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Is The Paper Store’s Jewelry Worth It?
Blush and Bar
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If you live in the northeast and buy gifts, you’ve probably been to The Paper Store.
The family-run business sells stationery, crafts, cards, gifts, and jewelry.
But is what you’ll find at The Paper Store worth its cost?
As jewelry experts here at Blush and Bar, we decided to find out. Here’s our honest review of The Paper Store.
Let’s get started!
About The Paper Store
Bob Anderson founded The Paper Store in 1964 with a small newspaper stand in Maynard, Massachusetts. Today, his youngest son Tom Anderson serves as the CEO.
The company has grown a lot since then. Today, The Paper Store has expanded across the northeast United States with a total of 86 stores.
While the store started selling newspapers, now you can find everything from stationery, educational toys, fashion accessories, home decor, and even clothing.
Everything at The Paper Store is focused on specialty gifts.
Source:The Paper Store
The Paper Store’s gifts
The Paper Store sells a huge variety of gifts, mostly geared toward women.
They carry many well-known brands, including Hallmark cards, Life is Good apparel, Lego toys, Kate Spade accessories, and Yankee Candle decor.
The gifts you’ll find aren’t unique to the store and are the same type of products you can find at other retailers across the country. With enough searching, you could probably find all their products at different stores in your local mall.
That said, if you’re in the New England area, The Paper Store is the perfect one-stop-shop for all kinds of gifts.
But there’s one type of gift we should explain a bit more—The Paper Store’s line of jewelry.
Source: The Paper Store on Instagram
Is jewelry from The Paper Store any good?
The Paper Store sells many types of jewelry, though none of what they sell is made by The Paper Store. Instead, they resell several popular consumer brands.
All the jewelry you’ll find at The Paper Store is fashion jewelry. That is, you won’t see any pure gold or platinum rings, and nothing has valuable gemstones like diamonds or rubies.
The brands they carry include Luca + Danni, Alex and Ani, Pura Vida, Mia + Tess Designs, Cape Cod Jewelry, and Mantraband.
The products are very cheap—expect to pay around $15-30 for a ring, necklace, or bracelet.
And when I say “cheap,” I’m not only referring to the price. The products you’ll find at The Paper Store are of low quality, even for fashion jewelry.
For example, our specialty here at Blush and Bar is gold vermeil, sterling silver coated with 18-karat gold.
Source: The Paper Store on Instagram
Most of the pieces I found while researching The Paper Store are filler metals like brass or copper coated with a microscopic layer of silver.
Typically, this plating method will wear away after a few months, leaving you with the dull copper or brass underneath.
The styles are pretty, to be sure, but aren’t for wearing long-term.
If you’re thinking about buying jewelry at The Paper Store, I’d recommend saving up your money a little bit and buying a more premium piece that will last longer.
The future of The Paper Store
We can’t write about The Paper Store without mentioning the elephant in the room—their bankruptcy.
With major online retailers like Amazon taking more and more customers, the recent years haven’t been kind to gift and stationery stores.
Other competitors like Papyrus and Things Remembered have filed for bankruptcy since 2019. It’s no wonder that The Paper Store saw struggling sales and operational challenges at the beginning of 2020.
But those problems were no match for the COVID-19 pandemic, which wiped out sales in the first half of 2020.
With next to zero sales and millions of dollars in holiday inventory purchases around the corner, The Paper Store filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in July of 2020.
Source: The Paper Store on Instagram
An investment group brought them out of bankruptcy with $22 million in September 2020, a speedy turnaround time, and about the best-case scenario The Paper Store could have hoped for after filing for bankruptcy.
For The Paper Store’s roughly 2,000 employees, this is a welcome relief that will keep them with work for the time being.
But in the long-term, brick-and-mortar stationery stores are a dying industry. Only time will tell how the chain fares in the years to come.
The final word on The Paper Store
If you’re looking to buy a gift, The Paper Store is a perfect place to find the right present for everyone on your list.
But if you’re thinking about buying jewelry, you might want to look elsewhere. What you’ll find on the shelves of your local store—or The Paper Store website—isn’t good quality.
For a few more dollars, you can upgrade cheap “wear it once” styles for something they can cherish for years to come. Isn’t that what a gift is for?
