Card Factory has reported rising sales and a narrowing of its losses after growing its business in the gifting market. With more than 1,000 Card Factory stores around the UK as well as websites for the business and its gifting firm Getting Personal, it posted £116.9m sales for the six months ended July 31 2021, a rise of 16.3 per cent. EBITDA was up by 202.6 per cent to £23.6m and the loss for the period at £5.2m, was down from £17.7m.
Card Factory’s new chief executive Darcy Willson-Rymer, who was appointed in March 2021, said store footfall levels were below pre-pandemic levels but that the firm is outperforming high street averages, demonstrating the strength of the brand and customer proposition. The online division was performing well, albeit with a slight reduction in demand as stores reopened as anticipated.
Ms Willson-Rymer said: “Since joining the group one of my priorities has been to review the business and its growth strategy. Having recently completed that process, I remain extremely excited about the opportunities available to Card Factory. The delivery of the growth strategy set out in July 2020 – and the broader retail environment itself – has obviously been impacted by Covid-19. However, it is clear that the right way forward is to transition Card Factory from being a store led card retailer into a market leading, omnichannel retailer of cards and gifts.
“Whilst cards will remain the largest part of our business in terms of total contribution, we will substantially increase our focus on the complementary gifting and party markets, enhancing our customer offer and significantly increasing the size of our addressable market. The successful delivery of our strategy will be achieved by putting the customer at the heart of everything we do – ensuring that we provide outstanding value and quality across all our products and services, available however our customers want to shop.”
Looking ahead, it added that it remains “cautiously optimistic” about the second half of the financial year, despite short-term uncertainty around the speed of the market recovery, the well-publicised disruption that is being seen in the supply chain, shortage of staff heading into Christmas, increasing freight costs and increased energy costs.
Ms Willson-Rymer added: “Although there remains some uncertainty about the speed of the post-pandemic market recovery in the short term, I firmly believe in both the resilience of the card and gifting markets and the fact that the majority of customer spend will remain in stores for the years to come.”
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