Jo & Nic’s Crinkly Cloth Books

Blog Post 

Full Name: Jo Joof & Nicola Moore

Job Title: Directors Partnership

Jo & Nic are two designers and illustrators who met whilst working in children’s book publishing. In 2018 Jo & Nic decided to use their many years of experience and launch their own range of cloth books. Something a little bit different to fill that gap in the market. 

Nursery Times are a range of cloth books uniquely designed to look like little newspapers. Newspapers are in print now but with our ever changing technology, printed newspapers could one day be a thing of our past. Babies love the sound of paper being crumpled and often want to mimic the grown up so this idea ticked all those ideas. They are also reminiscent of the ‘rag’ books we had as children. They are washable, safe and sensory. Perfect for babies from 3 months and long lasting so that they can keep them to keep up to 3-4 years old when they start to learn to read. Each page is brightly illustrated with rhyming text. Rhyming text helps children to read through listening to rhythm and tone. The sensory aspect of the crinkly filled pages is also good for children with SEN. 

Being a small business we have been able to connect with our customers directly and find out what they would really like. This feedback has been the foundation of building our business. We now have 100 titles and the potential to add more is endless. We supply to hundreds of the best independent toy shops, gift shops and book shops across the UK and overseas. We have translated 12 titles into French for Europe and are just about to launch into working on our first licence which will be present on our stand. We have won the award for best baby book 0-2 years for 5 years running. With little or no competition we are set to become the leading baby newspaper publisher! We have just completed our second photoshoot and seeing the babies reading the newspapers is just the best thing ever. The product lends itself perfectly to marketing, ‘Extra, Extra! ‘Read all about it!’ News Just in!… so it’s fun to promote. 

This will be our first ever trade show on this scale. It’s been great fun preparing to showcase our range as we have just finished preparing titles to complete 100 titles. We want to make our stand more of an experience and bring in that feeling of visiting a little newsagents as much as possible. We look forward to meeting new customers and getting inspired to expand the range further.