January
2010
E-cards the flavour of the month (CCO comments!)
CLIENTS and business associates of international ship supplies company HMS Far East will not be getting Christmas cards in the mail from the firm this year.
HMS has decided – for the first time since 1993 when it started operations in Singapore – to send out electronic greeting cards instead.
Managing director Peter Schellenberger said the switch to e-cards was a move towards being more environmentally friendly. ‘Protecting the environment means more than just recycling our used paper or packaging materials,’ he said.
The company, part of a bigger HMS group with eight offices worldwide, used to send out about 1,500 cards each year. With the switch, it sent out e-greeting cards to 500 more people this year, and enjoyed 75 per cent savings on its Christmas greetings budget.
More businesses are realising that going the e-card way is kinder on their pockets, and also helps to save the environment.
The Christmas period used to be the peak period for the postman because of Christmas cards. Nine years ago, Singapore Post delivered about 8.3 million Christmas cards alone in the month of December. Now it handles only about 5.3 million.
The Internet and e-mail have changed everything. And it means plenty of trees saved, based on the estimate that one tree can make 680kg of paper, or the equivalent of 34,000 cards.
While card-printing companies may have suffered a drop in business, the increased demand for e-cards has led to more of others offering designing services.
Those in the industry estimate that there were only 80 such companies seven years ago. Now, that number has grown to more than 250.
When Forest Concepts started out seven years ago, the main bulk of its business was in doing Web development work such as designing software and creating websites for companies.
Three years ago, it expanded its business to include designing e-cards, after many customers started asking for them.
The service quickly became a profit-churner. Said its marketing manager John Chong: ‘Companies are beginning to see e-cards as an opportunity for them to keep in touch with their clients all year round, not just for the festive season but also for birthday greetings and thank-you notes.’
Online portal www.ecards.sg, owned by Communique IDEAS, was started with a mission to go green, and it designs only e-cards.
Manager Dennis Teo said companies are expected by society to be environmentally conscious. ‘More and more big companies that are socially responsible in a more eco-friendly way will definitely go the green way of cutting down on their carbon footprint,’ he said.
Communique, with hundreds of major corporations as clients, has also seen its business grow by about 20 per cent each year.
Mr Simon Woon, sales manager of online solutions company Above1, said more organisations will go green and paperless as it is good for the budget as well as image.
The design and printing of corporate Christmas cards usually cost more than $1,000, compared with $500 to $1,000 for an e-card, which could be static or flash-animated and sent to as many people as the company wishes.
While it is boom time for e-card designers, it is a different story for another industry.
Ms Terrenz Luu, of local printing firm AN-V Printing, said: ‘This year, we have zero card orders.’
The last few years have been a downward spiral, she added.
Ms Mary Huang, of Axxa Design & Print, said her festive card business has plunged by 90 per cent, from hundreds of orders a few years back to barely 10 this year.
Even so, the carbon footprint of Christmas cards sent by Singaporeans last year, calculated based on figures from a British study, was estimated to be 228 tonnes of carbon dioxide, or the equivalent of the emissions from 14,500 households turning on a 100-watt light bulb for an hour.
The study by Best Foot Forward, a carbon-accounting firm, estimated that a mailed Christmas card has a carbon footprint of 43g of carbon dioxide, compared with an e-card’s emission of 4g.
It is even greener to send an SMS greeting. A study by British telco Vodafone estimated that an SMS produces about 0.000003g of carbon. This means the emission from an e-card is equivalent to sending 1.3 million SMSes.
Mr Dan Lai, director of the Climate Change Organisation based here, agreed that switching to e-cards is better than recycling paper cards, as recycling also generates carbon. ‘It is a vicious circle,’ he said. ‘To really recycle plastic and paper is quite taxing in terms of energy usage.’
Most multinational companies and government bodies have been using e-cards for some years now.
But there are still a fair few that feel e-cards lack a personal touch.
The Singapore Indoor Stadium, for instance, printed 3,000 Christmas cards locally this year. Its spokesman Camie Chua said: ‘E-cards are often placed under spam folders and have the tendency to go unread. Sending out hard copies also gives us the opportunity to update our records of our clients and suppliers.’
To overcome the ‘impersonality’ of e-cards, some firms have them hand-drawn.
HMS’ Mr Schellenberger engaged an illustrator to draw a picture of himself and his team for the company’s e-card. It had some recipients trying to figure out who was who in the drawing, he said.
But while more firms are going paperless, individuals appear to have kept to the tradition of sending real cards.
A local gift shop chain, which declined to be named, said its business has been constant, with about 20,000 cards sold every December since 2005.
Prints International, a popular stationery shop, said it sold more than 10,000 cards last year, and is expecting better sales this year.
Its general manager Jeff Lam said that even in a recession, people send Christmas cards due to their long tradition and affordability. ‘Consumers still prefer the human touch and warm feeling of buying, sending and receiving the real thing.’
Ms Adeline Sim, a senior executive from Duke-National University of Singapore Graduate Medical School, is one sender who loves paper cards. ‘They are more personal as I can keep them and I like to display them,’ she said.
‘It’s my hobby and I think I’ll be using paper cards forever. If I can’t buy them any more, I’ll just make them.’
To be eco-friendly, she usually makes her own greeting cards from recycled materials to send to her friends and family. ‘Recycled cards are very creative and they are very personalised. You can’t find the same design elsewhere.’
This article was first published in The Straits Times.
By Lester Kok