The Stationers Guild

This week at the National Stationery Show (“NSS”) a colleague of mine told me that the Editor of Get Married, an online wedding website, was going to visit a bricks-and-mortar stationery store and find out what actually goes on when someone seeks advice on wedding invitations.  I was intrigued:  gosh, will a “real world” experience get in the way of shamelessly promoting the same monotonous and tedious designs from online resellers?  Sceptical, but willing to give Get Married the benefit of the doubt, I trekked over to their booth at the back of Javits Center to see if they had made any relevant  improvements to their website.

I came across an enthusiastic young woman explaining the benefits of advertising on Get Married to two stationers.  As they were wrapping up, I jumped in and asked:  Will I be able to find a “real” stationery store on your website?    Using Connecticut as an example (my home state), I asked to see if they had any stores listed under invitations?

As I suspected, the only “local” stores you can find are “national” online resellers.    I think most people are savvy enough to know the difference between a business that sells “nationally” online and a local store, why can’t Get Married see the difference?    Despite the fact that wedding sites like The Knot, Martha Stewart Wedding and Get Married like to hype the local shopping experience, local relevance is determined solely by how much advertising dollars you are prepared to spend to “buy” local space. 

I explained to the young salesperson, that I considered this to be a deceptive promotion and it was causing people searching for local resources to move away from wedding portals.  She promised to bring this to the attention of her superiors.   Fortunately, I believe that mobile search will eventually kill these relics of self-promotion and deceptive claims whose primary interests are selling advertising and generating affiliate income.  Information from these websites is little more than promtional hype.  Let the buyer beware.

If you are an independent stationer thinking you will benefit from these websites, think again.  The money you spend on online marketing is far better spent promoting your own website and engaging in local search optimization. 

Richard W. May
Thérèse Saint Clair

I was somewhat taken aback but hardly surprised that the National Stationery Show will partner with Get Married to produce a series of bridal theme displays.  The National Stationery Show is scheduled for May 17 through May 20 at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City.

I must admit that I am not familiar with Get Married’s pedigree, but a cursory review of their website suggests that it offers little more than the myriad of online wedding sites that populate cyberspace.  What does Get Married have to offer that The Knot or the Wedding Channel or indeed a boatload of other wedding portals don’t have?  These hyped-up wedding portals are designed to sell, not inform.  Their value is largely determined by the all-powerful advertising dollar, not relevance to the consumer or the craftspeople and designers who make fine stationery products.

While I applaud The National Stationery Show planners for enlisting the help of a “wedding planner” to help showcase bridal theme displays, why did they select an online wedding website?  I view this as a sell-out to online resellers and online printers who are rapidly undermining the craftsmanship of fine stationery and custom invitations.  The National Stationery Show organizers should be chastised for promoting distribution channels rather than the artisans who make fine stationery and invitations and the experienced stationers who sell them.

Online wedding websites should be judged by their advertising sponsors, the products they promote and the distribution channels found on their website.  Specifically, I judge the integrity of wedding portals by the number of “true” local businesses that are listed under local resources.  For instance, Get Married, today listed six sources for local invitations and calligraphy in Connecticut on their website.  Four and probably five of these “stationers” are national resellers or printers.   Get Married is no different than The Knot or Martha Stewart Weddings who promote national resellers and printers as local resources.  How sad it is that these website owners have so little regard for the online buyer who may be looking for an experienced stationer in their neighborhood and invitation designers and fine paper lines who would never consider selling invitations online.

In an era when our public leaders quibble over the definition of  “is”, how can we expect website owners and search engines to agree that “local” refers to a business at a fixed location.  An 800 or 888 prefix is not a local business.  It is most unfortunate that online buyers searching for genuine local resources now have to sort through irrelevant, yes dishonest, search results that have been compromised by advertising fees paid to these wedding portals.

As a long-time visitor the National Stationery Show, I can’t wait to see the Eco-Chic wedding theme table promised by the organizers.  I suspect that the “Eco-chic wedding”  is just another questionable marketing ploy by the organizers to make us feel good about buying invitations that are produced from recycled paper and post-consumer waste.  Like the marketing spin on local resources, I suspect that this is simply   Greenwash spin that only serves to discourage leading craftspeople where concern for the environment is simply an integral part of their everyday life.