Canadians are turning to holiday cards to spread some much-needed joy this year. In some cases, the personal touch of handmade cards is even helping to bridge the physical distance keeping so many people apart because of COVID-19.
The pandemic has brought incalculable sadness to many Canadian families, but for Niki Hawel, who lives in London, about 190 kilometres southwest of Toronto, the plight of seniors in long-term care homes was closest to her heart in the early days of the pandemic.
“I thought about one of my grandparents being in a home and feeling like they were alone,” she told the CBC in an interview. “I couldn’t really process that.”
Which is why she hatched a plan to show residents of such homes that they were not alone in the best way available to her at the time: greeting cards.
The project first started with her and her daughter making cards for residents of long-term care homes in the London area, but as word of the project spread, more volunteers signed up. It has since grown to become something she calls the Smiling Seniors Project and has an ambitious goal: 2,000 greeting cards sent this holiday season.
“It seems like something that’s so small, but to them, it’s everything,” she said. “I didn’t want anybody thinking that they were just forgotten about.”
Sales boom
The U.S.-based Greeting Card Association told CBC News that it’s hard to get a handle on overall sales numbers this year because retail shutdowns are clearly having an impact, but the group that speaks on behalf of the greeting card industry says that cards aimed at expressing the sentiment that the sender is “thinking of you” are “up significantly” this year, and there are indeed “unprecedented increases in online purchases.”
“We are seeing earlier purchases of Christmas cards this year, and are optimistic that it will be a strong season, but it’s still too early to make that conclusion,” the GCA’s executive director Nora Weiser said in an emailed statement.
“The trend the last few years has been to purchase cards later, so the early strong sales this year bode well.”
Jon Hamilton, a spokesperson with Canada Post, says the letter carrier’s overall transaction volume is up by about 40 per cent this year, and a big part of that is cards.
“We know anecdotally this may be the year that everyone actually sent off those Christmas cards they buy every year and never quite get to, because they’re not going to make those in-person connections,” he said in an interview.
Small business owner Amy Kwong typically sells most of her cards wholesale to other retailers, but this year she’s seen an uptick of sales to consumers, mostly from online orders. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
The vast majority of Hawel’s cards are homemade. But the need to reach out via a greeting card is driving a sales boom in the store-bought variety, too. Amy Kwong owns a card and collectible store in Toronto. The physical location is called I Have A Crush On You and is in the trendy Liberty Village area of the city.
Her greeting card business has changed this year. She normally sells mostly wholesale orders to other stores, but she’s noticed a growing business selling online this year to individuals via her web portal, Smitten Kitten.
The dark days of March and April were hard on her business just as they were on many others, but she says business has picked up since then as people wanted to find new ways to reach out to loved ones they couldn’t see face to face.
“A lot of our stores cancelled their orders, but come September, October, November, sales picked up again so Christmas wasn’t cancelled,” she said. “So that was good.”
Kwong’s seeing the biggest sales from one type of card: those with dark humour that poke fun at the world’s plight in the pandemic.
“The cards that we design are more lighthearted,” she said. “I think maybe they want to send something that will get a giggle out of their friends — and her top seller contains a lot of words that aren’t fit to print on this website.
“It sort of reflects the, you know, the pandemic that we’re going through.”
Other card sellers are seeing a similar uptick. E-commerce website Etsy sells handmade artisanal items on behalf of local vendors and it says searches for greeting cards on its platform have almost doubled this holiday season.
Etsy card seller Emily Schirmer shows off two of her hottest sellers this holiday season. (Pierre-Paul Couture/CBC)
Montrealer Emily Schirmer is seeing that firsthand. She temporarily lost her day job in the spring when the pandemic first hit, which gave her more time to work on her Etsy store that was never really a major source of income for her before. “I had all this time so I started making illustrations and I made them into cards, she said.
“I started getting more sales and it just kind of took off during quarantine this year,” said Schirmer.
One of Schirmer’s most-popular cards riffs on an incident that most Canadians remember well: Justin Trudeau’s “speaking moistly” slip of the tongue in April.
WATCH | Trudeau’s viral ‘speaking moistly’ moment
While he points out that he’s not a medical expert, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he understands that masks can help protect people from “breathing or speaking moistly” on others. 1:15
She made a card about it, and her business blew up.
“The caption is, ‘I got you this card so I wouldn’t have to speak moistly on you,'” she said. “That was the card that really took off.”
Her sales have grown from about one a month before the pandemic to about 40 a day now. She had 27 orders total prior to this year, but is now up to 1,700.
While the pandemic has been tough on everyone, she says, she’s glad she’s been able to spread a little joy, and turn a passion project into a job for her, personally.
“I really wanted to do something that was very lighthearted and kind of added a little bit of humour to kind of lift people’s spirits a little bit,” she said.
While her Trudeau card was what got the ball rolling for her business, her top seller captures the spirit of this holiday season aptly.
“It says: ‘That’s a wrap 2020,’ and it’s a picture of a toilet paper roll with a bow on it.”
TORONTO – Roots Corp. may have built its brand on all things comfy and cosy, but its CEO says activewear is now “really becoming a core part” of the brand.
The category, which at Roots spans leggings, tracksuits, sports bras and bike shorts, has seen such sustained double-digit growth that Meghan Roach plans to make it a key part of the business’ future.
“It’s an area … you will see us continue to expand upon,” she told analysts on a Friday call.
The Toronto-based retailer’s push into activewear has taken shape over many years and included several turns as the official designer and supplier of Team Canada’s Olympic uniform.
But consumers have had plenty of choice when it comes to workout gear and other apparel suited to their sporting needs. On top of the slew of athletic brands like Nike and Adidas, shoppers have also gravitated toward Lululemon Athletica Inc., Alo and Vuori, ramping up competition in the activewear category.
Roach feels Roots’ toehold in the category stems from the fit, feel and following its merchandise has cultivated.
“Our product really resonates with (shoppers) because you can wear it through multiple different use cases and occasions,” she said.
“We’ve been seeing customers come back again and again for some of these core products in our activewear collection.”
Her remarks came the same day as Roots revealed it lost $5.2 million in its latest quarter compared with a loss of $5.3 million in the same quarter last year.
The company said the second-quarter loss amounted to 13 cents per diluted share for the quarter ended Aug. 3, the same as a year earlier.
In presenting the results, Roach reminded analysts that the first half of the year is usually “seasonally small,” representing just 30 per cent of the company’s annual sales.
Sales for the second quarter totalled $47.7 million, down from $49.4 million in the same quarter last year.
The move lower came as direct-to-consumer sales amounted to $36.4 million, down from $37.1 million a year earlier, as comparable sales edged down 0.2 per cent.
The numbers reflect the fact that Roots continued to grapple with inventory challenges in the company’s Cooper fleece line that first cropped up in its previous quarter.
Roots recently began to use artificial intelligence to assist with daily inventory replenishments and said more tools helping with allocation will go live in the next quarter.
Beyond that time period, the company intends to keep exploring AI and renovate more of its stores.
It will also re-evaluate its design ranks.
Roots announced Friday that chief product officer Karuna Scheinfeld has stepped down.
Rather than fill the role, the company plans to hire senior level design talent with international experience in the outdoor and activewear sectors who will take on tasks previously done by the chief product officer.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
VANCOUVER – Mediated talks between the union representing HandyDART workers in Metro Vancouver and its employer, Transdev, are set to resume today as a strike that has stopped most services drags into a second week.
No timeline has been set for the length of the negotiations, but Joe McCann, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1724, says they are willing to stay there as long as it takes, even if talks drag on all night.
About 600 employees of the door-to-door transit service for people unable to navigate the conventional transit system have been on strike since last Tuesday, pausing service for all but essential medical trips.
Hundreds of drivers rallied outside TransLink’s head office earlier this week, calling for the transportation provider to intervene in the dispute with Transdev, which was contracted to oversee HandyDART service.
Transdev said earlier this week that it will provide a reply to the union’s latest proposal on Thursday.
A statement from the company said it “strongly believes” that their employees deserve fair wages, and that a fair contract “must balance the needs of their employees, clients and taxpayers.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
MONTREAL – Travel company Transat AT Inc. reported a loss in its latest quarter compared with a profit a year earlier as its revenue edged lower.
The parent company of Air Transat says it lost $39.9 million or $1.03 per diluted share in its quarter ended July 31.
The result compared with a profit of $57.3 million or $1.49 per diluted share a year earlier.
Revenue in what was the company’s third quarter totalled $736.2 million, down from $746.3 million in the same quarter last year.
On an adjusted basis, Transat says it lost $1.10 per share in its latest quarter compared with an adjusted profit of $1.10 per share a year earlier.
Transat chief executive Annick Guérard says demand for leisure travel remains healthy, as evidenced by higher traffic, but consumers are increasingly price conscious given the current economic uncertainty.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
