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If you’re looking for doom and gloom, you can go ahead and stop reading because you’re not going to find it here. Call me crazy — and you wouldn’t be the first — but I think the stationery industry is thriving. I base this on two conclusions I’ve reached about the nature of our market and the modern consumer.

Once upon a time, when someone wanted to express herself, she might play a piano sonata, stitch a needlepoint or even paint a still life. That was before the industrial revolution – and before the birth of the modern consumer. This species has been carefully encouraged over several generations to express and even define itself by what it buys. Any and all retail selections — from pen to china pattern — reflect both who she is and who she’d like to be. She identifies with brands, as opposed to the apple pie recipe handed down from her grandmother’s grandmother. For this consumer, our industry offers so much — from distinctive names in home décor and apparel offering stationery, to a plethora of personalized product, to great, self-defining design at every price point.

Then, too, there is a backlash to all this blatant commercialism — and it works in our favor as well. Despite all the stuff out there, people still like making things with their hands. This passion has borne scrapbooking and Etsy, not to mention the whole letterpress renaissance. These artisans fuel our industry as well as adjacent ones, from gift to craft. They inspire each other as they support others with whom they feel a kinship. They blog and leave comments in those of others, creating a surprisingly lively and infectious online world.

Consumers, in turn, respond to the touch of the human hand, whether as a mark of prestige or because they appreciate the artistry involved. So we find ourselves in something of a 21st century Arts and Crafts movement. The trappings have changed, but the underlying passion certainly hasn’t.

With this perspective, to my mind, the industry is doing very well — or rather, as well as any individual within it wishes it to be. The future, at both the micro and macro levels, really is in our hands. Three years ago this month, people were shocked that our publisher, Matt McCallum, and associate publisher Brian Virgona had the audacity to launch a new trade magazine as the economy was tanking. Yet here we are, subsisting and even flourishing, despite many, many premature eulogies. So take my advice, and don’t pay attention to naysayers. Believe in what you do, and walk into the National Stationery Show like you’ve got the world on a string — someday soon you just may!

P.S. Unfortunately, some of the vendors were misidentified in our Spring NSS Issue. Stationery Trends sincerely regrets the errors. Please click here to see the corrected information.