extra occasions coming through and are there any you’re being asked for?
“Demand for the more obscure occasions, like Halloween, St Patrick’s Day, Galentine’s Day and non-Christian religious festivals, has principally been from by larger multiples and supermarkets – the independent sector appear to have less of an appetite for these occasions.”
Sarah Holmes, owner, Pencil Me In, Elgin
How important are Spring Seasons sales to you?
“Quarter one, or rather till the end of April, is much quieter for us and therefore Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day are important and I do really try to make the most of them. This year we went in on some really good additional gift ranges to complement Mother’s Day which really worked, and I need to apply the same focus to Valentine’s Day and Father’s Day. I probably find it easier for Mother’s Day, being one and have one to buy for!
“I’d say Valentine’s hasn’t changes much in sales figures, but Mother’s Day we’re definitely doing better with, although March 2020 was our best one as we ran a plant pop-up alongside and it was our last week open before lockdown, so we had a lot of panic card-buying going on.
“Being in the north of Scotland, bad weather really impacts both Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day for us, we can easily have snow and storms into May and that can impact footfall. However, in June, and the run into Father’s Day, most of Elgin town centre had an internet outage meaning hordes of folks working from home so we lost a bit of footfall that week.”
What have you done differently this year/plan to do for 2023?
“We tend to put out our displays four to six weeks before the event – once I see it in our M&S food hall we get out some sort of selection and they do tend to start selling immediately. We make sure also to have a dedicated section on our website, and this year we’ve been creating our own larger signage and posters for the windows and instore to remind people specifically of the dates for Mother’s and Father’s days as they change each year. Definitely for 2023 I need to go all in again on gifts to prop up these three key seasonal dates.”
Is there anything you feel card publishers could be doing to help you on Spring Seasons?
“Get the designs for Valentine’s and Mother’s Day ready early! I’m often ordering in December as, once Christmas cards are put away, we put Valentine’s straight out and we need new cards. When Valentine’s Day goes away, Mother’s Day comes straight out. We don’t rely on doing all of our new buying at the January shows due to lead times of orders getting longer and longer. I still see publishers releasing designs two to three weeks before the date that I would have loved to have had, but it’s way too late.”
What changes in design trends with Spring Seasons have you tracked?
“For Valentine’s people want more funny ones, Mother’s Day is definitely more sentimental but we need more middle-ground cards for those who aren’t best mates with their mums and less flowers with Happy Mother’s Day, there’s plenty of those cards around. Less ‘mama’ I think is needed, I see it a lot, and it doesn’t sell well. Father’s Day – funny ones always welcome, but lots of adventure-themed ones have been doing really well in recent years. Whisky themes always do well for us, being based in Scotland’s whisky capital.”
Have you seen any extra occasions coming through and are there any you’re being asked for?
“We try hard to have an eclectic mix of cards so we can cover these types of alternative events and celebrations. We do always carry a small selection for New Year, as Hogmanay is a big deal up here as is first footing. We stock a host of friendship cards so always covered for Galentine’s, and Hallowe’en is sometimes asked for.”
What’s your go-to display once Father’s Day is over?
“This year we bought two new dedicated card spinners – I’ve never had spinners before, always shelves – so we had extra capacity for the seasonal. Now Father’s Day is away we’ve kept one spinner out to do a bigger range of large birthday ages. After Father’s Day in Scotland we’re also straight into the end of term – the schools break up and go back earlier up here – so we also give over space for teacher Thank Yous. August is back to school so we have some cards suitable for that as well as weddings and anniversaries. Christmas starts to sneak out in October!”
Laura Alcock, owner and founder Laura Sherratt Designs
How important are Spring Seasons sales to you?
“Spring season sales are really important to us, Mother’s Day is our biggest season of all, apart from Christmas. A great start to the year in January/February collecting orders and sales for Spring Seasons usually means for a good year for us. “
How have you approached your Spring Seasons 2023 greeting card selection?
“We’ve designed lots of bright loveliness for Spring 2023 with pops of colour, florals and pattern. As usual we have concentrated on Mother’s Day. We have designed with a nod to trends like gingham, lilac colours, cute florals like the daisy flower and scalloped edges.”
Is there anything you feel retailers could do to further Spring Seasons?
“Shop early, start looking at Spring Seasons as soon as possible – before Christmas – so you’re ready for Valentine’s Day in February! Pre-ordering the stock you need and getting it on the shelves well ahead of the event is good.”
What changes in design trends with Spring Seasons have you tracked?
“Our customers increasingly shop for cards suitable for seasons without the specific event caption, that means retailers can be left with stock after the event. Our stockists have been increasingly buying cards with Mum, Nan, Granny, on them but without the Mother’s Day title. It’s the same for Valentine’s Day, we get shops asking for Husband and Wife cards that they can carry on selling throughout the year. We’ve also had lots of requests though for the popular Mothering Sunday title, it’s traditionally British and this caption sells really well for us.”
Top: Spring Seasons are still important for card retailers
