Where Mothers Day Magic Begins Behind the Scenes at UK Greetings

Mother’s Day is a major UK holiday, second only to Christmas in card sales.

By Grace McIntosh, Radio News Hub

Approximately 30 million Mother’s Day cards are sold and sent in the UK every year.

Publisher UK Greetings, based in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire,  have been making cards for more than a hundred years.  

It’s a collaborative process and begins with thorough market research and analysis of trends in celebrations and the overall card market.  

Lois Holcroft, who’s worked at UK Greetings for 32 years, works in the Insight Team.   She told me it all starts with analysis: “We do quite a lot of analysis around all the different celebrations. which ones are growing? which ones are maybe not growing as much? what’s happening in the total card market? and then we work with the product teams, who then do briefings and specs to the creative teams, who will then develop some wonderful designs.”  

The design team work two years in advance – so the cards you see on the shelves this Mother’s Day were actually designed back in 2023.  

And then there’s the words of course.  

Editorial Manager Laura Mace works in the team that write the words that go in the cards.  

She told Radio News Hub: “It’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation of whether the words or the design come first. so sometimes it’s the message and then the design around that. Sometimes they come up with a beautiful design, and then we add the words to complement it. 

“When we’re thinking about mum, for example, we’ve got to cover every single person, every type of relationship. So whether that’s, you and your mum are as close as close can be, right down to, you know, maybe things are a bit trickier, or you’re just not the kind of people who like to say that kind of thing so it’s about covering all of that and everything in between. It could be one line or we do some cards that are eight pages of rhyming verse.”

In recent years the day has become a wider celebration of the women in our life.  

To reflect this UK Greetings now do more than 40 different caption areas for Mother’s Day, including “From your fur baby” and a “Dad on Mother’s Day” caption for the dad’s that have had to be the mother figure too.  

Both Lois and Laura told me the key theme around the holiday is gratitude and mum’s really care about the cards that they get.  

Comparing it to Father’s Day Lois added: “Mums are much more likely to be disappointed by their adult kids on Mother’s Day. They say getting a card is the next most important thing after actually seeing their children on Mother’s Day and it’s the number one purchased item at Mother’s Day.  

“Then flowers and stuff come after that, but cards are the number one.”

Published: 30/03/2025 by Radio NewsHub