Why CNA stayed cool — and whether that still holds
Three forces likely explain CNA’s staying power in these polls, and each is worth testing against where the brand (and its original voters) stand today.
Heritage still carries weight, but it is a depreciating asset. CNA’s 129-year history secured real cultural penetration. The goodwill of generations of shoppers buys time before a decline in the actual store experience registers with the public. But that goodwill does not renew itself automatically – it needs reinforcing with visible, relevant stores, and CNA has been closing rather than reinvesting in them.
Category specialism also helped, largely by default. CNA remained “the” dedicated stationery destination in a fragmented market where PNA, Waltons and Typo each occupy narrower niches (value, B2B, lifestyle). With no single youth-focused challenger combining broad range and cultural relevance, CNA won the category more through the absence of competition than by outperforming it.
Information asymmetry did real work too, though this gap is narrowing. Business-rescue proceedings and boardroom disputes made trade press, not youth social feeds. Many GenNext respondents voted having experienced CNA only through parent-led back-to-school trips, insulated from what was happening behind the till.
The more pressing question, though, is what happened to the voters themselves. The 18-year-olds who helped crown CNA “coolest” in 2021 are now in their mid-twenties, entering the workforce, working hybrid or remote, buying markedly less traditional stationery, and doing far more of their reading, note-taking and planning on a phone, tablet or laptop than on paper. Whether CNA has kept pace with that shift (rather than merely being remembered fondly by it) is the real test of its “cool” status. A brand can hold a cohort’s nostalgic affection while steadily losing relevance to how that same cohort now actually works and shops.
What this means for stationery retailers today
CNA’s story is less a company-specific cautionary tale than a preview of a sector-wide reckoning: South African stationery retailers broadly face the same pressures that undid CNA’s network – digital substitution of physical products, shrinking mall footfall as shopping shifts online, and a youth market that keeps ageing out of the very demographic that made CNA “cool” in the first place.
That reframes the central question. It is no longer “can CNA survive?”. That will be settled in business-rescue proceedings and boardrooms, largely independent of youth sentiment. The sharper question for the category is whether specialist stationery retailers can remain relevant at all to a generation buying fewer notebooks and more subscriptions.
Answering that means treating brand equity as a finite, depreciating resource rather than a permanent asset. CNA shows that legacy goodwill and category specialism can buy a retailer years of favourable perception even as fundamentals deteriorate, but that credit runs out. The lesson for competitors, and for CNA itself if it survives rescue, is to convert nostalgic affection into active relevance before it lapses: smaller, experience-led stores in the places young people already go; product ranges that follow customers from paper to digital instead of competing against the shift; and education- or community-linked positioning. CNA’s study-guide dominance and CSR partnerships are instructive here, that gives a stationery brand a reason to matter beyond the transaction.
There is a research lesson too. “Coolest brand” surveys measure perception, not performance, and perception lags reality by years, especially among cohorts structurally insulated from trade and business news. Retailers and marketers tracking these awards should treat a “coolest” win as a lagging indicator of past brand-building, not a live signal of current health, and pair it with harder metrics: footfall, digital engagement, and repeat purchase among the cohort meant to be the category’s future.
Conclusion: brand equity is a lease, not a legacy
CNA’s paradox is ultimately a lesson in brand equity, not brand health. It shows how far heritage, specialism and information gaps can carry a legacy retailer’s reputation even as the business behind it struggles, and how quickly that credit is spent once a generation shifts from paper to screens. For stationery retailers, and any niche category facing similar digital disruption, the takeaway is not to chase awards but to keep earning relevance with customers who already like the idea of the brand: meet them where they now shop, work and study, before nostalgia is the only thing keeping the “coolest” title alive.
