Today we’re taking a break from the post series, because I had a strange and thought provoking experience yesterday that I wanted to talk about.

On my holiday drive, there’s a small town that I drive through that I really admire, at least from a small business standpoint.  This town is clearly a successful place for small businesses.  There is a picturesque street lined with art galleries, antique stores, and small restaurants.  I got really excited yesterday specifically because driving through, I saw a sign for an old fashioned paper goods store.  So excited, in fact, that I stopped in the dark and the snow, intending to go in and check it out and rave about the fact that a store like this still existed.

I’ve had a strange love affair with paper stores since I was a kid.  I grew up near one, and I have years of happy memories involving going to the paper store with my mother to buy pens, cards, and stationery.   There’s a sense of possibility that paper gives me that a computer can’t replicate.  A blank page of paper and  a sturdy pen in the right color can be the simplest and the most inspiring set of tools for a writer.  I love my laptop, and I run an online business, but I still write most of my copy by hand.  It’s old fashioned, it’s inefficient, and it gets my brain going.  For me, blank word documents can be incredibly intimidating.  Real paper goods stores seem to be a dying industry.  You can find stuff online (like this gorgeous stationery), but it isn’t quite the same thing as browsing through a store in person.

So I parked my car and went up to the window of the store, which was still brightly lit.  It turns out I’d made it 20 minutes past closing time, so the doors were shut, but the lights had deceived me.  But the even bigger letdown was the fact that the window of the paper goods store was filled with….tiny glass owls and little signs with silly sayings.  No sign of old fashioned paper goods at all!  No paper, no stationery, no pens.  I was really disappointed, and also felt sort of silly for letting this one store sign get my childhood hopes up.   I got back in my car and kept driving, and after awhile decided to stop back in on the way home on Monday to give it a real chance.  But in some ways, the damage was done.

As someone who runs a business devoted to helping small businesses survive, I am saddened by things like this.  Many small businesses try to compete with larger places by being something that they aren’t.  If you are a paper goods store, having a window full of tiny glass owls is doing yourself a disservice.  I know paper isn’t really fashionable anymore, and that handwriting and stationery is kind of a lost art, but there’s still a marketable business in being unique.  Lots of stores sell glass owls, and not that many sell really beautiful paper.  The best way be successful as a small business is to be yourself, and trust in yourself and your product to make you money.

That all said, does anyone know a good paper store, either online or offline?  I need to restock on stationery and pens!

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