Latest wrap innovation leads publisher’s plans for the new year
It’s the time of year when everyone is kicking back for a festive break – but the Ohh Deer gang has been working their Christmas socks off to come up with a whole sheaf of plans for the new year.
From the latest catalogue, through new licences, an innovative rollwrap sustainable solution, and a completely fresh stationery collection, to planting even more trees and re-launching its Riso Prints arm, they’ve been very busy beavers.
“This is what happens when you get Jamie heading up our product again!” md Mark Callaby laughed about his partner and fellow company founder Jamie Mitchell.
“We’ve been wanting to do rollwrap for ages, but it’s a big investment and bulky product to work with. We’ve been asked so much recently to relook at it and the solution we found was offered to us by our manufacturer and we knew that’s what we wanted.
“The nifty little tear strip for easy open is plastic-free and it’s much neater than wrap clasps so we’ve tested it lots to know that it works a treat.”
Also debuting is new brand Kaleido, which moves the company into the world of luxe stationery and, there’s the riso prints where owning a risograph machine, that can incorporate many layers of colours a bit like screen printing but quicker with eco-friendly inks, was the driver as it had been sitting unused but taking up space for a couple of years.
“We didn’t want it to continue gathering dust anymore,” Mark explained, “so we’ve moved it to the office where our creative team are, as it used to be at the warehouse, and Jamie has been the driving force behind its comeback – really working on designs that he would want to own.
“We’re also bringing them back with the new Seaweed board from G.F Smith, we’re using this as the backing board, so they’re going to look really premium and hopefully stand out.”
On top of the catalogue with over 400 new products, and expanding card pack to offere everdya including mixed birthday and thank you, Ohh Deer is starting 2024 with eight fresh licences, collaborating with Party Mountain Paper, Makingshit, Abigolucky, Ashkahn, Emily Taylor, Diane Hill, Anisa and Suzy Ultman.
And the publisher and online retailer is now aiming to expand its ecological footprint through a new planting a tree with products scheme.
Mark said: “We used to plant trees via our B2C arm Papergang and donated enough to plant more than 150,000 trees via TreeAid through its lifetime. With Papergang now gone we wanted to find a way to introduce it to our wholesale audience, so now we’re planting trees via card packs, rollwrap and our riso prints.”
