About the business: Appointed designs and produces custom notebooks and other stationery and desktop products.
In October, founder and CEO Suann Song opened Appointed District Shop, a storefront with a new 10,000-square-foot warehouse and studio at 1500 Okie St. NE in Ivy City. For her, it’s a dream realized from her childhood, when she would play “stationery store” with her sister.
“I’ve always believed that people buy from people,” she said.
Appointed’s storefront features The Notebook Bar, where customers can walk in, fill out an order form specifying design features they want and walk out 15 minutes later with a custom-made notebook, a process they can also watch through glass doors outside the warehouse facility.
The business sells its stationery products through 600 retailers across the U.S. and internationally, including Salt & Sundry in Union Market and Solid State Books on H Street NE. Song said she likes to prioritize working with independent retailers, though the company also sells its products in national chains and has a licensing partnership with BuzzFeed.
The company, which projects 2021 revenue of $2.5 million, produces 1,000 notebooks a day from its warehouse.
How it started: Before she founded Appointed, Song worked in marketing and public relations and was a self-taught graphic designer. When her first child was born, she stayed home from work and ended up taking a letterpress printing class. That translated into her designing greeting cards that she sold on Etsy.
She expanded the cards into her own stationery line, but she knew she had bigger dreams — to start her own business.
In 2015, Song started working with Raff Embossing & Foilcraft, a die cutting and foilpress business with a warehouse in Hyattsville, and the first company to make prototypes of the notebooks she had begun designing. For many of the early days of Appointed, it was just Song renting a corner of that warehouse, binding her notebooks by hand.
“There was not a notebook on the market that met my needs,” she said. “It essentially was an idea that came in my head, which is very similar to a lot of founders, but it’s sustained and it’s established careers for people. We’ve built this whole company and brand from a single idea and belief that the tools that you surround yourself with have an impact on your creativity and productivity.”
Song bootstrapped the business. Since its founding, she said, Appointed has seen an average year-over-year growth between 50% and 75%.
After 10 months at the Hyattsville warehouse, Appointed moved to its current home in Ivy City, where its own warehouse has semiautomatic machinery to speed the notebook binding and monogramming processes.
“Now, we’re busting at the seams,” Song said.
The pandemic effect: Appointed didn’t lay off any employees during the peak of Covid, Song said, despite overnight cancellations of retail orders and slow sales. Her strategy was to prioritize traffic to the company’s website, even if it didn’t result in sales, just to generate brand awareness. She also created free digital downloads with step-by-step instructions for meal preparation and home-schooling tips.
The pandemic pivot: When she had launched her business, Song had initially focused on a wholesale and business-to-business strategy, with only a third of Appointed’s products sold through e-commerce platforms. But that changed during the pandemic.
The decision started Appointed’s curve back toward recovery, Song said. The company has since experienced a surge in orders, which resulted in a 50% increase in revenue and 50% growth in staff to keep up with the demand, Song said.
The business now employs 21 full-time workers, as well as a handful of part-time employees.
And e-commerce makes up 65% of company revenue.
The challenge today: The shop sources paper from mills in New York and Pennsylvania, and labor shortages at those facilities mean a scarcity of paper — obviously one of Appointed’s essential materials. Song said the shortage is expected to last eight to 12 months and has resulted in a backlog of orders for her firm.
But other supply-chain issues haven’t impacted them because all of the materials are sourced from within the United States, she said, and almost all of the production is done in-house.
What’s next: As much as Appointed District Shop has grown in the past six years, Song said she feels like she’s just getting started.
After fitting two months of work in one weekend between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, her team is preparing for its busiest month, January — when many customers will need new planners.
In 2022, the brand is launching a new desktop accessory line, as well as notebook subscription services for customers who buy a new notebook every four to six weeks.
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