The story
Clinton Cards was founded in 1968 when Don Lewin opened his first shop in Epping, Essex. The business grew to 77 shops by 1988 and was then successfully floated on the London Stock Exchange.
In 2004, the company purchased the Birthdays chain of card and party shops for £46.4 million but placed the subsidiary into administration in 2009, subsequently buying back 140 of the 332 stores.
In May 2012, the company's main supplier American Greetings bought £36 million of Clintons debt from its main lending banks, and immediately called in the debt for payment. Clinton Cards was unable to make the payment and entered administration on 9 May, with Peter Saville, Simon Freakley and Anne O'Keefe of Zolfo Cooper LLP, appointed as Joint Administrators of the Company. A week later 350 branches were closed, including all the Birthdays branches, and the remaining 397 stores were purchased the following month by US-based American Greetings' subsidiary Lakeshore Lending Limited. That October, 12 stores were disposed of and sold to its main rival Card Factory.
In 2023, Clintons was once again facing financial difficulties; the company appointed advisors to help it avoid insolvency and looked to close 38 of its 179 shops.
From Wikipedia’s article on Clintons, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4