RETAILER UP CLOSE – POSTMARK
Marking Time
RIGHT TOP: The curved frontage of Postmark’s Kings Cross station store was the first to fanfare the new look. BOTTOM LEFT: Leading stationery brands, such as LEUCHTTURM1917, have a strong presence in Postmark while, having sourced a quirky collection of stickers from South Korea they are featured in their own hanging space (left). BOTTOM RIGHT: Postmark’s greeting card selection is vast.
“Instigating the inaugural new look in our Kings Cross store at the same time as opening a brand new store in Liverpool Street at the same time as Christmas stock was going into all stores… you’d think I’d have learned to slow the pace down, but seemingly not!” admitted Mark Janson-Smith, co-owner of the Postmark group, who also squeezed in running the Berlin marathon in the same period. Stationery Matters donned its trainers to chase after the marathon man and innate retailer to learn more about his plans to stay in the running and to open more stores.
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his time last year, Mark JansonSmith’s wife and business partner, Leona strongly requested: “Please let’s not open any more shops this year.” They sort of kept to the deal, well for a few months at least, instead putting their boundless energy into bedding in the former Paperchase sites Postmark took on which effectively doubled the size of the business and confronted the new challenges of running stores in busy railway station locations, with limited storage facilities and strict regulations on deliveries into those stores. It also became apparent that while an idyllic setting, the garden ‘office’ at their home was no longer practical as the HQ for the growing stationery and greeting card retail business. Now
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Postmark has its name above the door of a new office and warehouse in London’s Fulham, with a showroom set to be installed soon. “Much as it was a luxury to wander to the end of the garden to go to work, the new set up is so much better, not just from a logistical point of view, but on the team front too. While most deliveries go straight to store from suppliers, we also have a van delivering into our station stores a couple of times of week,” says Mark, who is full of praise for Graham Leese, Postmark’s head of operations for setting up the new warehouse system. The significant consumer-facing change however was the creation of a whole new look for Postmark, which made its debut in the Kings Cross store last October. “When we took over the Paperchase sites in March 2023, to get them up and running we used the former fixtures and fittings, but it was
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always the plan to bring them into the Postmark family with our look and feel,” explained Mark. While freely admitting that he felt “absolutely terrified” before seeing how his plan for the transformation had come to fruition, largely as it represents “such a large investment”, Mark is delighted by the results. “I feel it really represents the exciting next step in the company’s evolution,” he endorses. With a contemporary ‘wooden tree’ providing a central focus as soon as you enter the Kings Cross station store, the light wood flooring, fixtures with a pale turquoise accent colour, illuminated card genre signage and repositioned till area creates a warm welcome into the card and stationery emporium. A wide selection of greeting cards flank the back wall while standalone fixtures are used to great effect along the curved shopfront and in the main body of the shop to showcase various stationery ‘stories’ from a vast array of suppliers, including LEUCHTTURM1917, Vent for Change, The Art File, Museums & Galleries, Chronicle Books and Galison. With the blueprint of the new look having debuted in Kings Cross, it was