SPRING//SUMMER 2018 17 16 SPRING//SUMMER 2018 Come and visit us at stand M540 www.edding.com/colourhappy Discover your own creative happiness: Mix up to 190 colour shades with the brushpen colour mixer and just 20 brushpens. Get your Colour Happy Edition from edding and let your creativity run free! So, what’s your next idea? IT’S HARD not to feel like the birthday girl when I receive a parcel of beautiful stationery through the post wrapped like a present. I’m not expecting to be this excited. After all, it’s purely in the name of research. Isn’t it? If every customer experiences such delight when their order arrives, then this subscription box lark is actually a business model made in heaven. Original Beauty The internet subscription box model was first trialled in the US back in 2010 by innovators in the beauty game, Birchbox. Its meteoric success led to an explosion of similar services in the US and, eight years later, the subscription commerce model is booming here in the UK. The initial concept of curated beauty and make- up samples has expanded to include many other categories. Customers in the UK can now order regular, curated deliveries of food, booze, books, even artisan coffee beans and, of course, stationery. Websites like My Subscription Addiction offer a comprehensive database and reviews to the growing market of consumers looking to treat themselves. Model Service Using the same principles as those first beauty boxes in the US, customers in the UK can now sign up to a wide choice of subscription services to receive curated boxes of stationery by post. The companies offering stationery subscriptions come in all shapes and sizes, reflecting the variety of stationery they deliver to their customers. Some are crowdfunded start-ups like Sherbet Lane, who create their own unique designs, others are larger players who’ve created a subscription service as an add-on to their existing retail channels, like RLB Paper Society from Roger la Borde. Others still have started off with a subscription service and evolved into other selling channels, like Spotlight Stationery, which launched Stationery & Art, an online stationery and art supplies shop, two years after it sent out its first subscription box in January 2016. The flexible business model opens up a lucrative corner of the stationery retail market once accessible only to larger operators. We’re now seeing services JULIA FAIERS unwraps the stationery subscription box: a regular delivery of curated stationery through the post BOX OF DELIGHTS FOCUS ON: SUBSCRIPTION BOXES WE WANTED TO START A CREATIVELY LED BUSINESS WITHOUTTHE UP-FRONT COSTS OF OPENING A SHOP OR BUYING LOTS OF STOCK IN ADVANCE. HoneyTree Post The Jungle Fever box from Boxcitement