STATIONERY MARKET, IS IT GROWING?

From my previous post of my initial ideas, I have decided to go down the stationery route. My brand which will be called stitches will be a handcrafted stationery company that is environmentally conscious. With this decided I thought I should look into the stationery market to understand whether this market is growing or is a risky market to enter at this moment.

"The UK stationery market is worth £2.1billion in 2016, having grown by 3.2% in the past 5 years." (Competitormonitor.com, 2016) Sub-categories including paper and notepads were identified as slowing in terms of growth over the same period due to the ongoing digitalisation and the increased use of technology devices which has reduced the demand for stationery. 

The growth of 3.2% means that people are still purchasing stationery, however, the challenge would be that with the digitalised world that we live in today, how do we get people writing again? I feel that this would be a challenge for my brand but is a vision I want them to aim for. If my brand focused on the right consumer trends e.g personalisation it could help them be successful in the stationery market.