The Stationers Guild

Reflecting on the 2011 National Stationery Show, I came across this  Blog post entitled “Don’t take it personally”  by Seth Godin, who was the Keynote speaker at the NSS Future Conference.    Here is an extract from his post:

QUOTE (Slightly Edited)

“Don’t take it personally.”

This is tough advice. Am I supposed to take it like a chair? Sometimes it seems as though the only way to take it is personally. That customer who doesn’t like your product (your best work) or that running buddy who doesn’t want to run with you any longer…

Here’s the thing: it’s never personal. It’s never about you. How could it be? That person doesn’t truly know you … All they know is themselves.

When someone moves on, when she walks away or even badmouths you or your work, it’s not personal about you. It’s personal about her. Her agenda, her decisions, her story.

Do your work, the best way you know how. Is there any other option?

UNQUOTE

Indeed, is there any other option?  Sure, you can exit the playing field and move on, having let someone else’s opinion determine your relevancy and/or artistic value.   Seth Godin’s advice is for leaders or “tribal chiefs” as he refers to them who are not intimidated by failure and certainly not the opinions of others.

With these words of caution from Seth Godin, I would like to reflect on some of the major trends I saw emerging from this year’s National Stationery Show.    Most certainly, you shouldn’t take my views “personally” since my objective is to create a dialogue and not to discredit anyone’s work or business strategy.   The business is hard enough for another naysayer in our midst.

Stationery Trends & Observations

1. The Chinese have Landed:   This is the first time that I can recall a strong Chinese presence at the NSS.  It seemed that they occupied a dozen or so booths and while I didn’t see a great deal of activity, their presence signifies that more cheap imports will be arriving soon.    I admire the craftsmanship and work ethic of the Chinese; however, their business model is very much different than our own.  Designers and manufacturers who outsource production to China do so at their own peril.    You may win the cost-efficiency battle, but you are most certain to hasten the demise of your brand and, quite possibly, the industry.
2. Too much Letterpress:   I adore letterpress, but there are simply too many suppliers.   Let’s face it, most anyone with an old press and Photoshop can produce “unique” and “eco-friendly” stationery and invitations.   As a stationery store, I am reluctant to take on new lines since many of the designs look the same.  While I commend everyone on “doing your own thing,” it seems to me that only the established lines that maintain quality standards and continue to innovate will survive.
3. Pricing Models -  Established Lines Hold the Line:    I have long been concerned that manufacturers and designers of quality paper products would succumb to the temptation to lower quality to compete with the “fast-food” paper companies that now dominate our industry.   Meetings at the NSS convinced me that a line in the sand has now been drawn and serious brands will no longer follow Alice down the pricing hole to oblivion.    I welcome this change and believe that consumers will opt for higher quality products at price levels that can sustain the industry.  Maybe this is wishful thinking, but this is the first time in several years where industry leaders have said “No mas!” to price cutting. 
4. Online Sales & Affiliate Marketing:    It is good to see that Crane has re-established an affiliate marketing program.  Other companies that sell online should do the same thing.  While this is all well-and-good,  these affilitate programs will be of little use to bricks and mortar stores unless they take advantage of them.  Affiliate marketing is like learning to ride a bicycle:  lot’s of bruises and scrapes as you learn to ride and pretty easy after you get the hang of it.    I fear that many stores will not do so and the benefits of leveraging one’s sales by providing an online option will be missed.  In effect, Crane and others have given  stores a vital piece of online real estate and it is our responsibility to make it work.   In order to accelerate that process, I will shortly be expanding the functionality of the StationersGuild website into an affiliate marketing laboratory to test various online marketing strategies.  In addition, an affiliate website, Rite4U.com will be focused on best practices to build, maintain and market your local business online.  There is a lot to learn and it is changing each day, but at least you won’t have to repeat my mistakes.

Again. let me thank the organizers of the National Stationery Show and particularly Patti Stracher for keeping the flame burning.    Everybody approaches NSS differently and if I have stepped on anyone’s toes, “don’t take it personally.” We are in the boat together.

As readers of the Stationers’ Guild News are aware, I am a huge fan of Seth Godin.  Kudos to Patti Stracher and the organizers of the 2011 National Stationery Show for snaring Mr. Godin – the author of 10 or more books and founder of Squidoo – and enticing him to be the keynote speaker of NSS’s Future Conference -  Put it on Paper: The Imporatnce of Pen and Ink in the Digital Age. 

Seth Godin

Mr. Godin is an enthusiastic and engaging speaker, brimming with ideas and no shortage of courage.   He encourages us all to “run straight at the fear factor,” and become a leader.   “This is no time for the timid.”   Mr. Godin characterizes the stationery business (and other businesses) as an “idea business.”   It is our job, as business owners to “spread the story.”   Stationery is “not needed anymore” and we need to figure out how to appeal to an audience that may “want” what we have to sell but certainly doesn’t “need” it.

Clearly, spinning our wheels trying to sell stationery and invitations to an audience that doesn’t NEED it is the wrong approach.   Mr Godin argues that we need to “create a conversation worth talking about,”  and each of us can do this by becoming a “tribal leader” of people interested in listening to your message – not a sales pitch.    Our job is to send relevant messages to people who want to hear it and make it a conversation where others can join in and share in the enthusiasm.  The “converstation” may not be for everyone, but your ideas – if they are compelling, interesting or simply fun – are likely to resonate with an audience who is attracted to the subject.  Mr. Godin argues that society wants you to “fit in” so that you can be ignored.   It’s a pretty scary thought, but probably rings true.  Leadership requires courage. 

Mr. Godin provided a “big picture” view of what you need to do to become a tribal leader.  Nevertheless, one of my colleagues was disappointed that he didn’t tell us “what to do.”  I think his complaint or observation is valid.   Mr. Godin didn’t provide a recipe for success, but he did tell you what may succeed:    Ideas that spread!    While everyone may have a different slant on Mr. Godin’s presentation, I take away that one should share ideas about causes or issues that we are passionate about.  In the case of a bricks and mortar stationery store,  I see many engaging ”local” topics that one can unite a tribe that may have little to do with one’s business but would certainly make you stand out as a community leader.   I don’t know about the rest of you, but I plan to do just that.

Thank you Mr. Godin and the organizers of NSS for this useful opening to the National Stationery Show of 2011.

Richard W. May
Therese Saint Clair

I don’t know about you, but I find the National Stationery Show website one of the most frustrating and user unfriendly websites in cyberspace.   I was trying to register for Seth Godin’s presentation entitled “Put it on Paper:  The importance of pen and ink in the digital age,” and the system collapsed as I was checking out.  Mr. Godin is one of the key tribal leaders of the digital generation (not sure he would like that designation) and the author of some 13 books on marketing and relevancy in the digital age.

Oddly enough, I came across Seth Godin when I installed my first Wordpress Blog and one of the PlugIns was entitled “What would Seth Godin do?”   Like most people with a new toy, I really didn’t give a fig what Seth Godin would do, but in retrospect it would have been useful to listen to this wise “young” man since he is one of the few people to sort through the bits and bytes and make sense of this digital revolution.   I  commend Patti Stracher and the other NSS organizers for snaring Mr. Godin and I would encourage anyone who reads this article to get their tickets now.  You will not be disappointed.

Ah, the National Stationery Show (“NSS”) website.  In an effort to modernize, the NSS now has attendees register online.  When you get to the show your digital pass will be scanned and you will be issued a paper registration tag with some mystery code that hides all kinds of personal data that might be useful to vendors.   I liken the process to going through scanners at the airport.  Fortunately, no groping is allowed.

While I am now immune to the dehumanization process of electronic screening, I blew a gasket when the registration system crashed as I was trying to checkout.    The system simply swallowed my credit card information that I had used to sign up for a few courses and I had no idea whether I was registered since the system simply advised me to “come back later.”    This was not the first time it had happened, but what can you do?

I then received a digital invitation to attend Seth Godin’s presentation as well as a paper invitation.  Thank God for paper.  Neither my wife nor I could open the digital invitation – it was so well encrypted that my browser refused to open the images.   In fact, we were prompted to download the latest version of Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer 8.  It was then I realized how clever Patti had been:  She was making the point that there are many gremlins in digital communications.  Indeed!

As much as we beat up on the poor Postal Service, e-vites have their own inconveniences.  I made the mistake of opening a “song and dance” video birthday card on my smart-phone and realized that it was configured for a 4G network rather than a 2G network.  It  took forever to download and by the time it did, my battery had died so I missed the cool e-Birthday greeting.   Rather than spending  time disabling the pop-up suppressor and going to the tools menu to all “pictures,” I have simply stopped reading evites.  Eventually, someone will call you and ask you if you are attending.   Is it rude not to open an evite along with the other junk mail in your inbox?

I read with great interest that the 2010 National Stationery Show has succumbed and, indeed, embraced social networking to promote interest in the National Stationery Show scheduled for May 16 through the 19th at the Jacob Javits Center in NYC.  According to Patti Stracher, the NSS Manager.  ”Social media sites are becoming increasingly important for impromptu business discussion, in a world that has become accustomed to instant feedback and news.  Websites such as Twitter, Facebook and others are helping us to communicate quickly and concisely in a way that works for busy professionals on the go.”

Last year, as an April Fools joke, I published a Blog article suggesting that the National Stationery Show would be digital by 2012.   The latest announcement by Ms. Stracher suggests that there was, perhaps more truth than humor in my “prediction.”    While one naturally assumes that “social networking” makes great sense to promote the National Stationery Show, I always ask:  “Who benefits?”   For instance, would you use the Kindle to market the National Book Show or Skype to promote a long-distance calling plan?    While I have no regrets in using every available marketing tool (particularly if they are free) to market my business, Ms. Stracher and other organizers should think carefully how these promotional tools will be used.   As far as I am concerned, empowering social networkers to promote the National Stationery Show is akin to giving the keys to the Jedi spaceship to Darth Vader.

Twitter is a social network based on the simple concept that friends and followers are actually interested in what you are doing.   I realize that any sane person could care less what I am doing.  Furthermore, I firmly resolve not to encroach on your privacy even if you are inclined to be a contestant on a reality TV show.   In other words, “Thank you for not sharing.”   I don’t mean to go Andy Rooney on you, but if you are genuinely interested in what I am doing 24/7 you probably have a pretty sad life.

While Twitter may have started out as a social phenomena for people desperately trying to “connect” or “follow” someone with lives less shallow than their own, its “social” function has been taken over by big business and media manipulators.   Like most of my fellow stationers who attend the National Stationery Show, I don’t plan on texting.    While I do carry a cell phone, it is not text enabled and, to be honest, I have found little to call about, let alone text at the National Stationery Show.  If stationers are not texting or tweeting, who is?    This brings us back to the central questions:  “Who benefits?”

Texting and tweeting is big business.  Professionals and paid free-lancers will be busy using the NSS social and their own platform to promote their brands, websites and anything else which attracts “eyeballs” or visitors to their booth (assuming they are even registered as an exhibitor).  In fact, I am quite confident that as I write this blog,  paid mercenaries are busily crafting scores of 140 character tweets in anticipation of the event to promote their own brand.   It works something like this: 

• BrandX Company plans to launch a new line of wedding invitations called “Cloud 9″ at the May show
• BrandX  Company’s marketing department contracts Indian and Philippine copywriters to write thousands of 140 character “text” messages promoting “Cloud 9″, “wedding invitations” or “BrandX wedding invitations” within the context of the NSS show product launch (at $1 to $2 an hour,  you can generate a lot of messages cheaply and you don’t even have to spell too well)
• Many thousands of messages have been created around the product launch (coordinated with article and PR releases) that will then be timed to be released around the time of the show
• The artificial “buzz” is self-generated by BrandX and will quickly be picked up the search engines and those who track key words (i.e. wedding invitations) on the social networks.

The end result of this manipulated social  “marketing campaign” is that consumer has been played.    I realize that there is an old adage that says “Let the buyer beware.”  Nevertheless, for NSS organizers to blindly jump on the social bandwagon without evaluating the consequences is, in my opinion, most disheartening.  The organizers at the National Stationery Show must should ask themselves:  ”Does social networking  lead to a stronger industry, better craftsmanship and a more-informed consumer?”  I think not.

Richard W. May
Thérèse Saint Clair