Highlights from the National Stationery Show 2018

The 2018 National Stationery Show was a fabulous showcase of so much stationery goodness! Booth after booth offered eye-catching displays and products as well as having super-friendly and passionate people.

 This pictures were from the Sakura of America booth. My favorite is the seahorse stationery!

Who doesn't love beautiful quality lined envelopes?

All in a lovely stationery set.

The images below are from the Lily & Val booth. I fell in love with these prints of store front images. Aren't they gorgeous?

I love them so much I can't pick a favorite.

The only thing missing is a storefront image of a bookstore.

This lovely Keepsake Kitchen Diary from Lily & Val is a combination cookbook, journal and scrapbook. There is so much inside there that it would be best to watch the video on this page of their website.

 This is just a portion of what I saw at the 2018 NSS. More to come in future blogs.

Typewriter Heaven

I sat down to write this blog and decided to type a little bit of it on my wonderful green Voss typewriter that I first blogged about last year.

I haven't had the typewriter out for quite awhile and it's just been sitting quietly on a shelf in my office. I did use it to type a note to Missive Maven as well as the daughter of a friend last year when I first purchased it.

So I dusted it off and loaded it with paper and typed a quick note.

Part of the reason I'm doing this now is to show off these couple pictures I had taken last May at the National Stationery Show. This company buys and sells typewriters as well as supplies them for photo shoots and movie sets. 

You can visit the kasbahMod website to see pictures of their current inventory. They also sold typewriter ribbon for $15, so I picked up one for my old Voss, but haven't had the heart to change it yet. Looking at these couple pictures makes me wish I had taken more. Why oh why did I not?

I also love the business card they handed out at the stationery show. Very cool! They do actually have a name and email on the card, but I have it neatly hidden behind my handmade "Your name here" sign.

Day 1 at the National Stationery Show

Just a quick post to tell you that I'm at the National Stationery Show (NSS) and that it is lovely, just as it is every year! I have some issues with my camera, so will need to use my iPhone for more of the blogging posts on this trip. Unfortunately, I didn't know that today, so only took one pic with my iPhone.

Each year I continue to meet new and established owners of companies who had a dream and are pursuing what makes them happy. This makes me happy as that is what Letters & Journals is all about.

Some of the super friendly people I met today include:
Tara at Gratitude Designs (cards and journals)
Jode at Plymouth Card Company
Nathan at Rifle Paper Company (current L&J giveaway sponsor)
Stacey at SE Hagerman Designs  (current L&J giveaway sponsor)
Carin at Compendium Inc
Nancy and Clay at Jot2Jot

There are more but I will add them at another time when I can include the proper photos.

Stay tuned for Day 2 at the National Stationery Show tomorrow! I will definitely have more pictures to share then.

National Stationery Show Preparation

This week I will be attending my fifth National StationeryShow. I am just as excited this year as I have been every year I’ve gone. For the pen and paper lover, this is the trade show to attend.

It’ s great to walk the show aisles and see eye candy and functional, whimsical, practical, colorful stationery, cards, notebooks and office supplies and much more.

I’ve met some great people at the NSS including some of the original sponsors of the Letters & Journals monthly giveaway:

Peter at Crane Stationery

Christy at Regreet

Julia at Flying Wish Paper

Karen at Exaclair

 Currently I’m working on the print magazine of the premiere edition of Letters & Journals and will be looking for potential advertisers. Soon I will have pricing information posted on the website.  Print advertising rates will start at $200. More info to come on that!

Letters & Journals Magazine Update

Plans for the print magazine of Letters & Journals are continuing to move along; maybe not as fast as we'd like, but moving, nonetheless.

The Minnesota Magazine Publishing Association (MMPA) has a 2011 Minnesota Magazine Mingle later this week. This gathering is for editors and writers and is a great opportunity to see all of the different magazines published in Minnesota.

In February I'll be attending the Niche Magazine Conference in Austin, TX. It's the fifth annual conference created and hosted by Carl Landau. This magazine event is geared exclusively for niche magazines, which is exactly what Letters & Journals will be.

In May I'll be returning to the annual National Stationery Show (NSS) in NYC. I've been to NSS the last two years and am in heaven as I walk the floor visiting all of the different booths; seeing all of the new product as well as the familiar product that we see in stores and online. I think there were over 1,100 vendors last year. It's amazing and a lot of fun meeting all of the people who attend this annual event.

In the meantime, we are still working on our goal of getting to 5,000 names of potential subscribers for the magazine. We are at 2,700 names currently so it's good to see that moving in the right direction!

What is regreet?

For a fun way to re-use some of those funny, one-of-a-kind birthday cards (or any kind of greeting card), regreet offers an innovative change from the ordinary. Who hasn't thought of doing this? In 2009 Christy Eichers took this seed of an idea and went on to start her own company.

I met Christy this year at the National Stationery Show and have been following her (and her smiling green frog) on Twitter and Facbook and watching regreet grow.

For the uninitiated, here is how it works

The basic regreet kit comes with signature labels (to cover the previous signature), note paper, envelopes and journey labels. The journey label allows you to identify your newly minted regreet card with a unique regreet ID number that you can enter online and then track where the card goes once it leaves your care. Or, in some cases, you can see where it was before it found its way to you.

When I approached Christy for the monthly stationery giveaway, she immediately responded and sent in two items that can be won in this month's giveaway- the basic regreet greeting kit (pictured above) and a greeting card organizer as seen below.

This sturdy and earth friendly organizer comes with 2 single sets for regreeting your first cards and pockets for each month plus an pocket for supplies.For more information (including a short video) of how regreet works, just visit their website.

If you would like the opportunity to win these items in this month's stationery giveaway, just be sure you are signed up for LetterNews, the monthly e-newsletter.

Day 2 at the National Stationery Show

Day 2 at the National Stationery Show was another jam packed day. I walked the second half of the show, stopping at many booths and finding out about the product they featured.

I met Karen from Exaclair who many of you may know or have heard of as she is generous with sending out samples of their product. Earlier this year I raved about the bottle of J. Herbin Orange Indien ink I received that Karen had sent. It was nice to finally meet her and thank her in person.

The notebook in the photo is from Flowerpot Press. They have some lovely journals and cards.

I met Alan at Night Owl Paper Goods. Their eco-friendly products are described as 'modern yet folksy'. They also have an awesome website- cute, whimsical, easy to read and navigate.

When he heard that I was looking for local stationery stores to visit, Alan recommended that I visit Greenwich Letterpress who also had a booth just one aisle over from Night Owl. So I visited there a bit also and got to know how they are owned and run by two sisters who are both artists. If I don't make it to there store in Greenwich this year, I will plan to get there on my next visit to NYC.

All for now. Wish I had time to list more, but must move on. Will post again tomorrow! And will also follow up with some of the people I met at the show at a later date when it is not so crazy and busy.

Day 1 at the National Stationery Show

Today was the Day 1 of the National Stationery Show. I visited lots of booths and met some wonderful creators, vendors, sellers of all things stationery.

Highlights of the day included meeting Peter Hopkins at Crane Paper. Peter was kind of enough to help me out a couple years ago by answering some questions for me as I started conducting the initial research into starting this magazine. I have followed Peter's blog for a few years and meeting him today was like meeting an old friend. He was very warm and welcoming.

Peter also surprised me by giving me a gift bag filled with boxes of Crane cards and stationery and, boy, did I have fun looking through that. It was all I could do to not open one of the boxes and start writing on a card when I got back to the hotel. But, alas, my husband wanted to go out to dinner, so off we went. Most likely I will be including one of these boxed cards in some contest or drawing in order to spread the stationery joy.

Other booths I visited include Truly Sisters where I met the artist and owner, Mary Torch. This is Mary's first year at NSS and she got started as an artist creating sorority stationery and thank you cards for her daughter who recently joined a sorority. Apparently sororities in the south are big into cards and thank you notes and they needed something more modern and chic than they were finding. So Mary created her own line and has been expanding her choices and selection over this past year.

Eco friendly cards has been a big theme this year. Kelp Designs was one of them and they were giving out twitter pins for those who stopped at their booth and was a twitter follower, or wanted to be. They were very nice and seemed surprised by all the twitter fans they had. Ecosystems and ecojot were also at the show.

Too Little Trees plants a tree for every blank book they sell. They had a wonderful selection of journals and were giving away free journals to all of their booth visitors.

Many of the vendors I met were wholesalers and sell only to stores, of which there were a lot of store owners and buyers at the show. But from the conversations I had with others who have been to previous shows, they fear the traffic is down from the last couple of years as the hard times continue. But it was only the first day, so hopefully Monday and Tuesday will see an increase in traffic walking the show aisles.

I walked about half of the show and will walk the other half tomorrow. There are over 900 booths, which, I believe is down from 1,000 at last year's show and 1,400 from a few years ago. On Tuesday I will go back and see some of the booths that I might have missed- too busy, looking the other way, a missed aisle, etc.
 

Preparing for the National Stationery Show

The National Stationery Show (NSS) starts this Sunday! I'm so excited to be going again this year. My main objectives are to find story ideas and new products to share, find potential advertisers as well as stationery stores who would like to carry the magazine, and meet others in the industry and share their enthusiasm for our collective passion- pen, ink, paper, cards, mail, notebooks, journals and more. I have a checklist of items that I am bringing which includes:

• Business Cards
• Magazine Prototype
• Postcards featuring the prototype cover
• Stamps for mailing postcards
• Extra suitcase for all of the goodies (information packets, samples, catalogs)
• Camera
• Good walking shoes
• List of fun tourist things to do
• Notebook for ideas and business cards 
• Appointment calendar to make sure I keep the appointments I have set up

Wish me luck! Hopefully, I will see some of you there!
(Photo: Paper Patisserie in St. Paul, MN)

Making Plans to Attend the National Stationery Show

The 64th National Stationery Show takes place in New York May 16-19, 2010. The annual trade show will have over 9,000 exhibitors and 12,000 industry related visitors- including me! Letters & Journals is looking for story ideas, new products to feature as well as finding potential advertisers for the magazine.

There will be vendors from various industries such as pen, ink, stationery, cards, gift wrap, home office products, calendars, etc. The Letters & Journals blog will update daily from the show just like last year. Here are the entries from the 2009 National Stationery Show.
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4

Missive Maven

The Missive Maven is one of my favorite blogs on letter writing. She sends and receives the coolest mail and she includes photos that show you her fun cool mail. And, I've found that if you send her something, she will most likely post about it and send something back to you! How cool is that?

She's also got a ton of cool links on her site that will take you to all kinds of other interesting blogs, mostly on letter writing, stationery, postcards, stamps. I love it!

Miss Maven also did a blog on my letter writing and journal surveys and I got a lot of people saying they found the surveys through her blog. Thanks, Ilona!

MMPA Conference

I attended the MN Magazines & Publication Association's annual Summit & Expo on May 21. This year's theme was How to Be Up in a Down Economy. The day was filled with four different tracks that include: Editorial, Circulation, Sales and Leadership. Deciding which sessions to attend was a difficult choice with so many valid options. I followed the advice of Hervey Evans, magazine consultant, who suggested I attend the sessions on advertising as I will need to start approaching advertisers at some point in the next year.

The Sales sessions focused on internet/web site sales rather than the print sales. I think it would have been beneficial for me to have more information on the print side, especially as a start-up magazine. But there was some useful information and the presenter, Wendy McHale of the Laredo Group, was an experienced sales professional and an excellent speaker.

The key to online sales is to know who your audience is and to understand your stats (unique views, length of visits, how viewers are getting to your site, what they're doing while they're there, etc). It's important to value the online advertising space and partnership opportunities because historically this space has been seen as less valued than print, when we actually have the potential to know more about our subscribers and viewers than we have with the printed version. Very interesting.

I have begun taking notes on the marketing information I need to gather so that I can put together a sales packet to help prime me for this new role- advertising sales. Definitely going to the National Stationery Show (NSS) this month also helped in that regard as I met stationery store owners and potential advertisers there.

Day 4 at the National Stationery Show

Today's NSS show only went from 9-12 and it seemed much less trafficked than the other 3 days. I think a lot of people got their buying/visiting done in the first 3 days. The buses ran slower today and the waits were longer for them. I would not plan to go on the last day again. Also, I felt that a lot of the exhibitors who I visited were disappointed because I wasn't a buyer looking to put their product in my store.

I met fellow twitterer @JackiPaper at her gorgeously designed booth as shown in the photo. Jacki won the Think Green Award for one of her cool products (recycled fortune teller greeting cards). You can read about all of the awards here. Way to go Jacki! So nice to meet you. Jacki's web site is www.jackipaper.com.

Overall the show was a lot of fun. Met some wonderful new people and made a lot of contacts for potential advertisers for the magazine when that time comes in about a year from now. So much yet to do.

Day 3 at the National Stationery Show

What a busy crazy week it has been! We walk around the show and my feet get tired. We walk around the city and my feet get tired. I am beat! But it has been fun and worth every aching muscle.

On Day 3 I did not spend as much time at the show. My husband, Joe, and I had touristy plans for the city. But I did meet some more exhibitors and got some great pictures. When I get home and I have more time, I will add photos to flickr so that you can see more than the few I am putting on here.

This cute pooch was at the Hooray for the Underdog booth which makes and sells cards (and other products such as notepads) featuring great pictures of rescue animals. These cards were gorgeous and for a cause that is dear to my heart- animals. Every day I visit http://www.animalrescuesite.com/ and click on the link to help the animals. Please check it out if you have not heard of it.

Day 2 at the National Stationery Show

Day 2 at the NSS was fabulous! I met some more fantastic artists/business owners. Hello! Lucky (twitter name @helloluckycards), Two Trick Pony (twitter name @carriepony), Emma J Cards (twitter name @emmajcards) and Mary Ellen from M. Ellen Designs.

There is so much eye candy at the show it is difficult to keep your head from spinning. Today I did a walk of the length of the show to get a sense of how many booths/aisles there were. It was incredible! I don't know that there's a way to get to all of them. But what am I missing if I don't? I hate to think...

In addition to meeting all of these great people, it's enjoyable to see the wonderful and innovative designs of some of the booths. I did not have my camera with me today, so had to rely on my phone camera and many of this pictures I took were not very good quality. Will try to do better today.

There has been a lot of positive reception to my magazine, Letters & Journals - a quarterly magazine on letter writing and journal writing. Of course, I am talking to a lot of people who would call themselves paper enthusiasts, a key market to this kind of publication.

More updtates to come. Thanks for tuning in!

Looking for People to Help Take a Quick Survey

This post is about the three surveys I created. One is for letter writers. One is for journal writers. And one is for stationery store owners and/or designers. Each survey is only 10 questions long and should take no more than 5-10 minutes of your time.

I'm really looking for some feedback on these hobbies and how the magazine Letters & Journals can be designed to appeal to these groups of people. Any help and feedback would be greatly appreciated!

The link to all of the surveys can be found here. Please take just a few minutes to complete any of the surveys that appeal to you. And I would also request, if you can, to forward this information to any and all of your friends, relatives, acquaintances, coworkers, etc. to have them take it too. Or, if you have blog that this would relate to, please feel free to link to the surveys from there. I will definitely return the favor! Thanks to all who can help!!!

I know your time is valuable, so I tried to make the surveys short and sweet, but left room for you to add your suggestions if you feel inclined to do so. Thank you.

Now I am off to pack for National Stationery Show. I plan to visit as many booths as possible, take lots of pictures and do some sightseeing while we are in NYC. And, of course, blog about it all.

National Stationery Show

The National Stationery Show (NSS) is held every May at the Jacob K. Javits Center in NYC. This year it runs from May 17-20 and I will be there. Lucky me! I'm very excited to attend the pinnacle of the industry's trade show. There will be over 1,00 exhibitors and 14,000 attendees. Here are just a handful of some of the exhibitors:

Gina B. Designs
Russell + Hazel
Two Trick Pony
Emma J Cards
Whitney English
Sweet Letter Press

My goal is to talk to these people- many of whom could be potential advertisers for Letters & Journals- and find out how my magazine can serve them. Here is list of the products that are featured at NSS: greeting cards, invitations, imprintables, giftwrap/ribbons, stationery, bridal accessories, customized/personalized products, decorative home office products, writing instruments, papercrafting supplies, frames, journals, calendars and more.

I will write more about the show when I am there next week. Stay tuned.

In the next few days I will be finalizing the surveys I created. One of the ways I plan to capture information from these stationery designers and store owners is to ask them to take the quick survey that I set up on Survey Monkey. In addition to the special survey I did for this group of people, I also created 2 more general surveys that I want anyone and everyone to take. There is one on letter writing and one on journal writing. Thanks in advance if you can do this. I will post the details in my next blog.

Magazine Update

April was an exciting month for progress on the magazine. I met with a magazine consultant and interviewed 2 potential graphic designers to create the logo and the brand for the magazine. I signed up for the National Stationery Show in New York that takes place later this month and I also signed up for the MMPA's (Minnesota Magazine Periodicals Association) 1 day conference also in May.

I started this blog in April and am pleased to see people finding it through searches, twitter, word of mouth.

I am working on creating a survey for potential advertisers (stationery designers and store owners, gift shop owners, pen companies, etc) on Survey Monkey which has free and paid surveys. I should be finished with the survey in the next week. I will also do one for letter writers and journalers as I think it would be beneficial to get their input as well.