Card Factory today confirmed its intention to float. Retail Week speaks to chief executive Richard Hayes about how he aims to grow the value greetings card retailer.

When will Card Factory list on the stock market?

The next few weeks will be fairly intense but we’re hopeful of concluding mid-May.

Clinton Cards fell into administration two years ago with 1,200 stores, you want to grow Card Factory to 1,200 stores. How will you ensure the same thing doesn’t happen to Card Factory?

If you go back two years to when Clintons had issues there was speculation from the media, which blamed two things: first of all the online market and the second thing was a declining market. Both are incorrect.

The personalised greetings card market is 3% of the total market in volume terms and the card market alone is estimated at £1.4bn with compound growth of 1.4% for the past few years. So people can draw their own conclusions [about the potential for growth].Card Factory has been opening 50 stores a year.

And we don’t want to spend too much time focusing on the competition. We’re very focused on the online retail proposition and we have control of the supply chain through our vertical integration, so we’re able to offer customers value.

What are your growth plans?

The growth for the group will come from four channels: improving the retail proposition in existing stores, the ongoing roll-out of stores, a continued focus on business efficiencies and the development of the online offer and we’re currently looking at the best ways to take that opportunity.

Will you be refitting existing stores?

It’s all about improving the proposition and providing better value for money. It will be a combination of a number of things to give better quality products and drive growth.

You want to open up to 1,200 stores in the UK and Ireland. When will you open in Ireland?

We already have stores in Northern Ireland but not in the Republic of Ireland. We will look into developing that but it’s not a priority.

Card Factory generated a 9.2% lift in EBITDA to £80.4m, is growth on track?

We’re pleased with the growth. We have consistently grown revenue in the business over the last 10 years.

Last year there was a lot of speculation over whether Card Factory’s private equity owner Charterhouse would sell the business or seek and IPO. Why did you choose to float?

The reality was that we had a lot of people approach us rather than going to market ourselves and off the back of those approaches we decided to get knowledge from a select few. Bear in mind that Charterhouse had only been invested in the business for three years at that point. There were offers on the table but we felt they didn’t reflect the potential of the business, so we decided not to pursue it.

What stake will Charterhouse hold in Card Factory once it floats?

These are all things that are set to be agreed but it’s fair to say Charterhouse will keep a significant share of its current 60% stake.