The new location of Papillon Press (8130 Big Bend) is stocked with stationery, decorative prints, and other products bearing beautiful block-printed designs, but co-founder Madeleine Wiering is taking an industrial approach to attracting window shoppers to the store, now nestled among restaurants and retail shops in the Old Orchard area of Webster Groves.
“I’m putting my 1,500-pound, 100-year-old letterpress right in the front window of the new store because it’s something that will draw people in. In the old store, it was kind of tucked into the back because I was like, ‘It’s a machine.’ But then, people would walk in, and that was what they wanted to see.”
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That’s not the only lesson Wiering gleaned from Papillon’s first foray into the St. Louis retail scene, a shop on South Jefferson shared with Hollis Leather, a handcrafted, leather-goods store that still occupies the city storefront. Now that Papillon has transitioned into a solo shop that, at around 1,200 square feet, is twice the size of the former store, Wiering has added shelving and furniture and created displays that better showcase the store’s expanded offerings, which include art and other products designed and created in collaboration with Vernon Wiering, Madeleine’s father and Papillon’s co-founder.
“We’ll have a larger selection of the paper goods that we make in the new store. And, because it’s more space, we’ll also be able to add more stationery items, so fountain pens, dip pens, little art supply type things, lots of fun different inks, paper goods, lots of Japanese stationery. That stuff is always very popular and really high quality.”
Madeleine Wiering is also expanding the store’s hours and its calendar of classes on carving, collage, block printing, and other art techniques seen in the store’s products and equipment, which also serves as shop decor.
“Most of the equipment is visible because I want people to see that we use all these old tools and old machines,” Wiering says. “The more people see them, the more they ask questions and the more curious they are about the processes.”
The same is true for the store’s stationery, an array of which are kept in a glass case adorned with a sign that invites shoppers to ask to try any of the pens and inks inside. And, though Papillon offers online sales, Wiering is expanding the shop’s focus to the in-store experience.
“We have a lot of people who come in and are interested in fountain pens or certain kinds of stationery items, but they don’t know a lot about them. So we try to have our space be somewhere where they can try a bunch of different pens, test out inks, that kind of thing. And that’s something that you can only get in-person.”
