Jo Joof and Nic Wood on how Crinkly Books reinvented the baby book – and signed their first license

Nic, Jo, thank you for joining me. You’re the creators of one of the loveliest potential licenses I’ve seen recently – Crinkly Books. For the uninitiated, what are Crinkly Books?
Jo Joof: Crinkly Books are cloth books for babies designed to look like little newspapers. We’ve all seen cloth books before, of course, but they’re usually quite rigid with a piece of thin sponge in the middle. We wanted to make a higher quality cloth newspaper that really crumples up, and one that you can wash.

And I’m looking here at one edition of the Nursery Times! Where did the idea for this come from?
Jo: We came up with the idea after my niece was born blind, with some other disabilities. I wanted to buy her something that was lovely, but something she could hold and connect with. And since Nic and I get together a fair amount, I thought maybe we could create something unusual. We’d both worked in publishing for so many years and – whenever we were given a project – we’d always be trying to think of something that hadn’t been done before. That’s the only way you can really get noticed!

So how is it that you and Nicola know each other? Through publishing?
Jo: Yes… We actually started at a publisher called Parragon within a week of each other. I’d previously worked for Grandreams in London, but then I moved to Bath to work for North Parade Publishing. After meeting Jo at Parragon, we both went back to NPP.

And Nic, is it one of those friendships where you get along because you’re very similar? Or very different?
Nic Wood: We’re quite different as people, but we have the same values. We want the same end result and we work well together. We also enjoyed working alongside each other. Then Jo went freelance, and later helped me when I went freelance. We were both pregnant at the same time as well which was funny! So it’s just one of those natural things; helping each other and seeing the value in each other.

With the Crinkly Books, we wanted to put something out there that’s going to make people smile and is going to be there for a long time. It’s the nostalgia thing as well… We know newspapers could be gone one day, but we like the idea of using them here as a bit of a novelty.

Lovely! It’s a fun idea, certainly… And versatile! In terms of your first licensing deal, you’re allowed to talk about that now, presumably?
Jo: Yes. We have some other conversations under NDA at the moment, but our first license is with Bing. And that’s a really good match, I think, in that the product suits Bing… Bing is all about toddlers learning new life skills, so it’s really nice to bring Bing into our range.

Nic: We were lucky in the way the deal came about because Acamar Films had seen us picking up a Junior Design Award for Best Baby Book. I can’t recall why we entered the awards; I think we said no when they approached us because we’re such small business… We didn’t think it would be worth doing – and then we won Gold!

Ha! Goes to show, doesn’t it? Has it won other awards?
Nic: We’ve done the Junior Design Awards five times… I think we won Gold the first year we did it, and then… I can’t remember! We’ve won four Golds and one Silver. And that’s just so amazing to us; to win up against the other products in that category, because they’re phenomenal. In fact, we were also a little scared to do it at first because we thought there was no way we were going to go up against them! But actually, it’s lovely to be in that environment, and collecting an award just tells you that you are doing something really good.

Brilliant. Nic, you mentioned that you and Jo have similar values. Is there a conscious effort to bring certain values to the company?
Nic: I don’t think it’s a conscious effort, no. It’s more a shared sense of what we enjoyed growing up as kids of the ’80s – and now have lovely memories of. Simple things that make you happy and content. It sounds really trite, but you do just need really simple things to make you happy. We’re not pushing that on anyone! But that’s the product is a really simple thing… We also focus on some niche themes and subjects because we think they’d be nice for people. And because it’s just the two of us, we can make those decisions. That’s the freedom you have when you’re a partnership and you are a small company…

Great answer. What are some of those themes? And where do the ideas for them come from?
Nic: We started with numbers, colours and first words because they’re really important. We value inclusivity in our books, and as a small business we can ensure that happens. We did a Paralympics and all sorts of family titles, for example. And this is all from our customers! We started the business selling once a month at a wonderful market, The Frome Independent. When we meet customers there, face to face, they make suggestions for things we could feature… That’s something else we value – meeting people and hearing what they want. And some people wouldn’t immediately associate LGBTQ+ with a baby book, but we think it’s important to bring that in softly and nicely.

Are there any subjects that you think might not work?
Jo: Style wise, we thought muted colours were going to work really well… Just based on styles in nurseries and clothing. There was a phase where everything was muted, so we tried it thinking it was what people wanted. That didn’t take off as well as we thought it would, though! But one other subject we’re pleased to cover comes to mind because my children are biracial and they grew up not seeing that kind of representation… We’ve been able to introduce that a little.

Nic: Yes, it’s great to include that. And it’s not a hard sell, it’s just tying into real to life, isn’t it? Everyone’s different and we’ve got the luxury of being able to do smaller runs of all these different books. People suggest them and we’ll do them if we can because we want to.

And I know I sound idealistic when I say this, but – in theory – if topics that have been underrepresented in the past are now normalised early on, there’ll come a day when they won’t be thought of as ‘other than’ later…
Nic: Exactly. That’s just what it is. Also, we really do value books! I still go to the library and get books every week. Growing up as a kid, I probably would be considered a geek! Books were my joy; I loved going to bookstores and the library. It doesn’t much matter what book you have – if you’ve got a book and you love it, it’s your escapism. Maybe social media is more some people’s escapism now, but that was mine. And I think that we’d love to keep the joy of books going for as long as we can.

Were you the same, Jo?
Jo: Once a week, I used to love going down to the newsagents when I was young… I’d take my pocket money and buy a comic and sometimes a little bag of sweets. I could make a comic last through that whole week; I’d read it over and over. I did have a favourite book in the school library, though: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I used to get it out over and over and over again…

Ha! No one else in your school’s ever read it! And Nic?
Nic: I loved Enid Blyton – and anything set at a boarding school! I just loved the idea of boarding school; it sounded really cool! Later, I went on to teen fiction with authors like Paula Danziger. Even when it wasn’t cool to read, though – when I was 11 or 12 or whatever – I still did… I think if you’re introduced to reading young enough, books grow with you – or you grow with books – and I guess that’s what we’re trying to do here. Introduce a book to start that natural progression of evolving with books as your taste changes. I’m now into crime…

You’re actually into crime? Or reading about it?!
Nic: Ha! Reading about it!

Well, that’s a relief! And in terms of future IP that suits Crinkly Books, what kind of licenses would you like to approach you?
Jo: We’re quite nostalgic and have our own memories of what we used to watch when we were small, so we do love a lot of the old ones… And a lot of those brands do come back to life, don’t they? But we do like a lot of the new brands as well. It would be great to have a mix of both.

Nic: It’s just all of those that we used to watch as cartoons, or read about in comics or books. We haven’t reached out to anyone about it but – for example – I personally loved Button Moon! So simple and so beautiful and they’re very good – as are our books, I think – for special educational needs, autism and things like that. So that would be an example of something to explore to reach places we haven’t yet gone. We’re open to almost anything.

I’m curious: why do you think your books good for autistic children?
Jo: They’ve got that very sensory aspect… There’s something about crinkling them that a lot of people find soothing. And that’s a tactile experience – it’s not just the sound. You can actually feel the crinkle! If fact, I used to know a lady on the school run… I showed her a Crinkly Book and, even though she was deaf, she looked up at me as she crumpled it up – she was nodding her appreciation!
That feeling of deep satisfaction was there.

We’ve also shown the products to some people with dementia, and it’s resonated with them as well. This is something we might look into a little further down the line. We’d need to be really careful with the content we put in, but we think we could create a couple of titles for people living with dementia. We’d rather wait and get that content exactly right, though, because it would be a really amazing thing if we could do it.

That could be an extraordinary product! Alright! We need to wrap things up, but I do love the product – and I really appreciate you joining me to talk about it. Last question… What’s next for you?
Jo: Well, we’ve now reached over 100 titles – that was a big goal for us! So I think what’s next is just opening the door to more licenses.