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Post by allanorn on Mar 26, 2019 14:31:20 GMT
Well, kind of. Story USA Today. Digital e-cards and price increases are cutting into the mass greeting card market. Stores like CVS and Walmart are looking to redeuce the amount of space dedicated to cards in favor of health care products, but niche cards and value cards seem to be on the rise. |
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Post by mailartist on Mar 26, 2019 19:29:05 GMT
CVS devoting more shelf space to "health-care products." Probably because no health-care anything in the US sells for a piddly "$1 - $10," but many more times that. Higher prices, more profit.
Bottom line, is all . . .
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Post by radellaf on Mar 26, 2019 23:04:23 GMT
I mean, I've bought a few, but since the price went over about $3 for even a simple card, I've given them a pass. Think I got one for $5 for someone really sad about their dog, because it was so well written. But in general, yeah, I use the websites that will mail a card for you these days. Amazingmail is good if you have a photo but not many stock designs. Postable doesn't have many but I've found good ones. It's just easier, no more (if not less) expensive, and I'm usually late for occasions or don't care enough to do more than spend a few minutes, but wanna be polite.
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Post by Gary S on Mar 27, 2019 0:06:18 GMT
I fall squarely in the "budget card" buyer section. I'm not spending $6 on a single greeting card especially with the cards they have out now. While Millennials may “...take a more casual tone. They’re ironic, more comical.” I don't want that on a card for an elderly relative nor do I think a card with curse words is really what good ol' Aunt Sarah is looking for when she opens up the Birthday card I sent her. I look for something that I like personally and a lot of the time that is found in the el cheapo section where they use a lot of older, copyright free, images. Some of the most amazing cards I've found lately have been at dollar stores. The image was just what I had in mind when I set out looking for cards.
Mailing a card is not necessarily the final result of buying greeting cards but lower end cards are usually smaller and of slightly lighter card stock so you don't get nailed for an extra ounce charge when you do go to mail them. I've heard several folks at the post office dismayed that the stack of Christmas cards they paid a bundle for now need an additional ounce stamp to be mailed. They get mad and the post office employee immediately throws the greeting card manufacturer under the bus without the slightest bit of hesitation. I don't blame them as weight should always be a consideration when designing something that has a fairly high likelihood of being mailed at some point and first class postage is only good up to one ounce. That hasn't changed in a long while.
I have no clue if greeting cards will still be around in a couple of generations but if they are it'll be because the companies listened to what the buying public wanted rather than the company pushing what they want to sell. A higher profit margin only works if folks buy the product. McDonald's made a mint off of value priced food in a world full of fancy restaurants offering top of the line menus. Sometimes you're in a hurry and don't want to mortgage the farm for a quick meal. Both products will sell, just not to the same clientele, so you have to decide which group you want to target. A $20 hamburger on the McDonald's menu will be a waste of menu space but if you sell five $4 burgers you still end up with $20 at the end of the day. Sell enough 2 for $1 greeting cards and you'll stay in business while companies hawking $6 a card wares may very well fold in a few years.
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Post by radellaf on Mar 27, 2019 3:22:41 GMT
$4 burgers? You seen what they're going for even at McD's these days? They made money off marketing and toys (in my lifetime, maybe they were more wholesome in the 60s), not a quality product at a fair price.
The envelopes that need more postage say it right on there. Granted, I usually don't buy those, but if I'm dropping $6-8 on a fancy card I'm not going to balk at using two stamps.
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Post by allanorn on Mar 27, 2019 4:29:37 GMT
I think it's a confluence of several things at once, which makes this discussion all the more interesting. I recall last week picking up what I thought was an acceptable birthday card for later at Target and then being in a bit of a shock when it rang up as $4. It brought back a conversation I had with my mother about a couple of my aunts no longer sending holiday and birthday cards. (At least one's retired FWIW.) I had a lot of time crawling along the freeway for the drive home that night so I even thought about some other recent card purchases.
No doubt the Internet and especially mobile devices have changed the game on physical mail, cards included. eCards aren't as bad or as socially unacceptable as they used to be.
Card displays take up a chunk of floor space for sure, and I definitely am not certain what the margins are on cards. (I'm a perennial complainer of how bad the Christmas cards are at several shops.) I do think the profit per square foot is small, because it's more labor intensive to stock and keep it in good looking shape than other aisles. I can see where a line of cosmetics or medicines/vitamins could net more per floor space for a shop than cards. That's not the whole story.
Short of being wealthy enough to where it doesn't matter - people are being choosy on what to spend money on. There was an article I read a few months ago that mentioned a possible conversion to a two-tier economy of wealthy and not-wealthy. That probably does go a long way towards explaining the luxury card market, but I also don't think it's everything.
One thing I have noticed is the growth of private label/generics/store brands. Twenty years ago, store brands at grocery stores were almost a non-starter. Now quite a few things are competitive on price and quality vs. name brand foods and the gap is closing. I'm old enough to have a couple of name-brand items I buy without question, but that list is getting smaller every day. (Philadelphia cream cheese and Bounce dryer sheets are the only two I can think of off the top of my head, but I'm starting to get choosier on canned tomatoes.) This does extend to cards. Trader Joes has some pretty good cards at 99 cents each, and I buy a couple at a time when I see good ones and need a couple in the box for a necessary event.
I think the wealth/private label arguments come together in the context of a changing consumer market. Like some of us who own $400 fountain pens and some of us who write using Bic sticks, some of us can afford or choose to spend the money on expensive cards. A lot of people can't or won't spend the money either. I also think there's some context as well - I'll send most of my family Christmas cards from Unicef ($12 for 12! Stands up to fountain pen ink! Generally acceptable by everyone!) but my parents get Hallmark-equivalent cards that are $4 each. My guess is that cards are mirroring the US economy a bit here: moving away from a middle-income, name-brand, mass-market one to something that has luxury niches amongst a large contingent of inexpensive options, all in a shrinking physical market.
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Post by Gary S on Mar 27, 2019 15:21:53 GMT
$4 burgers? You seen what they're going for even at McD's these days? I went with the price of a Big Mac in my hometown of Checotah, OK. It's $3.99 for just the sandwich alone. There are cheaper selections and higher priced selections depending on toppings but I thought the Big Mac being their signature sandwich was a fair choice to go with. Perhaps we should discuss how much Big Macs cost where we're located if there's that big of a price difference. Perhaps nationalized pricing is part of the problem with greeting cards. A $6 Hallmark card in NYC would seem cheap while the same card in Checotah would be thought to be exorbitant. |
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Post by radellaf on Mar 28, 2019 13:04:57 GMT
Guess I was wrong. I'd seen this recently, but yeah, some googling shows me nothing but $3.99 anywhere.  (summary: the burger has pretty much tracked the CPI and is no "more expensive" in real dollars than it was in the 80s or 90s) If it's $4 now, then it's less expensive than it used to be. That said, a few extra bucks for a $7 5 Guys burger is a long way from $20, and IMHO a much better value in terms of taste and substance. Likewise, I'm fine paying $3 instead of $1 for a card if it looks good enough... or can be bought online instead of driving to the dollar store. If only I could get an affordable home delivered burger... The "deluxe" $10 cards might be interesting if I wanted to get a sorta-close friend a small gift but really had no idea what to buy. I usually go to ThinkGeek and pick out something, but that fold-up card might be just as much fun. For Christmas, it seems so much more efficient and cheap to get the 10-20 pack boxes from B&N. Being something of a cheapskate, I try to get them 30-50% off in late Dec and then use them the next year. |
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Post by Mia on Mar 28, 2019 16:12:22 GMT
Even though I send letters, I very rarely send birthday cards. I usually write birthday greetings within a letter.
I don't like many of the birthday card designs. And as for the sentiments... Sometimes this makes finding cards very difficult in some circumstances. What sort of birthday card can you send to someone who has just lost their son to cancer? Or for her to send to her other son with the same birthday (different years) as the departed son?
At a couple of stationers, there are a selection of cards you can pick and choose in a multi-buy. These are often better than the more expensive single cards.
There are a lot more (paper) craft shops around, and these concentrate mainly on card-making. The cards made this route can be quite thick and then fall foul of the thickness limit for standard letter rate.
As for Christmas cards, I buy mine in packs from charity shops, mostly after Christmas in the clearance sale.
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Post by Mia on Mar 28, 2019 16:21:35 GMT
I wonder if we should come up with a couple of surveys - one about the shops and the types of birthday cards in, and one for members of this forum - do we in general send birthday cards, do you have a stash of greetings cards in, and... ?
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Post by radellaf on Mar 28, 2019 17:45:29 GMT
Even though I send letters, I very rarely send birthday cards. I usually write birthday greetings within a letter. I don't like many of the birthday card designs. Birthdays are the occasion most replaced by electronic means, for me. Mostly because I forget them until Facebook tells me about one, too late to send even a mail-by-web-store card. |
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Post by Mia on Mar 28, 2019 18:06:50 GMT
Some card shops in the UK sell Belated Birthday cards.
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Post by allanorn on Mar 28, 2019 18:57:40 GMT
Even though I send letters, I very rarely send birthday cards. I usually write birthday greetings within a letter. I don't like many of the birthday card designs. Birthdays are the occasion most replaced by electronic means, for me. Mostly because I forget them until Facebook tells me about one, too late to send even a mail-by-web-store card. I stopped sending birthday cards to most people because they requested not to get reminders of how old they were getting  |
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Post by radellaf on Mar 28, 2019 21:07:57 GMT
Some card shops in the UK sell Belated Birthday cards. Oh, I've definitely used my share of those in many forms. Card, email, custom photo card. Last one with my mother, which didn't go over that well (and _why_ don't I set a calendar alert?). As for getting older, yeah, sure has been a while since that "woohoo! You can drink now!" card for 21 years, probably a good 4 or 5 years since the first 6-pack. I only just started thinking black might be a good color after 40, and 7 years on, I think blacker-than-black will be required for the next decade. My sweetie isn't any younger, but has the nifty coincidence that her son has the same birthday, so she can ignore her own number and celebrate his. That works for a while, anyway. IDK, as far as designs, there's usually something on the rack that I like. The artwork anyway. It's condolence cards where I want someone else to do the writing. "Sorry for your loss" sounds like I'm just quoting a TV cop show like "Bones". |
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Post by filpot on Mar 29, 2019 13:05:59 GMT
Birthdays are the occasion most replaced by electronic means, for me. Mostly because I forget them until Facebook tells me about one, too late to send even a mail-by-web-store card. I stopped sending birthday cards to most people because they requested not to get reminders of how old they were getting Beware Facebook birthdays, allanorn - the one on my FB is totally made up, as I consider it a security risk to have my real birthdate on there. Some organizations who issue customers/members with "pre-made" access codes use your birthday as part of the code. |
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