We're moving!

Hello, everyone! It's been a while...I hope you are all still out there. The big news here is that we're restructuring our operations and next week will be moving into some new space, all under one roof here in Chicago. We're excited, but all the preparations for this move have obviously resulted in no blog posts for a long time!

Our offices will be closed next week, re-opening on September 16, so we can get everything moved and organized. Any orders placed next week will be filled promptly on or after September 16.

Moving is hassle, but one thing I love about it is that it forces us to really clean house. In honor of this, we're having a little moving sale through October 31 for our dear retailers: 15% off all boxed and bulk imprintable invitations and notecards, and $10 off our Completely Custom display. Now is the time to stock up on some of our darling designs like the one you see above. And, if you live in the Chicago North Shore area, stay tuned because we're going to be hosting an open house/fall clean up sale in October, and there will be some great deals!!

Thanks for your patience and we promise to be back with a new blog schedule by the end of September.

We've gathered some of our NSS favorites

The National Stationery Show is overwhelming. As you walk the aisles, you see fabulous line upon fabulous line, and as a manufacturer, it leaves us wondering: How do retailers ever choose? We love hen and barley press, obviously, but as paper lovers, we appreciate other manufacturers' creativity, too. As the day goes on, we plan to post some of our favorites, including our favorite item from our own line. Many of these are lines whose look we not only love, but whose owners we are fortunate enough to count as friends and close colleagues. Enjoy!

Let's start with Demby + Solomon. They shared a booth with us, so we got to see their products firsthand. Their Clever Correspondence album is DARLING--take a look at some of the product samples below.


Then there is The Paper Menu. The owner Marie is adorable, as are her products. The Paper Menu booth at NSS reflected the line's style, right down to Marie's great husband Julian sporting seersucker pants like only a Southerner can. After seeing Marie and Julian in their booth, both Carolyn and I came away with: 1) how cute are those products; and 2) a reminder that we love seersucker on men. The Paper Menu's latest addition to their line are personalized aprons, gowns and pillowcases. Check out the cute aprons below:


Fin+Roe is another favorite (and boothmate of ours). Owner Lori is, like me, a Wisconsin girl, and as if her Marzipan line weren't enough, she's rolled out the totally innovative Fin+Roe line. Check out these photo magnet digital cards. Talk about clever...and different (GOOD different)...and stylish. We love 'em!


Our favorite from our own hen and barley press this year are our magnets, especially our new Monogram Magnets and You Said It! Magnets. From our Initial Magnets, our Classic Style are runaway bestsellers.



Stay tuned for updates and favorites throughout the day!

topic du jour: customer appreciation

Good afternoon! Today we had a screw up with one of our retailers, someone who had not ordered from us before. As I was reflecting about how we handled the situation, I was reminded about how important it is to show appreciation to customers, both when you're fixing a mistake and in the course of everyday dealings.

Since we are all in an industry that is driven by sales, it is easy to get caught up in who your largest customers are, and limit specials, incentives and perks to them. But, especially this year, when everyone's sales have been hit hard by this economy, sales may not be the best measure of to whom you should extend whatever customer appreciation programs your company might have. One store's (or customer's) $200 might be another store's (or customer's) $2,000. A store who writes a $2,000 is not, therefore, necessarily a more important or "better" customer than the one who writes $200. How many times have you had a store that orders a lot but is difficult to deal with, meaning that your profit margin dwindles by virtue of the amount of time and attention they require? Which is not to say that a big customer isn't important, because of course they are, but I wonder if dollars spent should be the primary factor in formulating customer appreciation programs and incentives.

All of which is a long way of getting to today's topic du jour: How do you handle customer appreciation? Do you have a program within your company for doing so? Retailers, what are your favorite types of customer appreciation incentives?

At hen and barley press, we send updates to our Completely Custom program at no charge to a large portion of our retailers. Sales aside, we can generally glean where the potential is, and let's face it, an album is essentially a catalog of our products, so why wouldn't why want to give as many retailers as possible the tools to sell our products? We send hand addressed, hand signed holiday photo cards to most of our retailers, whether they've ordered from us recently or not.

Recently, hen and barley press donated a bunch of our invitation and note card overstocks to the Chicago branch of a national not-for-profit called AmericaSCORES. It was not a huge donation by any stretch of the imagination. Today, we received a packet with a copy of their most recent publication, as well as a handwritten note from the executive director, thanking us for our donation. Let me tell you, we were impressed! It made us think we should really do the same thing for our customers all the time, not just at the holidays, or after the National Stationery Show. Food for thought!

We'd love to hear from you all on this topic!

Gather: The National Stationery Show Way

The National Stationery Show, described by someone on Twitter as "Fashion Week for paper people" was held from May 17-21 at the Javits Center in New York. Stationery companies from Crane & Co. to hen and barley press to companies you've never or not yet heard of have booths of varying sizes and complexity. It is a very creative atmosphere, a lot of fun, and a great networking, marketing and sales opportunity.

This year, we and a few other companies from A Fresh Bunch got creative and gathered together to have a group presence at the show. Done very last minute, our booth did not have the polish or presentation that it would have normally, but we pooled our resources, got ourselves and our products there, and made a splash at the show. Retailers loved the one stop shopping for 6 lines in one booth, and we each loved having sales help that allowed us to devote time to networking, trend-spotting and socializing with our paper friends. We're going to do it again next year, and are already making plans for improving upon a good thing.

Here are some highlights from the booth:


hen and barley press: our new magnets (shown at left) were a big hit, as was our new combined Completely Custom & Semi-Custom program. With over 14,000 design options, and 15+ stationery & gift products, this program defines one-stop shopping! As one of our retailers said upon seeing the Semi-Custom designs, "Oh, I will sell a ton of this." You can't beat that reaction (or the show special price tag of $150).

marzipan inc./fin+roe: marzipan inc. has launched a new custom album called fin+roe that had retailers all abuzz. Their photo magnet announcement cards drew quite a crowd and we love them, too!

evy jacob: we love evy's tagline of celebrate everything, everyday and her designs reflect that love of celebrations small and large. Her personalized albums were a huge hit and we loved their bar/bat mitzvah designs in particular.

Artful Sentiments: there is something about Molly's handblocked prints, they are simple and yet vibrant at the same time. Her coasters had us drooling with their fabulous prints.

Demby & Solomon: Lysa of Demby & Solomon donates her time & design talent to A Fresh Bunch, designing all of our group's logos and visual communications. Her new line of imprintables is fantastic, and we also loved her clever correspondence album.

Lucky Star Press: Sarah of Lucky Star Press recently had a new baby and still managed to pull together a fabulous collection for the show. Her amazing letterpress designs are subtle and sophisticated with the right dose of good cheer. We loved the mix-n-match initial sets.

None of us had ever done anything like this before, and felt like we were rolling the dice by having "the competition" in the same booth. But gathering together, pooling resources and really exchanging information with each another was such a positive experience, and we think retailers liked it as much as we did. If you visited our booth during the show, THANK YOU! If you weren't there but want more information, please visit each of our sites.

Here's to gathering together!

Completely Custom

Hey retailers! Looking for a way to turn your store into a custom design studio? We've got a great program that can help you do just that.

Completely Custom is the hot, new must-have program that turns your store into a custom design studio.

It's more than just personalization, it's Completely Custom!

- No inventory to manage
- Small footprint - 8.5" square x 14" tall acrylic easel holds all the pages
- Over 14 products offered, something for every occasion: note cards, labels, invitations, gifts, calendars and more
- Hundreds of designs + different color combinations = 1,000s of design options (our everyday math calculations tell us over 14,000, to be exact)
- Reasonable price points and everything offered in low quantities for gift giving
- Brilliantly simple order form the customer can fill out themselves

Bottom line? Custom design that anyone can do, on products customers love, all at non-custom prices.

Just in time for the National Stationery Show, our newest addition to Completely Custom is ready! Meet Semi-Custom, 36 patterns, including our most popular imprintables patterns, for use on 6 different products with personalization. It's less decision-making than Completely Custom, but still a wee bit custom...it's Semi-Custom! And all of this from one easel!

See it in person in Booth #2547. We'll be there along with members of A Fresh Bunch.