Stand DP1-A62
M!NT marks 20 years of quirky and fun designs
Debbie and Alan Williams are celebrating a superbly M!NT two decades of greeting card and stationery publishing this summer. Twenty years ago, Debbie and Alan took over a struggling and little-known card company and have turned it into the veteran and major independent business it is today.
An early and significant success came with the now-classic Knit & Purl range of quirky animals and objects hand-knitted by Debbie herself, originally helped by her mum and friends. M!NT creative lead Anita Dragicevic staged and photographed humorous scenarios featuring the knitted characters, creating an industry groundbreaking collection of mainstream humour cards, a range that is still commercially relevant to this day.
“Many imitators followed but the original has been, and remains, a sales phenomenon,” explains administration and relationship manager Sophie Bylina-Williams. “With its home-spun ultra crafty look and funny, accessible puns, it’s a creative team effort coming up with new ideas and fun puns, which inevitably leads to a shopping list of knitting for Debbie. Octopus, vinyl record, sheep, beer glass, avocado, cheese and many more have all received the knitted treatment.”
Little did Debbie realise when she started a temp accounts job with a small greeting card company at the start of the century that she would end up buying and relaunching the company with her (then farmer) husband Alan and growing it into the 43 000sq ft premises it now occupies – one of the UK’s leading independently owned greeting card, stationery and gift publishing groups. M!NT’s early successes rapidly led to the acquisition of Museums & Galleries Ltd, then Real and Exciting Designs, and then the launch last year of The Fold, M&G’s new boutique side label.
Meanwhile, M!NT has not rested on its laurels. Group creative director Ben Dorney reinvigorated the brand, creating the new M!NT identity, and took humour into the present with the To Be Frank! collection of cards, gift bags and stationery combining dead-pan humour with a design-led look and unique blend of brilliantly-finished neon colours.
“Once again, a team effort created the magic – printer and production team pushing technical boundaries; studio design and copywriting in collaboration with an industry wordsmith – and the result is a unique look and tone-of-voice, the last word in colourful humour,” Sophie says.
The constantly refreshed Knit & Purl remains a core M!NT offer, and together with the contemporary success of To Be Frank! bolsters the company’s standing as a leading humour publisher, with a reinvigorated collection of licensed ranges including Katie Abey and Magdalena Creative alongside popular in-house ranges such as Doodle Showcase and Just Saying.
Good-humoured and level-headed, the ever-modest Debbie reflects on 20 successful years in the industry: “We just feel so proud of our team, how they have adapted to the evolution of the business as well as to our retail customers, both multiples and independents. We would not be where we are today without them.”
