Stationery business Penfax, Hexham celebrates 10 years

Andrew Graham, who lives in Warden, has owned Penfax on Market Street in Hexham since officially opening in June 2014.

The shop sells all kinds of writing instruments in various brands along with journals, notebooks and services including book-binding, laminating, photocopying and printing. 

Outside Penfax (Image: Supplied)

Andrew has worked in the stationery business for approximately 35 years and has worked in retail his whole life, before venturing out on his own with Penfax.

His team includes Angela Gair in sales who has worked there for 10 years and Brij Sinclair in accounts.

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"We also offer beginner calligraphy workshops and I do a lecture on the history of writing," Andrew said. The last time I did it, was the first time to a paying audience and that covers 5,500 years of writing going right back to the beginning of the alphabet."

The lectures are held in town at The Vault.

Penfax supplies all kinds of stationery (Image: Supplied)

Penfax also offers pen repairs and servicing, which Andrew is seeing an increasing demand for as people try to avoid throwing items away.

"Writing is not dead either, people think everybody uses electronic communication as the only way to communicate but it's not. People are still writing and we sell thousands of journals and pens a year. We encourage young people to write, they get their pen licence from school and come here and buy a pen they love using."

Penfax supplies (Image: Supplied)

Andrew said he went to European trade fairs years ago and 'couldn't believe the amount of colour' that was in stationery.

"In the UK, stationery was very sombre and I wanted to do colour. If you come into the shop, it's very colourful, it's like a sweet shop," he said. 

"We have customers coming from Carlisle and Tynemouth, Berwick and Durham. They all make their way to Hexham to visit us."

He said nearly every day in the shop is different.

"Stationery is an interesting product the way it's evolved. I've always said we don't sell a dust collector, we sell things that are useful."

In the last 10 years, Andrew said businesses have faced a lot of changes in the economy, plus Brexit and Covid.

"Retail has changed, I've never known so many things happen with retail but it's coming under a lot of pressure. We get a lot of people coming in who don't want to buy on the internet, we do sell online but we enjoy the high street and selling from our location."