![]() When it comes to memorable cards that are more a gift in themselves, Cardology are sheer masters of creation. ![]() As well as selling gorgeous, original cards, Archivist designs amazing, luxury boxes of matches with wonderful designs, which can be found on sale in famous British retailers including the Natural History Museum, the V&A, Conran, Paperchase, and Liberty. Letterpress is a traditional printing technique where many copies are produced when a press inks the image and then stamps the paper with an impression, and it was the norm for five centuries, though the process is rarely used now. I wish I could include them all but with there being over a thousand, here are some of the ones of note that I wanted to share with you, in Part 1 of our three-part series.Īrchivist has been around since 1994, since Sarah and William Allardice decided to offer high-quality letterpress products with a sense of fun. I am delighted to bring to you the first part of my favourite UK greeting card publishers, some of which I know firsthand or have known about for many years and some which are new to me. The most recent Market Report by the Greeting Card Association showed that the UK greeting card market is today valued at a staggering £1.75 billion at retail and it must be said that this continuing industry growth would not be possible without its many publishers. It was discovered in a survey by Ofcom (an independent regulator for communications services in the UK, including postal services) that in recent years, more UK consumers have been sending greetings cards than any of the other countries surveyed, and each buys an average of 33 cards annually. The UK may be the world’s second-largest greeting cards market, behind the US, but it boasts the largest number of per capita sales too. With more than a thousand publishers, most of which are small or micro businesses with few employees, it's no surprise that at least one in every six retailers in the UK stocks greeting cards. ![]() Over the next 25 years, trends and publishers both here and across the Atlantic have come and gone, but I feel that from experience, I can make one definitive statement: Anything worthwhile in this industry, or at least any lasting greeting card trend that matters, likely had its origins in the United Kingdom.įor starters, as we mentioned in one of our earlier blog posts, The History of the Greeting Card, the very first commercial Christmas card was made in England, in London, which firmly cements my first statement.įast forward to the present, however, and in terms of design, the Greeting Card Association recently stated that the UK card industry is recognised as being ten years ahead of others, and business blogger Brandon Gaille confirms the strength of the UK's market is partly due to the high per capita level of greeting card publishers. While I had some prior knowledge of the UK’s influences on the North American greeting card industry, I had no idea of the extent of those influences at the time. That was the time my company sent me to England, to my first international stationery show in the city of Birmingham in the West Midlands. Well, my love affair with UK greeting cards and UK card publishers isn’t recent, as it started back in the early 1990s. You may well be wondering what this Canadian bloke is doing writing about his favourite UK greeting card publishers.
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