THE GOOD. I hope I don't jinx it by writing it here but we are on track with our National Stationery Show (NSS) preparations! That’s right there is an entire trade show just for stationery. And it’s the one time of year when we get to see our retail customers face-to-face to show them what’s new and hopefully drum up more business. In a nutshell, it’s a big deal around here. We’ve been meeting weekly to go over everything from mailers to booth design to giveaway swag since January.
There’s still a lot on our to-do list but we feel pretty good going into our 2-week count down. We've been able to stick to our timeline because we are benefiting from all of the work that went into changing our booth location last year. The new corner booth looked great and so we’re pretty much reusing the same layout and furniture, saving us a lot of guesswork and time (and money!). Obviously, we’ll be refreshing the overall booth aesthetic with new paint colors and display. Clayton has been toiling away on a large scale art composition made out of hand-cut paper for our counter and walls. And next week we’re going to mock up the booth and test the walls Eric and I are building.
I just dropped our bright yellow mailers in the mail this morning. We divvied up our long list to get everything addressed this week and now we could all really go for some hand massages. But no time for that, we have a trade show to get to!
THE BAD. We are hiring because we've had some schedule changes around here. You may have seen this posting about open positions in the shop (do you know anyone in Boston looking for a job?). This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but sorting through résumés and scheduling interviews does throw a wrench into the day-to-day operations. It's important that we find people who are qualified, excited about being here, and want to be part of a small, quirky team.
THE (NOT SO) UGLY. Harris, our mint plant, is looking mighty happy these days thanks to Sarah and her inner botanist. Just in time for ice tea season!