‘Brexit has been an utter disaster’: the royal heritage firm that can’t sell its wares abroad
W ith products on sale at Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey and museums across the country – as well as in European capitals – Jeremy Shaw, the managing director of Derbyshire-based Heritage Playing Cards, has particular reason to hope the coronation will be good for the business he set up 30 years ago.
The past few years have been anything but. First, the Covid pandemic shut all museums and their shops, meaning an almost total collapse in domestic and overseas sales. Then the country’s leading producer of heritage playing cards – whose popular kings and queens of England pack has been updated ahead of the coronation to include one of Charles III – saw its export business almost completely wiped out by Brexit.
The effect of Britain leaving the European Union has destroyed 85% of his company’s trade with EU customers – which accounted for 35% of its total turnover.
“Before Brexit, we got an order at nine in the morning and three days later it was sitting in a shop or museum in Paris or Brussels or Vienna,” said Shaw. “Now almost all of our EU customers have given up. The paperwork and the costs of getting packages over to the EU mean they think it is just not worth it. Brexit has been a complete and utter disaster.”
As well as UK-themed packs – the kings and queens, the prime ministers, the stately homes and many more subjects – the company has supplied European markets with bespoke packs for different countries, such as German castles and a pack celebrating the Brothers Grimm fairytales.
But not for much longer. “We are running down all our German and French stock and then we will finish. We will donate whatever we have left to schools as teaching materials for foreign language lessons,” said Shaw.
“We are just battering
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