The most poignant shortage
First toilet paper, now sympathy cards nearly sold out in pandemic
The coronavirus pandemic has left retailers scrambling to meet a crushing demand for everything from milk to toilet paper to flour and yeast.
But there is another shortage, perhaps less obvious but more heart-wrenching. In stores, next to an ample supply of birthday cards and thank-you notes, the sympathy cards are nearly sold out.
The greeting card aisle, with its pastelcolored envelopes and messages for every occasion, offers a snapshot of the virus’s wicked toll. While many celebrations and milestones have been put on hold, grief is in abundance.
“The number of orders we see coming in for sympathy is stunning,” said Alan Friedman, who runs a silk-screen card company, Great Arrow Graphics, in Buffalo, New York, and is a board member of the Greeting Card Association, the industry trade group. “It seems like just about everyone knows someone who has died.”
Even at a time of perpetual Zoom gatherings and virtual hugs, big retailers are struggling to keep up with the demand for old-school sympathy cards.
CVS, one of the nation’s largest sellers of greeting cards, said that it was seeing “higher demand for sympathy cards than most other types of greeting cards during the pandemic” and was experiencing shortages in certain stores. Shoppers across the country have posted on social media that their local Winn-Dixie or ShopRite was running out of cards.
On Etsy, the online marketplace for crafts and jewelry, searches for sympathy cards more than doubled from March 1 to April 17 compared with the same period a year ago.
“It makes me sick in my heart, every order that comes in,” said Elizabeth Avalos, who sells greeting cards online from her home in Valley Springs, California. In a typical month, she sells about six sympathy cards. She sold 37 in March and more than 275 this month.
Some of the shortages have been caused by distribution problems. Pharmacies and grocery chains, focused on keeping their shelves stocked with household staples, are not allowing card companies to come into the stores and restock regularly. With stores running out and people unable to leave their homes, many card sales have moved online and are at record levels, suppliers say.
Before the pandemic, the greeting card industry had experienced declining sales. Some big retailers recently cut back on the aisle space devoted to cards. The parent company of high-end card retailer Papyrus declared bankruptcy in January and closed all of the brand’s stores.
But virtual communication has its limits, especially in times of grief.
With many people unable to attend funerals or drop off food for a grieving neighbor, or even offer an embrace, mailing a sympathy card seems more necessary.
For some, the upending of their cardsending rituals has been another cruel outcome of the virus.
Deb Toye-Sweppenheiser was grieving this month when she visited a Winn-Dixie supermarket in Marco Island, Florida. Her 79-year-old aunt, who lived in Hillsborough, New Jersey, had died from the coronavirus and she wanted to send cards to her family, including at least five cousins.
But the shelves of sympathy cards were empty and the scale of the pandemic hit her anew. She posted a picture of the card display on Facebook, expressing her shock with the remark, “Not fake news people are dying.”