Clinton Cards

This is a small branch of Clinton Cards in the Kings Mall, just inside the main entrance. Its size is its undoing: whilst the stock is reasonable — a pared down version of the normal range — the aisles between the card displays are narrow, so that if someone is browsing, you have to nudge them out of the way if you want to browse in the same spot. This requires management to work that much harder if everything is to be kept neat and tidy.
And whilst in the larger stores I find the selection of ‘teddy tat’ — cheap cuddly items for buying on the spur of the moment — merely a distraction, here it takes up space that might more usefully be given over to cards. This was especially so the other day when I was looking for a Valentine’s card: the jostling for a space was quite unpleasant, the card displays had become a real mess, and there was a vast amount of ‘teddy tat’ aimed especially at the Valentine’s Day market clogging the remaining space in the aisles. This seemed to have drawn in a large crowd of pubescent teenagers, but was clearly putting off other customers who — like me — went elsewhere.