You may not think the UK stationery industry is particularly volatile, but 2025 has been especially lively. From WHSmith’s dramatic high‑street exit to fast‑growing digital challengers, the landscape is reshaping before our eyes. Below you’ll find a concise, data‑rich tour of who’s winning, who’s wobbling, and where the biggest Stationery & Office Supplies SEO opportunities lie.

Organic traffic across the market climbed 13 % this year, yet performance is wildly uneven. Keep reading to uncover the gaps, and learn how to close them.

How big is the Stationery & Office Supplies market online?

  • Average organic traffic across the 100‑plus brands we track rose 13 % YoY.
  • Combined visibility for the top five sites alone now exceeds 1.5 million monthly visits.
  • Only 0.63 % of searchers click page two, first‑page rankings remain non‑negotiable.

 

Which stationery brands dominate organic visibility?

Rank Brand Monthly Organic Traffic  ± YoY
1 The Works 456 ,180 +8 %
2 WHSmith 376 ,715 −19 %
3 Ryman 262 ,245 +31 %
4 Smiggle 220 ,933 +39 %
5 Flying Tiger 189 ,241 +7 %
6 Staples 107 ,674 −5 %
7 Papier 101 ,043 +89 %
8 Cass Art 91 ,440 +34 %
9 Montblanc 74 ,871 +16 %
10 Pen Heaven 50 ,947 +21 %

 

Top visibility climbers

  1. ESPO – up 310 % (38 ,146 vs 9 ,301)
  2. Papier – up 89 %
  3. Smiggle – up 39 %
  4. Ryman – up 31 %
  5. The Works – steady—but still inching ahead at +8 %

Biggest fallers

  1. Stationery Superstore UK – visibility collapsed (‑100 %)
  2. Arteza – down 51 %
  3. Cult Pens – down 25 %
  4. WHSmith – down 19 % despite a powerful brand
  5. Staples – down 5 %

If your traffic’s taken a hit, don’t beat yourself up about it. The last 6 months have brought more seismic quakes to search than we’ve seen in the past 6 years combined. SGE, AI overviews, helpful content updates, Core Web Vitals getting stricter, SERP features evolving constantly – it’s been a proper whirlwind that’s rattled nearly everyone.

While it’s easy to throw your hands up and complain about Google moving the goalposts again, that won’t get you anywhere. This isn’t all doom and gloom, and yes, you can absolutely turn this around.

There could be a thousand reasons why your traffic’s dropped – maybe your pages are loading like molasses, perhaps your content’s gotten too thin across categories, could be you’re not targeting what people are actually searching for, maybe you’re just not diving deep enough into topics to show real expertise, or maybe the cause lies out of your hands completely. I wouldn’t want to assume what’s hitting you specifically.

But if you’re in this boat, here’s where I’d start: focus on building genuine, human-first topical authority. Go deep on subjects that matter to your audience, create content that demonstrates real expertise, and make sure you’re covering topics semantically – not just chasing individual keywords but understanding the full landscape of what your audience needs to know.

 

Life after the high street: WHSmith’s pivot

A £76 million deal sees Modella Capital snapping up WHSmith’s 480 UK stores and re‑branding them as TG Jones. The traditional high‑street arm delivered only 15 % of group profit. Travel outlets now contribute 75 % of revenue and 85 % of trading profit.

The challenge? Online. WHSmith’s stationery‑category traffic sank 19 % YoY, putting the domain at a crossroads. A full migration to tgjones.com risks short‑term SEO chaos. Lost rankings, broken links, and months of recovery. Click hear for our full tear down of what’s going on and how we’d recommend WHSmiths migrate the site if they choose to do so. 

 

Authority vs visibility: spotting the sleeping giants

Matching Domain Rating to organic traffic uncovers four quadrants:

  • High traffic / high authority – The Works, Flying Tiger: set the benchmark. Hats off to these guys. They’ve built their house right and have the search marketing strategy to expand. At this point, you should be thinking about solidifying yourself as market leader.
  • High traffic / low authority – WHSmith, Smiggle: punch above their link profile; ripe for digital‑PR gains. Those with high visibility but low authority may not have the brand reach compared to rivals, but overperform in search engines thanks to technical SEO, content and site experience.
  • Low traffic / high authority – Moleskine, Lamy – At school, these sites were the kids who ‘had potential.’ There are clearly some on-site issues holding these brands back. Whether those issues lie in content, structure, or tech, an on-site review is highly recommended.
  • Low traffic / low authority – Arteza, Office Monster: Look on the bright side, there’s a lot of room for improvement. Brands in this zone should consider urgently rethinking their on-site technical and structural setup, also their keyword strategy and off-site campaigns.

Brands in quadrant three are your quickest win. Steal their keywords; mimic their structure; outrank them with better on‑page UX.

Here’s how the top 30 in the market stack up:

Site Visibility Order Authority Order Domain Authority Organic Visibility Rank
theworks.co.uk 1 4 57 456180 1
whsmith.co.uk 2 3 58 376715 2
flyingtiger.com 5 2 63 189241 3
ryman.co.uk 3 6 52 262245 4
smiggle.co.uk 4 13 47 220933 5
montblanc.com 9 1 64 74871 6
papier.com 7 7 51 101043 7
cassart.co.uk 8 15 46 91440 8
staples.co.uk 6 19 43 107674 9
ohhdeer.com 11 14 47 47015 10
moleskine.com 19 5 54 23250 11
cultpens.com 12 18 44 38393 12
winsornewton.com 16 12 48 27870 13
espo.org 13 20 43 38146 14
penheaven.co.uk 10 26 39 50947 15
lyreco.com 27 8 50 18370 16
parkerpen.com 32 10 50 14574 17
smythson.com 30 16 46 16358 18
filofax.com 20 21 41 22916 19
glsed.co.uk 14 30 36 33465 20
lamy.com 36 11 49 11598 21
carolinegardner.com 21 25 39 21447 22
rajapack.co.uk 28 24 39 18331 23
papertiger.co.uk 22 28 37 21415 24
londongraphics.co.uk 25 27 38 18715 25
ukofficedirect.co.uk 15 39 33 28567 26
derwentart.com 34 22 41 14394 27
staedtler.com 42 9 50 7575 28
thejournalshop.com 24 29 36 19961 29
penshop.co.uk 23 35 35 21242 30

 

Keyword trends: where buyers are heading next

Emerging product searches:

  • “noting pad” (49 ,500 searches, +22 %)
  • “alcohol marker pens” (+273 %)
  • “white gel pen” (+175 %)

Opportunity keywords with low competition:

  • notebooks – 11 ,000 UK searches, difficulty 13
  • mechanical pencils – 1 ,500 searches, difficulty 4
  • branded notebooks – 1 ,200 searches, difficulty 5

Brands filling these Stationery & Office Supplies keyword gaps now will own tomorrow’s demand. Click here to get the full list for free.

 

Reviews & trust signals

Brand Avg. Rating Review Count
Cult Pens 4.9 86 ,995
WHSmith 4.3 49 ,869
The Online Pen Company 4.7 13 ,572
Staples 4.4 14 ,749
Euroffice 4.4 12 ,376

Nine out of ten shoppers read reviews first. Embed Trustpilot snippets on product pages and reply to negatives within 24 hours, a fast route to higher click‑through and enhanced E‑E‑A‑T.

 

Social reach & share of voice

  • The Works – 673 ,000 monthly brand searches but a modest social score of 757.
  • Montblanc – smaller search volume (74 ,000) yet a standout social score of 5 ,376.
  • Flying Tiger – balances both with 90 ,500 searches and a 3 ,082 social tally.

Digital brand awareness describes how familiar consumers are with your brand or products online, whether they are searching for your brand or interacting with it on social media. A healthy mix of branded search and engaged followers insulates revenue from algorithm swings. To calculate this ranking, we blend branded search metrics with the performance and reach of social channels for brands across the sector.

Owned social score considers followers and engaged conversations on all major social platforms.  A strong owned audience now influences SEO more than ever—brand queries feed Google’s entity understanding, soften the impact of core updates and now, social content such as TikTok videos and Instagram reels are starting to be pulled into the SERP!

Brand Name Site Brand Searches Per Month Owned Social Score Rank
The Works theworks.co.uk 673000 757 1
Montblanc montblanc.com 74000 5376 2
Flying Tiger flyingtiger.com 90500 3082 3
Smiggle smiggle.co.uk 135000 1521 4
Whsmith whsmith.co.uk 450000 302 5
Faber Castell faber-castell.co.uk 6600 10661 6
Ryman ryman.co.uk 135000 268 7
Papier papier.com 40500 751 8
Moleskine moleskine.com 12100 1500 9
Cass Art cassart.co.uk 49500 174 10
Parker Pen parkerpen.co.uk 18100 398 11
Staedler staedtler.com 2900 2054 12
Staples staples.co.uk 49500 85 13
Ohh Deer ohhdeer.com 4400 874 14
Filofax filofax.com 18100 211 15
Smythson smythson.com 14800 239 16
Leuchtturm 1917 leuchtturm1917.co.uk 5400 354 17
Cult Pens cultpens.com 18100 100 18
Art Box artbox.co.uk 14800 116 19
Lamy lamy.com 2900 326 20
Lyreco lyreco.com 49500 15 21
Castle Arts uk.castlearts.com 2400 285 22
Winsor Newton winsornewton.com 590 1105 23
Fredaldous fredaldous.co.uk 8100 68 24
Arteza arteza.co.uk 3600 137 25
Caroline Gardner carolinegardner.com 5400 70 26
The Journal Shop thejournalshop.com 2900 65 27
Papersmiths papersmiths.co.uk 2400 67 28
London Graphics londongraphics.co.uk 1000 88 29
Derwent Art derwentart.com 260 336 30

 

Ready to dig deeper?

Grab the full 69‑page report for a forensic breakdown of 9 ,800 keywords and 11 performance metrics—get the free Stationery Market Report now.

Need tailored guidance? Our human‑first search specialists can help you outrank the competition—learn more about our SEO services.

Check out our WHSmith case study and see how we’d tackle a complex migration—view the case study.

Want more content like this delivered daily? Connect with Michael or myself on LinkedIn, where we share regular insights, practical tips, and industry analysis to help you stay ahead of the curve.