David Falkner may spend his days selling pop-up cards of Star Wars stormtrooper helmets and Harry Potter’s Hogwarts, but he’s intent on ensuring his industry is taken seriously. “We punch well above our weight,” said the co-founder of Cardology, of the £1.5bn greetings card industry.
Falkner and a cluster of fellow card retailers gathered in London this week to voice concerns over proposals to cut back Britain’s postal service.
In late January, the communications regulator, Ofcom, set out a series of options for the future of the service, namely creating a slower, more reliable service or cutting the number of days on which Royal Mail delivers letters, from six days a week to five or even three. A costly next-day service would be retained.
The consultation is expected to ultimately lead to a reform of the universal service obligation (USO) – the company’s mandate to deliver to every address in the UK at a fixed price, six days a week.
Royal Mail argues that the sharp fall in letter volumes over the past two decades makes its current business model unsustainable. As part of the process, Ofcom is hosting a series of events for interested parties – from small businesses to direct mail companies – to chew over the potential impact.
“This feels to me a bit like a Beeching cut, it feels panicked,” said Falkner, sitting on stage at Ofcom’s offices overlooking St Paul’s Cathedral. He was referring to the 1963 Beeching report, which led to huge cuts to rail lines and stations nationwide, and has long been lamented as an overzealous cost-cutting exercise that damaged the railways in the long term. Businesses fear the postal cuts could have the same effect.
Much of the focus after Ofcom’s announcement has been on the impact on consumers – including elderly and vulnerable people – but businesses are also worried.
“Of course letters have declined with email, but greetings cards are still very much a paper-based business, it’s a really strong economy,” said Heidi Early, the owner of Early Bird Designs, a greetings card and gift shop in Stoke Newington, north-east London. “It’s growing, my business is thriving and it relies on a reliable and affordable postal service.
“My customers are still sending cards but I’m getting comments every day about how unreliable the postal service is and how expensive it’s become in relation to the cost of a greetings card.”