Gift Focus inc Attire Accessories - September/October 2020

109 UP AND COMING SLEEPY BEE STUDIO www.sleepybeestudio.co.uk @sleepybeestudio we quickly discovered just wasn’t feasible in terms of budget and time as it takes a lot of work to put it all together. Each collection can have up to 15 sku’s so building that and the subsequent photography, online set up etc. is quite a task. So, we reduced it to two per year, along with any additional lines that don’t necessarily fall into a theme but that work within the brand. What trade shows do you attend and why? Top Drawer is one of the best ones for us as it’s not quite as vast as Spring and Autumn Fair at the NEC. We exhibited at our first trade show at Top Drawer in January this year in the Spotted category and it was a great experience. We met such a lovely group of people and won the ‘Best Stationery Design’ category for the SS20 Paper Awards, which we were over the moon about! There’s also the Stationery Show in London, and Home & Gift in Harrogate. It would be amazing to attend NY Now but we’re not quite at that stage with our travel budget! What are your current best-selling designs? Our writing sets and tissue-wrapped stationery sets have always been the most popular lines (Stargazer for the tissue-wrapped and Botanical for the writing set). There is a definite love for anything star-based, so we plan to add more to this theme. When was the website launched and how does it support the business? We launched the site in August 2019, having originally launched online with Etsy whilst we were building our own site. What with the current COVID-19 situation it’s been a huge support, our online sales of our writing sets doubled in the last few months as people said that they felt they finally had the time to write and knew that for certain friends and family it was really important to them to get that kind of communication. It’s overall a really important platform for the business as we can write blogs, offer exclusive online products and on our social platforms re-direct them to the site. What have been the key milestones in the business? Winning the Paper Award was a definite big deal for us seeing as we were less than a year old when we won it, and there were a lot of very well-established amazing brands that applied for that category. The other key milestone is that we made it through our first year really! It’s such a competitive market and you just have to be confident in yourself and embrace any changes that you need to make in order to succeed. How do you view the current market and what trends, both in business and product, do you see emerging over the coming months? Due to COVID-19 it is hard to predict what trends may come about, but one thing that the vast majority of people have done is taken a step back and evaluated their own work-life balance; and understood just how important family, friends and self-care are now more than ever. There’s been an online surge in sales for health products and exercise machines. Likewise, as people have had more time to reflect on this, there’s also been more of a focus on mental health and how people can do certain things to help themselves, from getting outdoors every day to keeping a journal. How that translates to our area of business seems to be a bigger need for products that have meaningful messages and quotes, and that the colours used invoke a sense of calm. Personalisation and gift experience are as popular as ever and whilst it’s not a new trend it’s something that more and more people are searching for and that businesses, including our own, are finding new ways to introduce. Customers appear more open to spending more on something that is clearly good quality but also that they can put a personal touch to that shows the recipient that they have really thought about them. Sustainability and clever use of materials is something that we’ve seen across multiple categories. As a business we are conscientious about sustainability and how we can develop products to support that, such as at the minute we are currently working on doing a limited-edition stationery gift set using G F Smith Extract paper. The paper is made from recycled coffee cups and comes in a really beautiful selection of colours. It’s still very much at the NPD stages so all fingers crossed that we can launch it! What are your future plans for the business? We both want to increase the bespoke and collaborative side of things. To do the illustrations for a book, or product and packaging design for a brand we admire would be a fantastic opportunity. Our other goal is to purchase a foiling machine so that we can add personalisation to our products and additional designs to our cards & prints. We also have a number of new themes in the pipeline, original art exclusively available on our website, and looking into new packaging formats for our gift collections.