Author: Mark Fletcher

The best place to buy Christmas cards this year is a local newsagency. It will be a small, locally-owned, family business, which supports local community groups. You are also like to find a good range of Christmas cards rom fancy to basic.

At supermarkets like Coles, there is less of a choice. Typically, they pitch cheap looking and packaged cards at a high price point. The cards themselves are shoved on a shelf and not respected as you would usually find in a specialty card store, like a newsagency.

The Christmas card range this year at Coles is mediocre and expensive in my opinion.

As a channel we need to do more to call out the difference between what we offer in getting cards compared to supermarkets. We need to subtly remind shoppers how we bring value to this category and provide them with a shopping experience they will appreciate. We can do this through social media and elsewhere.

We can beat the supermarkets and similar by being more engaged with this category and reaching outside our four walls with stories representing our differentiation.

It is good to see some Australian card suppliers, Paper Street and Henderson Greetings, offering boxed Christmas cards in open packaging this year. Packaging without the usual acetate all-enclosing container.

In this type of packaging, a slim cardboard box frame is used to hold the cards with most of the surface area front and back open so that customers can touch and feel the actual cards. It is an open box approach.

I like this. I like that it is a good environmental story as well as a good customer service experience.

Feedback from customers in-store has been terrific so far this year. since we have the traditional and new packaging from various suppliers in-store, it is interesting hearing unprompted comparisons about the packaging being made.

The open box in the photo below is from a card company in the UK. I am holding it so you can see what I mean about the benefits of this type of packaging.

Where cards have treatments, such as embossing, the open box approach works well, offering shoppers a tactile experience that could / should more effectively guide purchase.

I anticipate a consequence of more card companies adopting the open box approach to the traditional boxed Christmas card packaging will be better product, product that leverages the tactile shopping experience. Customers will benefit as will retailers and card companies.

Anything we can do to grow card sales has to be important, right?! I think this open box approach pursues that goal.

With physical retailers chasing opportunities to offer experiences, it  is appropriate and timely that innovative card companies are facilitating a better experience in Christmas boxed card shopping.

As competition with online intensifies, anything we in physical retail can do to leverage in-store tactile experiences matters. 

Boxed Christmas card sales are important for the newsagency channel in that compared to everyday card sales, we perform very well in the boxed Christmas card space. Being on the front foot with innovation matters as it is differentiating. This is where the work by Paper Street and Henderson Greetings is important as it provides indie retailers with an advantage.