7 minute read
Retail Interview
Greetings Today talks to Michael Apter, owner and MD of Paper Tiger, which trades from two stores in Edinburgh
Can you tell us a little about the history of Paper Tiger? Paper Tiger was founded in 1981 as part of the Studio One group of companies, owned by John Johnson. I began working with John and Paper Tiger in 1997, and I took over the business in 2016.
Tell us about the shops. Our stores are in the western side of Edinburgh city centre, in busy areas, surrounded by other businesses, hospitality and hotels. Our Stafford Street shop is located in the West End, part of the Georgian New Town, and the Lothian Road shop is on a main road in the centre, surrounded by some of the key cultural venues in the city, and just a stone’s throw from Edinburgh Castle and the Old Town.
We have a supportive and helpful staff in a welcoming and attractive environment, selling well-designed, meaningful products that are made by authentic designers, illustrators and makers, for discerning shoppers for the significant moments and significant people in their lives. Your stores ‘tell the stories of our products, makers, illustrators and designers’. Please explain! We find really interesting suppliers who make really great things, and then we ask them
about themselves and their products! We run regular Q&A features on our Jungle Blog, which we share on social media, on the website and in the stores. Pre-pandemic we were running events and meet-ups, which we hope to reintroduce in the coming months. You have a strong community focus - as well as supporting charities - can you tell us more about this? Over the course of more than 40 years, Paper Tiger has become a well-known brand in Edinburgh, Scotland and beyond. We are approached regularly by local charities and organisations to help them with fundraising activities, and we try to help as many as possible when they align with our values or when team members have a particular affinity. This year - the Chinese Year Of The Tiger - we are working with the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation to raise £10,000 for tiger conservation projects. Tell us about how you support the customer journey - both in-store and online. I have been in retail all my working life and I implicitly understand the importance of consistently good customer service. It builds your reputation and your relationships with your customers. We employ colleagues who understand the importance of customer service, and we work on it on a daily basis. It is measured in-store and online, and we aim to delight our customers. Occasionally we will get it wrong, and we take the right steps to try and make things better. That customer journey is mapped out in documents, training, and so on, and is part of our company culture and our daily operations so that consistently high customer service is absolutely embedded in what we do.
It is obvious you take great care in choosing your cards and wrap for the stores - can you tell us more about your criteria? We are clear on what we want to have on our shelves and when we want to have it in the stores, and we know where we can source that product. We have specific metrics across a number of different criteria for ranges, themes and product selection, and we use those criteria to manage our stock at a macro and micro level. We also closely monitor our customers and our sales to ensure that our ranges are working in the stores and online. How do you source products? Sourcing is a never-ending, 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, multi-platform, multi-sensory, embodied and virtual experiential journey of discovery! We see so much stuff, all the time. I am approaching 25 years in the business,
and I have seen literally millions of products. Before my time with Paper Tiger I worked for HMV, where I saw millions of record sleeves, CD covers, video, DVD and computer game covers, so I know about what works in terms of visual presentation of words, images, and colour. We are good at the perspiration bit so we can seek out the inspiration. How is trading for you at the moment? Trade is improving and is beginning to shape up in quite an exciting way as we navigate out of the pandemic. Edinburgh was hit hard by the absence of tourists, and the office sector is still in a state of flux, but the city centre is a hugely appealing place to live and work, and to come and stay and experience, and we are here to serve those customers. I checked in on Edinburgh Castle earlier and it is still absolutely, ridiculously stunning. I have taken more photos of the castle than I have taken of my dog. Which is really saying something… What’s your demographic like? Discerning shoppers of all ages who are looking for quality and something a few steps away from the High Street. How do you get word out there to potential customers? First, we make sure we have striking window displays that capture the attention of passersby, and that high level of visual merchandising is carried through into the stores. We use that in our social media, and we specifically create visual merchandising and physical displays with the intention of using images of them as paid posts on various social media. We run keyword advertising around specific occasions. I also write a regular newsletter. Tell us more about your online presence. We have traded online for just over five years, with the intention that whatever we sell in-store is also available online. The proportion of overall digital sales fluctuates through the year, but is around 20-something per cent of our annual turnover. My “We ambition is to grow that further specifically in the years ahead. Have you seen the average create visual cost of your products go merchandising up - and if so how have you dealt with it? and physical Everything is becoming more expensive, and we have displays with reluctantly raised retail prices the intention of to accommodate that. We have introduced more price breaks using images on our products to remain competitive. of them as Tell us more about your paid posts on commitment to being eco-friendly. various social Sustainability is a key criteria in our buying decisions and that media’’ feeds through every element, from the materials, to the production process and how it gets to us. All of our own cards and wraps are recycled/FSC papers, and we try to use local suppliers whenever possible to reduce carbon footprint. Any waste generated in our processes is recycled; our recycling partner has a ‘zero waste to landfill’ policy. We also offset our business travel by planting native tree species in the Scottish Highlands. What brands have been particularly popular with your customers? We have stocked some brands for decades - Caroline Gardner, Roger La Borde, and Archivist Cards immediately spring to mind, but alongside these established companies we offer hundreds of designs from dozens of other publishers. Is there anything you haven’t been able to source? There is a real lack of high-end, high-quality, well-designed handmade cards. There are probably some compelling reasons for that, but the market 25 years ago had many makers and designers offering unique pieces of art on a greeting card. I miss it as a consumer as well as a retailer.
What challenges have you faced over the past few months and how have you dealt with them? The pandemic! Brexit? 2019 had been a bumper year for Paper Tiger, and 2020 began well for us. We were preparing for our 40th anniversary in 2021, and sadly we were unable to run the events and activities that we had planned. As I said earlier, Edinburgh is still a beautiful city, and it is filling up again with locals and visitors who are discovering - and rediscovering - the pleasure of city centre retail and leisure.
Anything else you’d like to add? If you would like to keep in touch with what we are doing, please sign up for my newsletter at www.papertiger.co.uk/pages/paper-tigernewsletter.
Finally - what are your five best sellers? Caroline Gardner designs are a perennial bestseller for us, we like selling Quentin Blake cards from Woodmansterne, Letterpress from Archivist Cards alongside our own Paper Tiger Letterpress range, and our friends at The Art File consistently offer us a fantastic choice of contemporary designs that our customers love.
