Small businesses react to first class stamp price hike
UK’s Greeting Card Association members concerned Royal Mail is ignoring views of small and medium-sized businesses and their consumers.
This month Royal Mail raised the price of a first class stamp from £1.35 to £1.65 – an inflation-busting 22 per cent increase that’s the fifth hike in less than three years.
A first class stamp is now almost twice the price of a second class stamp, which remains affordable at 85p because it has the protection of being pegged to inflation by regulator Ofcom.
And the UK’s Greeting Card Association which represents over 500 publishers, retailers, agents, specialist suppliers and distributors in an industry worth £1.5bn to the UK economy, said it feared the rise was part of a plan to kill off the more affordable second class stamp for good.
That’s because Ofcom and Royal Mail last month announced plans to chop the second class post down to three or even two days a week – and ending Saturday second class deliveries.
The GCA believes that move will seriously undermine consumer trust in the service, leaving the small businesses they represent fearing the service will be wound down – and if it is, it will leave them and the consumers they serve, with no option but to use an unregulated, high price first class stamp for important cards and letters that need to be delivered on time.
Owners of thriving online greeting card businesses are concerned about this.
Grace Jackson, founder of Grace Jackson Design, may have founded her business in 2019, but she has known the emotional value of a handwritten card for much longer. One of her most enduring childhood memories is watching her mother write a stack of over 100 Christmas cards each year. She sees her hand-foiled, premium greeting cards as keepsakes in their own right – and is saddened that rising price rises will make it harder for her customers to commemorate the little moments in their loved ones lives’ affordably.
Grace said: “It worries me massively, because I know both as a business owner and a customer that a handwritten card means so much, and this will undoubtedly result in people sending fewer cards.
“A handwritten card is such a meaningful gesture, whether it is celebrating a big milestone or just to tell someone you are thinking of them – and it feels like the Royal Mail are trying to kill that off. Five price rises in under three years is atrocious, and I am afraid of what it means for my business going forward.”