Commercial director Richard Bacon must be cheered by the UK’s seemingly insatiable desire to say it with cards, which helps greetings card work add up to 50% of Sherwood’s £17m UK turnover. Royal Mail reckons we’ll be posting around 750m of them this month, and will probably hand deliver almost twice as many again.
That’s a lot of sentiment being expressed. But if it sounds like money for soft soap, think again, says Bacon. “Most people might consider the greetings card to be a simple product, but the finishing can be complex. For example, you’ve got ‘flitter’, which is the glittery stuff that’s put on cards and has to be done in-house with specialised equipment. Likewise, card folding is a specialist process, and then you’ve got to have die-cutting, foiling, embossing – not forgetting single-bagging lines, or transit wrappers so that cards can be batched up in sixes for distribution to stores.”
Sherwood’s investment has “run into millions”, including a customised £2m Komori press with UV varnishing and special metallic effects capability inline, as well as a battery of folding machines at £100,000 each. A greetings card might go through 20 different processes, as well as the application of ribbons, jewels and tip-ons, a lot of which would be hand-finished at its factories in China or Poland.
An increasing requirement for added-value difference is a significant barrier to entry, cautions Bacon. “As a business, we have to maintain literally every operation and perceived idea available to our customers; they aren’t interested in some-one who can just do a four-pack single greeting card.”
Sherwood’s hold on the sector has benefited through the demise of at least two of its competitors – Loudwater and Wayzegoose – with the former’s collapse enabling the Nottingham-based group to take on a hand-finishing facility in Gdansk, Poland.
Other print finishers not already deterred will still need to overcome a language as well as an investment barrier. While flitter might essentially be glitter under another name, the uninitiated will struggle with ‘puff’ (a softly textured finish), Crystalina (iridescent flaking) and Virko (a powder dusted on to the card).
Sporting appropriate green credentials has further boosted business, says Richard Bacon. “You’ve got to have ISO 14001 and ISO 9000; also be using FSC-sourced stock, vegetable-based inks and appropriate varnishes. Publishers are very switched on to these issues for obvious reasons; from selling a product that was traditionally environmentally unfriendly, they’ve now cleaned up their act. What they’re now offering is very environmentally sound. It doesn’t necessarily have to be more expensive either, but your business needs certain things to be able to achieve it.”
Des King is a Printing World contributor with an eye on the finishing line. Email him at: thewritestuff@ntlworld.com
Finishing is key to cards that deliver
Christmas is definitely on the cards this month, though it's anyone's guess whether it'll be a white one, a green one or the grey of economic gloom. For those seasonally merry men at Nottingham's Sherwood Press - the UK's largest manufacturer of greetings cards at around 300m each year - Christmas has long since been foiled, fine-detail embossed and folded for another year. Their focus has now moved on to the sector's next big occasion: a springtime bonanza that includes Valentine's Day, Easter and Mother's Day.
