We were lucky to catch up with Melissa Constandse recently and have shared our conversation below.

Melissa, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard

The stationery world is pretty wonderful and friendly, and full of creative people who have managed to make a living doing something they love. In that way I am not different from any one, and I respect so many of my fellow industry colleagues.

One thing we do very different from everyone else, is that we don’t make occasion greeting cards. We don’t have a Mother’s Day card, or a graduation card, or a get well card. It’s something that makes selling the line a little more challenging, but I’m also certain it’s what has made us stand out and has helped us grow.

I like to use symbolism, magical correspondences, and floriography, to give each card or design a deeper meaning, that can then be interpreted as an occasion.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m a graphic designer by trade, and spent many years doing branding for restaurants, vineyards, clothing companies, etc. I slowly began to get tired of chasing people for money, and of not being able to design the things that I wanted to. I was creatively drained.

I’ve always loved stationery and over the years had become very familiar with printing and the printing industry, and so I decided to transition into making paper goods. And in particular, wholesale stationery. Which was scary and hard at first, and branding work still paid most of the bills. But little by little the stationery business grew until it became my studio’s main revenue stream.

I took a wonderful online course called Trade Show Bootcamp (now called Paper Camp), run by the incredible Katie Hunt, and learned everything I needed to know about the business, and most importantly, about trade shows. Which are huge in the stationery/gift industry.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Our presence at trade shows, and our customer service. Something I love about trade shows is meeting and talking to people who stop by our booth. My company is very personal so talking about it is easy. The cards are illustrated with things I love and that interest me, so I love explaining things to people, sharing our process, etc. Many of the people who purchase our products for their stores have become more than just familiar faces, and I love seeing them and catching up with them at shows. And even though this is something I genuinely enjoy, it also creates a very personal connection. And the same applies to our retail customers.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

When you have a small business, and therefore a small team, everyone wears many hats. I personally like to encourage people to create their own role in the company based on their particular strengths. There’s the basic things we all need to do every day, but after those are done there is so much room to be creative and come up with fun projects. I treat my team like I do my family. I care about them, respect them, care about their mental health, their personal goals, etc.

And while morale is not always at 100 (stuff happens), we know we can always talk to each other to make things better.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://openseadesignco.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/openseadesignco/

Image Credits

Laura Perkins