The stationery category in U.K. retail stores provides a showcase for lifestyle brands, fashion labels, and artists.
Several of the high-end London department stores—Liberty, Harrod’s, Fortum & Mason, and John Lewis—have stationery departments where licensed collections are boutiqued, for example. At Liberty, an array of fashion designer Christian LaCroix’s note cards and journals is featured in the first-floor stationery room, while John Lewis’s stationery department features ranges tied to British art and lifestyle brands including Call Me Frank, Caroline Gardner, Rachel Ellen Designs, House of Holland, and Fenella Smith, with multiple SKUs from each presented in tabletop displays.
Meanwhile, stationery specialty chain Paperchase, which features mostly private-label designs, is the licensee for a series of London Underground journals and mugs and has another licensed range in development tied to the A-Z map brand.
Even independent stationers, of which there are many, occasionally offer licensed products; Etc. in Islington’s Angel neighborhood features a front-of-store tabletop exhibit of a wide spectrum of Orla Kiely notebooks, notecards, and gift items, to name one example.
Check back with RaugustReports in the coming weeks for occasional observations on trends from Brand Licensing Europe and London retail. In addition, tomorrow’s Raugust Communications’ e-newsletter will feature a discussion of the importance of local licensing in territories around the world, using the U.K. retail landscape to illustrate. (Sign up at the RaugustReports home page, or below if you are reading this online.) Finally, LinkedIn members can read five observations about character licensing in London here.
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