Clinton sees growth with Birthdays

CLINTON Cards, the retailer which put its North West subsidiary Birthdays into administration in May and then bought back the best performing shops, has reported a “solid performance” in recent months.

The Essex-based group said like-for-like sales for the 16 weeks to November 22 increased by 3.9% reflecting growth across all its product categories.

In an interim management statement the business said the Birthdays business, “continues to improve and is meeting expectations”.

Since August Clinton has opened eight new stories and closed 10, leaving it with 859. Some 676 are Clinton stores while 183 trade under the Birthdays brand.

Clinton put the 332-store Bury-based Birthdays chain, which had been making losses for some time, into insolvency in May as part of a plan to turn the business around.

A month later it bought 196 better-performing shops for £3.5m, saving 1,450 jobs out of the total workforce of 2,100.