In a significant development for Emotional Rescue and Paper Salad, and a stand-out in industry practice, the two greeting card publishers have collaborated on a huge launch of six card ranges, comprising a total of 150 designs.
The ranges, which will be launched in the first three months of 2021, will combine Emo’s strength in humour and sentiment with Paper Salad’s distinct design prowess. All of the cards will be dual-branded with a backstamp of ‘Emotional Rescue in collaboration with our good friends at Paper Salad.’
Explaining the rationale behind the tie-up with Paper Salad, David Greaves, managing director of Emotional Rescue told PG Buzz: “Paper Salad’s principal area of expertise is visual, contemporary/trend, design and I think they are the best in the business. Our principal main skill is in humour/sentiment – editorial/copy and I think we are pretty good at that too. In terms of market product positioning, this is a perfect match. It creates really exciting product from two highly complementary, proven successful publishers.” David also highlights how the collaboration “enables both businesses, to access parts of the market that otherwise would be much harder to get at without each other.”
As to how the idea for the two companies to work together came about, David’s recollection is that, “it involved being in a bar and champagne! Over time, we got talking about product, we all got really excited and one or two ranges became six!”
He acknowledges that, especially given Emotional Rescue’s thorough pre-testing process, the development of six ranges represents a “major investment (especially in the current climate) for both Emotional Rescue and Paper Salad in terms of cash, energy and most importantly, time!”
Karen Wilson and Claire Williams, co-owners of Paper Salad freely admit that they have really enjoyed working on the product development with Emo. “Humour and sentiment is a route that we never in a million years thought we would ever venture down, but we have been surprised how much we have enjoyed illustrating the fantastic jokes and sentimental poems that Emo produces,” Claire Williams, co-owner of Paper Salad commented. As her business partner, Karen Wilson added: “The jokes certainly made us have a much-needed laugh and kept myself and Claire busy during lockdown too! Due to the unique way that Emo test all their jokes and presentations, the sheer volume of work we had to produce to get to the final selections was huge, but we are really excited to see the reaction to this fantastic collaboration.”
While Emotional Rescue will take on the distribution of the collaborated ranges into the multiples, the Paper Salad team of independent sales agents will exclusively be representing all six ranges in the independent channel.
This follows on from Emotional Rescue’s recent agreement with Paper Design Group, for the Nigel Quiney/Paper Rose sales team to represent its existing ranges to independents. Explaining further, David elaborated: “The existing ER portfolio is very substantial, with four new proven ranges being launched in the first quarter of next year, including the new Spitting Image range. To put the six new Emo-Salad products on top of that would have been just too much.
In addition, the Paper Salad sales team is excellent. Karen and Claire were also very keen for their people to market the product and consolidate their position within the indies, at the contemporary end of the market.”
The first three Emo x PS humour ranges, MishMash, Is it Friday Yet? and Ho-Hum! will launch in January, followed by two sentiment ranges, Emosh and Senti and one further humour brand, Mine’s a Pint, which all launch in April.
David confirmed that this raft of products is not a ‘one off’. “Both ER and Paper Salad see this collaboration as a very long-term relationship,” he said.
