Gift Focus - Mar/Apr 2020 (Issue 118)

80 Greetings from Bug Art Gift Focus speaks to Mike Wright, studio manager of Bug Art, about the history and future of the international greeting card publisher When did Bug Art start up? Who started the business and why? In the early ’90s, Bug Art’s founder Jane Crowther designed a small range of greeting cards to supplement her meagre income as an artist. She initially started selling them at craft fairs alongside her paintings but as the cards started to sell, Jane made the commercial decision to concentrate on her card designs. Bug Art was born. How has the company developed over the years? The first cards were called the Snout range and featured a cute little bug character with a plastic nose and wobbly eyes. The earliest Snout cards were a labour- intensive cottage industry – they were hand painted and the noses and eyes were glued on by hand. Bug Art attended several trade shows before the Snouts attracted significant attention. There was nothing else quite like them and soon agents and distributors began to show an interest. As trade started to pick up, Jane was able to invest in less labour intense production. The orders started to roll in and within a couple of years Bug Art had acquired a team of agents and distributors covering the UK and several other countries. Friends and family were employed to keep up with the demand for nose sticking. This popular range would go on to sell in their millions over the next 10 years. A second range was released in 1993. Completely different in style, these art cards were again a great success. They featured images on handmade paper, enhanced by embossed gold foil. The Paper & Foil range is still in production and is regularly updated with new designs. In 1995, Jane and Bug Art moved from London to Nottingham. In 1999, Jane’s sister Anne joined the company, and along with Chris Griffith (Bug Art’s sales manager), they founded A La Carte to provide warehousing, distribution and credit control services to greeting card publishers – with Bug Art as its first client. The business grew steadily with new ranges and an increasing customer base. In the UK, we mainly sell to small independents. Abroad, we continue to expand sales in more than 20 countries, enjoying year on year growth. Over the last four years, Bug Art has worked to consolidate our website, making it user friendly for our UK trade customers. What inspired the name Bug Art? Like all good ideas, Jane thought up the name in a pub. In a light bulb moment, she came up with the name to link the two range styles into one cohesive title. Since then, every Bug Art design has a tiny little bug hidden somewhere in the image. Some customers love to look for him. Occasionally, we forget to add the bug and these cards become collector’s items. Tell us about your product offering. We publish quality art cards, most of which are foiled and embossed. Our focus is on beautifully designed cards that are nice enough to be framed. They’re all blank inside which means that they can be used for any occasion, anywhere. Jane designs the majority of the cards, but she sometimes collaborates with other artists on ranges. They’re all printed and finished within a 35-mile radius of Nottingham. Along with the small carbon