82-83_1973.qxp_Grid 01/09/2025 14:54 Page 1
IN CONVERSATION WITH… 1973
SUMMER OF CONTACT Having shown at PG Live for the first time in June and welcomed retailers to its brand new showrooms in what it described as a Summer of Contact, 1973 is keeping up the pace this Autumn with the introduction of the respected French stationery and card brand All Ways To Say into the portfolio of brands. PG heads down to the company’s south coast HQ to meet up with co-founders Emma and James Emmerson and sales director Louisa Sharman to find out more. When asked during a panel discussion during London Stationery Show about what gives her stores a USP, with no hesitation Sally Matson, owner of Red Card and Little Red in Petworth responded with: “Knowing the stories behind the products and the brands that I stock so that I can then share it all with our customers. The more I know,
82 PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
the more I can tell them and the more that they buy.” As a prime example, Sally eulogised about a recent visit to 1973 and Rifle Paper Co UK to see the new showrooms. She relayed how she not only got to know better the people who own and head up the business, as in James and Emma Emmerson and sales
Top: (left-right) 1973’s co-founders James and Emma Emmerson with longtime friend and sales director Louise Sharman in the company’s new showroom. Above: Retailers are being invited down to the showroom at the company’s HQ in Portslade. Products under the 1973 side are in one room which leads into the Rifle Paper Co side. Below left: The new Flower Power range that was designed by James and Emma and like the vast majority of the company’s products are printed in-house.
director Louisa Sharman, but also marvelled at how the vast majority of its extensive product range of cards and stationery is produced onsite. Sally was one of the early visitors of the company’s new showrooms, during what has been coined as a Summer of Contact by the 1973 teamsters. “Historically we haven’t been as good as we could have been in telling our story, but having exhibited at PG Live for the first time this year, which we loved and the setting up of our showrooms, we feel the time is right to let our customers not only see where the magic madness happens, but to feel it and smell it too,” sums up James, who cofounded the business with his now wife Emma, 22 years ago, naming the company after the year in which they were both born. It is indeed a good story that is very much