Grand Design

There's good news and there's good news on the stationery front. The first good news is that stationery manufacturers are optimistic about sales increases for 2004, according to our annual industry survey. The second good news is that there's a lot of really attractive stationery product on the market. One of the trends that we wrote about in our December Trends and Forecasts issue was the movement to luxury stationery, photo albums, and scrapbooking supplies, as part of a new emphasis on personal communication. Even young people are getting into the act. Color, images, and materials are the hallmarks of the next generation of stationery products, examples of which appear on our cover, and in the feature story beginning on page 34. Leather-bound journals in bright yellow, purple-striped suede photo albums, polka dot storage boxes, and chic, modern writing instruments exemplify the burgeoning trends. Travel journals adorned with period images of steamship and rail journeys come complete with pockets for storing ticket stubs and other vacation memorabilia. It's great design that's driving great stationery, and it's going to make for a very interesting National Stationery Show in May.

Lack of space in last month's issue prevented us from introducing two more additions to our "We Asked…" panel of retailers. Vasilio Kiniris is the owner (with his wife, Wendy) of Zinc Details, San Francisco, a 13-year-old contemporary design store featuring tableware, accents, and furnishings. The couple opened a second venue in nearby Berkeley in 2001, and won a Gifts & Decorative Accessories REA award for visual merchandising in 2003. Lori Ziolkowski is manager of Zehnder's Magic of the Seasons, a Christmas store in Frankenmuth, Michigan, that won a REA store design award in 2002. Each will offer their retailing expertise, alongside our ten other panel members, over the next many months. Finally, we note with sadness the closing of Gooseberry Barn in Auburn, Maine, due to too much "competition." Harvey and Rachel Desgrosselliers had been in business almost 20 years, and between 1988 and 1998 their store was a three-time REA winner.