More stores planned as bookshop chain reveals strong Christmas card trading
Great Christmas reports from Waterstones’ boss James Daunt and the UK retailer’s greeting card buyers have been backed by the news that a dozen more stores are planned for the year.
James told the Financial Times at the weekend that the company had “a solid Christmas” of trading and had opened 12 new stores in the UK in 2024 and is looking to “do that or more in 2025”.
Dubbed “the man who saved Waterstones”, James has been MD at the retailer since 2011 and stayed when it was bought by Elliott Investment Management, which also owns the Barnes & Noble book chain in the US where he became chief executive in 2019 – he still personally owns the 10-strong Daunt Books independent chain in London, Oxford, Marlow and Saffron Walden.
Known as a believer in the importance of greeting card sales in retail, the stores all have a large card section and the company won the Best Non-Specialist Multiple Retailer of Greeting Cards at The Retas Awards 2024
James spoke at the GCA conference in 2016 on the subject and the rationale behind giving each Waterstones outlet – there are now around 350 – independence in selecting which products from the company’s range work for their customer base.
Meanwhile, revealing its festive card sales, senior buyer Hazel Walker and buyer Megan Douglas confirmed to PG: “We had another great year of trade on Christmas cards. Both boxed and single cards performed well, delivering double digit growth for both.”
They said sales had started “extremely well” so although customers were buying and sending earlier to avoid the higher first-class stamp price but they were very happy that trend continued right up to Christmas Eve.
The buyers added: “It’s really encouraging to see that our customers value sending Christmas cards and our sales continue to grow year on year.”
Appropriately for a book-based retailer, Waterstones’ main charity offer is its own brand of boxed cards, produced with Museums & Galleries, which supports the BookTrust charity, and Hazel and Megan said: “We had one of our strongest years for these, making up about a quarter of our boxed card sales overall.
“As you’d expect, anything book-related resonates with our customers so the Storybook range from The Art File was also very popular.”
Waterstones continued to trial relations cards for Christmas, which reflected in “stronger sales this year” which Hazel and Megan put down some customers possibly “opting to send fewer but more personal cards, but we also changed our approach slightly by narrowing the offer, putting more volume behind key lines which seems to have worked.”
In the Financial Times interview, James commented that the timing of Christmas had worked in the company’s favour, boosted by a successful weekend of trading before the big day on Wednesday as that allowed last-minute shoppers the Saturday and Sunday to get out and buy cards and gifts.
“If you’re in the last-minute game, and we are to an extent, then it was a solid Christmas that came late because of the fall of the calendar,” he said.
“The last weekend and December 23-24 were exceptional on both sides of the Atlantic. It has been a good post-Christmas as well.”
Despite fellow retailers citing the rising costs of employing staff and business rate increase imposed by the October budget as reasons for putting expansion plans on hold, James was firm in his store opening plans although he admitted pay inflation was “significant” for the business.
But he said he believes the fallout from Brexit is still the thorniest issue for Waterstones, telling the paper: “It remains the biggest pain, adds to the cost and complexity, and made our labour situation worse.”
