Transformation underway at Yorkshire-based Card Factory as sales keep rising

The Card Factory has published its interim results for the six months ended 31 July 2021.

The company said its results were in line with expectations and a transformation was underway to create an omni-channel model to deliver sustainable revenue and profit growth.

Total group revenue during the period increased by 16.3% to £116.9m driven by the impact on trading of Covid-19 related lockdowns:

Darcy Willson-Rymer, Chief Executive Officer, commented: "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, omni-channel 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.

"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.

"We look forward to successfully executing our strategy to transition Card Factory into a market leading omni-channel retailer of cards and gifts, delivering sustainable revenue and profit growth and driving value for all our stakeholders."