Card Factory boss Darcy Willson-Rymer is gunning for another year of growth as the business looks to expand its product ranges, partnerships, and store estate.
The greetings card retailer today unveiled a 25% jump in pre-tax profits to £65.6m over its last year, which the retail boss says came despite customers still feeling the pinch.
“We’re hearing two main things from customers: the first one is that the financial pinch is still here and they’re still having to make trade-offs on how they spend their money,” he says. “[They are] also telling us that they want to continue to celebrate, those special moments that stand still important to them.”
Willson-Ryman credits its expansion of product ranges for driving growth and plans to ramp that up further in the year ahead.
“We should continue to see new ranges in store,” he says. “We relaunched humour about a month ago and our general range relaunches this month as well as new stationery and new gifting opportunities.”
“We’ve invested in some regionality – we’re seeing good growth in regional captions. We’re also seeing some expansion in other celebrations so things like Diwali, Eid, and ‘thank you teacher’ are all growing.”
Card Factory’s investment into products is partnered with it reconfiguring shop layouts to cater for the new ranges and “allocating more space to gifted celebration essentials”, which Willson-Rymer said is “gaining traction”.
The greetings card specialist will also continue its store expansion building on its 26 net openings last year as it targets 90 net stores by its 2027 financial year.
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Card Factory’s partnerships pay off
Partnerships are another key growth avenue for Card Factory, with its current agreements contributing £17m in sales.
This includes £10.7m from its acquisition of SA Greetings in South Africa and the rest from a franchise agreement with Liwa Trading Enterprises in the Middle East and its concessions inside Matalan.
Speaking on the Matalan tie-up, Willson-Ryman says: “The partnership’s going well. We’re in all 223 stores and we got all that in before Christmas so really pleased with that.
“We will continue to work with all of our partners to see on how we can continue to optimise our range and continue to get things right for the customer.”
He says that Card Factory is in conversations about further partnerships, but declined to comment whether they would be UK-based or overseas.
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