Kate Smith Company is celebrating successfully traversing its first year in business and looking ahead to further growth in 2022.
The greeting cards and calendar business – which focuses on positivity and creating joyful moments with happy faces from simple phrases and uplifting tones – officially launched in spring 2021, having appointed Lisle Licensing as its exclusive UK agent the previous year.
The team worked hard on re-designing the existing Kate Smith Company ranges as UK vs US style as the humour, sentiment and wording in the greetings sector is vastly different.
Lisle, meanwhile, appointed Hallmark Cards for greeting cards, Moonpig for print on demand and greetings, plus Carousel Calendars for wall calendars and diaries, all of which launched in 2021.
In three quarters of 2021, Moonpig sold more than 166,000 in cards alone, with sales surpassing forecasts by more than 250%. Meanwhile, Hallmark sold more than 99,000 cards between June and December and Carousel Calendars sold more than 30,000 pieces of the three skus it listed. The wall calendar sold 18,000 pieces alone.
Looking further into 2022, Kate Smith Company and Lisle Licensing will focus on expanding the distribution of existing licences and broaden the seasonal collections including Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Christmas. Lisle will also turn its attention to expansion of the Kate Smith Company brand into secondary categories and is aiming to schedule meetings at upcoming industry trade shows.
“We’re so excited about the launch of our brand in the UK with the help of Lisle Licensing,” commented company owner, Kate Smith. “Bringing on three spectacular licensees in the first year has really helped us spread lots of hugs, high fives and lols. We look forward making humans smile every day through our growing UK product offering.”
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