Howdy, Knock Knock friends! It’s been a while since I popped my head out of the humor sand to say hello, but I’m excited to share that we’ve been concocting all kinds of knockaliciously good things. We’ve been doing the stuff you know about, like creating new products and foisting them upon the world, most recently our Fall 2016 release, which we debuted last week at the National Stationery Show, in New York City (because, you know, Fall = May).
One of the most exciting developments is the growth of our Fill in the Love™ line, which started with What I Love About You by Me and has expanded to encompass not only seventeen titles in the original sweet little book format but also a more sumptuous boxed and gold-foil-stamped rendition, boldly graphic postcard books, and the innovative Read Me When series, letters that a beloved recipient can open and enjoy over time. Fill in the Love has been an amazing best-selling juggernaut for us, and we get all kinds of heartwarming feedback about how the books have helped people express love, improve intimacy, and create world peace. Except the world peace. I’ll leave exploration of the rest of the new products for Fall 2016 to you, courtesy of our beautiful website (I can say that because the world’s best team designs it, not me), but as a little teaser for now, here are a few relevant words I especially like: street art, flipbooks, dilemmas, journals, chalkboards, and puppies. Always puppies. Never enough puppies. (Remaining new items will be live on our site at the beginning of August.)
There’s also been a ton of stuff going on behind the scenes. I won’t bore you with, like, manufacturing and accounting, even though many of us find those subjects beyond scintillating. What I will share is some of the marketing morsels that have bubbled up. We changed our tagline from “We Put the Fun in Functional” to “Say Something More” because, well, Knock Knock goods always say something more but don’t always put the fun in functional. We wanted a larger umbrella that gets to the heart of what we do, which includes not only creating and publishing funny books and other ephemera but also allows for self-expression and communication, whether with Fill in the Love or a multiple-choice sticky note or pad. Our goal is to help you be your wittiest self, so when we say something more, we hope to help you say something more. Does that make sense? If not, I can always say something more . . . As if telling you what to do (and what we do) weren’t enough, we also put some polish on what we are, which is “independent makers of clever gifts, books, and whatever else we can think up,” as well as our mission, “to bring humor, creativity, and smarts to everyday life.” I’m sure many of you can relate to the fact that it’s all too easy to describe or sum up an entity other than yourself. Indeed, because we’re so close to ourselves, it was surprisingly hard to distill our essence into just a few words (in part because my life mantra is “Even though it’s possible to use fewer words than more, why?”), so we’re especially happy to have kneaded and massaged and dug way deep to come up with a mission that really resonates for us.
Finally, we’d love to hear YOU say something more. We’re eager to converse with Knock Knock aficionados out there, to learn what you think about our stuff, whether in a product review or a post or some such. And if you want to tag it #knockknockstuff or #saysomethingmore or #fillinthelove, we’ll be over the moon. I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but social media is all the rage these days, so of course you can find us on MySpace. Just kidding. We’re in all the other places, though, and we’re especially rocking and rolling Instagram, so please follow us if you haven’t already! Okey-doke. Time for me to get back to twiddling my thumbs. Which I have way more time to do these days because Knock Knock has the best team EVER. We couldn’t do it without us, truly. And we especially couldn’t do it without you. Toodles, Jen Bilik Owner, founder, CEO, head honcho, and Paco’s mama
Thanks for the update. Love your stuff. Retiring your old tagline is a little sad, but we’ll still use it around our office in its memory.