Huge high street fashion brand to make a major change in all 223 stores – and shoppers will love it

A HUGE high street fashion brand is making a major change in all 223 of its stores.

Matalan will add concessions of Card Factory products in all of its shops by the end of 2023.

It means Matalan shoppers will be able to buy Card Factory cards and celebration essentials across their entire UK estate.

The products are already available in 22 stores as part of the first phase of the rollout.

It comes as Card Factory saw a 73% increase in its pre-tax profits to £24.7million in the six months to the end of July.

Like-for-like sales increased by 10.5% in stores but online sales fell by 13.1% in the same period.

Chief executive Darcy Willson-Rymer said: “Our value and quality proposition and the strength of our store estate resonates with customers and positions us well to navigate the challenging economic backdrop in the run-up to the Christmas trading season.

“Continued leveraging of the insights gathered from our investment in customer data is enabling us to evolve and optimise our store formats and ranges across cards, gifts and celebration essentials, all underpinned by our discipline in maintaining a resilient financial position.”

Founded in 1997, Card Factory’s first store was located in Wakefield.

The greetings card chain now operates across 1,000 standalone stores in both the UK and Ireland.

The brand also sells products in over 530 Aldi supermarkets as well as operating concessions in Matalan stores.

Card Factory’s growth comes at the same time that its biggest rival battles to keep a presence on the high street.

Restructuring experts FRP Advisory and law firm Jones Day presented a plan to save Clintons in an insolvency court in August.

The deal has saved thousands of jobs and over one hundred shops across the UK.

But the retailer will still have to close 38 of its 225 stores in the hope that it’ll return to profitability.

The restructuring plan cuts the amount of business rates and rent Clintons has to pay on the loss-making stores that are set to close, according to the Evening Standard.

Landlords and local councils will receive just 8.6p for every pound owed by Clintons on these 38 stores.

Jeff and Zev Weiss, the owners of the Clintons, have also agreed to provide a revolving loan facility to keep the chain afloat for the next 12 months.

The card shop has already closed a string of stores earlier this year.

Speculation had been raised over the firm’s future when it announced back in 2019 that it urgently needed to close 66 of its sites to avoid collapse.

The firm resolved its woes by entering into what’s known as a “pre-pack administration” back in December 2019.

Clintons brand and its assets – its shops, staff and website – were sold to a new company called Esquire Retail Limited.

The move involved hundreds of job losses and store closures.

At its peak before administration, the retailer had 2,500 staff working across 335 shops.