It has all been happening in the Postmark camp. The London-based retailer has just opened a brand new store in Blackheath (with another set to open in Wimbledon shortly), has unveiled fresh new branding, reached the finals of The Retas 2021 and has committed to sponsor The Henries 2021’s Lynn Tait Most Promising Young Designer or Artist award.
“It has been crazy busy, but great,” commented Mark Janson-Smith, who runs the Postmark group of five (soon to be six) shops with his wife Leona. “Our new Blackheath store is off to a flyer!” he added enthusiastically.
About reaching the finals of The Retas 2021 in the Best Greeting Card Small Multiple (4+ stores) category, Leona said she felt “absolutely thrilled…particularly after such a tough 18 months. Opening our new shop in Blackheath has been hugely exciting and really given us so much motivation to expand Postmark further. We’re also really looking forward to seeing everyone and catching up, it really has been far too long!”
The opening of the Blackheath store comes less than two months after the joint venture agreement was forged with Cardzone to fuel Postmark’s expansion ambitions. (https://www.pgbuzz.net/postmark-forges-a-joint-venture-partnership-with-cardzone/)
“It was the most successful opening day we have ever had and we are just so delighted to have had such an amazing start to our new partnership with Cardzone,” Leona told PG Buzz.
She describes Postmark’s new Blackheath store, in the attractive South London ‘village’ as “a fantastic space. Being a corner site it gets wonderful natural light and means we have great windows for product display. Blackheath itself has such a wonderful village vibe and we really felt people in the area would enjoy shopping with us. We already have some Blackheath customers at our Greenwich branch who had been telling us for a while that we should make the move up to the heath so when the opportunity came up, we just jumped at it. The reaction so far has been phenomenal with so many of our new customers telling us how happy they are to have a card shop in the village.”
Mark and Leona have gone for a different look in the new store, both outside and in. As well as fanfaring new branding, the interior has lighter flooring and ‘pencil’ dividers, which have been attracting lots of attention. “We’ve also dedicated a whole window down one side of the shop to our Jellycat tree, which everyone has been “oohing” and “ahhing” over. Our favourite moment was watching a chap jog past out of view and then to see him running backwards to stop and take a look at all the lovely Jellycats perched on their tree!” revealed Leona.
The shop also includes a different counter design that has an everyday pen display built in, with lots more stationery and children’s books on the middle units.
Mark and Leona worked with their brother-in-law, Chris Jefferys on the new branding. Chris designed the original branding more than 17 years ago and was really keen to help us update and refresh it. “We decided to remove the separate the text and the roundel to make it clearer and fresher and went with new typography.” Said Leona. The new branding is to be rolled to all our current shops over time as well as feature on any new branch facias.
The new Postmark brand also features in the rollcall of Henries greeting card awards sponsors with the retailer delighted to have the opportunity to sponsor the Lynn Tait Most Promising Young Designer or Artist award category. Commenting on their pledge, Mark said: “We are so excited to be sponsoring the Young Designer award at The Henries. Recognising and supporting emerging talent is hugely important to our industry and something our own business relies heavily on for new designs and trends. We are very honoured to be sponsoring this award which we hope will encourage all those nominated on to successful longer-term careers in the card industry.”
The Henries 2021 is now open for entries across all categories (https://www.pgbuzz.net/the-henries-2021-now-open-for-entries/), including the Lynn Tait Most Promising Young Designer or Artist award category (which is open to all designers 35 years and under). Entry is entirely online via https://www.thehenriesawards.co.uk/
