Card Industry News

Last weekend I completed the Berlin marathon to raise funds for Anthony Nolan, a charity which takes back lives from leukaemia by providing life saving donors for patients in need of a bone marrow transplant. 

I had the most amazing run considering I only managed 8 weeks training due to injury (half my usual amount). It was my fifth marathon to date and, although I have run faster times, I was pleased to finish in under 4 hours. I felt good most of the way usng a new strategy where I ran to my heart rate rather than to a specific time or pace. You can read more about the Marco technique here.

It was also very humbling to meet people who had meaningful connections with my charity. An American lady, called Melissa, spotted my vest at the start and came through the crowd to tell me that two years ago Anthony Nolan saved her life. I was so moved that I spent the next few minutes trying to pull myself together before the race began. At the finish I also met a doctor, called John Snowden, who ran for Anthony Nolan as his hospital has had a lot of invaluable support from them. Later he tracked my charity page down online and donated to my fundraising, which was really generous of him. The running community is so friendly and inspiring.

I also took part in an international 6km fun run the day before, which finished in the Olympic stadium. It was amazing to stand in the same place where the African American, Jesse Owens, won four golds in front of an the Aryan supremicist, Hitler, at the 1936 Olympic games. Luz Long, Owen's German competitor, helped him improve his run up to win the long jump medal and was the first to congratulate him. Even in troubled times the Olympic spirit rises above politics. Jesse Owens later said, "You can melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn't be a plating for the 24 carot friendship I felt for Luz Long at that moment." Watch a two minute video of this story here.

The 41st BMW Berlin marathon was won by Dennis Kimetto who broke the world record completing the 26.22 mile (42.2km) course in two hours two minutes and 57 seconds. It was a beautiful sunny day for the 40,000 runners who took part in the race that finished through the iconic Brandenburg gate. It's pretty cool to be able to take part in the same race as the fastest man in the world.

I had some wonderful support from my friends and family for the marathon. On my return to the UK I even received a lovely congratulations card from the Anthony Nolan events team, thanking me for raising funds for them. I have run for many charities over the years and they are the first to take the time to send me a card, which really felt special. 

I would like to thank everyone from the card industry, and in particular the 2013 Ladder Club delegates, who kindly donated to the funds I raised in support of my dear friend, Lynn Tait, who has had to call on the help of the Anthony Nolan Trust this year. 

Please contribute to my Anthony Nolan fundraising page by clicking here

Read 15 ways marathon training can improve your business

Click here to find out more about the Ladder Club

Years ago I attended a greeting card industry seminar, not unlike the Ladder Club days for new publishers that I speak at each year. I remember a speaker proudly stating that she never sent greeting cards and that this was not uncommon amongst card publishers. The statement has preyed on my mind ever since as an insidious problem within our industry. I don’t have the facts on how widespread this issue is, but I do know that I personally could do better with the number of cards I send each year.

As card publishers, suppliers and retailers we should be the ones that are using these products the most. If we don’t use them why should anyone else? Given that the industry is dominated at board level by men and 80% of card buyers are women, it must surely help us improve our offering and make the card sending tradition stronger if we are sending more cards ourselves?

None of us know what will happen to the card industry in years to come and whether or not future generations will enjoy cards as much as those previous have. We can’t control these things, but we can control what we do now. That is why I have been so excited about working with the Greeting Card Association Council to create and launch both Festive Friday and now Thinking of You Week to help promote card sending by starting with card publishers ourselves. 

This month I agreed to take part in a dry run of Thinking of You Week, a new event being held in the last week of September to highlight the emotional power of sending and receiving cards. I roped in some of my colleagues at Blue Eyed Sun to join me. Everyone who took part in the initiative had fun doing it and enjoyed taking the time to stop and think about friends, family and loved ones. I'll be updating more on their stories later this month.

The quality of our relationships is based on the quality of our communication. Cards are such a great way of communicating that we care, by taking the time to consider others and what we’d like to say to them. We know that scientific studies show that receiving cards makes people feel more special than receiving texts and Facebook messages. Because there are less letters and cards received in the post these days, I believe they may have an even stronger power now. It is said that receiving cards can even stave off depression for recipients. I think it can help the senders with this too. 

Whatever you focus on you’re going to feel. Focussing on being grateful for what you have in your life and the people you care for means that you take your mind off yourself. Fear disappears when you are grateful, as does stress. 

What are you grateful for? Start with yourself, then your close family and friends and all those who are important to you. This is what I did when I sat down to write my cards for Thinking of You Week. Pretty quickly I found that there were a number of events or reasons to send cards to the people I care about. It wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. It helped that somehow all of my Facebook contacts birthdays have downloaded into my iPhone’s calendar.

The hardest part was tracking down all of the addresses I needed. Remember that card sending is an important, meaningful tradition for older generations who will greatly appreciate the time and effort that you have taken to think of them. You might also find that it's a more powerful way of connecting with everyone who is important to you.

Staying connected in meaningful ways with my friends and family is so important to me that I am very grateful for the opportunity to take part in this initiative. I hope that you do too. This really is a wonderful idea that’s worth spreading so please do get involved and send some extra cards during the last week of September.

Click to find out more about Thinking of You Week

Read more about scientific studies on card sending

I am very excited to share with you details of a project I have been working on with the Greeting Card Association this year. Following the success of our Festive Friday card sending campaign, the GCA are proud to announce 'Thinking of You Week' which will highlight the emotive power of sending and receiving hand written cards.

Thinking of You week is to be held from the 22 - 28 September 2014 and marks 7 days of friendship and love for those that are near and dear to our hearts and those we may have lost touch with or want to connect with in a closer, more meaningful way. Life is so busy for all of us these days that it's important to stop and reconnect properly with those we care about. Thinking of You Week aims to facilitate this by encouraging us all to send seven cards during one week in September this year. 

Cards are great to receive and especially so for those in need of a lift. It's been scientifically proven that receiving a handwritten card makes people feel more special than receiving texts, emails or messages on social media. Receiving cards can even stave off the early stages of depression.Think how lovely it will be for all of us to send out a wave of good cheer and love across our amazing planet.

Below is a draft poster for the campaign.

Click here to download the Thinking of You Week Toolkit

Cellophane bags are commonly used on greeting cards in the UK and around the world. Whilst there was a time when lots of retailers would stock cards without wrapping, these days many are now demanding it from their suppliers. Cello bags protect greeting cards from the many fingers that touch them on a daily basis in retailers' card racks. Purchased cards are opened in good condition and consumers feel that they get value for their purchase in much the same way that many shoppers now like to have their fruit and vegetables wrapped and protected at supermarkets. Yet we all know that plastic can be damaging to the environment and takes a long time to degrade.

Recently I spoke to Richard Smith from Wrapid Manufacturing at a GCA Council Meeting to see if there is anything we can do as card publishers to reduce our impact on the environment, specifically in regard to cello bags for greeting cards. Here's what I learned:

There are currently three main options of cello bags for greeting cards:

PLA (aka Corn Starch film)

PLA (poyl-lactic acid) is a bio plastic obtained from starch or sugar taken from plants such as corn, sugar beet, sugar cane, potatoes and many others. One of the benefits of this option is that plant photosynthesis removes CO2 (carbon-dioxide) from the atmosphere to transform it into sugar or starch which is then processed (through fermantation) into PLA. This bio plastic is then turned into compostable packaging material.

PLA is 100% compostible and will fully degrade into CO2, water and biomass which can be used as fertiliser in agriculture. This works well if consumers know to dispose of these compostable cello bags with their food waste. Composting only works if the compost heap is regularly turned. If not, the bag just sits in a pile and will take much longer to degrade. In fact testing has proven that bio-plastic films do not biodegrade in landfill conditions due to low moisture content. Composting is also not easily available to everyone wanting to compost their corn starch cellophane bags. So what else can we do with them?

Poly-lactic acid film is 100% combustable and can be incenerated and transformed into clean energy. The CO2 previously absorped by the plants is released back into the atmosphere to be absorped by plants again and converted into starch and sugar once more. PLA can also be mechanically recycled after grinding, recrystallisation and re-granulation. It can also be chemically recycled back into lactic acid, purified and polymerised into high quality 1st grade PLA resin. Of course some of these processes require a lot of energy in order to recycle the material effectively. Also, because PLA requires food product to be used to make it, is it morally acceptable to be using food for packaging instead of feeding people? Will we have enough to do both?

I know of several publishers who have tried to use corn starch cello bags for their greeting cards over the last few years.  A common problem with PLA is that it can degrade too quickly when exposed to moisture. Some retailers report that the bags fall apart before the cards in them have been sold. PLA film also creases and crinkles very easily. The cello bags can look poorly made which can also have a negative effect on card sales for retailers. PLA cello bags are also more expensive than regular cello bags for cards at roughly four times the price.

Modified Polypropylene

This option takes regular polypropylene cello film and adds a proprietary formulation to special processing conditions that accelerate the degradation of the packaging when discarded. These conditions include the availability of oxygen, natural light, pressure and slightly elevated temperatures (over 30-40 degrees C, typical in landfill sites). It also degrades in the open air if the plastic is properly disgarded as litter. Under these conditions the cello bags will degrade within 8-18 months by a process of abiotic oxidation. In oxygen rich atmospheres, micro organisms attack under enzymatic action and convert the final mineralisation of the material into water, CO2, methane and biomass.

This option for greeting card cello bags is cheaper than PLA and it still biodegrades, but it isn't compostable. It's designed to suit landfill and degrades faster than conventional polypropolene cellophane. It can be mechanically and chemically reused after grinding, re-crystallisation and re-granulation. It can also be incenerated, but this sin't the most environmentally responsible method.

As you can imagine the relatvely short life span and danger of degrading on the shelves can affect the perceived value of the cards that are wrapped in modified polypropylene in the same ways the corn starch bags often do. Pricing wise this option is 50% cheaper than PLA.

Conventional Polypropylene

This is the most commonly used packaging medium for wrapping greeting cards as well as most other forms of packaging worldwide. It's also the least green option when considering biodegradation or compostability. Having said that, it is 100% recyclable through council refuse collection facilities linked to managed recycling programmes. What's important is that consumers know they can add the cellobag to their plastic recycling. If they do, then our greeting card cello-bags can be mechanically or chemically recycled into low grade plastic products like carrier bags and coloured plastic bottles. If they don't, polypropolene bags can take over 400 years to degrade in landfill. Inceneration is also not a very environmentally responsible method of disposal.

I think there are two main reasons why polyproylene is used by publishers for their cello bags: It's the cheapest option available commercially and polypropylene cello bags add to the perceived retail value of the product. Because polypropylene doesn't crinkle and crack as easily as other options do these cello bags make cards look and feel more expensive. Combine these two main factors with others like the fact that they don't fall apart on retailers' shelves and it's easy to see why everyone uses them.

New Green materials?

Research and development work is currently ongoing with the prospect of some new technology being released into the market which will be totally different to the esisting substrates. It is expected that these will be coming through for general supply in about 12 months time. This could be exciting news, but we shall have to wait and see whether these options are viable commercially and will work operationally with existing production processes.

To be green costs money

When we first met with Richard, I was hoping that using the combined power of our industry we could encourage the development of more environmentally friendly cellobags for the greeting card marketplace. The truth is that greeting cards are a tiny blip in the world of packaging. To put it in perspective, the manufacturers that supply our suppliers with the film they use to make our our greeting card cello bags supply 30 times more to other packaging markets. 

Who will pay for the premium commanded for technologically advanced films? In theory, if everyone in the supply chains contributed by paying a little more (and consumers added to this when purchasing) then we can all contribute to making a difference to the planet for future generations. The realities of making this happen are challenging. A key driver will be consumers demanding more advanced, eco friendly film for food packaging which uses the majority of polypropylene film. The supermarkets will have a big role to play in this. Already a lot of attention is focussed on reducing the use of plastic carrier bags in the UK, if we can do this with other packaging too the drive will be turned from a "should" into a "must" for everyone involved.

What can card publishers and retailers do?

Recycling virgin polypropylene (standard films) through council recycling programmes is the most responsible and affordable approach for our environment. We need to encourage our greeting card cello-bags to be recycled. Labelling and good comminication with retailers and consumers is key for this.

Another thing we can do to reduce the impact on the environment is to down guage the film thickness and limit the amount of material. Certainly we should discourage the use of greeting card cello bags that are greater than 40 microns. There really is no need to go thicker than this. If we could all shift our bags to 30 microns we would have a 25% reduction in the material used. This would be a massive improvement although it will be challenging to achieve, as many publishers use 40 micron bags because they feel nicer and more expensive than 30 micron. It could be damaging to business if your products were thought of as becoming less commercially appealing because of a change in the cello thickness.

Finally we can reduce the use of plastic in our everyday lives. The biggest way of doing this is to look at how much polypropylene is in your shopping basket at the supermarket. See if you can make alternative choices like buying fruit and veg loose instead of prepackaged for example. Let your supermarket know that this is important to you as a consumer. If the supermarkets can push the polypropylene manufacturers to come up with more enronmentally friendly solutions this will have a knock on effect for our industry too.

Read about Germany's first waste free supermarket by clicking here

Click here to read more card industry news

Find out more about the Greeting Card Association

Visit Wrapid's website for greeting card cello bags

If you're interested in the environment and waste then you might also find this informative 

The Ladder Club 2014 dates have been announced. These are day long crash courses in card publishing held in Westcliffe on Sea each year and run on a not-for-profit basis by Lynn Tait of the Lynn Tait Gallery. You must choose one of the following days to attend as you cannot do both in the same year:

The first seminar, Getting on the Ladder, for brand new greeting card companies or those considering card publishing will be held on Tuesday 4th November 2014 with the highly recommended networking dinner the night before. If you haven't done the first day before then book this one first.

The second day, Climbing the Ladder, which is for more experienced new publishers who may already have been to the first day seminar the year before, is to be held on Wednesday 5th Novmber 2014. There will also be a dinner the night before for these delegates to network and meet the speakers one on one. Only choose this seminar if you have a turnover of at least £3,000 and have exhibited at least one trade show.

The seminars are packed with great speakers and industry experts including Karen Wilson and Claire Frost from Paper Salad, digital printers from The Imaging Centre, litho printers from Sherwood Press, paper merchants GF Smith, envelope suppliers Enveco. There will also be retailers, sales agents, trade show organisers from PG Live, Jakki Brown from Progressive Greetings and Sharon Little from the Greeting Card Association.

This will be my tenth year of speaking at these seminars and I highly recommend them to new greeting card publishers. They are an invaluable source of great information that will help you make the most of your greeting card business. If you are considering card publishing they will give you everything you need to be able to decide if it is right for you.

Held in Westcliffe on Sea, Essex these Ladder Club 2014 dates should go straight into your diary if you want to improve your card publishing business or are considering publishing cards. The cost for each day is an incredibly low £48 and includes lunch. 

To book a place at the Ladder Club contact Trudi or Pauline on 01702 480180 or email waiteandtaitbakery@hotmail.com 

Click to read about previous Ladder Club seminars

Read more business tips on our blog

See how we doubled the income from our handmade card business

Above are interactive slides from my talk at Spring Fair International on greeting card, stationery and gift market trends. All images include hyperlinks so that you can click straight through to the websites of any companies you may be interested in. Feel free to share this using the links above.

The key take away points from my talk are summarised below:

Handmade, crafting and up cycling all remain strong trends and this is likely to continue this year. Knitting, crafting and stamp booking are all rising in popularity in the UK. Fuelled by of our interest in looking after the planet by reducing, reusing and recycling.

Sentiment is stronger and clever use of language and humour on text based cards, gifts and stationery continues to grow. Staying connected and close to loved ones is still important and it looks like there will be a rise in popularity in stationery and card sending. Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg has pledged to write and send a considered thank you note each day throughout 2014.

We are also spending more time together looking back. So nostalgia, particularly vintage and retro, ranging from the 1920's through to the 1980's is doing well. It's all being done with a contemporary take to keep it fresh and interesting.

Nature is also a very strong trend. British woodland creatures are doing well. One of the big trends this year has ben owls which have been selling really well in cards and gifts . Foxes are going to be stepping into the limelight in the coming months and are set to be big this year.

British made and ethically sourced gift and stationery items has been one of the continuing current trends. The jubilee and the Olympics last year saw a huge British revival and our confidence on the world stage continued with Andy Murray winning Wimbledon and the US Open last year, Chris Froome winning the Tour de France (after Bradley Wiggin's win last year) and the English cricket team winning the ashes. The Commonwealth Games are being held in Glasgow in 2014, so we should continue to ride this wave of revived British pride.

Big events have been recognised as key drivers for retail sales. The birth of baby George has been key to growing baby product sales and forthcoming events like Shakespeare's 450th Birthday, World War I Centenary, the World Cup Football and the Commonwealth games will all offer opportunities for retailers. 

If you'd like to read more about key buying events and retail buying patterns click here.

Finally, one of the key observations to make regarding trends and how to improve your retail business is to pay attention to your customers needs and target them well. You can be as on trend as you like with your buying, but it the products are not priced and positioned well in your store you will not reap the benefits. Moreover, if your staff are not well trained and not focussed on making your customer's buying experience as pleasurable as possible your business will suffer as a result.

What I learnt about selling from Liberty of London's top shop floor sales staff

6 Ways that you can track UK Gift, Stationery and Greeting Card Trends

Click here for details of my talk on card & gift trends at Autumn Fair 2013

Caught this funny scene on the meaning of cheap greeting cards in a recent episode of the BBC series Sherlock:

Sherlock (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) is helping John Watson (Martin Freeman) and Mary Morstan (Amanda Abbingdon) prepare for their wedding. Mary asks Sherlock if she should include John's cousin on the top table and hands Sherlock the RSVP card they received.

"She hates you. Can't even bear to think about you," says Sherlock

"Seriously?" asks Mary.

"Second class post, cheap card, bought at a petrol station. Look at the stamp. Three attempts at licking, she's obviously unconsciously retaining saliva," replies Sherlock.

A funny reminder that cheap greeting cards send more information than the message we may have written inside them.

You can watch the 15 second clip by clicking on the triangle at the bottom left of the image below. Be warned. Remember to reply with a nice card ;-)

To watch full episodes of Sherlock on the BBC click here.

Read more:

16 Retaling Lessons I learnt watching Liberty of London

Are postage stamps really legal tender in the UK?

The Ladder Club is an annual seminar to support new and aspiring greeting card publishers to climb the ladder up the card industry. It's organised by Lynn Tait and has been a fantastic support to many publishers for over a decade, helping them to avoid the pitfalls that can cost time, money and a whole lot of heartache.

I have been the keynote speaker at the event for the past nine years of it's fourteen year history and have had the privilege of meeting and helping many fantastic new businesses during that time. Often the seminar has been regarded by attendees as a success even when they have decided not to become a publishers. For £48 and a day of their time some artists and photographers have realised that their passion is creating beautiful things and they choose to find other ways of generating income including licensing their work, partnering with businesses or simply selling their work in other mediums instead of on cards.

We had a fantastic turn out for the first day of the seminar this year which is all about helping the delegates to take their first step onto the Ladder. Jakki Brown, the co-founder of the Ladder Club, compered the day in the absence of Lynn Tait who organises it with the help of her two stars Trudy and Pauline. The day started with an introduction to the Greeting Card Association with CEO Sharon Little. Warren Lomax from Max Publishing spoke about PG Live, the Henries Awards and how to make the most of Progressive Greetings magazine's free editorial section.

Simon King and Nicky Marshall from Sherwood Litho Press showed everyone how to prepare for and print litho on B1 presses and the technical issues involved with doing so.

Bob Short from The Imaging Centre took us all through the Digital Printing process which most card publishers these days use for short runs to test the market with their products. Both printers ran through the costs of getting started and the Ladder Club delegates were given some useful information packs.

Everyone got to learn about the different substrates and boards they could print on in an entertaining talk from Mark at paper merchants GF Smith. Julie from Enveco Envelopes Plus talked about how envelopes are made, what prices they start at and how to save money by using standard off-the-shelf sizes for your first greeting card ranges. Simon Boyd from Progressive Greetings Live talked us through the important things to consider when exhibiting at trade shows for the first time and how to get the most out of your trade shows.

One of my favourite talks was from Ian Bradley, a Midlands greeting card agent, who helped everyone to gain an insight into how working with freelance sales agents can benefit their greeting card business. Karen and Claire from

Paper Salad spoke about their adventures in greeting card publishing and the things that new publishers must keep an eye out for before rushing into big deals with large multiple card retailers. Retail expert Henri Davis spoke on the second day about how to approach large retailers in a very informative talk drawing on her experience of buying at large chains like the National Trust and WH Smiths. I found it incredibly useful

to gain an understanding of what buyers of large multiples need and want from publishers. I also had a few things to so say about my experience in the card business running Blue Eyed Sun.

It seems that everyone had a great time and all of those attending found the Ladder Club extremely useful and well worth their time. Thanks to the Ladder Club delegates and sponsors I have raised almost £500 towards my £1000 goal for the Anthony Nolan Trust, who I am running the Berlin Marthon for next year. I was inspired to do this by Lynn Tait, the organiser and founder of the Ladder Club, who was in hospital undergoing a stem cell transplant on the same day.

Click here to help me raise £1,000 for the Anthony Nolan Trust.

Click here to join the Ladder Club Facebook Group

Click here for the Ladder Club LinkedIn Group

For those that attended the Ladder Club and want to know more. Here are some links to useful content on my blog:

Looking Back from Perfect - How to achieve your goals

10 Business Basics to get right before using social media

Social Media Tips on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

I am so pleased to announce the launch of Festive Friday, a new card sending day for the greeting card industry, which will take place on Friday 29th November 2013.

Festive Friday is a day for the whole greeting card industry to write their Christmas cards and send them out to their friends, family and loved ones to start the Christmas card sending season with a bang.

There are an estimated 100,000 people working directly and indirectly within the greeting card industry and the idea is to create a ripple effect from this initial action.

This is a project that I have been personally involved with during my time on the GCA Council and last Christmas our business encouraged our staff to send Christmas cards as part of our marketing efforts for the card industry. It was really fun and had a great effect. Read more about it in this post: Have you sent your Christmas cards yet?

We hope that the cards and loving messages to young and old will inspire and excite and remind everyone of the importance of the festive season for keeping in touch and staying more connected with your friends, family and loved ones. Scientific research has proven that sending and receiving greeting cards makes people feel cared for and happier and can even help fend off depression. Read more about this study in our post Scientists prove greeting cards are good for your Mother.

So remember to set aside some time on Festive Friday the 29th November, for an hour or two, to write cards with your staff and send Christmas cards out to your friends and family. You can even save money by sending them second class post and they will still arrive in plenty of time for Christmas. Plus the more cards you send earlier the more you should receive in return. See the Royal Mail table below for last sending dates to various parts of the world and in the UK.

Please share this post and spread this message far and wide within the card industry. 

You can find out more about Blue Eyed Sun's Christmas cards for 2013 which were nominated for a Henries Award this year and are available at all good gift shops and card retailers.

The Seasonal Buying Report has been released by i2i Events, the organisers of Autumn Fair. It contains insights into retailers' changing approach to seasonal buying and shows what is needed from suppliers going forward. Here are some of the key take away points from the report:

The Changing Retail Landscape With changes in consumer behaviour, selling channels, technology and even weather patterns, 'change' has become the main constant in the last five years for retailers. This has had effects on in the card and gift market and affects both buyers and suppliers. Incidentally, the respondents to the survey were mostly independents with up to 4 shops and 43% sell greeting cards.

Retailers' Changing Approach to buying Retailers are reducing their forward ordering commitment and buying closer to seasons like Christmas and Spring occasions. Up to 24% of retailers in the survey are holding back more than 50% of their budget to buy closer to the season. This is being driven by tougher economic conditions and changing consumer behaviour. Retailers are looking for flexibility and speed which means suppliers are having to supply from closer to home. Buyers are also waiting to see what their customers are buying before repeating orders. According to the Seasonal Buying Report, the main reason to continue forward ordering is to guarantee supply of key products.

The importance of Christmas Christmas has become a make or break event for many retailers with a third of respondents saying that Christmas accounted for up to 50% of their annual turnover. For 18% surveyed, Christmas is worth up to an incredible 75% of total sales. November and December account for 21% of all retail sales in the UK across all sectors. The later ordering of stock by retailers appears to be driven by consumers themselves buying later and later which makes it harder to predict sales trends.

The Importance of Retail Events For most independent retailers, Mother's Day is the most important event after Christmas. Halloween continues to grow in the UK, with Tesco rating it more important than Valentines and Mother's Day. These key events offer growth opportunities for retailers.

What Retailers are Looking at from Suppliers The retailer/supplier relationship is crucial and buyers are prepared to change suppliers to be assured of the service they require to meet these new buying patterns. That means suppliers will need to increase stock lines and manage their stock control well. Innovative, fresh new products that are well stocked will be the way forward for successful suppliers at the moment.

There's an interesting section at the end of the seasonal report, by Professor Joshua Bamfield of the Centre for Retail Research. He says that Halloween and the needs of children are dominating seasonal spending and this trend is set to continue. Baby showers and pregnancy related events are also growing and present opportunities for retailers. There is also a Q&A case study with a good customer of ours: House of Fraser.

It's an interesting read and rather timely for us as we revamp our warehouse in order to reduce delivery times from an average of 4.3 days turnaround. We also have a gorgeous new selection of children's cards which we launched at Harrogate and showed at Autumn Fair as well as a new Baby Shower design in our best selling Vintage range.

To download The Seasonal Buying Report click here.

To see more on Greeting Card, Stationery and Gift trends click here.