During a recent visit to Royal Tunbridge Wells, I discovered a stationery shop just outside the shopping mall. The shop sells cards, notebooks, and other stationery-related items with 'pop art' designs. Think big and colourful. Many of the products in the Blott store are also colourful and cute, and some of the products remind me of Japanese-style, with a store design similar to Muji with little containers, but Blott is much more colourful. According to their website, Blott is a 'stationery company with a creative twistt' (1).
Blott opened its doors earlier this year, amid a harsh economy, but they seemed to fit right in place on the High Street, and the shop was busy. They now have a second shop in Guildford, and this was opened this autumn.
The company MyAgency created the branding, the range of product designs, and the shop design. Their website (2) contains several photographs of the shop and some of its products.
Although Blott are competing with other stationery companies, such as PaperChase, these other stationery companies do not offer the same range of designs and products, so this is a small gap in the market for them.
My favourite product range were the cute erasers. Erasers shaped like cute animals and other items that appeal to boys and girls are available in a variety of bright colours. I fell in love with the ice lolly, ice cream cone, and biscuit erasers and bought a few. (There were so many different colours of them that I wanted to choose one of each! I photographed some of the ones I bought below: cream biscuits, ice cream cone, and ice lolly.)
I also find Blott's loyalty scheme idea to be very creative. Each time five pounds is spent in store, the customer receives a sticker to place in their book. The book, given to the customer along with their first sticker, looks like a passport book, and on the front cover, it reads "The United Kingdom of Stationery". Once a page is filled with the correct number of stamps, the customer can collect their free gift. (I feel it is slightly strict, however, as the customer must spend £40.00 before they can claim a binder, which is the least expensive prize that can be claimed.) The images of this promotional scheme are below.
Blott's website is also open for business, and the website is simple and easy to use. However, I am a little disappointed in it because it isn't as colourful and quirky as the actual shops are, and the images for the products are a little too small, and I don't think the website really does them any justice. Usability-wise, the website seems spot-on to me, and it's easy to get around and to see exactly where you are at in the structure of the website, but the design offers little in comparison to the wonderful in-store branding. (The home page certainly feels a little more like the shops as it contains large images of its products, but unfortunately, this is not reflected throughout the bulk of the website.)
2) http://www.myagency.co.uk/case-studies/blott
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