At Little Craft Place, customers can find an array of planner supplies—including more than 1,600 colorful washi tape designs. Ian Lim owns and operates the shop alongside his wife, Eunice.


“We ha[d] realized in the past three years or so that the planner market has been booming a lot,” Lim said. “It’s more in the fun way rather than back in the day when you just used them to put things on the calendar.”


Scrapbooking supplies, stationery, stickers, bookmarks, stamps, sticky notes, pens, coloring books, pencil cases, paper clips and die-cut items can all be found in the Jones Road shop.


Inventory is often imported from Japan, and Lim travels to various conferences and trade shows to find new products to bring back to Cy-Fair.


“We try to carry things that other stores don’t carry so we can offer more choices to our customers,” he said. “We listen to [customer] feedback, find out what they need and get those unique items for them.”


While the Jones Road location has been open since late summer 2016, Little Craft Place’s online store has been in operation for nearly 10 years. Lim said most sales typically still come from the online business, which ships products all over the world.


Lim and his wife started out making custom signs for businesses, educators and weddings. Soon, they began offering paper products online and ultimately outgrew the home business.


The couple chose a location close to their home for the storefront, which has allowed them to better cater to the needs of customers and work with manufacturers more effectively, Lim said.


In the future, Lim said he and Eunice, a graphic designer, would like to venture into wholesaling products and create their own brand.


“There are not many stores like this,” Lim said. “We are niche, and there are very few in the U.S.”






11911 Jones Road, Ste. 5, Houston
832-604-7103
www.littlecraftplace.com
Hours: Tue.-Thu. 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Fri. 11 a.m.-6 p.m., Sat. 10 a.m.-4 p.m., closed Sundays and Mondays