Stationery Show is a no-go

Lunalux has exhibited at the National Stationery Show in New York City since 1997 or so. Sadly, weirdly, we skipped it this year. Participating in The Show gave us the opportunity to meet many fantastic people and develop important relationships with both our customers and our competitors. The NSS was always an expensive venture, and a source of much stress, but very much worth it for many years. Lunalux would not be where it is today if it weren’t for work we’ve done at the Stationery Show! Over the past few years, our sales at the show have declined, so we couldn’t justify the expense this year.

My favorite part of the show for the past two years has been a collaborative promotional calendar we created with other fantastic card manufacturers, including elum, Snow & Graham, Egg Press, Jack and Lulu, Two Piglets, and You Send Me. Even though Lunalux won’t have a booth at the NSS, our good friends have still invited us to participate in this year’s calendar; please visit elum to pick up the Lunalux pages for the calendar. The pages we created this year are pictured at the left – click on the image to see a larger version.

Sunday May 20 was opening day, and the show runs through Wednesday. I look forward to hearing from exhibitors, shoppers and sales reps who attended the show this year. Was it the same size as last year, or smaller? Were there other notable absences? How was traffic? What was the mood like in the Javitz? Any hot gossip, notable trends, exciting New Things? Was it a huge mistake for us to bow out this year? These first-hand reports will help us decide if we should try again next year, or say goodbye to The National Stationery Show forever.