Gift Focus - May/Jun 2018 (Issue 107)

Tell us a bit about Pen to paper Pen to Paper opened a couple of weeks before Christmas, 2000 so we’ve been trading in Brighton’s vibrant North Laine, an area full of small interesting independent shops, for 18 years now. We’re a stationery shop rather than a gift shop though we’re well aware that a lot of people do come to us to buy presents. We specialise in pens, notebooks, cards and gift wrap, plus diaries and calendars at Christmas and New Year. As well as a bricks and mortar shop, we have an e-commerce web store and send out mail order all over the world. Was this the first shop you opened? Margaret was an experienced retailer having worked for a major book chain for many years. Joyce was a freelance graphic designer. We had already set up a company to republish images of women in the music hall as postcards and greeting cards. We realised we worked well together as a team, trusted each other and had a shared love of stationery. We were on holiday in France and nearly fell out over who should have first dibs on a diary and thought, “If we’re this passionate about our stationery, surely other people will be too.” We went to lots of stationery, paper and pen shops, where we made a note of publishers and manufacturers of items we loved. Looking for a distributor for our cards, we went to the Autumn Fair at NEC Birmingham. It was a revelation. We realised we had the pick of marvellous suppliers with which to stock a shop. What advice would you give someone setting up a gift stationery shop? Decide what your focus is and stick to it. Explore which suppliers you want to use. Go to trade fairs, armed with business cards to show you mean business and collect relevant brochures, price lists and terms of business from companies that interest you. Chat with stall holders. Be honest that you’re just researching with the eventual aim of opening a shop. Remember you’re possibly starting long-term relationships with these suppliers. If you’re not in a position to be their customer yet, remember to move aside if they have current customers approach them – they are there to sell, though they’ll probably talk to you happily until a real customer comes along. Know the area you’re opening in. Think about what other shops are already in that district and how you might sit well with them. Don’t copy what other shops are doing and definitely don’t try to poach their suppliers. Find a selection of goods that you can offer, that are wonderful and priced just right that no-one else in that area is offering. Keep a close eye on costs. Try not to pay more than you have to for renting premises, fitting it out, getting it decorated, advertising your new business. We were lucky that there was a local Traders Association in Brighton when we first opened that pooled information on local rents so we could gauge what was reasonable and what wasn’t. Talk to any Joyce Chester and Margaret Monod, owners of Pen to Paper, talk passionately about sharing their love for stationery with the people of Brighton THAN THE SWORD the pen is mightier 100 giftfocus