Creating Creative Stationery with Style
One of the few things in life that we just cannot do without is stationery. No matter who you are, or what you do for a living, you will always need a certain amount of stationery to help you. Be it a pen, a notebook or pad, there’s always something tucked away in a corner draw of every home to jot down notes or thoughts on.
Now, what if someone decided to spice up your stationery and bring you something unique, different and exciting? Wouldn’t it be fabulous, to put it simply? Let’s speak to Shreshtha Poddar of NOTEX, a paper based stationery brand to know more about her creative and inspiring journey.
Stationery is a very interesting field, how and why did you choose to enter the world of making stationery?
Well, my Father has an offset printing business line; it was initially he who wanted to start off a paper based stationery brand of his own. This led to our brand – NOTEX. NOTEX is short for ‘Notes for Executives’. We always wanted to cater to the executive section of the society. They use the most elite books, and aren’t afraid of sporting unique stationery that makes them stand out.
I had two choices, either to become a financial investor post my graduation or start off fresh in the line of stationery. I decided to pick the latter after doing a thorough research on the Indian stationery market. The market is raw and has a major supply shortage.
Only 10% of our stationery requirements in India are being catered to by current suppliers. I saw this as a great scope of growth. But nothing comes easy; the process of catering to anyone’s requirement professionally isn’t easy. A lot of hard work and effort goes in continuously without any results for a long time.
How large a market is ‘Creative Stationery’ in a country like India?
This section has no end, we could pump in more than a billion products, and yet push ourselves to develop some more. In a country like India, where there are so many diverse cultures and types of people, the creative stationery segment is limitless. So as a manufacturer, you need to decide which segment you would want to cater to currently, and need to re-look and revise strategies every six months.
What kind of clients do you generally target?
Notex usually targets university students and corporations. We try to make products which would help people stay organized. Our products, Jot It, and Scribble, are meant to take down notes on. We also focus on making elegant stationery to meet the needs of executives.