Clinton’s looming date with death was on the cards
I’M SURPRISED about Clinton Cards. Not that it has gone into administration, you understand – I’m surprised it lasted so long. It’s a struggling retailer with a gigantic high street footprint (861 stores in the UK, including 188 Birthdays outlets) selling a disposable product with no intrinsic value that you could replace with a free message over a social network.
The greetings card industry is one of those universally reviled sectors; renowned for celebrating invented occasions. You can picture Don Draper lounging in his smoke-filled office, cigarette in hand, coming up with creative new ways to sell small rectangles of cardboard. “Father’s Day, Don? But there is no such thing as Father’s Day. Nobody is going to buy into that.” But buy into it they did. Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Good Luck, Commiserations, Salutations, Welcome, Goodbye, Get Well Soon, Sorry You’re Dead. The full gamut of human interactions can be neatly expressed on a dead tree for the small sum of £3.50.
With household spending squeezed, it would be little surprise if people were now wishing their friends a Happy Spring Interval in person. Or, even better, saying it online, for free, without actually having to see them at all. The truth, though, is a little more complicated. Sales of greetings cards have actually been remarkably resilient. In the last five years, total sales have risen from £1.43bn to £1.48bn. Unit sales have also held up, at 1.49bn last year, compared to 1.5bn in 2005.
Don Draper did his job – we’re no less inclined to send greetings cards than we were a decade ago. The problem is Clinton Cards itself. Over the same five years, its shares dropped from 113p to a measly 7p. It’s not difficult to see why: its stores are messy, sprawling, dowdy affairs, filled with unappealing tat.
Smaller, leaner firms spotted the danger from the online world. Facebook pings you a note every time a friend passes another milestone. Microsoft Office has all the tools you need to create the perfect transitory memento to mark the arbitrary occasion.
Greetings card firms had to move with the times – the clever ones did. Moonpig created high quality, customisable cards that it mails out for you; Funky Pigeon created compact retail spaces that don’t damage your retina when you step through the door. The Duchess of Cambridge’s mother is among those exploiting the very high-end of the market with her Party Pieces store.
Clinton’s situation was made worse by its badly timed acquisition of Birthdays for £50m in 2004. Now it will probably be bought out of administration by American Greetings, which acquired its £35m debt pile this week. The US giant will hope to shed unprofitable outlets in the same way Clinton itself did when it placed Birthdays into administration in 2009, eventually buying back 180 of the 332 stores.
Whichever way you cut it, the future looks bleak. Save your money on the Get Well Soon card and go straight for the Condolences.
Steve Dinneen is the deputy lifestyle editor of Morning Wire