The phrase, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ may need updating in this day and age of Instagram, especially where baby photos are concerned. And this change in consumer habits has sparked a great product idea for design-led card publisher, Paper Salad, with its box of Milestone Baby Cards, which was put to the test a few days ago – marking the ‘first week’ in Ben Williams’ life, son of Paper Salad co-founder Claire Williams and her husband Gareth.
The social media channels went bonkers busy when Beyoncé announced her baby news via a photo she posted on Instagram, Kourtney Kardashian’s bundle of joy, Reign Aston Disick received a whopping 1.3 million likes when his photo was first released to the world recently in the same way, while Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel raked in a record 1.4 million likes when their baby Silas was announced pictorially. But it is not just rich and famous proud parents who are taking to social media channels Instagram and Facebook in their droves with their visual posts – not just of their new arrivals, but their subsequent mini milestones and achievements too.
While well-known for its trend-reflective card ranges, Paper Salad duo Claire Williams and Karen Wilson’s antennae were even more alert to this trend when Claire became pregnant herself.
“Claire becoming pregnant certainly did make us rethink our business in a number of ways,” admits Karen Wilson, referring both to the publisher’s plans for new product launches as well as its management structure.
Karen and Claire hit upon the idea for their Baby Milestones Card set after realising just how popular they were becoming on social media. “Our research revealed that although there were quite a few products around, there was nothing with the lovely bright images that are our trademark,” explains Karen.
Claire highlights how this new addition to the Paper Salad product portfolio “was a bigger project than we first anticipated as each box contains 48 designs. When you multiple this by three, to cover boy, girl and unisex, we had 144 designs to complete. It became a race against time to get them finished before I left on maternity leave!”
Shortly after this new addition to the Paper Salad product portfolio was launched with great success by its sales team, Claire introduced her own new addition, baby boy Ben, who was born on October 17, weighing 8lbs 14 oz – “I used one of the ‘my first week’ cards from the new set to show him off”, says Claire.
Meanwhile, Paper Salad recently welcomed Karen’s ‘baby’, 26 year-old Jack, who has joined the company as general manager!
