30 Years and Counting

Today, November 15th, is the 30th Anniversary of Lynn and I opening our first store at Harborplace. That first little store in Harborplace was more of a party and entertaining store than the stationery store we've become. We were reminiscing about some of the best sellers from the early 80s: pinatas, Murphy's Law posters, funny cocktail napkins (remember the one with "Dinner will be ready when the smoke alarm goes off"?), Rubik's cubes, Paper-By-the-Pound, Mrs. Grossman's stickers, the Preppy Handbook, Baltimore shot glasses, aprons with funny sayings and the first personalized items - mugs, paper lunch bags, and balloons with names on them.

We were remembering people who have worked for us over the years. In 1980, most of them were college girls and a few guys, and they were all younger than me. In 2010, most of the staff have mothers younger than me! And it's always a big surprise when someone from the past stops in to say hi, with a teenager in tow who looks exactly like I remember their mom or dad looking when they worked at the store years ago.

We opened a second store at Green Spring Station in 1983, and gradually added more stationery and invitation printing to the mix, which grew into the niche we've become known for. In 1984 or so, we started printing birth announcements and it was always fun to watch the kids we announced as they celebrated milestones in their lives. Christenings, 1st birthdays, kindergarten graduation, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs as they turned 13, camp stationery, Sweet 16s, high school and college graduations, 21st birthdays. And then, last year, we started working on weddings for five of them - a very big milestone. Will 2011 have the first baby born to someone we did birth announcements for?

It's ironic how full circle we've come in 30 years. When we opened The Pleasure of Your Company, the economy was in a recession, the nature of retail was changing, and mind-blowing new technology was about to change everything. So many things we take for granted were very new in the 80s. For the first time, food, entertainment and shopping were all mixed together and people wanted shopping to be an experience rather than just a trip to the store. And new technologies were just emerging - car phones, desktop computers and printers, VCRS, video games, fax machines, bar coding, a microwave in every home. How many people truly remember what it was like to not be able to buy the latest version of Windows, or the Adobe Creative Suite off the shelf and have to do the programming themselves? Thank goodness we had Lynn, who could write the programming we needed. The learning curve to incorporate these into our lives was a lot like now, as we learn to use smart phones, all the social media, aps, the possibilities that GPS opens up for retail, compete with internet shopping, and so on.

And so we've come full circle - in 1980, there were a handful of stationery stores in Baltimore. The number grew to 11 or 12, but the recession has cut it back to a handful again. Technology is an opportunity and a challenge - the motto over my desk, "everything is changing and change is accelerating" has never been truer. Entrepreneurship is thriving - I think the megabusinesses who can drive pricing and the little businesses who can change on a dime and morph quickly are the businesses who will survive another decade.

We are at 30 years and counting - still standing, still morphing, still keeping up with the changes. The photographs of the store will look as different in 5 years as they have in all the pictures we've taken in the last thirty. We are thankful for this wonderful adventure - thankful to Jim Rouse for his vision of a downtown renaissance where we could start a business, thankful to the great staff we've had over the years, thankful for the relationships and friendships we have with our vendors, thankful for great landlords, and most of all, thankful to the wonderful customers who have come in year after year and always supported us - you are THE BEST!!!