I received a press release yesterday from Pam Danzinger who runs Unity Marketing, a marketing consulting firm that specializes in the luxury consumer market. The company conducted a study of the US greeting card market and found that people are starting to place more value on the kind of cards we love - clever, pretty and unique [like these from Paper+ Cup] - and buying them more often at specialty retailers than at mass merchants.
Take that, Target - maybe now you'll stop ripping off other people's designs...
Here's what the press release reported:
Greeting Card Market Is on the Up Swing as Card Shoppers Turn to Specialty Retailers For More Distinctive Product Offerings
New study from Unity Marketing finds that greeting cards were the fastest growing category in the overall stationery market
Stevens, PA November 6, 2007 -- The market for greeting cards made a big comeback after four years of steadily declining sales, rising over 11 percent from 2004 to 2006. In 2006 the market for greeting cards climbed to over $10 billion. This according to the latest report on the stationery market from Unity Marketing.
"From 2000 to 2004 the sales of greeting cards were in steady decline," reports Pam Danzinger, president of Unity Marketing and author of Shopping: Why We Love It and How Retailers Can Create the Ultimate Customer Experience. "But in 2005 the tide started to turn as a result of a shift in consumers' shopping preferences away from mass retailers and discounters, like dollar stores, toward more specialty retailers that offered better designs, higher quality and more specialized card choices. In 2006 specialty card and gift shops regained 6 market share points. As a result, the mass merchants are holding on as market share leader by a thread," Danziger announces.
This revival of specialty retail for greeting cards comes after years of a steady drop in the number of specialty retailers in the card and gift segments. The number of gift shops dropped 21 percent from 75,0102 stores in 2002 to 59,032 shops today. Specialty card shops declined even more - 33 percent from 8,135 in 2002 to 5,391 currently.
Danziger explains, "A few years back the mass merchants, such as Wal-Mart, were the biggest, baddest competitors in the greeting card business, driving prices down and capturing the largest share of business. This resulted in a winnowing out of the weaker specialty retailers that couldn't survive the mass retailers' onslaught. But this new study shows that the tide is turning. The specialty retailers that remain are robust competitors able to attract more affluent shoppers who will pay more for the better designs and higher quality greeting cards available through these stores."
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