When I promised in the last post that we would publish articles other than on the occasion of the publication of a new book, I meant it. I immediately added it to my list of resolutions for 2021 and promised myself that I would write something for you at least once a month. Well, since I agree with the saying that January is only a test month and the year doesn't really start until February, let's ignore the fact that I missed the article in January and move straight to the February article. ?
I quickly understood what the article would be about. I have a feeling that new customers are coming to us (thank you! ??), who may not actually know who is behind printintin and what our story is. And so I decided to summarize it all so that we are clear about it. Ok lets go!
A few years ago
... were born in Prague and in a smaller town in northern Bohemia three creative souls . Anička, Kačka and Martina. At that time, we had no idea that our paths would cross one day and that we would start creating our paper dream together. Even at that time we liked to draw, write, produce, invent and most importantly they loved trips to the stationery store. From a very young age, we had various notebooks, pencils of all colors and other very important stationery treasures lying around in our drawer. All this time, however, we lacked products on the Czech market with which we would be completely satisfied. And that's exactly what we decided to change a few years later.
2014
It was 2014 and our destinies finally began to intertwine. Together we found ourselves on the grounds of our Alma mater . Kačka in the second year and I and Anička as inexperienced freshmen. Together, within the field of Multimedia in economic practice, we learned all the graphic rules, the basics of marketing, how to take pictures and film correctly. And we should have evaluated all these skills soon.
And we evaluated them right away as part of our final bachelor's project. We have all found ourselves at a seminar where the task was only one - divide into groups and create something real. And I am sure that it was fate that arranged that we were "left to each other". I remember like it was yesterday when I sat down with the girls in the hallway and together we discovered that none of us had a group yet. And unlike most of our classmates, our group did not break up after successfully defending our bachelor's thesis.
At that time, Kačka had been working for several years lettering and handwriting in general. She even chose modern calligraphy as the topic of her bachelor's degree, and in order to devote herself fully to writing, she even left her original job and returned to the school desks. Anička and I also really enjoyed writing, so we decided to do it we will try to combine the love of writing with the love of paper, and the idea of establishing our own stationery was born . After a few meetings together, we soon found out that we have the same vision - we want to produce products that are not only beautiful, but also funny, high-quality, environmentally friendly and, above all, will make our customers happy. And we still stick to that today.
After clarifying our vision and goals, we set to work. At this point it was already clear to us that we all wanted to continue the project regardless of how our course turned out. We had to come up with a brand and its name. From endless brainstorming, we came up with dozens of possible names, but only one sounded right to us from the beginning – printintin . People often ask us what the word means. It means nothing, but at the same time everything. We chose him for his playfulness and joy, which we wanted to bring to people from the beginning.
2016
Regarding our seminar, we received a lot of useful advice from the leaders. However, it was clear that he did not trust printintin too much. This was partly due to the fact that no one from the jury was our target group, but also due to the fact that at that time local production was only slowly beginning to receive attention. Doubts as to whether there will be customers equally enthusiastic about 'stationery essentials', who will be willing to support our products and author's work, were definitely in place. But we had it the other way around. The more we immersed ourselves in the work, the more we believed that this was "the one". With a smile on my face, I remember our weekly meetings in cafes, where we invented everything possible and impossible.
The first thing we focused on was product development. The notebook symbolically became the first. And even before Christmas, we had the first test batch in our hands.
2017
Printintin's first task in the new year was to defend our credits. Because it was most important for us to develop a really high-quality product, we spent most of our time researching the material and searching and testing various papers to find the right ones that would meet all our requirements. Because of this, we were not able to fully adhere to the original rather ambitious schedule of the project. However, we entered the defense confident and with a clear plan, which ultimately won us the credits.
The first step in our plan was secure finances for the launch of the company, which we decided to try to acquire using crowdfunfing. So we started with the thorough preparation of the campaign on Startovaci , which was successful to our great joy. She got the name "My heart beats for paper" and thanks to her, the heart of printintin also started beating.
In between school duties, we started making the first products that we sent to our Starter contributors. It took us several days just to pack them!
And then it got serious. Company foundation. First invoice issued. First orders. It was the large wave of orders that came upon us after the campaign on Startovač that delayed the opening of the dream e-shop. However, we created orders with joy, as before, and among them were those that we are still proud of, such as notebooks for Becherovka, window displays for Manufaktura or diaries for Loono, on which we still collaborate today.
It was November 14th and we finished the last adjustments to the e-shop , which we finally launched that day. Since then, notebooks have been coming to you, as well as other products that we gradually added to the assortment.
2018
The very next year, we added prints, greeting cards, views, undated diaries, plates and very popular stickers to our offer. We presented everything at our first market , where we met customers for the first time even in the offline world. Of course, we immediately fell in love with it and started regularly participating in other markets as well.
In 2018, we also successfully denationalized all of them and said goodbye (physical only) with Anička, who went to study in Holland to gather new artistic experience.
2019
A year later, we fulfilled another dream. We spent most of the year writing our first book For the love of writing, or the basics of lettering and modern calligraphy . (So you can find our whole year summarized in detail in this article. ) Even though it was quite challenging at times, we enjoyed the whole process of writing and creating the book and ended it with that the most beautiful baptism , which we still like to remember today.
The only other thing I remember from this year is "The Great Christmas Market Marathon," which I enjoyed alone this time, because Anička was studying abroad and Kačka was (definitely on purpose) she broke her leg. For me it meant an extra workout (try pulling boxes full of paper) and extra less sleep (try not to take five weekends off in a row).
2020
As we all unfortunately know, the whole year 2020 revolved around the coronavirus. And that meant complications for us as well. The girls and I didn't see each other off-screen for almost a whole year, but we continued to work on printintina. With all the restrictions came restrictions for us as well, and we could not sell our goods either in the stores to which we regularly deliver, or in most markets. However, you included us with a lot of orders on the e-shop, and thanks to you, we were able to keep our beloved stationery alive. Thank you very much for that!
Even in this difficult year, however, we managed to publish another book - Time for Christmas . Its theme was, as the name suggests, Christmas, and you can read about how a Christmas book is written in the summer here .
2022
We continued to publish books. After the Travel Diary and the three-year diary Year by Year, which were published in 2021, we added Life Story to our libraries.
Together with Kačka, we founded Papír Fest, a paper shop pop-up for paper lovers, where you could meet other local paper makers in addition to us.
At the end of the year, we had a big change. Anička decided to apply her creativity to other projects and our paths parted for good.
The present
The year is 2023 and we we have a lot of plans for this year to move our printintin again. We have millions of ideas that we want to realize, so you have something to look forward to. 🙂
for printintin,
Martin