Newspaper Article 1994 – Stationery businesses sold

Stationery businesses sold

Hawke’s Bay’s Stanton Brothers has sold its stationery businesses to the Auckland-based Blue Star Group Ltd.

Stanton’s managing director Bernard Stanton said family would retain the existing printing business in Hastings. The family operated one of the last of the old family stationery companies in the district.

Others such as Timms and Pattersons had gone earlier, he said today.

The printing business will be the sole survivor within the family for a link that reaches back to 1862, when Bernard Stanton’s great-grandfather John Shepherd, a printer, arrived from England.

Lorenzo Stanton married John Shepherd’s daughter Constance and started selling stationery in 1910, setting up in business on his own in 1918.

Their 13 children all became involved in the business and eventually the eight sons bought out their father.

One of them was Bernard Stanton’s father Percy, who set up business in Hastings in 1947 after moving from Wellington. He broke away from Stanton’s nationally eight years later.

Craig Stanton with his father Bernard and their wives Delwyn and Karletta as partners will continue to operate as Stanton Print. It will move to new premises in about two months.

The Blue Star Group purchase is effective from March 31 and will give the company 19 branches from Auckland to Invercargill.

The Stanton stationery branches at Hastings, Stortford Lodge and Napier have a staff of 35, reduced from 42 a year ago when the shops changed to a point-of-sale computerised system copied from the company now taking them over.

Bernard’s second son Brent Stanton, now the company buyer and accountant, will become Hawke’s Bay area manager for Blue Star.

Bernard Stanton said he would join son Craig and three others in the printing business “as the boy’.

“I think ink is still in my blood,” he said.

“I’ve done 40 years. It is going to be strange giving it up. It’s been a good time.”

Mr Stanton said the trend of business had changed over the years and he did not believe that was confined to the stationery trade.

“It used to be friendly and social. Now it’s cut-throat business,” he said.