How to Start a Stationery Business Online: A Complete Guide

Stationery, stationed yet an important thing.

Tell me one place where don’t not find stationery items. People love stationery and they take it everywhere they go! Office, home, school, manufacturing units, colleges, etc. literally everywhere.

Of course, over past years technology evolved and almost everything is digitized today. Be it to-do lists, front desk calendar, or planning your schedules, everything you can create at your fingertips.

However, in spite of technology growth the stationery industry is booming. Here are some facts to rescue:

According to research done by Grand View: the stationery business market grew and has a market value of USD 90.6 billion in 2018 and is rapidly growing at a CAGR of 5.1% by 2025.

Another research from Statista, shows that the hobby and stationery business industry is expected to grow by US$25,875m in 2021.

It is clear that the growth in demand of stationery business is rapid. There are multiple factors which contribute to growth of this market, out of which: increase in employment and higher education has a major role to play.

It has some of the basic items which help businesses and its employees to work efficiently. So, if you are someone who is planning to start a stationery business then this guide is for you.

Here’s a quick roadmap of this guide:

• Plan your Business
• Launch Online Stationery Business
• Marketing Strategies

Plan your stationery business:

To start anything new requires planning as it gives you more clarity on what you need to do. And that’s the exact thing which helps you in starting your stationery business.

If you are looking to venture into the stationery business then a well-thought business plan is a must. It will help you streamline your operations, manage your finances, and enable you to offer the best products to your customers. Lots of educational institutions and corporate places keep looking for someone who can fulfill their bulk stationery order at wholesale rates. Start with including the following two things in your stationery business plan.

Competitor research:

Whatever the industry be – there is always competition. There are always some seasoned brands in your industry that are highly popular and in-demand. And the stationery business is no exception. For instance, Faber-Castell, Camlin, MontBlanc, etc. are some seasoned competitors in the stationery industry and are towards the top.

If you want to compete with them, you must be ‘like’ them and importantly “better” than them. But it doesn’t imply that you start emulating them in everything from products, site design to other strategies. It simply means that you should intensively research their overall marketing approach – be in terms of products, quality or prices of products. This will help you decide on how much you can invest in your business to make it stand out.

Note: Researching your competitors and copying your competitors are two different things. If you simply copy everything that your competitor has, there would be nothing unique about your store. However, analyzing your competitors will help you to assess where your business stands and what all efforts you would have to make to reach their level.

Define target audience:

Have clarity about your target audience in the stationery business. Define which audience you prefer to target B2B, B2C, or both. You can target both or either of them. The more clarity you have on your target audience, the more you know what your audience needs. I would suggest starting with going B2C and slowly expand your business in the B2B industry.

Launch your Online Stationery Business:

Taking your stationery business online comes with its own challenges. But don’t worry, we have got you covered with everything. Let’s talk step by step on starting your online stationery business.

Decide the budget:

Deciding a budget is the first and foremost thing. Think over all the things which go into taking your business online. For example, developing a website, marketing, deployment, etc. think of all such things and figure out how much investment each of them needs. This will help you to define your budget and give more clarity about your budget to you as well as your investors.

Pre Launch preparations:

Whether it is an online stationery business or offline business, register your business with local authorities first. Besides that, you would always need a minimum of licenses and permits required for your business to avoid any legal issues later. Establish a legal business entity – an LLC, a DBA, or a corporation based on your type of business.

Once you have registered your business, acquire all necessary licenses and permits required for your business. There are licenses including seller’s permit, employer identification number (EIN), business tax certificate, and several others that you may need for both online and offline businesses.

In general, you may need more licenses and permits for an offline business. However, if you are not sure of all the licenses you need, it is best to contact your county clerk’s office or check the official site your state has designated for this purpose.

Once you get a license the next step comes from vendors. The major purpose of taking your business online is to make sure that customers can order things from their comfort and get things delivered. And to make items deliver without any trouble you need vendors. So, get in touch with the right and well known vendor management companies. They will help you with delivering projects when and where needed.

Need help in setting up your stationery website? Our team can help you right from selecting the right platform to launching it.

 

 

Follow trends:

Every day there are new trends in the market and customers’ requirements keep on changing constantly. But, as an online stationery business owner it is important to keep up with this ever changing trend.

To keep with the trend make sure to provide your customers with an option to create and design various cards. That could include business cards, greeting cards, stamps, invitation cards, posters, etc. The reasons behind providing all these to your customers under one roof will give them less chance to go anywhere else. Make sure that the designs are according to recent trends and appeal to customers.

Apart from predefined designs, you can even provide your customers with an opportunity to design cards or posters according to their need. Use the third party extension like a product designer tool and give your customers freedom to show their creativity.

Launch website:

Developing a website is one of the most important things while taking your stationery business online. It is important to provide all services online with an ease to find and place orders. Developing eStore is not one person’s job. It requires a proper amount of time and input from the experienced people. In such a case it is perfect to reach out to a company like us which helps you to develop your eStore.

Once you have found your technical partner which will help you to develop your eStore sit with them and think over deciding development platform. There are many different platforms like Shopify, Magento, Drupal, etc. Each of them comes with their own merits and demerits. Make sure to reach out to experts and choose the platform that is suitable for you and your business.

Next step is to define lists of features you want in your eStore. You can include: payment gateway, add to cart option, wishlists items, easy sign in option, search products with particular keywords, and more. All these features will make your customers’ shopping experience better.

Starting an online store doesn’t have to be difficult. With PrintXpand, you save the time and efforts it takes to build a store from scratch. Our Web to Print Solutions make the entire process smoother.

 

 

Your USP: Custom Stationery Products

From the pool of thousands of stationery businesses offering great products, how would you mark your spot? The best way is getting one step closer to what your customers actually need, and then delivering that.

For example, a comparison between a simple diary vs a personalized one with their name printed beautifully, the second option will always win. That’s the power of custom products. And it could be your USP to become one-of-a-kind brands in your industry!

Today with modern technology, even your customers can customize these products on spot while shopping and place orders!

To implement that, all you need is to integrate our product designer tool in your eStore. Your customers come and design stationery products like business cards, pens, invitations, etc. and order!

The Product Design Tool from PrintXpand provides a seamless navigation and a feature rich library of thousand plus themes, fonts, stickers, and more. So, you can provide the best shopping experience.

For example, you deal with business card products. With an integrated functionality of customization, your customers can create products using the pre-defined templates, images, and text options. WIth an easy interface, customers do not need to be professional designers.

Your clients can design their entire business cards right then and there and send an order for it either in bulk or individually. This decreases back and forth communication between businesses, designers, and other companies. Additionally, it even helps them to get the designs according to their choice and get the final product.

To know how it would work with your store, you can explore the product designer tool here.

 

 

Marketing and Promotion:

Well-begun is half-done. Now that you are all set to sell your products to customers; put your best foot forward in promoting your products – and of course, your business.

While there are ways like flyers, handouts, giveaways, news ads, discounts, endorsements, etc. that can help. But, a web presence can always complement all of them for even offline businesses.

So, read on to know the strategies to promote your stationery business.

• Social Media OptimizationSocial media presence of any brand today is a necessity. Choose one or more social media platforms that suit your brand and make a social marketing plan. Update your users about new product launches, offers and discounts, and more. This will help you broaden your outreach to include more audiences that notice your brand through social media and land on your site.
• Email MarketingEmail marketing is a traditional yet great way to reach your target audience and enhance their overall customer journey. Engage leads through emails containing relevant content and surveys as per a particular stage in the sales funnel, and nurture them into customers, or even better – into repeat customers.
• Display AdvertisingIf you want the audience searching for products or services similar to what your businesses offer, display advertising can also work well. You can run a display advertising campaign for your business and decide on which sites you want to run your visual ad on.

To help you formulate a strong display advertising campaign and adjust your budget accordingly, you can always contact a seasoned digital marketing professional or a digital marketing company.

Conclusion:

Taking any business online has its own challenges and stationery business is no exception. To start your stationery business online, the first thing you need is a full-proof plan and the right partner like us. Be it integrating our tool to take the whole business online, PrintXpand can be your one stop solution.

With years of experience in the custom product industry, we strive to make your business remarkable. We have a team of tech experts who guide you throughout the process including marketing efforts to fetch you good business. For us it is a journey of creating businesses with great offerings. To know how we can help you, let’s set up a skype call. We will be happy to help you!

 

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