How staying flexible helped Cloth & Paper flourish
Ashley Reynold’s business is all about planning, but the stationery designer’s success is thanks to perpetual pivots and innovation - including introducing Afterpay
Ashley Reynolds’ top tips for growing a successful business
- Don’t follow the crowd
“I think a lot of small business owners feel like they need to closely follow the strategy of other small businesses in order to be successful. You’re most successful when you’re doing something different and unique because it allows your brand to be the outlier.”
- Determine your office culture and hire accordingly
“We have a culture where everyone likes everyone – we’re just very picky about the people that we bring on to the business. We want positive, forward thinking, enthusiastic people, people that have really bought into this industry and the customers as much as we have.”
- Listen to your customers – and respond
“A lot of the time customers tell you what they want. They tell you what you need to do in order to continue that relationship or continue to build new relationships. We do a good job of just listening to the customers and I think that is why we’re still around and our business has continued to grow.”
As a stationery designer who sells luxury diaries and planners, Ashley Reynolds appreciates the importance of forward planning better than most.
However, she owes much of her business’ success to her ability to remain open-minded and adapt quickly.
Reynolds, who previously worked in finance, launched her e-commerce brand Cloth & Paper in 2015, and initially assumed that the best way to break into the paper goods market was to sell a mix of her own products, as well as those from well-established stationery brands.
But it quickly became apparent that customers were only interested in Reynold’s planners. “Our potential customers really didn’t want to see brands that they could get elsewhere already. They wanted something new, fresh and exciting. We scrapped the whole offering other brands [thing] and went to offering all of our own products exclusively.”
“Our potential customers wanted something new, fresh and exciting.”
That was Reynolds’ first lesson in adapting and pivoting.
The next one followed soon afterwards.
Having decided to focus on selling her own products, Reynolds found herself with an excess of products from other brands that she needed to unload quickly. “To get rid of all that product that we had bought, we did our first subscription box,” she says, explaining that the subscription boxes were an excellent way to sell excess stock at a discounted rate - and create an ongoing revenue stream. “Our subscription box sold out in the first two days.”
Subscription boxes now represent 50 per cent of Cloth & Paper’s sales.
Growing fast
Reynolds originally launched the business soon after she moved from Richmond, Virginia, to Raleigh, North Carolina in 2015. Unable to find a daily planner that fit her sleek, androgynous style, she decided to create one of her own.
Six years later, Cloth & Paper employs 45 staff, and was recently ranked in Inc.com’s 5000 fastest-growing companies. “Looking at this trajectory, we’re projected to continue to grow at about 200 per cent this year,” says Reynolds, who adds that crucial to Cloth & Paper’s success is the involvement of her husband Ryan, who joined the team officially as COO in 2017.
Harnessing social media
Perpetual pivoting is one secret to Cloth & Paper’s success. Another is Reynold’s ability to harness a vibrant online community.
Soon after she moved states and launched her business, Reynolds joined a Facebook group of like-minded paper lovers. There, she not only found new friends but also, eventually, an engaged customer base.
“I stumbled across some Facebook groups that involved people who enjoy planning on paper and I started sharing some of my plans from my planner in those groups. People started asking [if they could] purchase my planner,” she recalls. “These people are what really helped support me and get Cloth & Paper off the ground.”
Weathering the pandemic
Selling planners at a time when all plans went out the window presented a unique challenge. Cloth & Paper not only survived – it thrived.
“We have had people that have subscribed to us and stayed subscribed to us since 2015, and that’s because of this friendship that we’ve built online. I feel like through the pandemic that kind of aided our growth – it was this friendship of people wanting to see you succeed, even through tough times,” Reynolds explains. This community now includes nearly 100,000 Instagram followers.
Listening to customers
Reynolds has always made herself available to her customers, something she believes distinguishes Cloth & Paper from other businesses. Each Friday afternoon the company holds a Happy Hour where new products are released, and Reynolds is available online to talk through the new additions. “I communicate with our customers a lot, [and many] call me by my first name. They’ll call our customer service and say, ‘Hey, tell Ashley this’ or ‘Tell Ashley that’… I hate calling that a ‘marketing strategy’ because we’re just out here nurturing relationships that we’ve cultivated,” she says. “I feel like that’s really a big piece of what’s continued to push us forward.”
“I hate calling communicating with our customers a ‘marketing strategy’ because we’re just out here nurturing relationships that we’ve cultivated.”
Cloth & Paper’s involvement with Afterpay also came from customers, Reynolds says, with many requesting it as a way to finance gifts or other purchases. “We release new products every week and people say: ‘Hey, I want to support you and I want to purchase from you every week but is there anything else we can do as far as payment options so that I can continue to support you [on a regular basis]?’”
This connection to customers and their needs and satisfaction is critical to Cloth & Paper. “Keeping [track] of your customer's issues [is essential to driving] innovation – if you aren't [constantly innovating], you aren't truly solving your customers issues,” Reynolds explains. “Our desire to make our customer's lives better through innovation is what has contributed to our quick growth, and this is at the core of our business.”
What’s next
Cloth & Paper is known for planners, inserts and pens but Reynolds is looking to also carry a homeware line. “We want to expand into more of a lifestyle brand, so we’re offering more products outside of paper that will still be branded Cloth & Paper,” she says.
Ashley Reynolds’ top tips for growing a successful business
Don’t follow the crowd. “I think a lot of small business owners feel like they need to closely follow the strategy of other small businesses in order to be successful. You’re most successful when you’re doing something different and unique because it allows your brand to be the outlier.”
Determine your office culture and hire accordingly. “We have a culture where everyone likes everyone – we’re just very picky about the people that we bring on to the business. We want positive, forward thinking, enthusiastic people, people that have really bought into this industry and the customers as much as we have.”
Listen to your customers – and respond. “A lot of the time customers tell you what they want. They tell you what you need to do in order to continue that relationship or continue to build new relationships. We do a good job of just listening to the customers and I think that is why we’re still around and our business has continued to grow.”
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