AROUND 100 Scottish workers in 14 stores are to lose their jobs in the first wave of closures at collapsed retailer Clinton Cards, administrators said.
They are among 366 redundancies across the UK which have come after the group, the country's biggest specialist cards retailer, collapsed into administration earlier this month.
The first 44 stores, out of 350 lined up for closure, will shut before the end of May, administrator Zolfo Cooper said, including 25 Birthdays and 19 Clinton stores.
Further store closures are due in the coming weeks, although Zolfo said there was no further information at this time.
The affected Clinton stores in Scotland are in Airdrie, Coatbridge, Edinburgh The Fort, Galashiels, Glasgow Byres Road, Glasgow Sauchiehall Street, Greenock, Hamilton, Paisley and Stirling. The four Birthdays shops to close are in Cumbernauld, Dalkeith, Falkirk and Fort William.
There have been reports that WHSmith, which bought the online personalised greetings card brand Funky Pigeon in 2010, is interested in buying up to 350 stores. Card Factory, Clinton's biggest competitor with 596 stores, is also thought to have approached administrators.
Clinton has suffered dire trading in recent months as it comes up against stiff competition from supermarkets and online retailers such as Funky Pigeon and Moonpig.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article