Store gallery: Clinton Cards back from the brink

The greetings card sector is a tough arena in which to operate. To be successful, a shop has to be in an area of relatively high footfall (with associated high rents), has to offer ranges that capture the mood of the moment (and greetings cards are as prone to the vagaries of fashion as anything else) and have a store environmentthat is appealing.

On this reckoning, Clinton Cards might be seen to have been struggling on the store environment front for a while – desperately clinging on to its orange branding and with a shop- fit that, to put things generously, looked outmoded. Now, fortunately, things have changed, in the City of London at least.

More accurately, a store has opened that may represent a way forward for a retail brand that has been through the mill this year – being put through administration and having its estate whittled down, bit by bit, to 400 stores. And across this portfolio there is a range of store types, representing a retailer that has changed its mind many times over the years and has updated some stores while leaving others to muddle through.

The single thing that unites all apart from the new store, unveiled on Cheapside, is the colour orange and great swathes of it are spread across the estate. Prior to its well-documented problems, Clintons unveiled a new (very bright orange) format early in 2011 – at the time of the royal wedding. That was in St Albans and at least had the merit of standing out from the rest of the high street in that location, but possibly not for the best reasons.

Stand outside the newly opened Cheapside store, however, and the view is different. A muted cherry red takes the place of orange and the single word Clintons is written in a faux handwritten font that offers the twin benefits of making you forget the retailer’s heritage while offering something genuinely attractive in its place.

There is more to a revamp than changing a fascia, however, or at least there should be, and at this point it is worth considering what Clinton Cards looks like in other locations. In the context of the City, the closest branch is where Lime Street meets Fenchurch Street, about half a mile east of Cheapside.

This is a little piece of history as far as Clintons is concerned and the storefront wraps around the corner of the two streets. The logo is orange and the large amount of glass frontage ought to provide good views into the interior. It does not. Walk through the door and lighting levels seems subdued, the displays tired and the carpet threadbare.

This is actually an enormous store with an escalator to the right of the entrance – whisking shoppers upstairs to the first floor that looks… just like the floor below it. And as well as being over-spaced, the point-of-sale material around the perimeter on the ground floor had obviously been used for some other purpose as there were tape marks on it where whatever covered it up had been removed. The Pure Party shop-in-shop looked distinctly uncelebratory and the store was completely empty as the morning rush, at about 8am, passed its front door.

All in all, a difficult store, but the upside is that the nearby Cheapside shop might as well have been a different company. Located along the road from a branch of Paperchase and more or less opposite One New Change, it is in the middle of a retail hub for the City that is choc-full of new shops. A destination therefore, and Clintons is well placed to benefit from this.

Laden with gifts

For those selecting Clintons ahead of Paperchase, this is a pleasant experience although, curiously, if you are looking for cards, you might be forgiven – initially at least – for thinking that you were in the wrong place.

There are some cards at the front of the shop, along the wall on the right-hand side. For the most part, however, what confronts the shopper are a variety of birch veneer tables bearing gifts. These are in the mid-shop and to the left is the cash desk, which has wrapping paper and bags on the wall behind it, but cards are few and far between.

In fairness, Clintons obviously wants to push the gift category but at the same time keep those who just peer in informed that it also sells cards. This is achieved thanks to differing equipment heights – low at the front and high, in the shape of mid-shop gondolas, at the back – which also allows the requisite product density to be achieved.

It is therefore clear that this is a shop that has a substantial card offer, as well as gifts. And if the shoppers heads for the rear half of the space, it’s cards and nothing else.

Some of the cards around the perimeter are merchandised by type, rather than occasion – making understanding what is being viewed relatively straightforward. Clintons new owner American Greetings has opted to include Papyrus as a header on part of the perimeter. Papyrus is a US fascia operated by Schurman Retail Group, of which American Greetings owns 15%, but it will mean little to UK shoppers and may even serve to confuse when viewed in the context of what else is on show.

Cards on the mid-shop gondolas are, for the most part, displayed in a highly traditional manner, by both occasion and recipient. So if a card is sought for a great uncle’s 95th birthday, this is where it is likely to be found.

Point of difference

The real point, however, is just how different this store is from other Clintons branches, in terms of appearance at least. American Greetings’ ownership will have had a bearing on the form that this new format has taken. And compared with many other operators in the sector, this looks roll-out ready – a fully modular store design where furniture, perimeter cladding and cash desk could all be transplanted with relative ease to another location. It also happens to look distinctly North American (anyone who has visited a branch of Canadian books, cards and giftware chain Indigo will note the similarity) and its almost antiseptic modular nature speaks of a format that has its origins in a land of big skies and roll-outs across massive territories.

Given the £16m that has been set aside to remodel the estate, there has to be a mild question mark over whether there will be sufficient funds to replicate the dark wood floor, among other things, in other locations. It seems probable that a more cost-effective alternative may have to be found to make this scalable.

If, however, this can be realised without compromising the overall look and feel, then Clintons may yet have the capacity to return from the brink and even to show a profit, as its new owner claims will be the case, within two years.