Welcome back to most people, but welcome to those of you that were unable to join us at the results presentation. Good morning, everybody. It's a pleasure to welcome you here today at UBS's offices in London for The Card Factory capital market strategy update. A warm welcome if you're joining us online. As I mentioned at the prelims earlier, please accept our apologies for having to rearrange this session from last week at short notice, we are genuinely glad to have you all here today. The purpose of today is to provide you with updates on what we are delivering through our Opening Our New Future strategy, how we are ensuring successful delivery, and our target financial performance through the delivery of the growth plan.
Joining me here are several members of my executive team who'll be covering key aspects of our growth strategy. Jen Lawrence, our Executive Director for People and Transformation, will be taking you through our cultural and capability changes that are underpinning our growth ambition. Brian Waring, our Executive Director for Customer, will update on the market, on brand and customer. Adam Dury, which is there. Adam Dury, our Chief Commercial Officer, Sam Davies, our Executive Director for Digital, and Syed Kazmi, our Executive Director for Business Development, will outline our delivery plans for stores, cards, gifts, online, including omni-channel and partnerships. Finally, our Interim Chief Financial Officer, Simon Comer, will talk you through the financial targets through to FY 2027. Let me begin by talking about the positive journey of progress Card Factory's been on over the last two years.
We exited the pandemic period with a lot of momentum behind our business, and in FY 2023, we saw the return to pre-pandemic levels of sales. This was partly due to the return of footfall on the high street and the unwavering loyalty from our customers. However, this doesn't tell the full story. Fundamentally, this business is on a journey of transformation, and quite simply, we're beginning to deliver on its potential and opening up the growth opportunity. While customer loyalty has been essential for returning sales, the changes we've been making as a business fueled the return of sales and the growth that we're now enjoying. To explain, I want to point to the five transformation levers. Let me start with the cultural journey this business has been on.
When I joined, there were some clear changes that needed to happen, and Card Factory needed to become customer-centric in its thinking and in its approach. To achieve that, we needed to put customer data at the heart of our decision-making. From product creative in our design studio to the customer service experience training that we are now giving colleagues in store, we are applying customer data into our thinking and growing our ability to respond to market change. All of this customer understanding is being delivered from our new customer function, which is providing both the data and the insight needed to drive this decision-making. The outcome is a continually improving range, which is surprising and delighting customers, and therefore, driving sales.
Data has driven the thinking behind the improved store layout and the experience that we're rolling out across our estate in different ways. It's underpinning our omni-channel strategy with our first omni-channel service trial demonstrating the positive impact that this will bring. In other words, data-led decisions around the customer to touch every part of the business. Let me start just by giving you one powerful example. All this is meant to do is demonstrate the depth of expertise using data and evolving to deliver profitable sales. We've just enjoyed a very strong Mother's Day season, and our insight showed us that sons and daughters want to be able to share not just a card and gift, but a coordinated collection of products that can really wow, mom.
This data is drawn from post-season analysis of a range of data points, including store-level and product-level sales, customer segmentation, but much more. Our design team then took over, they overlayed the data with design and society trends, and they created a brand new card that was a card that had a chocolate heart in the middle with a matching gift bag, with a matching balloon. Finally, then it's passed to the commercials team, they assessed this proposed product against a variety of impact measures, such as replacement of old products, forecasted performance, what's the impact on space plans, supplier costs, all of those things. The result was very strong appeal, one of our best-selling lines, GBP 3.99 price point, which historically has been unheard of. This was one of our best-selling lines.
This is why we need to put the customer at the heart of everything we do. When I look back over my two years at Card Factory, it's clear to me that the cultural journey has not only exceeded my expectations, but it is central to the growth that we're seeing. It's a similar story when it comes to the next transformation lever, and that's leadership. We've had a strong focus on building our leadership team capability. This has included new talent, so ensuring we've got the right people with the right capabilities and experience to drive forward our growth agenda. In addition to that, we've, been investing in the time and the training that's required for us to have the caliber of leadership that we need at all levels of the business.
This has allowed us to devolve responsibility for decision-making down the organization to the right level. We've also developed a high challenge, high support leadership culture, and this is helping people to be more effective and more able to deliver because they're empowered and they have the responsibility to do so, but they also have the accountability. All of this leads to the third transformation lever, which is the capability that we've put behind our Opening Our New Future growth strategy. At the heart of that transformation capability is our new transformation office, which is providing the planning, the collaboration, and risk management diligence that we need to deliver at pace to plan on time and on budget. The next lever I wanna touch on is some of the unseen initiatives that make a significant difference. This is really about focusing on the fundamentals.
For example, we've optimized our product range to provide greater choice and ease of shopping for customers. We've focused on the service experience to help customers find everything that they need. We've increased our capacity in key growth areas such as online, right? We've addressed the core fundamentals such as leaner stock management and using price as a lever. Although it's worth adding that in using price as a lever, we're using data to understand the price elasticity and the impact on the consumer so that we avoid unwanted loss of sales volume. Finally, we've achieved financial stability, including successfully navigating the supply chain pressures, the inflationary environment of the last two years. We've ensured that we have the right financial structure for the balance sheet in place, and the successful refinancing of the business last year was crucial to this.
Of course, the competitive and consumer landscape has shifted considerably over the past two years, and there's been considerable reversal of the two main pandemic competitive trends that we saw, which was a shift to online and switching to the grocers. The return of customers to normalized shopping behavior has seen online sales decline and the gains made by the grocers reversed. While at the same time, we've driven footfall growth through the range updates that we'll be discussing here today. At the same time, we've had challenges within our business that we've been facing into and which you'll hear more about today. Our IT transformation has been too slow over several years, and without the right IT infrastructure, we cannot fulfill our growth ambition.
That is why we've invested in new talent and adopted a fresh approach to our IT delivery, which is already delivering results. Separate to that, our pace of development online has also been slow and underinvested. That's now changed, and with the completion of the replatforming of both cardfactory.co.uk and Getting Personal, this provides the foundation we can build upon as we invest in our online future. This includes enabling our chosen omni-channel propositions. Finally, a significant portion of our growth ambition is connected to partnerships both in the U.K. and internationally. Signing up new partners understandably takes time, and this is being taken into consideration within our growth phasing. However, this also gives us time to smoothly transition from the manual processes we currently use to serve partners today to the automated processes and infrastructure we'll need as we scale up the offer.
How we continue to respond to these competitive, market, and internal challenges will help determine our future success. It is why we have placed so much emphasis on the cultural, leadership, and capability changes that I've highlighted. Because it's with those levers in place that we can both deliver at pace and respond in an agile manner to changing circumstances. With that in mind, let me talk in more detail about the Opening Our New Future growth strategy, which we announced in FY 2022. FY 2023 was the launch year of our business transformation as we begin delivery of our strategy, and we've achieved significant milestones across all our areas of focus. By delivering on the strategy, Card Factory will become the leading omni-channel brand, helping customers every day to celebrate life's special moments.
The U.K.'s number one destination for all customers seeking unrivaled quality, value, choice, convenience, and experience, and a global competitor putting cards and gifts in the hands of more customers. It will enable the business to reach our £650 million revenue target. On this slide, you can see the structure of how our growth plan. With our core business, we will build upon our leadership in cards within the U.K. using insight-led innovation and range development. This work is well underway and is delivering sales growth both in every day and in seasonal. Like for like, sales will continue to grow through our store estate as we continue our optimization program and expand into underpenetrated markets.
The building blocks of additional revenue growth will come from, firstly, gifts and celebration essentials. We previously referred to that under the single complementary categories heading, but we've now split that out to make it easier for us to measure. Secondly, the work we're doing both to expand our online market share and to leverage the strength of our store estate to deliver new omni-channel propositions such as Click and Collect. Finally, the material opportunity that will come from partnerships both in the U.K. and internationally. Syed will discuss later the positive progress we've made in the signing of a new partner in the Middle East and the acquisition of South African Greetings.
On this slide, you can see how we've structured the initiatives that will deliver on this growth ambition, which includes the experience we need to build for colleagues and customers. In other words, the shift we are making towards becoming a customer-centric business and the investment we are making in our colleagues to ensure that we have the right culture and capabilities. And all of this is built upon the insight-driven creativity that is at the heart of our design function and technology infrastructure, which is the critical enabler of change for any business which is seeking growth transformation, and our central integrated model that drives efficiency and flexibility across the business.
Our business model not only continues to provide competitive advantage but also provided the flexibility that the business benefited from during the FY 2022 supply chain crisis, and the ability to respond rapidly to changing customer demands, as we've seen as being crucial post-COVID, and with the delivery of our strategy, and the platform for transitioning Card Factory to an omni-channel business. As our business transforms itself into an omni-channel retailer with an international presence, our business model will evolve. In FY 2027, there'll be five components. Our design capability, which uses insight, sales data, trend analysis to ensure our product offering, both cards and gifts, meets the needs of loyal customers while appealing to new demographics in the U.K. and to our partners internationally.
Our in-house manufacturing facility, which can produce 270 million cards per annum, serving U.K., Ireland, and international partner stores, with new ranges produced in as little as four weeks and quick-selling lines remanufactured in just days. This will allow us to maintain both our quality and value for money credentials. As part of our expansion, both internationally and across gifting, we've already developed the sourcing and buying capability that we need to support a fully optimized global supply base. This delivers speed to market with a continual focus on sustainability, product development, and cost management, enabling the offer to exceed customer expectations. We're in the process of expanding our distribution capacity, providing the capacity headroom through the 5-year strategy for all omni-channel and partner needs.
Finally, our store estate and omni-channel development, with 1,000-plus stores across the U.K. and Ireland providing primary route to market. We will have additional touchpoints through our online offer and via our U.K. and international partners. Let me turn to our ESG commitments. The delivery of our ambitious Opening Our New Future growth strategy and the business transformation this requires are underpinned by our commitment to operate sustainably across all areas of our business. We believe we should have a positive impact on our people, our customers, our communities, and the environment, and we value this alongside our financial performance. At all times, we operate with integrity and transparency and always strive to do the right thing.
In line with best practice, we continually review our sustainability strategy to ensure it delivers meaningful impact, aligning it both to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and to the risks and issues identified in our 2021 materiality assessment. We are aware these priorities may have changed given the extraordinary context of the last 12 months, including the cost of living and energy crisis, as well as increasing awareness of the impact of climate change and biodiversity loss. We will refresh the materiality assessment in FY 2024. This will then become a baseline for an updated five-year ESG strategy and roadmap, as well as a review of our risk management framework, ensuring that our priorities reflect the changing world around us and remain aligned to those of our stakeholders.
This includes an assessment of our Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions. We will provide an update on this plan at the interims in September. In summary, the business is in good shape with a strengthened balance sheet now in place. We're clear on our core business priorities and the building blocks of growth with identified growth targets within each component. Having made a strong start on our growth strategy in FY 2023, we have good momentum in the business, which will enable us to reach our revenue targets of around GBP 650 million in FY 2027. Let me hand over now to Jen Lawrence, our Executive Director for People and Transformation, who will be taking through how our cultural and capability changes are underpinning our growth ambitions. Jen.
Good morning. As People and Transformation Director, I have the responsibility for ensuring we've got the capability and the capacity to transform. Creating the culture that unlocks Card Factory's potential is fundamental for a business which is serious about a growth agenda, that's something that my team and I are passionate about putting in place. The fact that we've made such a strong start in FY 2023 on the delivery of our strategy is because we've made incredible headway in evolving our culture and behaviors. We fully recognize that such a transformation is, of course, a journey. It's about understanding the fundamental challenges, unlocking the potential that we have, doing the right thing, training and encouraging the right outcomes. We've made substantial progress on that cultural transformation journey as we entered FY 2024. It was clear that the progress we've made is already paying off.
The change has been recognized not just in our delivery, but also through awards. Card Factory received the best company to work for award Q1 2023, the number 1 best big retail business to work for, and the number 3 best big company to work for in the U.K. We were delighted and super proud to receive that recognition. Throughout the last year, we focused on developing the foundations and capabilities we need to deliver on our Opening Our New Future growth strategy. If I start by talking about our values, which we updated last year, and you can see them on the screen behind me. For the whole team at Card Factory, these are actively embraced in everything that we do, from the way that we make decisions, interact with our customers and each other, through to the delivery of our strategy.
They don't just embody our brand and our culture, they truly act as the North Star for our behavior and are already making a tangible difference in how we succeed as a business. It's essential because our ability to succeed is reliant on behavior change. Darcy has already emphasized the first two points, cultural change and developing our leadership. Cultural change at Card Factory is about embracing the needs of our customers. It's about embedding data-led decision-making through every function, using creative thinking in everything that we do, and exploring all options for delivering on our strategy. Embracing the need for greater pace of change, by doing so, adopting greater agility of thinking. Finally, really importantly, cross-functional alignment and collaboration, which is important for any business of scale.
If I just give you a couple of examples of how that cultural shift is already delivering some really positive outcomes. Starting with our design studio, over the past two years, we've worked really hard to bring customer thinking directly into the design process. Our team now actively takes inspiration and direction from predicted trends and indicative consumer behaviors to create design boards. This feeds into the development of our range builds. We develop out the range to meet a broader set of customer needs, both within core celebrations and into new areas that are proving popular. One example, which Adam will refer to later, who knew cards from pets?
Secondly, within our buying team, customer data and insight is being used to develop our ranges, which ensures that we're licensing the best-selling brands and building complementary ranges across card and gifting that maximizes the celebration opportunity for our customers. Moving on to leadership then. We have upweighted our leadership talent within the business through new hires from organizations such as KPMG, B&Q, E.ON, and PrettyLittleThing. This is bringing in specific expertise to deliver on the strategy. It's worth noting that we're also hiring specialist capability into ESG to help us drive that important agenda forward.
We're developing leadership capabilities built on the principle of devolved decision-making, which means the executive team shapes the strategy, the senior leadership team have the responsibility for its delivery, ensuring that decisions and actions are taken at the appropriate level, and really importantly, at pace. Moving on to pay and benefits. We're using this as a lever for retaining and attracting fresh, new talent, whilst also ensuring that everyone is rewarded fairly, inclusively, and importantly, competitively. In early FY 2023, we made the first significant step as a business towards delivering a pay and benefits model that we can be proud of. While it's gonna take some time for us to achieve that ambition, we aim to reach a place as quickly as possible where everyone feels that the hard work and commitment that they deliver is recognized in the financial reward and benefits that they receive.
Already, we've delivered an increase in our annual pay and introduced benefit improvements that are an important step towards that inclusivity. Additionally, last year, we made significant investments in our store manager population. That included store manager talent review, an increase in pay rates, and a new sales incentive, which was aligned to the step-up in accountabilities of that role. The outcome of that investment has led to a reduction in turnover of store managers from 9% to 3% and a really meaningful increase in our engagement. Our next priority will focus on reducing store colleague turnover, improving fair deal, and bringing pay rates in line with market averages, and ensuring we are investing in our top talent. All of which runs alongside a continuation on of looking at productivity.
If I turn to our IT roadmap, the focus for the last year was about progressing and delivering on the key strategic initiatives, whilst also ensuring that foundations are in place to enable our future strategy. There are several business critical initiatives that are being delivered within that roadmap, and the two standouts that are worth highlighting are firstly, the completion of our ERP implementation, with the second phase going really soon, going live very soon. It's a really vital but complex project. It's already live in our finance function and underpins the growth strategy by allowing understanding of and kind of that rapid response to changing shopper habits and preferences. It will provide the ability to view stock in all areas of the business and allows us to integrate with future partners both in the U.K. and internationally.
Secondly, we've begun a complete network upgrade across our store estate that will provide us with the ability to have Wi-Fi in stores, which will both help customers make use of our Omni-channel offer and enable mobile point of sale, allowing store colleagues to take payment on the shop floor, helping to reduce those queue times. In the future, this will allow us to explore additional Omni-channel services, such as reviewing our online range in store or placing an order from home delivery, meaning that any Card Factory product is available to any customer, anywhere.
We're delivering the infrastructure that's required to enable the omni-channel experience and support our partnerships in the U.K. and internationally, as well as operational improvements across the business, such as within my own function, HR. All of that's possible because we've been fixing the plumbing within our IT structure. Without wanting to take up too much time on detail, this has been about addressing the issues that Darcy earlier acknowledged, which have been holding us back. It's included building an enterprise architecture to provide a clear view of business capabilities, completely restructuring our IT department to address how we engage and business partner with how we're focusing on building stronger technical capability. Contracting with our new strategic technology partner, who will help us to deliver our initiatives faster.
We've also made progress in strengthening our cybersecurity controls by implementing, and this is a bit of a tongue tie, the National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework, which has greatly enhanced our ability to identify, protect, detect, respond to, and recover from potential cyber threats. Finally, I just wanna talk through the specifics around our transformation capabilities. Led through our newly formed transformation office, we're building the people-led capabilities to deliver on the five-year transformation plan. We're placing the right talent in the right roles. We're ensuring that there's a plan alignment across the business for every aspect of the delivery of the five-year plan. We're enabling greater team collaboration by ensuring that every function is unified around plan delivery. We're combining, importantly, project management and change management skill sets.
We're redesigning the operating model to be value-driven around planning, business objectives, and outcome focus. We believe that by taking those steps, and with the transformation office now in place, we have the ability to focus, monitor progress, and course correct as we respond to circumstances. We're ensuring that we've got the right skills and capabilities in place and are harnessing our existing capabilities. We're providing governance across all aspects of delivery, addressing barriers to change so that we can deliver at pace, and ensuring we have the right behaviors to shift towards customer centricity and data-led. In summary, we're working through the robust plan that we have in place to ensure that our delivery ambition is underpinned by our absolute ability to deliver.
Thank you very much. I shall now hand over to Brian, our Customer Director.
Thank you very much, Jen. Card Factory was founded on a simple yet powerful insight, the appeal of sourcing and selling greeting cards direct to the customer at low prices. This has been at the heart of Card Factory's success since our first store opened in 1997. Back then, our opening price point was GBP 0.29, and 25 years later, it's still GBP 0.29. I expect there's not many brands that can say that. However, some things have changed. Today, as well as offering low prices, Card Factory's quality and our extensive range have resulted in a market-leading value for money proposition and a brand that is recognized and loved by many. Customers can shop with us in 2023 via our 1,000+ stores nationwide, online, and through the app.
As we now look to the future, we're reframing the Card Factory opportunity in line with our vision to be the leading omni-channel brand in our sector. In order to enable this, we've improved the way we use data and insight, including using established industry sources such as Kantar and GlobalData, as well as a network of leading strategic research partners. Recently, we completed considerable work to scope and size our market opportunity in the U.K. and internationally. We've defined our market as celebration occasions, which in the U.K. alone is worth GBP 13.4 billion. Within celebration occasions, we will focus on greeting cards, celebration essentials, and gifts. This strategic shift to a much larger addressable market represents a significant growth opportunity for Card Factory.
To understand how Card Factory will achieve its strategic growth ambition, I'm going to talk you through, firstly, the changes we're seeing in consumer behavior, secondly, some details on the celebration occasions market, and finally, how we're enabling a customer-centric behavior within the business. Let me start with changes in consumer behavior. Like so many retailers, we closed stores for several months in FY 2021 and FY 2022 due to the ongoing lockdowns. From this, not surprisingly, we experienced big swings in shopper behavior, as shown by this share of spend chart from Kantar. What we have found so reassuring is how our business bounced back after these lockdowns, with customers queuing up as stores reopened. In addition, throughout FY 2023, we've seen footfall returning to the high street and more normalized shopping behavior, including around seasonal events.
Actually, in our most recent spring seasons, as Darcy mentioned earlier, Valentine's Day and Mother's Day, we've seen comparable shopping behavior to FY 2020 pre-pandemic. To illustrate this, the day before Mother's Day this year was one of the best ever trading days in our company history. For the last five years, we've conducted a bespoke study of the U.K. greeting card market, which I think tells quite an interesting story about how channel mix has evolved. The pandemic, not surprisingly, drove a real acceleration in online shopping, and this peaked at 36% value share in FY 2021. However, more recently, the offline share has returned strongly, and in our most recent study from February this year, it accounted for nearly 80% value share. Of course, this channel mix will continue to find its new norm.
However, I think what's really evident is that customers are choosing to shop in ways that suit their lifestyle. And our omni-channel vision recognizes this trend and will enable us to meet customer needs however they choose to shop to celebrate all of life's moments. I think regardless of where customers shop, they are telling us that times are hard due to the cost of living crisis. This global data sentiment index remains low. Almost half the population struggle to pay for everyday goods and services, and they're making trade-offs in their purchase choices. Despite these dynamics, customers continue to tell us that celebrations are important. A recent survey that we did reveals that almost three-quarters of the population believe this to be true. Perhaps in this context, it's no surprise that value remains a critical driver of retail brand choice.
As such, Card Factory's value proposition is resonating strongly. Although customers tell us that they're feeling under pressure, Card Factory is well-positioned to support them through this difficult time and beyond. Recent research indicates that Card Factory ranks number one for low prices in our sector. However, of course, it's not just about price. Customers also rate us as number one for value for money. Now more than ever, customers really value this, and it's one of the reasons that Card Factory has been recognized as a top 20 most loved U.K. retail brand. I think it's this strength that stands Card Factory apart. This graph is from a recent Card Factory study on value for money.
Consumers see Card Factory as having some of the lowest pricing comparable to the discounters, but they also see us as providing the quality expected of a mainstream retail brand. So it's this combination that gives Card Factory a highly differentiated position in the market. The impact of this distinctive position is very positive for Card Factory. It's resulted in more customers visiting us more often and spending more. Recent Kantar data of the U.K. offline card market shows a year-on-year increase of 9.5% customers shopping with Card Factory, compared to the market average of just 1%. Alongside this, we've seen an increase in frequency at 4.5x per year. In the last three months of FY 2023, we saw customers spending more too. This has grown 2.9% year-on-year versus the market average of just 2%.
As I outlined, our proposition is resonating with customers. This is reinforcing our strong position in the U.K. greeting card market, which has historically been our core market of focus. Evidence shows that not only is this market proving resilient, but it also has further opportunity for Card Factory. In February this year, we completed our bespoke annual study of the U.K. greeting card market, and it values the market at circa GBP 1.4 billion. With over 40 million U.K. adults buying greeting cards in the past year. This represents 80% of all U.K. adults buying a card, which is up from 73% the previous year. I think actually a particularly interesting fact about the market and from the study this year is that a key, the large proportion of the growth is being driven by young audiences.
16-24-year-olds now have the highest card per buyer rate, which is a continued trend since 2020. We believe that younger consumers are embracing more traditional ways to connect and celebrate. In a recent Card Factory survey, the top reason why this group purchased greeting cards include seeing the cards are more personal than emails or texts, and who would disagree with that? Greeting cards really are a strong basket staple in the U.K. In addition, our data show that 70% of gifts are bought alongside a card. Actually it's this that opens up significant opportunity for Card Factory to grow in adjacent categories. Our close adjacent categories are what we describe as celebration essentials, which includes wrap, bags, party, and balloons.
We estimate this market is worth around GBP 2 billion in the U.K., it's dominated by party accessories at around 50% of this market. By building authoritative offers and leveraging our significant customer base, we've made substantial progress and are now number one in the U.K. in balloons and number two in party. However, with Card Factory only capturing circa 5% share of the celebration essentials market, substantial opportunity remains. As for gifts, we have identified a GBP 10 billion addressable market in the U.K. out of a total circa GBP 40 billion U.K. gift market. The categories we're focusing on for growth include, but aren't exclusive to, soft toys, stationery, books, candles, and more. We have less than 1% share of these categories. Again, there's significant headroom to go for.
This is larger than our previously targeted GBP 5 billion gifting opportunity, which is informed by more in-depth market analysis and the broadening of our gift proposition to include products such as confectionery, flowers, alcohol, and gift experiences. Some of which are part of our extended online range. As such, building from our strong base in greeting cards, we're now focused on the larger GBP 13.4 billion celebration occasions market. There is lots of opportunity to go for, and we are very excited by the response from our customers. We've a highly successful model in the U.K., which we'll transfer to international markets, where we've identified a GBP 8 billion opportunity in greeting cards across seven key markets. This opportunity grows to over GBP 80 billion when you include gifts. You'll hear a lot more about this later from my colleague Syed Kazmi.
To successfully exploit these opportunities, we are increasing our focus on our customers and their needs. We've sharpened our brand strategy, placing customers and their celebrations at the heart of our brand, in line with our growth ambition. Our brand is rooted in a core truth that life needs celebration. This is built around customer search, which shows that even during the current economic crisis, customers still want to spend on celebrating life's moments. Building from this insight, our sharpened brand purpose and proposition focuses Card Factory on customers and their celebrations. Our brand purpose is to make sharing in and celebrating life's moments special and accessible for everyone. Our brand proposition or our promise to our customers is creating celebrations for all life's moments.
Our brand strategy is embraced by colleagues across all of the business, and we continue to activate our new brand thinking, which customers will see evident across all touchpoints. I'd now like to play just a very short video, which I think really nicely brings to life the Card Factory brand and our values.
Life needs celebrations. They bring us together and make us feel happy. They show that we care. At Card Factory, it's our purpose to make sharing in and celebrating life's moments special and accessible for everyone. You do this every day. Your enthusiasm and creativity turn our values into unforgettable moments of celebration. We lead the way. We are full of surprises and keep finding ways to delight our customers. We are never second best for passion. We celebrate our differences. We share in the moments and bring our whole selves to work. Everyone's invited. We make it happen. We have the confidence to think for ourselves and take accountability. We do the right thing. We find time to think and dream and invite others on the same journey. We care. We're a community of celebration, finding genuine happiness in each other's success.
Come on, let's share the love and raise the roof. Creating celebrations for all life's moments. That's the Card Factory way.
I think that video is a really lovely expression of everything that Card Factory is about and features some of the amazing colleagues from across all the different parts of our business. Now at this point, I'd just like to turn briefly to our brand health. Card Factory has a very strong rating for awareness and consideration. Card Factory has 90% awareness, which represents a 19 percentage point lead over the competitor average. Our competitors being U.K. specialist card and gift retailers. Card Factory's consideration, which is a percentage of consumers who claim they consider shopping with the brand, stands at 43%, which represents a 21 percentage point lead over the competitor average. These, combined with other strengths, means the Card Factory NPS or Net Promoter Score has grown to 42.1 in FY 2023, which is a 12-point lead over the competitor average.
From a brand health perspective, all of these measures place Card Factory in the top quartile of U.K. retail brands. I think it's our considerable brand strength that will enable Card Factory to grow in the wider celebration occasions market. Alongside our recently updated brand strategy, we've developed a new attitudinal and behavioral segmentation to help us to understand our customers. We've identified six segments spanning all card and gift purchasers in the U.K. We launched this new segmentation to the business earlier this year to enable us to make better decisions, and we're actively embedding it in key data sources. Our new segmentation reveals opportunities for Card Factory. Firstly, with existing customers, by building their loyalty to us through increased occasions and basket spend. Despite already shopping with us for cards, we only capture around 30% of their gift spend.
Secondly, there's significant opportunity to acquire new customers who we underserve but who are warm to us. 64% of this segment are familiar with Card Factory, but only 31% are shopping with us for cards and 6% for gifts. As an example of how we're leveraging this, the customer function is now using this segmentation and media targeting to help us to identify customers with higher acquisition potential. In summary, in the current market, our value proposition is resonating. We're attracting more customers who are visiting us more often and who are spending more.
We've the opportunity to build on our strong position in the U.K. card market by transforming Card Factory into the leading omni-channel retailer in our sector. To enable this, Card Factory will focus on growth within the larger GBP 13.4 billion celebration occasions market, plus significant international opportunities. Looking ahead, we're becoming more customer-centric and making better decisions. This will enable us to take advantage of the significant opportunities that lie ahead.
Now I'd like to hand over to my colleague, Adam.
Thanks, Brian. Good afternoon, everyone. Today, I'm gonna talk you through our growth delivery within our core business, our store estate and greeting cards, before moving on to gifts and celebration essentials, which is the first building block of new growth. Starting with a recap of our store estate growth ambition. Historically, our store estate has been our greatest asset. Our disruptive approach means we have successful, profitable stores on high streets, retail parks, and other locations throughout the U.K., and also now in the Republic of Ireland. Moving forward, our stores will remain our most prized asset. Having now exceeded pre-pandemic sales at over GBP 440 million, we're looking to grow store sales to around GBP 520 million in FY 2027. This represents 80% of our total sales and a compound annual growth rate of 4.2%.
The sales growth is broadly evenly split between cards, gifts, and store estate optimization. As mentioned, I'll come on to more detail on cards and gifts shortly. Looking solely at the store estate portfolio, as of the 31st of January, we had 1,032 stores across the U.K. and Republic of Ireland. We're looking to increase this by nearly 9% or around 90 additional stores. The strategy is to firstly continue with our core principle of lower cost, flexible leases with a target three-five-year break clause. This provides the agility we need to adapt to changing consumer footfall trends and ensures that we have exceptionally few loss-making stores. Less than 1% of the retail estate is loss-making, providing the business with an exceptionally strong store portfolio.
We need to continue to develop our store estate, remaining focused on moving into under-penetrated markets, which includes Ireland, testing a Central London format, and ongoing portfolio management. Drilling down into some of these points in more detail, Ireland has proved itself to be a profitable market with good scope for further growth. As of the 31st of January, we had 27 stores in Ireland and plan to increase this number to around 40 stores. We will explore the potential for further expansion. Central London is also a region of interest, as Card Factory historically only had stores in Greater London. Last year, we opened our first three trial stores, Tottenham Court Road, Holborn, and Fenchurch Street. I'm sure some of you have been and seen them. If you've not, I highly recommend you go and have a look.
Look at the store and look at the product offer. Assessment of our trial Central London stores is still ongoing. This is partly due to disruption experienced during the train strikes and partly as we continue to adapt the range mix to ensure we have the right offer to meet the needs of the Central London customers. We will decide the roadmap for Central London after the trial is concluded. Turning to portfolio management, we continue to respond to changing footfall patterns, especially within large towns and city centers, where we typically have multiple sites, multiple stores. As an example, in Hinckley, we have recovered sales and are still growing following a location change to a better pitch with high footfall and a slightly larger footprint. This gave us a 7% increase in gross sales since September 2022.
We expect city centers to be the winners through to FY 2027 due to the expected recovery of footfall, and we're seeing these locations recovering the quickest. At the other end of the scale, we expect mid-level shopping centers to continue to lose out due to footfall shifting to local or large regional centers and city centers. We are also running a store evolution program, which I'll discuss later when I talk through growth for gifts and celebrations essentials. As we adapt our offer, both in terms of the range and the omni-channel propositions, we will be delivering, we are investing in the service experience we provide our customers. In FY 2023, we implemented the first phase with customer service training and the introduction of a mystery shopper program. I'm incredibly proud of how the teams came across.
They deliver great service, and they are strong on the tills. What we need to do is just make sure we help customers find the product they are looking for. From FY 2024 onwards, we'll begin specific omni-channel training in terms of both service and tech to create an engaged and seamless customer experience. This brings me onto my final point regarding our stores, which is omni-channel, by which we mean the ability to seamlessly shop between our online and store channels. It's only by having a nationwide store estate that we're able to unlock the omni-channel opportunity and providing customers with the convenience of shopping anywhere and any way they choose to meet their celebration needs. This is a competitive advantage that only Card Factory's physical scale can deliver.
Let me now move on to discuss our greeting cards offer, where we retain a leadership position in the U.K. in a stable, low growth market. There are three pillars to our strategy. Firstly, we will maintain our value for money proposition, which sits at the heart of our brand purpose. We make sharing in and celebrating life moments special and accessible for everyone. To that end, while we have stretched the average selling price across our card range from GBP 0.99 to GBP 1.11, we have retained our value propositions, with cards still starting from just GBP 0.29 . We also now are delivering year-round relevant customer promotions. However, where customers place greater value on the celebration, we have increased prices, and this approach has proved successful. The second pillar is in regards to the range itself and how we are adapting our cards to respond to consumer trends.
Our range is continually expanding to include a wider breadth of celebratory captions. For those of you who may not be regular card buyers, that means cards, that is one example, help people celebrate a pet's birthday. In fact, if we look at Mother's Day, one of our top-selling cards was a card from the dog. This shows people are looking to expand the cards they buy and give. Also, it's about responding to demand around diversity and sustainability. While at the same time, we're optimizing customer choice with easy-to-shop and curated card ranges. On the screen beside me, you can see how we have developed our everyday wedding cards. Diversity and inclusion is really important, alongside broadening our range appeal, with cards showing different skin tones and same-sex relationships. All of this is expertly designed by our in-house design studio team.
We have also removed all single-use plastic, and the range is 100% recyclable. The way we are evolving our card range draws upon the points that both Jen and Brian were making about data-led decision making. The product and design choices we are making use data analytics to ensure we have better targeting, focusing, for example, on changing best sellers more frequently, as customers are more likely to become tired of seeing the same popular range. On the screen behind me, you can see how our data and insight-led thinking helped create some of our fabulous Mother's Day cards. Another example for the Christmas season, we developed a new allocation process which drove record high sell-through of single cards, wrap, and gift bags. In the past, the process involved creating store-level budgets and then allocating the stock.
For Christmas FY 2023, we moved to a sales-based allocation process which generated SKU-level forecasts by store, allowing us to react in season to customer demand, improving stock placement across the entire store estate. Another example is our everyday trend party range, where we strengthened our party offer using competitor data and market trends to identify opportunity for expansion. As a result, we took our best-selling balloon design, the unicorn, and applied it to complementary products such as a unicorn gift bag, a napkin, and a banner. I'm pleased to say it sold really well. The final pillar is around simplifying the in-store experience. Some customers very much enjoy the browsing experience. However, all customers have responded positively to the work we are doing to improve the ease of shopping cards in fixtures, installing better store navigation, and improving our visual merchandising.
Before I move on to our plans through to FY 2027, I want to highlight one point we made at the prelims presentation earlier. Post-pandemic, we saw that our everyday card ranges remained strong. From a seasonal perspective, we have now seen both improved store transactions and increased average basket values over Christmas. This was supported by our newly developed ranges, the strength of our expanding gifting, and strong value for money offer. These trends have continued through to Valentine's Day and Mother's Day in Q1 FY 2024, and seasonal growth is now in line with everyday growth. If we look at Mother's Day, we curated a solution for all customers by offering coordinated and compelling gifts. We curated a showstopper of a design that Darcy referred to earlier. The card came boxed with a chocolate heart, and alongside it, a matching gift bag and balloon.
Additionally, within Easter, we also introduced a curated selection of multipacks using the best-selling single card designs from the previous year. This allowed us to condense the size of the range to less than a third of last year, increased our density significantly, reducing our SKU count, and allowed us to buy more efficiently, which led to a lower average cost. These are examples of how we're stretching the top-end price point while maintaining our value for money offer. Excuse me. Turning to our card growth plans through to FY 2027. By using our enhanced customer understanding, we'll be able to further improve the range to ensure the right product in the right channel at the right time. This means using market analysis, sales analysis, long-term trends, and in-depth customer insight, such as through customer panels. Combined, this informs our decision-making.
We also have plans in place to accelerate our speed to market in order to improve the topicality of the offer across both the store estate and digital channels. This includes continuing to use the online channel to test and learn, so we can drive an improved product hit rate in stores. We're working to improve our sales density in store by using our analytical expertise to maximize the return from each product per square foot across the card fixtures. This will maximize profitability of each store. The responsiveness of our card offer is underpinned by our centrally integrated model of being able to design and manufacture the vast majority of our cards from our facility in Yorkshire. To this end, we'll continue to move more production back to the U.K. as we invest in our in-house manufacturing and product design to accelerate our lead times.
This will also enhance our ESG credentials with a target of over 75% of all production coming from our Yorkshire facility in FY 2027, compared to 63% today. The final area I'll discuss today is our growing and successful gift and celebrations essentials offer. This is a considerable opportunity for Card Factory, with identified addressable U.K. market of GBP 12 billion. Today, our market share is 1.7%, and our intention is to grow this to 1.9% by FY 2027. We have already made significant headway in building sales across our gifts and celebrations essentials category, which is now our fastest-growing area. This has been achieved through a range that offers both value for money own label ranges, as well as well-recognized footfall-driving third-party brands. It also capitalizes on the 70% of all customers looking for gifts to accompany their card purchase.
In FY 2023, we saw the strategy delivering success with total everyday like-for-like growth of 11.4%, with confectionery being the largest sales growth area at +111%, and tableware achieving the largest volume increase at +124%. We broadened the categories we are offering by introducing ever-popular third-party brands and license ranges, including Yankee Candle, Baylis & Harding, and Me to You. I have no doubt everyone in the room would have received a Me to You card at some point in their lives. These ranges offer a one-stop shop with coordinated and compelling designs. Within the Me to You brand, we're launching a new everyday Tatty Teddy range on our promotion ends after the successful trial in 50 stores.
All designs are exclusive to Card Factory, with coordinated cards from GBP 1.49 to GBP 1.99, all of which are selling very well. We also broadened our already strong soft toys offering through the introduction of boxed toys, pocket money, and licensed toys. They're back bigger and better in FY 2024, with products covering all key trading periods. This comes off the back of Card Factory already being the number one destination for balloons, number two for party, and increasingly strong in wrap. Beyond the range, we've also made in-store improvements to make shopping our gifting range easier. This is being driven through our store evolution program, which we have developed based on insight from our model store trial. It consists of three components.
Firstly, we are looking at space realignment. For the majority of our stores this year, we'll be reallocating space, giving slightly more priority for gifts and celebrations essentials than before. The detailed data analysis identified 750 stores where remixing category and range space will maximize profit density. This is a CapEx-light initiative with payback within a year. We are undertaking display reorganization to modify how we present cards and gifts in our stores. Cards will be arranged around the perimeter, while gifts will be displayed in the central aisles. This layout not only improves customer navigation and makes it easier for them to locate cards, but it also ensures proper product adjacencies. We plan to complete this adjustment in around 50 stores this year as we continue to fine-tune costs and returns. Moving forward through to FY 2027, our ambition is to carry out this change across all stores.
Again, this is a CapEx light initiative with a slightly longer payback period of 18 months, which we are looking to reduce if possible. The third component is the updated store design, which applies the new format that we successfully trialed within the model store initiative. This enhances the store's overall appearance by setting minimum standards for both our existing locations and also incorporating into the other two components of the program for new stores and a select number of full refurbishments. The costs are in line with existing refit costs, and there is no impact on our store CapEx forecasts. In summary, the model store trial has now reached its conclusion, and we're moving forward with these changes as part of the store evolution project.
Looking more broadly at our FY 2027 plans for gifting, we will capture and convert new customers through the continual introduction of new products in order to disrupt the market and gain valuable market share. This will be achieved by using our enhanced customer understanding to improve the ranging to ensure the right product in the right channel at the right time. As we further expand the offer, we expect continued strong performance in confectionery, toys, and party while exploring other categories. We will develop all year round everyday offer that has relevance and appeal to seasonal events as well as throughout the year. This will help to drive sales growth and will minimize seasonal markdowns. Finally, we will offer the complete customer solution by maximizing our omni-channel strength in areas such as the party category, helping our customers source everything they need for the perfect celebration.
Our gift and celebrations essential opportunity is significant, and we are already making positive headway both in store and online. It meets customers' expectations, is entirely complementary to our card offer, and can be enhanced through the omni-channel propositions that Sam is about to talk you through.
On that note, I'll now pass over to Sam to discuss our omni-channel and online approach. Thank you.
Right. Thank you, Adam, and good afternoon all. I'm delighted to have the opportunity to talk to you about both our omni-channel and also our online plans. Although they are both connected and online will play a key role within our wider omni-channel strategy, I'm keen to ensure there is no ambiguity between the two topics. We will aim to explain both over the next 15 minutes. As you know, we're already an online retailer and have a clear ambition to provide a compelling experience for those customers who wish to buy purely through our two online platforms, Card Factory and Getting Personal. At the same time, we're also a multi-channel retailer, selling through our extensive U.K. and Republic of Ireland store network, as well as through our online platform. These have historically been two separate channels and no connection between them.
In moving to become an omni-channel retailer, we will connect our channels, meaning our customers will be able to shop seamlessly between them, whether they're at home, in store or elsewhere. Our physical stores and our online platform are therefore crucial in our role to become an omni-channel retailer. They enable us to provide a seamless customer experience and will help increase sales through enhanced awareness, footfall, basket spend, and customer loyalty, both across online and across our physical channels. It's really important to remember that although many businesses have embraced omni-channel, we'll be the first U.K. card and gift retailer to do this, and we need to determine what works for us.
We believe transforming into an omni-channel retailer will give us a point of difference in the market and will allow us to build an exceptional experience for our customers and compete with both bricks and mortar and online-only competitors. Our combined omni-channel and online target is to contribute an additional GBP 30 million of revenue in FY 2027. The majority of this additional revenue will come from new omni-channel propositions, which combined with online, will represent 7% of Card Factory sales. Our omni-channel journey began last year with the launch of our first new omni-channel proposition, Click and Collect. This service was trialed in 87 U.K. stores during peak trading time to not only gauge customer demand, but to also provide a test and learn platform to prove the technology and the processes worked as we expected.
This service has provided shoppers with the ability to Click and Collect the majority of our range for collection within store within three-five working days. We learned a lot from the trial regarding store operations, customer demand and behavior. We saw higher than expected demand with over 1% of Card Factory online orders opting for this delivery method, despite only 87 stores being in the trial. Over 50% of those customers were brand new to online. Assuming this trend continues, the national rollout will enable over 10% of online orders to be through Click and Collect. We also experienced 16% higher average order value over our online channel and 7% of customers buying additional items in store during the collection process.
Based on the success of the trial and a range of operational improvements, we recently completed the rollout of the service nationwide across the U.K. Although the trial has been successful, at this stage, Click and Collect offer is basic, taking three-five working days for an order to be shipped to store. We know this needs to change and plan to trial later this year, pick from store, which will ultimately allow us faster collection and improved experience. With over 1,000 stores, we believe we can offer a unique service that allows customers to be able to collect their balloon bouquets, their party hats or their last-minute gifts the next day, and maybe even the same day at some point in the future, offering unrivaled convenience coupled with our fantastic value.
We're also really positive about the benefits Click and Collect will bring, but it's also just one of the omni-channel initiatives that we aim to start testing in the coming years. I'll share more detail on the other propositions shortly, but first I want to discuss the infrastructure backbone that we're investing in. As Jen has already explained, there is a wide range of investment happening across the business to enable our omni-channel strategy. A key part of that is our investment in technology with new systems, new partners, and internal capability. As an example, our ERP project will enable store-level inventory for the first time. This will use for Click and Collect, which will be vital if we want to be able to pick from store and offer faster collection to our customers in the future.
The in-store network upgrade, also Jen mentioned, provides an infrastructure backbone for many future digital omni-channel propositions. The first of these will be mobile point of sale trial planned for Q4 this year, focused on reducing waiting times and enhancing the in-store customer experience. As just mentioned by Adam, ensuring our store colleagues are aware, are trained, are engaged, and empowered will be vital to ensure that they have the right skills to unlock the in-store omni-channel opportunity. I'd like to now talk through where we are with our online offer through the Card Factory and Getting Personal websites and our plans for the future. We recognize we have an opportunity to improve our online proposition.
Online is an area where the business have been historically slow to adapt, but it now forms an essential part of our future strategy, and we're investing heavily in the team to deliver this. Although online purchasing post-COVID has reduced, online still forms 21% of the card market, while only 3% of Card Factory sales. To compete, we need to catch up with our online competitors by providing the key functionality for a positive experience, meeting customer expectation while remaining focused on our core objective of being the best value online retailer. To achieve this, we're focusing on three things that will allow us to offer a competitive experience that meets and exceeds customer expectation. Firstly, we're fixing the basics, and we've already achieved the most important part of this by re-platforming both Card Factory and Getting Personal in March this year.
This means for the first time, both websites are on a common technology base, and we can leverage the advances of using consistent systems, tools, and processes. This provides a foundation to take the experience forward for both sites. In addition, we have hired new talent into the team and brought on board a new technology partner to help us deliver at pace. Secondly, we're building the right propositions. Again, significant progress has been made by expanding the range we offer, especially when it comes to gifting. Our ambition for Card Factory online is to offer a much wider range of gifting products to help customers buy everything they need in one shop. We launched the first of these new ranges in October, offering flowers, alcohol, confectionery, and personalized books, with additional ranges having launched in February and many more planned in the months and years to come. We're also looking at pricing to ensure we are true to our value credentials.
Finally, we're working on the customer experience in terms of their interaction with our website, their doorstep delivery experience, and the overall omni-channel experience that we're building. By taking these steps alongside the marketing investment that we've allowed for in the plan, we can deliver our best value promise, which will enable us to disrupt the market. Focusing on our wider omni-channel plans for the coming years. While there are many different propositions we could embrace, our research has allowed us to focus on five key propositions that we wish to trial. Firstly, I've already talked about the success of our Click and Collect trial and our nationwide rollout.
The next stage is to improve the speed from order to collection with a trial planned for the end of this year to enable pick from store. Allowing us to reduce our dependency on Royal Mail and build a foundation to offer next day and maybe even same-day collection in the future. We know this is something our customers are asking for right now and will provide a great reason to shop with Card Factory. Secondly is balloons. We are the largest balloon retailer in the country. Building on our Click and Collect capability, we want to add a balloon collection service that will allow customers to book collection slots. This should make the experience of buying balloons easier for customers and also for our store colleagues. Our next concept is assisted selling.
We want to better understand how we can better support our store colleagues and our customers to provide the best in-store service possible. Having a mobile point of sale device in store enables us to start thinking about additional services customers may need. These include colleagues checking stock in store, maybe browsing the extended range online, or potentially ordering on behalf of the customer for home delivery. Next is customer loyalty. We know our customers have a choice of broad range of retailers when shopping for their celebration occasions. For cards alone, customers shop with three different retailers on average, and this is something we want to change. We've launched a project this year to define a loyalty proposition with the aim of growing share of spend, deepening our customer relationships, and helping us build a more complete picture of customer behavior. Finally, event reminders.
We currently offer a reminder service online for any key events or dates. This allows our customers to add a reminder for a birthday or an anniversary, and we'll let them know when it's approaching. This service is helpful for customers to avoid them forgetting key dates, but also a fantastic way for us to capture customer data, understand what our customers want, and communicate more frequently with them. We're in the process of redesigning the experience, enabling us to capture more key events. I'm confident in the future we will offer the ability for customers to interact with us in whatever way they choose, and we will not only meet, but exceed their expectations by offering multiple services and options with outstanding value.
Thank you. I now hand over to Syed to talk about partnerships.
Thanks, Sam, hello, everyone. As Darcy mentioned earlier, expanding our retail partnerships is a key element of our future growth. It is a huge opportunity for us to grow both in the U.K. and internationally, and the recent partnership agreement we have signed clearly demonstrates both the progress we are making and the opportunity that exists. To recap, we announced today the signing of Liwa as our exclusive franchise partner for the Middle East. In addition, last week we announced the acquisition of SA Greetings, which means we now have our first presence within that market, both as a retailer and wholesaler. I will discuss these new international opportunities in more detail over the next few minutes. However, let me begin by talking through our growth ambition through to FY 2027.
For FY 2027, our annualized target for partnerships is to grow revenue to GBP 84 million, mostly from international opportunities. The majority of this revenue will come in the latter years of the plan. Taking a step back over the last year, we have laid substantial groundwork, which is now bearing fruit, and we have a clear framework to assess new market opportunities. As well as engaging with and signing new partners, we have conducted extensive research of our markets of interest, and we now have a clear vision of the two partnership models to offer, both with a CapEx-light model. Our first partnership model is franchise. This is where the partner will operate everything using our brand and offer. Through our market research, we see both the Middle East, where we have contracted with Liwa, and India as regions where this master franchise approach will be applied with market exclusivity.
Other regions will operate a regional franchise model with or without regional exclusivity. Our second model is wholesale, and this is where we'll have our products in store, either Card Factory branded, such as they do with Matalan today, or white-labeled, such as with Aldi. This is based on a partner's specific requirements, and like franchise, this could also include a Card Factory branded shop-in-shop. These options will differ by region, and these target regions have now been identified from the research we conducted. On this slide, you can see these identified regions, which include seven new markets of interest for us in addition to the U.K. and Ireland. The research we conducted with GlobalData has allowed us to understand the size of cards and gifting within each of these markets and, most importantly, to understand what our international customers are looking for.
From this, we have researched competitors in each market, which routes to market they have implemented, operational models in place, and any learnings that we can take. This has given us clarity in our choice of partnership models to utilize and who we intend to partner with. In each of our target markets, we have built a shortlist of partners to engage with, and today, conversations are actively taking place, and we are confident in our ability to sign up the partners we need through the course of the plan, taking us to FY 2027. How we show up in each market will need to be tailored to maximize potential. As you can see on this slide, some examples of localized card designs that we have in place for the Middle East, India, and North American markets.
We will be supporting regional celebrations and different marketing calendars to maximize regional opportunity. For example, to support our new franchise partner Liwa in the Middle East, we will begin by leveraging our in-house design studio to support their marketing calendar with Eid and Ramadan gifts and cards. At the same time, we'll provide third-party products as per customer demand. As we scale further, we'll be looking to bring more of the design and sourcing in-house. This is in line with our research that suggests there is a stronger opportunity for gifts and celebration essentials in international markets, particularly in India and the Middle East, where there is a strong gifting culture. On average, 90% of customers buy a gift when they are purchasing a card, whereas in North America, for example, it's only around 45%.
Additionally, within the Middle East, the average selling price of cards is around GBP 4.20, compared to the Card Factory figure of just GBP 1.11 in the U.K. You can see how this gives us a chance to disrupt the market with our great value and quality offering. In terms of our plans with Liwa, we have signed a long-term master franchise agreement, and we are targeting 36 Card Factory stores over the course of the plan, covering the markets as shown on this slide. Liwa is the ideal partner for Card Factory, in the Middle East. As a franchisee, Liwa focuses on specialist retail brands, and they have experience both across value and premium. Today, in total, they operate the franchise brands for over 20 brands in the market, with a strong presence across the Middle East region.
Liwa's business model is set up to work collaboratively with the host brand to completely manage the initial brand engagement into the Middle East market. At this time, this relationship works well for us whilst we build our franchising capability. I am pleased to say our first stores will open in the United Arab Emirates later this financial year, and from that point onwards, we will scale through to FY 2027. This new partnership builds upon the successful pilots that we already have in place. Through these pilots, we have delivered 10% year-on-year revenue growth with a 3% growth in points of sale to today 949 partner locations. These are with Aldi and Matalan in the U.K., The Reject Shop in Australia, and our franchise partner Sandpiper in the Channel Islands and Gibraltar.
Through the acquisition of SA Greetings, we now have over 6,500 partner locations worldwide. This pilot phase has allowed us to establish some key strategic partnerships that we are developing further. Our ability to succeed in some of our target international markets will also be dependent on how we can operate as a business to support our partners, specifically our ability to operate in region with merchandising, manufacturing, and fulfillment capability. This is one of the reasons that the acquisition of SA Greetings is so beneficial. It gives us a foothold into the target South Africa market with an established real estate of over 28 stores. We also gain access to key wholesale accounts through the company's printing, merchandising, and warehousing capacity, and where they have a leading position within the market.
For example, their top five accounts have over 4,500 distribution points, largely consisting of small displays. While we will be focusing on building out the wholesaling opportunity in South Africa, we will also be using this mature infrastructure to understand how we can deliver similar local capability in other target markets. For all of our partners, we have developed the store design and brand operating procedures to support the two partnership models. On this slide, you can see some concept visual designs for our first international franchise stores that will launch later this year in the Middle East with Liwa. We are further developing new store formats, including Card Factory-branded shop-in-shops and travel stores that we can use as partners both at home and internationally.
As we continue to move from FY 2024 to FY 2025, our initial focus is to work with low to mid-level complexity models, such as with Liwa in the Middle East. This will allow us to build the right infrastructure needed to support accelerated growth. We will start small, ensuring we can support partners in the right way. We'll be completing the groundwork, putting integration in place, and then expanding as our delivery capability builds. Moving into FY 2026 to FY 2027, our international presence will increase, our delivery capability will be enhanced, and we'll be ready to work with partners of scale. We're looking at scaling within North America, where we can offer our full-service wholesale model and also offer regional franchising. The fully serviced model delivers higher revenues but lower margins compared to a supply-only wholesale model, resulting in lower margins from FY 2025 onwards.
Within these target markets, we have identified how much revenue and PBT is weaved into the plan from FY 2024 to FY 2027, with the USA offering the largest opportunity, followed by Australia and the U.K. and Ireland. Revenue has been spread across multiple markets to maintain strong margins while allowing us to make sure the appropriate effort and scale is delivered within each market. Our aim is to achieve a balance between our franchise and wholesale approaches. Both models are different in terms of level of complexity, scale, and contract length, as well as how Card Factory is represented from a brand presence perspective. However, we are confident this is a winning approach, as both models are CapEx and investment light for Card Factory. In summary, we have momentum within our partnership strategy.
It is the right way for a brand such as Card Factory to expand internationally by providing profitable growth with minimum investment risk. We can look forward with confidence to a partnership approach that will support our growth ambition by delivering greater value, choice, convenience, and experience for our customers, whether they be at home or internationally. That concludes this section of growth delivery.
I would like to now hand over to Simon, who will talk us through the financial plan to FY 2027. Thank you.
Many thanks, Syed, good afternoon. I would like to now turn to our financial targets over the course of the plan. As you can see on the slide, we are targeting around GBP 650 million of revenue in FY 2027, with a PBT margin of around 14%. This represents an extension of one year from our original target, necessitated by the impact of the COVID pandemic and the period it took to return the business to pre-pandemic revenues, which was achieved in FY 2023. Versus FY 2020, our like-for-like store sales returned to pre-pandemic levels with a 0.3% variance on FY 2020. FY 2023 online revenue was down GBP 2 million versus FY 2020, this was driven by Getting Personal with cardfactory.co.uk up GBP 4 million.
The online position has been impacted due to the shift of customer spend back towards the high street, alongside the impact of Royal Mail strikes during the peak Christmas trading period. Group margins returned again in FY 2022 post the pandemic. FY 2023, the first full year without lockdown periods, delivered above expectations. Looking forward to FY 2027, we are targeting GBP 190 million revenue growth with international expansion accounting for nearly GBP 80 million of this total. Online initiatives will represent GBP 30 million, and the combined stores initiatives, which includes growth in gifting, will make up a further GBP 80 million. By FY 2027, we expect margins to have returned to pre-pandemic levels, having absorbed GBP 39 million of inflationary costs from National Living Wage increases, cost of living salary increases plus utilities, currency, and material inflation. This is being mitigated through the use of price and productivity.
Free cash flow conversion returns to pre-pandemic levels. CapEx investment will be higher in order to support our transition into an omni-channel retailer. On this slide, you can see the revenue contribution from the three channels of stores, online and partnerships. This will see stores growth of 4.2% CAGR per annum, with growth initiatives offsetting declines. We are assuming that underlying footfall reductions and transfer of shopper habits to online. Online growth will be driven through both the direct sales on our two platforms and by leveraging the strength of our nationwide store estate to unlock omni-channel opportunities. As partnerships is building from its current low base, the CAGR is high and combined partnerships and online will contribute 20% of revenues in FY 2027, consistent with our original plan.
If we look at the growth contribution from the core business and our new growth areas of gifting, omni-channel and partnerships, we are targeting growth in all areas. From a stores perspective, there'll be roughly even growth contribution from the optimization of the existing estate, continuing to develop our leadership in cards, and by building our share of gifts and celebration essentials. For online, there'll be a combination of baseline growth from improved user experience, extending the existing offering and increased marketing, as well as the omni-channel initiatives such as Click and Collect. Partnerships expands in the U.K. and Republic of Ireland through new partner signings, as well as developing an international profile across seven identified territories. Initiatives require investment in both direct CapEx targeted at revenue growth, as well as infrastructure to support the operations of the business.
This includes development of the new ERP system, post the phase one implementation within finance and extensions to our Printcraft manufacturing operation. Once one-offs are excluded, PBT should improve by 3.5 percentage points by FY 2027. Store profits are inclusive of GBP 39 million of anticipated inflationary headwinds, which we manage via a combination of targeted pricing, productivity, and efficiencies. Stores initiatives are accretive to base margin, adding new revenues at 25% PBT compared to the FY 2023 base of 13%. This is being driven by targeted price and efficiency savings, delivering greater revenues per store without increased cost. Online initiatives are accretive to margin, adding PBT at 27% of revenue.
FY 2027 margin for cardfactory.co.uk and Getting Personal, while still investing for future growth, will be at circa 11%. Partnerships is a new business offering compared to existing business, therefore, incremental margin contribution is more closely aligned to existing business levels. We will be effectively managing costs during this growth period. Purchases will be reduced from 31 percentage points to 28 percentage points, with international freight reductions being partially offset by material inflation, in particular, helium and currency. For currency, we are at greater than 90% hedge for FY 2024 at a rate greater than $1.275, with layering going in for FY 2025. Store and warehouse wages reflect a slight increase to FY 2027. 4 percentage points of that increase is due to the National Living Wage inflation, with FY 2024 enacted at 9.7%.
We are forecasting at 6.1% for FY 2025 and then 3% per annum beyond. There will also be an improvement through targeted price increases and productivity through technology and better stock management. OpEx is held in line with existing rates and absorbs increased marketing and IT spend. Right-of-use store rents depreciation reduces on increased revenues per store, expected savings and the absence of deferred payments which were seen in FY 2022 and 2023. You will also note this slide excludes partnerships as that is a brand new model which I will now come on to. Through to FY 2027, we'll be adding an international franchise and wholesale model.
In FY 2023, we are investing in establishing new partnerships, and by FY 2027, revenue growth will be dominated by international partners on a fully serviced model, with over 15 new partners forecast in total over the planned horizon. The fully serviced model delivers higher revenues but lower margin percentage compared to the existing wholesale model, resulting in lower margins percentage from FY 2024 onwards. Despite being a new model, partnerships delivers profit margin in line with stores by FY 2027. From a category mix perspective, there is limited change through to FY 2027, as we'll be delivering growth across all categories. As we build our gift and celebration essentials offer, we will see a slight 3 percentage point decrease in cards, driven by the investment being made in the cardfactory.co.uk platform. We expect the total card mix to decrease as the online platform grows.
Moving on to our liquidity position. As mentioned at the prelims presentation, we have flexibility in our debt facilities and liquidity headroom following successful refinancing in April 2022. This led to a reduction in gross debt in the financial year, as well as stronger operating cash flows, which combined resulted in improved net debt and leverage at year-end. The refinancing in April 2022 secured facilities of GBP 150 million, made up of a revolving credit facility of GBP 100 million, which matures in September 2025, and GBP 50 million in loans. As at the 31st of January 2023, GBP 6 million of those loans have been repaid. You can see on the table on screen how this balance reduces through to 31st of January 2025. Restrictions on payment of dividends continue to apply until CLBILS and certain term loans are repaid.
These restrictions are expected to be lifted after January 2024. The balance sheet allows capital investment in the key projects that support the group's long-term growth objectives. In relation to our dividend position, the board intends to target a leverage ratio of between 0.5x and 1.5x , taking into account peak net debt position throughout the year. Provided leverage remains within this range and post restrictions being lifted, it is the board's intention to pay annual dividends based on a targeted dividend cover of between 2x and 3x the group's consolidated post-tax profits. To summarize, we are targeting to deliver around GBP 650 million revenue by FY 2027. This is achieved by continuing to grow the U.K. and Republic of Ireland, at the same time as diversifying our portfolio to deliver 20% of the business from online and partnerships.
Margins are expected to return to pre-pandemic levels of 14% whilst managing inflationary headwinds via targeted pricing, productivity, and efficiencies. Investments in capital targeted to deliver revenue growth in stores and online, as well as building infrastructure, supports the building blocks of profitable growth. Partnerships will be a capital-light model to de-risk international implementation. We have put in place the foundations for strategic growth and have a clear pathway to recommencing dividends.
Thank you, and I would like to now hand back to Darcy for some final remarks.
Brilliant. Thank you, Simon. Thank you, team. Right. Before I close, let me just summarize the strategy roadmap through to FY 2027, referring back to our building blocks of growth. For cards, our focus is on improving the ranging, and in the near term, we'll be maximizing the use of customer data to inform product design and ranging with demographics and regional ranging, helping to drive store sales growth. This will then reach maturity in the medium term of the plan with a range tailored for different regions and demographics and fully meeting diversity, equality, inclusion, and sustainability expectations. Within our stores, both in the near term and medium term, we'll be continuing our program of portfolio optimization and expansion into under-penetrated markets such as Ireland and Central London. In the medium term, we'll be rolling out our store evolution program.
Both customer data utilization and the store evolution program will be key growth drivers for gifts and celebration essentials, where we'll also continue to build out the range in store and online. In the medium term, we expect our gifting range to continue to evolve and to be expanded to meet our international partner needs. Turning to online, the focus is on developing an offer and user experience that will see us increase sales by positioning ourselves as the best value online retailer in the card and gifting space. In the near term, we intend to work at pace to exploit the re-platforming of both sites to introduce both new features and functionality, while also making improvements to the app. This should then mean that in the medium term, we can focus on driving sales and margin improvement. Further growth will then come through our omni-channel propositions.
The first to be fully rolled out was Click and Collect, and additional omni-channel proposition trials will be launched in the next two years as we build out the right omni-channel service for our brand and market. The final building block is partnerships. In the near term, the focus is on mid-level complexity models as we continue to build the right infrastructure needed to support the accelerated growth. In the medium term, we will then look to expand across all of the seven identified markets. To deliver on this growth ambitions, we'll be building out the IT capability as well as the manufacturing and supply chain capacity.
As I highlighted at the beginning of today's presentation, there will be a particular focus on the development of our culture and leadership that is critical if we're going to continue to deliver on time, to budget, and at pace. We also look forward to taking you through our ESG plans in more detail at the interims in the autumn. This draws the capital market strategy update to a close. In closing, let me restate why we've made so much progress to date and how this sets us up for our growth pathway through to FY 2027. We have a clear strategic direction, detailed plans, and a disciplined approach for delivery. This is built upon the cultural and behavioral progress that we've made over the last two years, and this has removed barriers to change and created the environment to drive forward our transformation.
We have a strong leadership team in place with relevant experience and the capability to deliver on the building blocks of growth. Despite the challenging consumer backdrop, we're confident in our proposition, and we have all the levers we need to manage the challenges. The growth strategy has new long-term targets that demonstrate leadership and vision, and we have shown there are clear milestone markers for near-term priorities and to track progress. Finally, we have a robust and strengthened balance sheet, which fully supports the investments we need to make to deliver on our strategic priorities. Really, we're grateful for your time today. We're gonna open it up to questions, and I'd like to invite back our presenters and my colleagues to kinda take the questions you have.
We'll start in the room and then flip to any questions we have online. Just a reminder, if you can, press the button whilst you're talking on the microphone, that way it feeds through, both to the production room but also to the people online.
With that, any questions? Danny?
Yeah, I've got quite a few actually, just to give you two to start with. First of all, why does it take three-five days to get Click and Collect product into store? It seems a long time. Secondly, for now, in terms of data, you're talking about using, you know, customer data. With a online sort of penetration of 3%, I presume you don't have that many sort of direct customer data points. Are you talking about panels or, you know, looking at shop data and stuff like that? Just wondered how long it's gonna take you to build out a meaningful database. That's the starters, if you wanna go with it.
Okay, brilliant. Go ahead.
I'll start with the Click and Collect one. Our promise is three to five days to the customer, three to five working days. That's because we are effectively shipping from our central warehouse to our store using Royal Mail. It can take three to five days. I had an order I placed last week, and it was there the next day. It's very dependent on how busy we are and how quickly we dispatch. Our aspiration is clearly to dispatch as quickly as possible, but we're in the hands of a Royal Mail delivery. That's exactly why the strategy is to move to a pick from store model, so we know what's in store, and we can pick it the next day, if not at some point the same day, 'cause clearly that's what customers want.
Sorry, I don't know how you operate in detail. I mean, do your deliveries to store of cards for putting on the shelves, I mean, how often do you deliver to store?
Our supply chain for stores, we've got two different ones. Cards physically get shipped in boxes via Royal Mail, and that is typically once per week. I mean, more in the higher volume stores. Gifting goes on pallets through a distribution network, and that ranges from between one and 5x per week, basically depending on volume. Just to build on the point that Sam made. When we did the Click and Collect trials, it was a pretty, just a straightforward crew trial of fulfill in the warehouse just as we're doing, and send it to the store via Royal Mail, just as we did.
Given the uptake on it and the resonance with customers, we prioritize getting that nationwide rather than on shortening the delivery time. We have that nationwide, and now our focus will be on how do we improve the service and kinda shorten that window. I think the second point was on how long will it take us to get a customer database and, yeah.
I mean, we have clearly a growing customer database. We've collected emails, and customer information online. I think part of the omni-channel strategy is how do we collect and then connect our customer information. Yes, online is one aspect, and then, you know, loyalty program, I've talked about event reminders. There are various different other concepts that will come that help us hook more customer data and understand and start connecting those customers so we can understand their behavior, we can build a better understanding of what they want, how they want it, when they want it, and start to communicate them in a more effective way.
I say our database, as we've, you know, been going for a number of years, is growing, but certainly there's plenty of scope to get much, much bigger.
How many?
I don't think I mean, certainly off the top of my head, I don't know, and I don't think we've ever shared that, probably.
Okay, I've got a couple of questions come in online. I think I think this is somewhere between Adam and Syed's, but so we'll start with Adam. As you expand the gift range and the stock to make new ranges for new partners, how will this complicate the supply chain and impact operations? Could you make the simplicity of the current model a lot more complex?
Yeah, okay. It won't complicate the model at all 'cause we've got a really strong. Well, obviously, first off, we've got our vertically integrated model. Obviously manufacturing an immense amount of cards in Yorkshire. And then when you expand that out to our gifting partners, we're already expanding that both into the U.K., Europe, and into the Far East. With what we have, within our supply base at the moment, we're able to fulfill the needs of our customers. I don't actually see any complexity that's gonna bring into the mix as we grow together and obviously working very closely with Syed as those new partners come along. Online, we learn more about their needs, but there's no reason for any alarms to be raised around product manufacturing.
Any other question in the room? Again, go for it.
Thank you. Just three or four from me, please. Just the first one is around the international partnerships, and if you could perhaps give a little bit of color in terms of the stage of conversation you're at with some of those with some of the other opportunities. I think the revenue showed a ramp up towards the back end of the plan. Just a little bit of color around that would be helpful, please. The second one, again, on international, just a bit of explanation in terms of the feedback loop with those partners in terms of how you get the proposition right. Is the product working? Is the brand resonating? Whether there'll be any investment required into the design team at home to get that proposition right.
Third question, sorry if I missed this, but just on the, on the targets, any thoughts around the free cash flow generation towards the back end of that plan? How that, how that profit improvement drops through to free cash flow. Just fourth question is a more general question. Just when you step back and think about that plan, I think the GBP 650 million of sales by FY 2027 is an uplift from the GBP 600 million by FY 2026 you talked about previously. Just any thoughts on wiggle room that you've given yourself within those numbers? If, if one area perhaps, is slightly less or lower than expectations, is there room for another area to outperform? Thanks.
Okay. Syed, do you wanna take the first couple on partnerships and cash flow?
I can do them. In terms of prospecting, Adam, I'd say we're at different stages depending on the market. On the low to mid-level complexity models, we're having active conversations with partners. We have shortlists of who we wanna partner with in the relative markets. On the more high complexity models, which are further out into FY 2025 onwards, we've looked at the markets in terms of the detailed market research. We've been out to market. We've met with potential prospects who we'd like to partner with. The next stage then is to basically work from a long list to a shortlist, similar to what we've done with some of the markets that we've now signed and updated you on. That'd be a similar kind of process that we'll follow through on in due course.
In terms of feedback from partners, in terms of the feedback loop. We will put together a joint plan, effectively, in terms of how we plan to show up in market, whether that be in terms of our store design, our range offer. That is based on desktop research that we've done, feedback we've had from the partners, from consumers in market, and also from landlords. Once we effectively launch in market later this year in the UAE, we will then take some further feedback on what's working, what's not working, and further refine our offer. We've got that level of flexibility that we alluded to earlier around third-party products as per customer demand. Once we basically got a winning formula, we can then bring that in-house as part of our vertical integration.
That would be kind of our initial plan in terms of managing the range. Final point on store design. I think there was a question earlier in the prelims around what investment we're making into the partnership side of the business. Store design is one in terms of how we're gonna show up from a Card Factory branded store, shop-in-shop travel. The benefit here is we're making an investment which we can use both on our own store estate in the U.K., international with partners, and this can be used across both franchise and wholesale, and across all seven markets of interest. It's not something we're doing specifically for Liberum, but something that we can utilize across all partners and models going forward.
Simon, do you wanna do cash flow at the back end of the plan?
In the very first slide, I think I put up was we talk about operating cash flow rather than free cash flow. We know operating cash flow is targeted to be greater than 70% during by FY 2027. There is gonna be a level, a higher level of investment in CapEx than we have seen historically.
Part of that is part of the growth curve. We're averaging about GBP 24 million over the course of the next four years, with the first three years being slightly higher than that last one. Clearly, obviously, that investment is there to obviously to drive the top line, with roughly half of the capital spend being on growth initiatives rather than just infrastructure initiatives.
Then I say in terms of your kind of point on how much flexibility or wiggle room to use your exact words. Look, I think, I would say none of us know exactly what the numbers are gonna be in five years, and therefore this is our best guess and best estimate that we can. What we have done is a couple of, I think, really important points, is that since I've joined, we've put in a process to review this annually. We have a process that reviews the market, that re-reviews the technology landscape, the people landscape, every year.
We then go through a process of saying, what's changed as a result of that sort of analysis, and what's the next questions we need to answer as part of the strategy? We evolve and update it. We're not gonna dilute our ambition because the market's changed or we haven't got something wrong. What we will do is figure out what's the next thing through that basically strategic, you know, review process. I think the other thing that I think this team has demonstrated over the last couple of years is we're a team, we've got our head up, we're having a look what's going around the corner, and we work with agility. As stuff comes at us, that we can't be judged by what we, what we didn't predict.
I couldn't predict the energy stuff. We must be judged by the speed and quality of our actions and our reactions. We will continue to act in that kind of agile way. As we learn new things and as things change and we have to adapt the plan, we will do so. At all times, you know, we won't allow our ambition to be watered down. I've got a question online, which is, what do we see as the biggest risks for our delivery of the FY 2027 plan? I think outside of the stuff that we don't know that is yet to show itself in kind of in front of us, the thing I fear most is I fear ourselves and I fear complacency.
That's the thing that's the thing that worries me the most. Success can mask failure, and we, you know, are doing everything we can to not only just to deliver on the things that we've said, and I think we've started to develop a track record of, we say, we've done, we will do, and just making sure that we've got our heads up, that we're always reading the data, we're always in tune with our customers and our people, and we don't get complacent and we don't make mistakes. Or when we do make mistakes, that we spot 'em quickly and we're able to correct. I fear that more than a new competitor opening or some, you know, kinda change in the market. It's also something we're extremely conscious of.
I don't know if anybody wants to add anything else around risk. No. There's a question in the back. Another question? Thanks.
Jonathan Pritchard at Peel Hunt. If I was, say, a Funky Pigeon shopper or a Moonpig shopper, why would I now start shopping at cardfactory.com?
Hi, Jonathan. Our intention is to offer a service that is absolutely comparable. Certainly there's no difference in the quality of the product, we believe we can offer a much better value proposition than the two competitors you just mentioned. Plus, our omni-channel strategy is about connecting our stores and online, we can offer, you know, 1,000 stores around the country for you to collect your product the next day at some point in the future, which I think will be a, you know, a proposition that the two competitors just mentioned just won't be able to meet.
No, I understand that. From a personalization perspective, you know, they spend a lot of money on getting the app going, et cetera. You think you're in a comparable position from them today, or will that be further down the road?
Yeah. I think we've talked about the technology investment that we need to continue to make, and getting the basics right is the absolute first thing. The replatforming, which we completed in March, was the first major stepping stone to achieve that. We're gonna use that base to build out the experience to compete with our online only competitors.
The thing I would add, Sam, is I think, Jonathan, we've made significant progress of the online experience over the last 12 months, and we will continue to do so. Most of our online competitors, they're doing bespoke in-house development. You know, given the nature of our heritage as being a bricks-and-mortar retailer, we're partnering with others so that we don't have to, you know, kinda have the armies of people to do that. I think the Salesforce platform is pretty robust and gives us the stuff we need, you know, basically to be competitive. You know, we're catching up. We've got, you know, I think the detailed plans in place that will make us do it.
I think with a combination of the scale, because of our bricks and mortar, the vertical integration, we'll be able to compete on a value for money basis, you know, pretty strongly. You know, we disrupted the physical card market, you know, all those years ago, and I think we can go again.
Sorry about that. Just to add to Jonathan's question, I mean, how are you going about planning to acquire those customers away from Moonpig? What sort of, you know, I mean, they've obviously got a lot of data and everything. It feels like you're probably behind on them on the curve there. How are you gonna go about actually acquiring some of these customers?
Yeah, you're right. We're coming from a lower database than those retailers who've been going much longer than we have online. I guess, and we've built into our plan digital marketing investment, you know, in the early years. Clearly what we need to change that to is retention and getting customers to come back. We have the significant advantage of, as Brian's already talked about, very good brand awareness. And we have a lot of customers coming through our stores every single day. We know from our own research that a lot of our customers coming through our doors just don't know we sell online. We think we have a significant opportunity to convert our in-store only customers to become omni-channel shoppers.
We know that omni-channel shoppers typically spend more with the brand overall.
Brian, anything to add?
That's exactly what I would've said.
Okay. Very good. I think, Tony, you wanted to come in for round two?
Thanks for remembering. Do you do any online marketing at the moment? Is sort of SEM, that sort of stuff? What sort of percentage of online sales do you spend on marketing, would you say?
Yes, we do. I mean, we haven't been doing digital marketing for many years. You know, it's a relatively new discipline, and we're building out a team at the moment as part of the people investment and the digital marketing investment. Yeah, there's. I mean, for me, there's lots and lots of opportunity in our digital marketing capability. Right now we do a range of different digital marketing investment into paid, social, email, retention, app push, other bits and pieces.
Just a couple more. In terms of the economics of online for you--
Yeah.
What sort of ATV do you need to actually make money online? Your card price is GBP 1.11. I can't imagine how much Royal Mail's had to dip out of that? You're making a lot of money.
Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, part of our strategy is to grow our average order value. Absolutely selling single cards is challenging, although we, you know, we pass through the cost of postage to customers. Absolutely our-- We are a gifting and card retailer, and attached gifting is a huge part of the strategy, and our average order value is significantly higher than a single card. Yeah, we get a significantly higher average order value than stores, which is a metric that we'll carry on monitoring and watching as we grow that, ultimately we're trying to get as many items as we can into a single box.
Are you gonna provide that at some point?
The store ATV. We, yeah, we've provided it before.
Okay.
What's our? Our. It's about 10 GBP.
Yeah. It's approximately GBP 10, yeah.
And just one last sort of unrelated question. When you talked about the longer term international model and you talked about fully serviced, I just wondered what that included. How much servicing there's gonna be. Are you gonna have, you know, production in the U.S., warehousing in the U.S., another office in the U.S.?
Really good question, Tony. I think the main differentiation between wholesale supply only and a wholesale full service of Card Factory taking responsibility for last mile logistics, typically either delivering to the customer's DC or store. The second piece of the service model is the merchandising in-store. Basically taking the responsibility for putting the cards and the celebration essentials onto the shelves, which in a supply-only model, we would only take the responsibility for supplying goods to the partner, but not taking responsibility on last mile logistics or the merchandising. Those are the two key differentiation points between the two models. Whether we do any printing in market is a kind of future decision on whether we wanna ship from the U.K. or print in market on demand.
As you currently see it, and within those projections, it's basically ship the stuff from over here and then, varying levels of cost and import, in the sort of destination market, yeah?
That's the current assumptions in the plan. Clearly, if there's a cheaper way of doing it, then we'll figure that out and kind of do it, you know, do it in that. We'll do it in the most cost effective manner.
Can I offer up a last question from anybody here? If not, I'll wrap us up. Just wanna say to everybody thank you very much for attending. Those that attended both sessions, really appreciate it. If you only managed the Capital Markets Day, again, I really appreciate you coming today. All of the presentations from today will be made on our investor website, overnight site. By tomorrow you should be able to access everything there. Once again, thank you for your time, and wish you a safe onward journey to wherever you may be going.
Thanks, everyone.