British design has always been successful in the global marketplace, from Rolls Royce aero engines to the iMac. So, we should hold our heads up high and be confident that while we may no longer be a world force when it comes to manufacturing, we can still compete in global markets when it comes to ideas and design.

The UK has a lot to offer the US market. I was speaking to the agency that licences Cath Kidston products, and the American market is huge for them at the moment, which proves that if the designs are right, then being a UK company is no barrier to success in the States. Good British designers who work in crafts have also been well received in the USA including people like Nick Bantock and Francoise Read. The key is that most of the successes have been where UK design has been licensed to US companies and then the American firms have organised the manufacture and distribution. So, while it’s not impossible to export products from the UK for sale in the USA, to me it makes a lot more sense to team up with partner company who is already distributing and manufacturing there.

It’s very difficult to accurately gauge the way our home grown companies are seen from a global perspective. When it comes to paper crafts, the American market is so much bigger than anywhere else that in many ways the US market is the global market. Right now I think it’s fair to say that generally we are considered to be importers rather than exporters.

Learning curve
The main lesson to be learnt from US based craft businesses is brand marketing. Too often I have seen British firms with innovative, well designed products that have had initial success, tail off due to the lack of a strong brand identity. Building on this allows you to gain the trust of the consumer and of course different brands mean different things. Some stand for 'high quality and exceptional design', or for 'great value', while others still work by being 'quirky and different'. Good examples of trusted craft brands would be - K & Company - high quality, innovative design; Fiskars - workmanship and reliability, or 7Gypsies - quirky and arty.

The brand should become a guarantee of what you are buying. Without naming names, I think too many UK brands have too much diversity within their offering. Too often I’ve seen stamp ranges that are branded under the same logo and yet include images that range from ultra cute teddies, through to vintage art stamping subjects. Or paper collections that include both ephemera style images, as well as bright and funky designs. It’s not that there is anything wrong with the designs themselves, just that the consumer never comes to understand what the brand stands for and therefore can’t relate to it. I have to hold my hand up and say that in our early days we made similar mistakes, but it is something you’ve got to learn from and we’ve worked very hard to build the Paper Nation brand into a consistent product line that consumers and retailers can trust.

The future is bright for British craft businesses, the continued success of shows on TV shopping channels, especially QVC, has encouraged 1000s of new consumers to give crafting a go and have also forced the trade to become slicker and more professional in both product development and distribution systems. Some independent retailers may feel they are losing business to them, but I honestly believe the opposite is true. Almost without exception, demand for our products via independent retailers increases after they have been featured on QVC. The craft industry as a whole could never begin to afford large scale TV advertising, but via QVC, and other similar channels, the market is gaining the sort of exposure we could only dream about ten years ago.

We’ve seen a new breed of craft outlet materialise in the last five years as well, with both Hobbycraft and Craft Central opening stores in or alongside garden centres with great success. The customer demographic of these garden stores is perfect for craft retailing and this expansion has also introduced a lot of new consumers to the market.

The internet too has expanded all of our customer bases and while it too has its critics, I feel that all new routes to market have to be a good thing if handled properly. Any book publisher who ignores Amazon would be foolish and equally it is important for craft businesses to find new markets through good quality, professionally run web based firms. Of course, it’s even more important that we support the lifeblood of crafting, the independent retailer, by expanding customer demo events, dynamic point of sale material and efficient order processing.