Retail Interview

Cheeky blinders

Scribbler’s head of design Aisling Crosland talks to Greetings Today about the retailer and how it sources its ranges - including its renowned cheeky offering!

Can you tell us a little about how you got into greeting card retail? I initially got into greeting cards by chance, applying for a temporary role at Watermark Publishing (UK Greetings) to work on its Asda ranges. It wasn’t a career path I ever intended to go down after finishing my Masters degree in illustration, even though I’d always loved cards and sending them for no reason to make friends and family smile. Once I was at UKG though I completely fell in love with the industry. Then five years ago I moved to London and landed my dream job at Scribbler and have been here ever since.

And can you tell us a little about the history of Scribbler.

It was 1981 when John and Jennie Procter launched their first-ever Scribbler store. The world seemed to love that first shop full of cheeky cards that broke away from the norm and tradition of other greeting card shops on the high street. People loved it so much, in fact, that Scribbler now has multiple stores across the country, as well as a successful online business. And since 2020 it has launched wholesale ranges into major supermarkets across the UK (and even as far as Australia) and has just launched a first-of-itskind instant greetings card kiosk in collaboration with Fujifilm. Tell us about your ethical/sustainable stance. Back in late 2018/early 2019 we started becoming more aware of our impact on the environment and looking at how we could do better. We were proud to be one of the first to market with biodegradable bags, which we later swapped in favour of going fully naked. We use FSC certified boards and work with the best printers to educate us on what else we can be doing.

John has always been passionate about reducing the amount of cards that are wasted and has pushed for years for what we call ‘print on demand’, where we print not only our cards,

“As a challenger brand within the traditional greetings card market we’ll always be known for our cheeky/rude humour, which appeals to a younger modern audience’’

but our small publishers’ cards digitally. This means we can produce what stores actually need, reducing the old method of warehouses full of stock. This has gone one step further in our collaboration with Fujifilm to bring the first instant greeting cards kiosk to the market.

How do you source products? Our products come from a mixture of places. Over time we’ve built up a list of publishers that we work with year in, year out. These come through directly to our buying team with their latest catalogues and designs.

I run what we call Scribbler Studios internally, which is made up of our in-house team as well as an ever-growing group of regular amazing freelancers. We also work with a huge network of independent designers, most of whom come to us via our supplier upload portal, where you can submit designs directly to the website. And of course we always love to head out to trade

Scribbler founders John and Jennie Proctor

shows, university shows and market stalls to discover new products and people. I am personally really keen to attract more designers to our industry so have also started running competitions with universities, such as the Arts University Bournemouth, to find new talent. How is trading for you at the moment? Like everyone else it’s a tough time out there; prices are rising, rents on the high street are high, and with the costof-living crisis, people are more selective over what they spend their money on. As a company, however, we have focused on other key areas of growth to help support the business through tough times like these, such as our wholesale and online sides of the business. And as I write this, we are very much hoping that, like every year, we will see that last few weeks peak in Christmas sales. People are buying later in the season and this is a pattern we’ve seen across the year but I’m pretty confident giving cards to loved ones is something that will stick around.

You sell both online and in store. Explain how that works. Over the past few years we’ve seen our online sales really increase, which has been fantastic. We’ve set up a supplier upload portal so designers can upload their creations to be signed off by our online buyer and team, and we’ve also been working hard on our customer journey and UX (user experience). Stores are still our biggest driver for the business but we’re definitely seeing online close the gap a little bit.

Describe your demographic. We have a varied demographic, and try to provide something for everyone. However, as a challenger brand within the traditional greetings card market we’ll always be known for our cheeky/rude humour, which appeals to a younger, modern audience. What brands have been particularly popular? Pop culture, and particularly politics has been popular with our customers for quite some time now. Although all-time need to continue to do, and having good working relationships with experienced print partners has really helped. What challenges have you faced over the past few months and how have you dealt with them? The biggest challenges for me particularly, on the creative side, have been rising costs of materials and design. I’ve done more visits to our printers and held more calls with external designers and freelancers than I have in quite some time.

This has meant working closely to plan in advance and make sure there are larger holdings of the types of boards and envelopes we want to use. I’m feeling confident that longer term these new lines of communication and ways of working will help us stay on track into next year.

I’m also really excited about some of the conversations started, new relationships and innovation that have come out of the past few challenging years of retail.

“Print on demand means we can produce what stores actually need, reducing the old methods of warehouses full of stock’’

bestsellers still come from our own-brand retro humour range and our punny food cards.

Through print on demand we’ve also been able to discover really popular designs from all over the independent design community, including my personal favourite designs at the moment from Studio Boketto.

Have you seen the average cost of your products go up - and if so how have you dealt with it? We’ve seen, just as everyone else has, cost prices go up everywhere. Board is more expensive than it was and ever increasing, so that naturally carries over into the products we buy in as well. On our own brand and print on demand products we’ve been fortunate enough to work closely with our printers on things like board types, making sure we have something cost effective and readily available without compromising quality. This is something we’ll

And finally...

If you could choose the cards people sent you - which would you choose to receive for Christmas or birthday or other special occasion?

I’m a big fan of a funny card and am loving the Studio Boketto ranges at the moment that I mentioned earlier. I also love ‘the little world of Liz’ cards from Redback – both of which I discovered via the Scribbler website. But I also love just beautiful, well-designed cards. My partner usually gets me something great from Ohh Deer, and my best friend just brought me the nicest card by Noi Publishing with cute dogs and flowers all over it!