Carte Blanche Greetings (CBG) has hit the ground running with its first major plush and gift launch since 2020, bringing in work from artists and designers for a core offering of Signature and Essentials, with capsule collections of trend-led gifting.
With Covid putting the brakes on CBG’s plans for a biennial core refresh, with an annual capsule update, marketing manager Grace Elphinstone said the company’s aim is to offer “great product to drive consumers into retail again.”
The Me To You Everyday plush and gift range will hit stores in April with a refreshed look and new formats in the bestselling Signature and Essentials ranges. The Everyday 23 range also includes two trend-led capsule ranges, Lakeview and Tropical Oasis.
Featuring a calming watercolour palette, Lakeview offers a collection of pampering and wellbeing gifting while Tropical Oasis’ reveals more functional gifting linesaimed at creating a sanctuary at home, or while gardening and crafting, embracing the great outdoors and house plants.
For greater sentiment, CBG’s Signature look incorporates hand-drawn illustrations which capture the spirit of Me To You, and feature premium finishes and bestselling product formats.
The Essentials look meanwhile, covers everyday occasion and relations-basedsends, bringing together an explosion of colour and femininity at great value for money.
Adds Grace: “We ensure we provide retailers with a solid core offering of proven bestsellers in Signature and Essentials, and introduce trend-inspired concepts for capsule. Often, when these formats perform particularly well, and the trend becomes more mainstream, we move them into core.
“Me To You always works best when a consumer knows they can go to a retailer and buy into the full range. It’s a go-to brand for love and sentiment with huge brand awareness and we know consumers will buy Me To You gifts throughout the year for different occasions and relationships, so retailers who offer a full plan always do far better than those who only offer a limited selection.”
For plan buyers there’s POS support which retailers can add free of charge to their orders, with the 2023 launch supported with window posters, shelf liners, header boards and ceiling danglers tailored to the size of the plan purchased.
Greeting card customers can buy into one of the specialist plans to ensure they can create theatre in store.
“We’ll be supporting all of this further with a competition for the best window display, rewarding the winner with a range of prizes including a Tatty Teddy costume character visit for the winning store. And throughout the year, we will have a range of additional consumer promotions planned to help support the launch.”
With a social media following above 223,000, CBG is set to use this fan army to help independent retailers, with a new dedicated stockists page space on the MetoYou.com website, where anyone who buys into a gift and plush or greeting card plan will be listed as an ‘Official Stockist’ on the site.
“We also know that social media is an important tool for retailers themselves,” Grace continues, “and, as well as sowing stories about the launch to our fans and influencers, we’ll also be providing independent retailers with their own social media packs including an amendable press release and lifestyle imagery so that they can create their own coverage.
”There’s a lot going on, as we know it’s tough for indies, so we want to support them as much as possible.”
Top: Carte Blanche Greetings has unveiled a major new Me To You Everyday launch of plush and giftware. Shown is Essentials.
