Independent is best

Independent artists are the best!

We are lucky enough to work with artists that are passionate about creating beautiful, funny and quirky greeting card designs. We are very proud of this community and make them front and centre in everything we do.

There is a reason why I am so passionate about this.

The idea for Cardly came to me more than 10 years ago.

At the time I was working in my family’s business. A successful chain of newsagencies that our family had built up around Australia. Greeting cards were our most profitable and important category. They were key to our success and something we really prided ourselves on.

But it wasn’t perfect. We were regularly approached by independent artists that were looking for us to range their cards. Some weren’t that great, but others were amazing and it was a great frustration that we always had to turn them away.

Why would we do that?

Because we didn't have a choice.

Economic realities meant that we had commercial agreements in place that limited what we could do. Unfortunately, the greeting card industry is monopolised by a couple of very large US companies. Hallmark and American Greetings. They pay for the fixturing, control 80% of the space and have the market dominance to offer margins that are impossible to ignore.

No matter how amazing the independent artist was they couldn't afford to give us the margins we needed. And couldn't service an expanded network of stores.

But that was then and this is now.

At Cardly, we ONLY work with independent artists. We pay them instantly and we try and be as generous as possible. We want to help independent artists get their cards to the world. We want to help them do what they love and be paid for it.