WHSmith is a British retailer, headquartered in Swindon, England, which operates a chain of high street, railway station, airport, port, hospital and motorway service station shops selling books, stationery, magazines, newspapers, entertainment products and confectionery.
Dollarama is a Canadian dollar store retail chain headquartered in Montreal. Since 2009 it is Canada's largest retailer of items for five dollars or less. Dollarama has over 1400 stores and has a presence in every province of Canada; Ontario has the most stores.
Woolworths Group Limited is an Australian trans-Tasman retailer headquartered in Bella Vista, Sydney, with extensive operations throughout Australia and New Zealand. It is the largest company in Australia by revenue and the second-largest in New Zealand.
American Greetings Corporation is a privately owned American company and is the world's second largest greeting card producer behind Hallmark Cards. Based in Westlake, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, the company sells paper greeting cards, electronic greeting cards, gift packaging, stickers and party products. In addition, the company owns the Carlton Cards, Tender Thoughts, Papyrus, Recycled Paper Greetings and Gibson brands.
Woolworths Supermarkets is an Australian chain of supermarkets and grocery stores owned by Woolworths Group. Founded in 1924, Woolworths today is Australia's biggest supermarket chain with a market share of 33% as of 2019.
A catalog merchant is a form of retailing. The typical merchant sells a wide variety of household and personal products, with many emphasizing jewelry. Unlike a self-serve retail store, most of the items are not displayed; customers select the products from printed catalogs in the store and fill out an order form. The order is brought to the sales counter, where a clerk retrieves the items from the warehouse area to a payment and checkout station.
Carlton Cards Limited is a greeting card company in Canada. Its lines of cards include Carlton, Gibson and Tender Thoughts. It also distributes the American Greetings line of cards in Canada. Since 2009, "Carlton Card Retail" has been owned by Schurman Retail Group, its wholesale division remaining with American Greetings; the stores are set to close in 2020. The closure does not impact the 6000 Canadian retail locations that sell Carlton Cards products.
Studio Retail Group plc, known until July 2019 as Findel plc, is a British home shopping company, based in Accrington, Lancashire. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange though its shares have been suspended since 14 February 2022, when it announced its intention to appoint administrators. Its chairman has been Ian Burke since 16 December 2016.
SandpiperCI is an international retail and foodservice operator with over 80 stores across five territories. They are a franchise partner with 10 of the world’s best brands as well as managing six locally grown brands to bring great shopping experiences to thousands of customers across the Channel Islands, Gibraltar, and Isle of Man.
Clintons, previously branded as Clinton Cards, is a chain of stores in the UK founded in 1968 by Don Lewin and known for selling greeting cards, together with soft toys and related gift products.
Birthdays was a British High Street greeting cards retailer. From its beginning in 1966, Ron Wood Greeting Cards operated as a wholesaler of greeting cards and gift wrap in Bury, Greater Manchester. In the mid-1970s three card shops were opened and soon the number had increased to thirty. In 1986 the Birthdays concept was launched, and the product range gradually diversified to include novelties, soft toys and ornaments. Birthdays operated for over 40 years under various names.
Card Factory is a retailer of greeting cards and gifts in the United Kingdom founded in Wakefield by Dean Hoyle and his wife Janet. The first store opened in 1997, and by 2020 the company had over 1,000 stores. The company also operates two retail websites and has mobile apps for both iPhone and Android. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange.
Target Corporation is an American big box department store chain headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is the seventh largest retailer in the United States, and a component of the S&P 500 Index. Target was established as the discount division of Dayton's department store of Minneapolis in 1962. It began expanding the store nationwide in the 1980s, and introduced new store formats under the Target brand in the 1990s. The company has found success as a cheap-chic player in the industry. The parent company was renamed Target Corporation in 2000, and divested itself of its last department store chains in 2004. It suffered from a massive, highly publicized security breach of customer credit card data and the failure of its short-lived Target Canada subsidiary in the early 2010s, but experienced revitalized success with its expansion in urban markets within the United States.
Hallmark Cards, Inc. is a private, family-owned American company based in Kansas City, Missouri. Founded in 1910 by Joyce Hall, Hallmark is the oldest and largest manufacturer of greeting cards in the United States. In 1985, the company was awarded the National Medal of Arts.
CSS Industries, Inc., was founded in 1923, as City Stores Company. Its headquarters is at 1845 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with showrooms in New York City, Memphis, Tennessee, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Hong Kong. The company designs, manufactures, and distributes seasonal and everyday greeting cards and novelties.
Shopkick is an American company based in Denver that created a shopping app for smartphones and tablets offering users’ rewards for shopping activities on both online and offline platforms such as walking into stores, scanning items, making in-app or in-store purchases and submitting receipts. Users are awarded "kicks" for these actions, and can exchange them for rewards in the form of mobile gift cards. The app is currently available for iOS and Android devices.
Paper Source is an American stationery and gift retailer based in Chicago, Illinois, that offers papers, custom invitations and announcements, gifts, greeting cards, gift wrap, paper craft kits, party supplies, and personalized stationery and stamps.
Schurman Retail Group is an American stationery, greeting card, gifts, and paper products company based in Fairfield, California. The company operates brands and retail stores under the names Papyrus, NIQUEA.D, and Paper Destiny. It also sells the American Greetings brand and manages its subsidiaries, including Carlton Cards. Schurman Retail Group has over 450 retail stores across the United States and Canada It is currently the second-largest American specialty retailer in the greeting card industry.
The Paper Store is an American retail company based in Acton, Massachusetts that owns and operates approximately 100 specialty gift stores across the northeast and Florida. The company is a family business that offers "on-trend" products catering to a predominantly female demographic, with a selection that includes apparel & accessories, jewelry, bath & body products, stationery, baby & toddler gifts, kids' toys, jigsaw puzzles, books, and Hallmark Cards greeting cards. The Paper Store is currently the largest interdependently-owned group of Hallmark Gold Crown stores in The United States. Other highly recognizable brands featured in their stores include Alex and Ani, Vera Bradley, Lilly Pulitzer, Kate Spade, Life is Good, Vineyard Vines, Pura Vida, Hydro Flask, and Ivory Ella.
The retail format influences the consumer's store choice and addresses the consumer's expectations. At its most basic level, a retail format is a simple marketplace, that is; a location where goods and services are exchanged. In some parts of the world, the retail sector is still dominated by small family-run stores, but large retail chains are increasingly dominating the sector, because they can exert considerable buying power and pass on the savings in the form of lower prices. Many of these large retail chains also produce their own private labels which compete alongside manufacturer brands. Considerable consolidation of retail stores has changed the retail landscape, transferring power away from wholesalers and into the hands of the large retail chains.
