Winning Best Retailer Initiative at The Retas 2025

We were incredibly proud to have our Female Founders Month campaign named Best Retailer Initiative at The Retas 2025, a national awards event celebrating the very best of the UK greeting card industry.

Not long afterwards, the Leicester Mercury also featured the story, helping share the campaign and award win more widely within our local community.

What made this recognition feel particularly special was that the campaign came directly from a genuine desire to create something positive, thoughtful and engaging for our customers. It wasn’t created to win awards. In fact, most of the best ideas in independent retail rarely begin that way. They usually start with a simple question:

“How can we make this experience more meaningful for the people walking through our doors?”

Female Founders Month gave us an opportunity to celebrate creativity, resilience and entrepreneurship in a way that felt warm, visually engaging and easy for customers to connect with. We wanted the campaign to feel joyful and uplifting while still carrying a deeper message about supporting independent businesses and the people behind them.

One of the things I’m most passionate about is showing that retail campaigns do not need to be overly corporate, gimmicky or complicated to be effective. Independent shops have something much more powerful available to them: authenticity, personality and genuine connection with their customers.

The response to the campaign was honestly incredible. Customers engaged with it emotionally, conversations began naturally in the shop, and it created a real sense of energy and momentum throughout the month. Winning the award afterwards felt like a lovely reflection of the impact it had already had in real life.

I was also especially pleased that the Leicester Mercury covered the story, because local independent retail is such an important part of community life and local identity. Small shops work incredibly hard behind the scenes, often with very limited resources, so it means a great deal when those efforts are recognised and celebrated publicly.

For me, the award wasn’t simply about one campaign. It reinforced something I strongly believe about independent retail more broadly: thoughtful ideas, genuine care and emotional connection still matter enormously.

And perhaps more importantly, customers notice when those things are real.