2014 National Stationery Show Recap

Phew!  The AFB Team just got back from our whirlwind trip to New York to visit Surtex and the National Stationery Show.  I am still processing Surtex, so more on that in a future post, but there is a lot to say about the Stationery Show, or NSS as it’s known in stationery circles.

Changes to the show:

• Scads of greeting/counter card companies and very few invitation, photo card and personalized gift lines.
• More “newbie” exhibitors than at shows in the past few years thanks to the addition of the #fresh section.
• Many exhibitors who felt out of place – neither gift nor stationery.
• Partnership with Etsy Wholesale to bring some of the Etsy Wholesale sellers to the show.
• Size – the show has gotten smaller every year and this year was no exception.

The Good Stuff:

• The #fresh section definitely had some of the more interesting booths (footnote on this in “The Bad Stuff”).
• The Etsy Wholesale section had some really great stuff (footnote on this in “The Bad Stuff”) – notably A Heirloom (I have one of their cutting boards and am obsessed with it) and Little Low Studio.
• Emily McDowell‘s booth not only looked great, but her hand lettered cards and products stood out in quality and readability, and also in the clever department.  She won about 62 Louie Awards and deservedly so.  (footnote on readability in “The Bad Stuff”)
• Kramer Drive  and Haute Papier were the two invitation/photo card/personalized lines that felt like they had worked really hard to keep their designs feeling fresh – many of the other lines looked like they hadn’t evolved stylistically in the last 5 years and are beginning to look tired.
• My obsession with R.Nichols knows no bounds and as always his booth and products were fantabulous.
• Sugar Paper, Ferme a Papier, Rifle Paper Co. and Smock were all on their A games – as always.
• The Yellow Owl Workshop and Linda & Harriet had the most amazing hand painted walls in their booths – really fabulous lines both.

The Bad Stuff:

• The #fresh section was stuffed in the back of the show, surrounded by a lot of junky “gift” stuff, and with this icky, draped faux back wall created to make the show look like it was taking up more of the floor at the Javits than it actually was.
• The Etsy Wholesale section was also stuffed in the back of the show – see point above.
• I love hand lettering – really – but 95% of the greeting/counter card lines that sported hand lettering were almost unreadable unless you were right up on top of them, and the sentiment was always smack in the middle of the card.  The lettering may have been great, the art (if there was any) may have been great, but put that card in a rack in a shop, and a shopper has no idea what that card is for unless they take it out and look hard at it.  That is a big no-no in the world of merchandising greeting/counter cards!
• Many of the other greeting/counter card lines sported typography – but not hand lettered – and while some of those were great, many of them had the same issue as mentioned above.  If a product doesn’t merchandise well in a shop, it won’t sell.
• The attempt at adding gift lines to the show has not been super successful, in my opinion.  Given the customer base that most of the stationery exhibitors cater to, many of the gift lines simply felt too cheap or totally out of place.  I could have cried for the stationery lines that were next to or across from gift lines that looked like they’d been attacked by a bedazzler, or that had spent no $$ at all on their booth.
• Lack of color.  As I am really digesting the show, I am realizing that aside from Rifle Paper Goods, Ferme a Papier and Waste Not Paper, there was a decided lack of saturated, all over color and (fresh) prints that we’re really seeing pretty much everywhere else – it was all over Surtex, for instance.  (Some of the veteran lines like Caspari and Design Design definitely had color in their lines, but in a much more traditional way.)  This is where the show fell flat for me – all those tiny white counter cards with dainty hand lettering or maybe a tiny illustration – while individually they might be lovely, as part of a show they just all blended together in a sea of white paper and letters.
• Same products.  Of the few companies still offering personalized goods, it feels like they are all offering the same products – calendars, notepads, melamine plates etc., mouse pads, water bottles.  As one retailer I know put it, “New designs are great, but I am really looking for new product – it doesn’t even have to be personalized – I don’t need any more calendars, plates or mouse pads to sell!”

The Trends:

Trends may be a misnomer because just because something is all over a trade show does not mean that it’s been adopted by the end consumer, and it’s not really a trend until that happens.  So maybe it’s better to say the things we saw over and over?  Anyway, here goes, in order of how much the trend was represented:

• Hand lettering
• Small sized greeting/counter cards with hand lettering
• Maps/states (cute overall but tough for a store to order or sell more than its own state)
• Animal illustrations
• Gold foil
• Neon accents
• Arrows

New York is so fun in May and I so love connecting in person with clients and industry friends.  The creative vibe of the show with all the clever booth designs can also be creatively inspiring.  But, ultimately the purpose of the show is to connect buyers and designers the buyer couldn’t easily find any other way, and in my opinion the show did not achieve that purpose.  One retailer I talked to summed it up best:  “The best lines I saw were lines I already knew about, and I didn’t need to come to New York to buy from them.”

If you were at the show, what was your take on it?