Tell us about your company and/or your products.
Lucy Loves Paper is a stationery brand delivering kindness, connection and inclusion in a bright bowl of cuteness. The brand started after I left a corporate design career planning on using my illustration skills to encourage empathy, celebrate diversity and spread joy. Now LLP has evolved into a fun stationery brand, making a variety of products in English, Spanish and Portuguese with a bold, colorful style inspired by my Latina roots (I was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil).
I also believe that cards are for keeping so we encourage buyers to give their greeting cards a second life by printing, on the back of each one, suggestions of how to repurpose or store them.
What’s your role at your company?
I’m the illustrator, creative director, social media manager, CEO, owner, president and queen.
Why did you become a GCA member and tell us about your GCA experience so far.
Entrepreneurship can be lonely so I was looking for ways to meet more like-minded people and my experience with the GCA has been even better than I expected. There are of course all the discounts and events but, for me the most important thing is the community. The genuine care and generosity that both new and experienced members show towards one another is just priceless. I learned a lot from GCA’s programs and members, made some great friends and am so grateful to be part of such a welcoming and supportive community.
What inspired you to get involved in the greeting card industry?
Lucy Loves Paper actually started as a custom illustration studio and it took me a while to get into greeting cards and wholesale. By 2020 my custom illustration business was doing well but I had this pile of filled up sketchbooks that kept getting bigger and I was looking for ways of putting my own art and values out in the world. I always loved greeting cards and was exploring the idea of a full stationery collection. That’s when a friend signed me up for an instagram giveaway to a free NYNow visitor badge and I won! I walked NYNow in February 2020 (right before the world turned upside down), visited every single stationery booth, talked to lots of makers and fell in love with the paper goods industry. I also noticed that there was still a lot of space for diversity in the greeting card world, so I spent that first year of the pandemic studying and developing my stationery line that was finally launched in the second semester of 2021.
What's something about you (a fun fact) that not many people know?
I see colors in people! It’s not a supernatural, woo woo thing - I can NOT see people’s auras. I’m just a very visual person and tend to associate people with colors which means that every time I think about certain people, their respective colors will automatically pop in my head.
Is there anything else you’d like to share?
In Feb 2024 I’ll be back to NYNow for the first time since that pre-pandemic visit and this time I’m coming as an exhibitor!! I’ve exhibited at Noted twice but this will be my first big girl booth (5x10') and I’m super excited to meet with retailers, reps, industry colleagues and maybe even give some tips to new artists that might be walking the show just like I did.
Lucia
Lucy Loves Paper
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