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Card Factory plc
Card Factory sells greeting cards, gifts, and party supplies to shoppers through its own stores and website.
Card Factory is a British chain that sells greeting cards, wrapping paper, balloons, and small gifts — the stuff you grab at the last minute for a birthday, a wedding, or a thank-you. Most of its sales still happen in its own shops on high streets and in retail parks around the UK, where customers walk in, pick a card off the shelf, and pay a couple of pounds for it. It also runs a growing online business through cardfactory.co.uk and a separate site, Getting Personal, that sells personalised cards and gifts.
The business works because it does something the big card brands don't: it designs and prints most of its own cards and sells them cheaply. A typical Card Factory card costs less than a fancy coffee, and that low price is the whole point — it wins customers who would otherwise buy a pricier card from a supermarket or a specialist card shop. Because it makes its own products rather than buying them from suppliers, it keeps more of each sale. It also sells a lot of cards around Christmas, Valentine's Day, and Mother's Day, so its profits swing heavily with the calendar. That cheap-and-cheerful model has limits. The shops carry fixed costs like rent and staff, and the card market is mature — people still buy paper cards, but not many more of them each year. Card Factory has responded by expanding its online and personalised-gift offerings and by selling through third parties, and it has been opening new stores while closing weaker ones. The company has also had to manage the rising costs of wages, energy, and freight, which squeeze the thin margins on a two-pound card.
Its main competitors are the big supermarkets like Tesco and Sainsbury's, which sell cards alongside groceries, plus online players and other card retailers. Card Factory's edge is price and convenience — a small, focused shop where you can find a card in two minutes for less than the price of a sandwich. The company pays a dividend and has bought back shares in recent years, returning cash to investors rather than sitting on it.
Saved answer · last researched 15 Nov 2026