Entrepreneur Finds Calling in His Love for a Lost Art

Ruby Tuesday Pick of the Week: Rag & Bone Bindery
Why It’s a Gem: Proof that passion and a nontraditional education can be every bit as valuable as a college degree.

(This interview has been edited for clarity and length.)

Lynda Resnick: In this week’s Ruby Tuesday, we’re speaking to Jason Thompson, owner and founder of Rag & Bone Bindery. Jason, would you please describe your business?

Jason Thompson: We’re a small bookbinding studio. We’re housed in a 105-year-old renovated mill building in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and we design and produce photo albums, journals, baby books, and wedding albums, all by hand. We market to gift shops and catalogues, as well as sell direct to consumers on our e-commerce website. We’re a very small company. There are only ten of us, and I run the bindery together with my wife. We live with our two small children in a residential loft above the bindery, which we renovated a few years ago.

LR: That sounds like the perfect life.

JT: It’s pretty charming, I have to say.

LR: What is your unique selling proposition? People can buy these things everywhere from Hallmark card stores to the street corner. What makes Rag & Bone Bindery different from other places to buy photo albums and things like that?

JT: I think some of it has to do with the fact that nothing is made overseas. Everything is made here in the bindery. And we have a love for bookbinding and book arts, so what we do we do pretty well, because it’s all that we do. We just make books. I think they’re beautiful on the outside, and once people pick them up, they realize they’re made with integrity.

LR: How is your business doing in spite of the economic downturn?

Founder, artist, and entrepreneur Jason Thompson of Rag and Bone, bookbinders in Pawtucket, Rhode Island

JT: We’re humbled and pretty happy that we’re actually doing pretty well. Year-to-date sales for wholesale are up about 26% over the same period for 2008, and [direct-to-customer] has about 63% over the same period for 2008.

LR: Good for you! And you dropped out of school, I understand? Sounds like my story. And started selling your products on a blanket in Harvard Square?

JT: Yeah. I am a high school dropout. I left school in the 9th grade. Just wasn’t for me, I guess. You know, there’s a stigma and a self-confidence issue identifying yourself as a high school dropout.

LR: Right. Well, I dropped out of college, but you dropped out of high school. Wow.

JT: And a couple years later, while my friends were still in high school, I joined The Great Peace March and spent a year walking across the country from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C.

LR: That’s an education.

JT: I think it was that experience as a young man that showed me the potential to accomplish difficult, challenging, and rewarding tasks, by myself and with others. I think that experience – not just seeing America one step at a time but working with others – helped when it came time to start the business. I don’t know if I verbalized it, but I think part of me realized that a lack of formal education was not a barrier to hard work and a willingness to learn and succeed. I think that and my love for bookbinding is what kept me going those first years.

LR: Did you have any mentors? How did you figure that out?

JT: It was just trial and error. The first wholesale order I ever took was with a local store. I didn’t have an appointment, and I just walked in with a box of books. I remember seeing that she was selling books for $30, and I said, “You know, I’m going to sell her my books for $25 dollars, and she can go ahead and make $5 off them.” I had no idea [the difference] between wholesale and retail. It was just trial by fire. I learned pretty quickly though.

LR: In Outliers, a book that I love by Malcolm Gladwell, he says it takes 10,000 hours to perfect your craft, whether it’s skiing, playing basketball, or herding wombats. How long do you think it took you before you perfected your craft of bookbinding?

JT: It was probably a year before every single book that I made was good enough to sell. In the first six years, it was just me – just me by myself, sourcing the materials, making everything, handling sales, and shipping them out. I think it was a good year before I was confident that every single book that I was going to make was going to be good enough to sell to a customer.

LR: I hear that after 9/11, you saw a huge downturn. Is that true?

JT: Yeah, we did. We had ten years of consecutive growth, and immediately after 9/11, the 12th of September, the faxes and the phones just stopped ringing. We were absolutely not prepared for the downturn, and we suffered financially for it. We kept the same staff that we had. We went ahead and put out our catalogue. We bought all of the raw material to produce books for that January. The gift and stationery shows run on a cycle of January-May-August, and that January, we were ready to go — and the sales just weren’t there. I think it was January 2007 when we started feeling those same feelings we did when it was 2001.

LR: It helps to have experience, doesn’t it?

JT: It wasn’t an overnight decision. I remember the meetings we had when we felt, “We better do something fast.” We didn’t jump after 2001. We let a few high-salaried employees go – with a handshake. We let some of our low-margin, high-maintenance customers go.

LR: Good. I understand you’re getting rid of your print catalogue.

JT: We’re pretty excited about the online catalogue. We don’t think it’s going to replace the print catalogue, although it’ll save us a fair amount of money on printing, photography, design, and mailing. But if we have an online catalogue, our wholesale customers can keep track of their orders. We can also roll out new products as they’re ready. We don’t have to worry about the cycle of the gift and stationery industry. Or even better, we can space out new product launches. Instead of having three new items in our catalogue, we can have one in April, one in May, one in June, and be in front of our customers three times instead of just once.

LR: And you’ll do an email blast to them, right?

JT: Exactly. Here’s my question. The last gift show was in January. We’ve seen companies come and go, but I must say, it was the first time I felt like one of the old folks. How does one stay current, design-wise, when you’ve been around for almost two decades?

LR: Aren’t you changing your designs? How often are you changing your patterns?

JT: It was three times a year, based on the show schedules, and now we’ll hopefully do it monthly, if we can.

LR: I think it would be a great idea for you to design some fabric.

Rag and Bone's products are "beautiful on the outside" and "made with integrity," says Thompson.

JT: We did that. That was so much fun. It’s a big commitment as far as buying a lot of fabric, but it’s a total blast. We worked with a local designer and printing outfit here in Connecticut, and I think that got our customers pretty excited, because that was unique.

LR: That’s the thing. You’re in a fashion business, unfortunately, and even though it’s new to the person who’s never seen it before, it’s old to the retailers. I have 20,000 retailers that I sell to with Teleflora. So I know that they need new things to look at, to excite them. You’ve got to figure out either a new product form or new patterns. Now, when you change the patterns, do you change everything, or just a few things?

JT: We look at the numbers. We look at dollars and units for each cover option, and those at the bottom go and those at the top stay.

LR: Good. I think you have too many choices, myself. And I think that makes it very hard to stay relevant. Have you ever gone to India to source fabrics? Because they’re very inexpensive and they’re fabulous. You don’t need big runs, and nobody else is doing it in your section, so it may be an opportunity. What I’m missing [from your product line] is something for singles. This is all the kind of graphics that Middle America and married women with families would be attracted to. You may open a new market if you dealt with something that slightly older women, empty nesters, would find beautiful. A little more sophisticated. A little more feminine. You could find new things and test them, see if that look works. Have one or two items in your line and see if [customers] relate to it. You just have to shop retail to see what’s selling and see if you could relate to it.

JT: That’s great advice. I want to thank you for the opportunity, and also for writing the book and sharing your experiences with the rest of us.

LR: It’s my pleasure. I think your business is absolutely charming. It’s a lost art in this world, and it excites me to see how well you’re doing. I wish you the best.