You open your mailbox wearily, expecting bills to tumble out. But somewhere in the middle, a greeting card peers out. You do feel good, don?t you? To have someone say they care enough to go beyond hitting the send button on their keyboard or mobile does give you reason to smile.
In the organised greeting cards segment in India, it is Archies that holds around 60% of the market share. Joint managing director Pramod Arora admits that ?seasonal sales have been dropping, with more and more people resorting to SMSs and e-cards to send traditional wishes on the new year, Diwali, Pongal and so on. On the other hand, the number of occasions that merit a card is growing.? Extending from today?s friendship day to others that honour mothers, fathers and the like, these are days being popularised across media like FM stations and Lifestyle TV. Arora says this ??days? card market may have a smaller base, but it?s growing at a healthy 33%.?
Holding fort on top is Valentine?s day, whose popularity continues to rise unabated. Once you take out the corporate sales component and zoom in on over the counter sales, Valentine?s day cards reportedly outsell all others. Talk about India changing!
As for design trends, Archies relies on an in-house team of young copywriters while the mind-body-spirit bookstore Full Circle sources its designs from the immediate environment, from advertisements to customer queries that may be an indicator of the next new thing.
What they share is a sense that their clients have an expanding social conscience. So Archies partners with CRY and HelpAge to market social expressions, while Full Circle sources many greeting cards from NGOs that work with the underprivileged and the handicapped.The latter?s co-owner Priyanka Malhotra says that most of the cards she stocks are made with recycled paper because her clients ?are very aware of issues like the environment.?
SMSs and e-cards have taken a toll on the sector, but a new web portal by the name of Papam has hit the best of both worlds combination, where you can go online, personalise greeting cards of your choice, and then have them delivered to the recipient?s doorstep.
Taking the pursuit of the personal even further are companies like Great Names, which specialises in personalised cards. Director Milloni Jhaveri explains, ?If someone wants to gift her soccer crazy friend a gift on friendship day, we have special soccer backgrounds to offer, on which we can imprint a personalised message along with the recipient?s special name meaning qualities.? This gift for making a lasting memory has won Jhaveri clients ranging from corporates like Star World and AIIMS, to celebrities like Big B and the Sultan of Brunei.
But for those who want to get even more personal, one option is to start making your own cards, clearly a popular pursuit going by the plethora of how-to manuals and videos on the subject. And as huffingtonpost blogger Joel Schwartzberg suggests, when you?re done, take the money you saved and buy some ice-cream for both you and your recipient: Lick for lick, ice cream tastes way better than envelope glue.