I have been able to visit a number of Ryman the Stationery stores in London. While each is different in size, they are all similar – the typical footprint I have seen in London is small, the aisles narrow and the range of stationery considerable.
They offer known brand stationery and their own brand. Given the Ryman retail footprint their own brand would carry considerable respect from consumers I suspect. Certainly their house branded products look like good quality – not like some of the cheap and nasty house brands back in Australia.
What really strikes me about the Ryman stores is what they fit into a smaller footprint. I was in one store of no more than fifty square metres. I be they had more than twice the stationery than a large newsagency allocating twice the amount of space.
In each of the Ryman businesses you get the feeling that they know stationery. They must, of course, as it is their bread and butter – get this wrong and they fail.
Maybe this is why newsagents are challenged with stationery … it is not our bread and butter. We don’t know the category as we should. We need to fix this if we are to grow stationery sales.
I have some thoughts on this and will share these at the Newsagency of the Future workshops in a couple of weeks.