Leading greeting card publisher and franchisor, Card Connection, has announced that the majority of its franchisees (87% of respondents from a recent satisfaction survey), are ‘satisfied’ or ‘very satisfied’ with the overall size of the Card Connection product range.

Almost three quarters were also ‘satisfied’ or ‘very satisfied’ with the design strength and balance of the Card Connection greeting card and gift ranges.

“One of our strengths as an organisation is our in-house product creation and development department: we currently have the largest range of greetings cards available in the franchised distribution market, with more than 1,500 quality designs,” explains Andrew Cutler, sales and franchise director of Card Connection. “However, it is essential that we get open feedback from our franchisee network so that we can continue to improve our products and services.

“The good news is, that despite continued economic challenges, a significant majority of our survey respondents have reported they have been able to ‘improve’ the profitability of their business over the past year or ‘maintain’ the same level of income,” continues Cutler. “10% of our franchisees have improved their level of profitability ‘significantly’.

“Our most successful franchisees attribute their increased profitability to trading up and increasing margin through selling higher product price codes through retail customer outlets,” confirms Cutler. “We will be working hard with all our franchisees across the country over the next year, to pass on these lessons and ensure every franchisee in our network can continue to optimise their level of profitability.”

Card Connection is part of UK Greetings, the largest publicly owned greeting card publisher in the world and has limited vacancies for franchisees who are keen to run an expanding business. Successful candidates would ideally have some management experience as, once established, they would be expected to employ a small team, operate a warehouse and have several liveried vans on the road.

Because the franchise networks in the UK and Ireland are complete, the available opportunities now consist of acquiring an already-established territory from an existing franchisee. These vary in price according to their level of development, but start at £20,000 (+ stock) with earnings potential in excess of £50K per annum.