Young entrepreneurs: Gabi Cox, Chroma Stationery

Name: Gabi Cox
Company: Chroma Stationary
Age: 25
Website: chromastationery.co.uk

Gabi Cox was in the final year of a fashion promotion degree when she started selling colourful, personalised stationary as part of an assignment.

She completed the project and went on to graduate – but found that people were still interested in buying her stationary even though the assignment had ended.

Living outside of London, Cox struggled to find a suitable job despite having completed internships at Glamour, Easy Living, British Vogue and Rain PR at John Lewis during her studies. Spurred on by the continued interest in her stationary, Cox decided to work for herself and run the brand full-time – and in November 2014 Chroma Stationary was born.

Now, Cox asserts that this was the best decision she could have made: Impressively, just three months after launch the business was making a profit, and at 18 months old it was debt-free.

Operating entirely online in both B2C and B2B, Chroma Stationary sells to customers across 28 different countries, while business clients place bulk orders ranging from 10 to over 5,000 units at a time. The company’s past clients include the likes of ITV, American Airlines, Max Factor and White Stuff.

Having initially financed the business through a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, Cox uses her online promotion skills to get her notebooks, diaries and pens noticed across social media.

She has sent products to online influencers including Lily Pebbles – who posted about her Chroma notebook and encouraged a surge of new customers – and YouTube superstar Zoella who, in late 2016, showed a Chroma diary to her 11 million followers; a moment Cox describes as “a huge turning point”.

Looking ahead, Cox hopes to expand her team – which currently consists of herself and three freelancers – while keeping Chroma Stationary’s core value of providing a personalised product and service to both individuals and businesses at heart.