By Roly Gordon, Senior Direct Partnerships Manager at New Look
At New Look, sustainability and tackling climate change encompasses the steps we take to improve the lives of the workers throughout out value chain in a way that protects the environment and promotes animal welfare. This effort is something that can’t be achieved in isolation, that’s why in our strategy we are working hard to increase the integration of sustainability across the business and partnering with key organisations to ensure we take the right approach.
Kind to Our Core is something we talk about a lot at New Look. It’s the way we refer to our environment, social, and corporate government strategy. It sums up the values we want to embed and the actions we need to take across the entirety of our business.
Our gift card strategy is no different. We’ve really come a long way with our new ranges to ensure that our products are both sustainable and recyclable. We’ve worked with Thames Technology to produce some innovative designs which not only stand out but encompass production processes which keep our Kind to Our Core credentials.
Mother’s day ranges are a great example of this where Thames innovatively produced a stunning metal looking card and carrier set made from environmentally friendly paperboard from Holmen Iggesund who are one of the world’s most environmentally friendly paper mills powered by bio energy so that no fossil fuel is used.
But that’s not all. We’ve begun to think differently with our gift card trading stance. Rather than the usual promotions we thought we can involve our customers in another Kind to Our Core initiative.
New Look has recently partnered with Tree-Nation who creates reforestation efforts worldwide. So, the team got involved, created a Tree-Nation egift card and for every egift sold over the six weeks to Christmas we’d plant a tree in the New Look Forest. We had an amazing response which has resulted in planting 5,400 trees! We are so proud of this achievement which was a great wat for our customer to get involved. It’s clear that they want to slow down climate change too so we will repeat this activity again sometime throughout the year.
The gift card industry like everyone else is facing many challenges this year particularly in the rising costs of energy and sustainable materials. Although I firmly believe physical gift cards are here to stay, we have already ensured our physical gift card production last year gives us more volume to last 18 months which not only ensures we are ahead of our planning, but this also supports the environment.
Decreasing climate change can be working hard to increase those egift card sales. We’ve seen a significant increase in the mix of egift sales here over the last two years and there is more to do. It’s important that we keep exploring those untapped egift channels and opportunities so that we balance the mix and decrease the use of paper and board in the next 10 years.
