Brighten Up Those Office Shelves

With Its Colorful Products, Russell+Hazel Aims to Make Sure Paper Is Always in Style

When Chris Plantan was growing up, her family celebrated the start of school as if it were Christmas. "My grandparents would send a lovingly wrapped package of school supplies to us each fall" from their general store in Sheffield, Ill., she says. "I loved it."

Thus began Plantan's personal relationship with paper. Years later, when she went to work as an architect and was uninspired by the notebooks, notepads and folders in the office supply closet, she made her own. Then she did the same for her daughter.

Rather than sending her child to school with a store-bought vinyl binder, Plantan made one out of heavy-grade book board. She covered the spine in bright red-orange linen, attached a dry-erase board to the inside cover and wrapped a big rubber band around the whole thing to avoid "binder explosion." When classmates began offering her daughter money for her homemade binder, Plantan knew she was onto something.

Today, she is the founder and owner of a successful high-end stationery and office supply business based in Minnesota. The products are designed to be fun and functional -- to "add life to your work," according to Plantan. She named the company after those same grandparents, Russell and Hazel.

Started as an e-commerce site in 2003, Russell+Hazel has a flagship store in Minneapolis, and its supplies can also be found at http://www.russellandhazel.com, national retailer the Container Store, in the Neiman Marcus catalogue and in smaller boutiques worldwide. Last year, the company did almost $2 million in sales, a remarkable showing for a paper-based business in a sluggish economy and a society bound to iPhones and BlackBerrys.

But these are not your ordinary office supplies.

The company's clean, colorful take on notebooks, pens, binders and storage containers have made it a favorite among designers, shelter magazines and movie studios. (Its products have appeared in "The Devil Wears Prada" and the latest Indiana Jones movie, to name two.) This summer, Russell+Hazel was invited to open a temporary shop in one of Manhattan's luxury department stores, Henri Bendel.

The small satellite shop, meant to tempt school-clothes shoppers, includes a "binder bar," where customers can get help putting their organizational components together, and a "fitting desk" for shoppers to try out their picks before making a purchase. Binders start at $14, single-subject notebooks at $12.

Plantan and her designers look to fashion runways and the home-design industry for guidance when choosing the newest shades and patterns to add to their core collection of colors: lime green, red-orange, light blue and charcoal gray. The vibrant and stylish R+H products beg to be displayed on a desk or carried about town.

Welcome to the world of the office supply as a personal accessory.

We talked to Plantan via phone and e-mail from Minneapolis about Russell+Hazel and the appeal of paper.

How does a company that so heavily relies on paper continue to thrive in an increasingly electronic world?