Card, diary, calendar business dull as New Year dawns

Sales of New Year calendars, diaries and greetings cards have halved compared to last year, traders said, due to the surging prices of paper and various austerity measures taken by seasonal buyers.

According to traders, paper prices have doubled in the past year. At the same time, there is a shortage of good quality paper in the market due to low imports of pulps stemming from the dollar crisis.

The three months from November to January are the peak season for this particular business and more than 70% of calendars, diaries, notepads and wedding and greeting cards are sold during this season, according to the businessmen.

Several calendar and diary manufacturing companies, including Azad Products, Ideal Products, SKY products, New Cartoon Products, and A.B Card Centre in the capital's Purana Paltan area on Friday told The Business Standard that their New Year sales this year have plummeted further than the previous two years, hit hard as they have been by the pandemic.

On New Year, handing out calendars, diaries and greeting cards to customers by various services and business organisations, including banks, has long been a tradition in the country.   

However, this time private banks, insurance, various companies and financial institutions have adopted austerity measures to cut costs owing to the economic slowdown, traders said.

Md Ariful Islam, the proprietor of AB Card Centre, said the new year greeting card business has been on the wane for the last 10 years as smartphones gradually became popular among people. The pandemic in its own way drove the last nail into the coffin. 

"Even before the pandemic, I used to sell around 50,000 cards during the new year. This year, I have sold only 3,000 at a wholesale price of Tk20-25 per piece." Ariful said. 

Calendars are selling for Tk40 to Tk100 depending on the quality while diaries go for Tk150-250 and greeting cards for Tk40 to Tk60.

Md Ismail, a sales staff of SKY Products, said, "Last year, a company bought 22,000 six-page calendars from us. This time that same company purchased 10,000 three-page calendars."

Sanjay Mandal, a marketing officer at Plasma Research Centre, came to Purana Paltan to pick up the 200 calendars pre-ordered from New Cartoon Products.

"Last year, we printed diaries along with calendars but no diary this time," Sanjay said.

According to the Printing Industries Association of Bangladesh (PIAB), the market for calendars, diaries and notebooks is around Tk1,500 crore while about two lakh people are employed in this sector.

Ideal Products CEO Md Nuruzzaman said that around three to four lakh calendars were sold last year whereas around two lakhs have been sold this time. 

"The number of diaries sold last year was about five lakh compared to the meagre 20,000 diaries that have been sold so far," he said.

Azad Products General Manager Mostofa Kamal said a six-page calendar costs Tk80-90. To cut costs, many buyers are now interested in three-page and even one-page calendars rather than six-page ones.

"Diaries, usually made with local white print paper, are selling for Tk200 to Tk250. The price of one-tonne white print paper was Tk95 thousand last year, which now has doubled to Tk1.90 lakh. But we have not increased the price of diaries compared to the paper price hike. Our profit has shrunk significantly," Mostofa Kamal added.

The General Secretary of the Printing Industries Association of Bangladesh, Md Zahurul Islam, said the market share of calendars is 30% and diaries 30%. The business has been declining since 2020 but this year, paper prices have doubled and sales have halved. 

"We are struggling to sustain the business. There was a time when private organisations, mainly banks, used to order huge numbers of greeting cards for New Year. That is not the case anymore. People now use smartphones to send out digital greeting cards through messages or using other apps," Zahurul said, adding that the sector is facing a crisis like never before.