Last week, I went to the 30th ISOT trade fair, where ISOT is the abbreviation of "International Stationary and Office Products Tokyo". This trade fair is held twice a year in January and June at one of the main exhibition grounds of Tokyo, Tokyo Big Sight (Tokyo International Exhibition Centre).
As most of the readers will not have the opportunity to visit, I will show some pictures of the Tokyo Big Sight centre. It is located on a man-made little island in the Tokyo Bay; link to Google Maps
As you can see, it is big. The exhibition takes place behind this tower and in a near second exhibition centre.
While the pamphlet says, 340 companies would present their products, a short count of the number of booths reduces this number to 200. This was also my impression. Among these 200 were at least 100 from China, Taiwan and Korea. Only a few companies from other countries were present. If I compare with last year, I think much less Japanese companies were present. Are stationary products out?
The only really famous Japanese company present was Kuretake. I am sure stationary insiders will consider other companies also as famous names.
Kuretake copied the ink mixing station of Sailor. They call it "ink cafe".
The Chinese and Taiwanese companies were often not targeting end users but searched for Japanese customers to provide products for stationary and 100-yen-shops.
Fountain pens were only shown by one company - made in China, nothing remarkable, looks like pens from Jinhao or similar companies: Fonte.
Even ball-pens were few, all made in China. Only Kunitake showed some of their expensive fountain pens made from antler.
Notebooks were shown from several companies, from low to high quality. The low-quality products were made for 100-yen shops. Often, I wasn't allowed to test the paper quality.
Many of these notebooks had some really nice covers, from paper, fabric or wood. However, not every notebook had fountain-pen friendly paper.
Another trend was scented notebooks. Adding scent to paper is nothing new, I remember 15 years ago meeting a Chinese researcher with scented business cards. I quarantined that card immediately, copied it and then threw it away. The notebooks I saw (and smelled) this time were not so intrusive. Some smelled even nice. Still not sure, if I would want them.
I liked especially the notebooks from Scent-in, a company from Taiwan. This company prints the scents using concentrated oils. You can their products below: drawer liners, wrapping paper and notebooks. The notebooks have a fabric exterior, are thread-stitched, glued and case-bond. They contain 160 pages of a fountain-pen friendly paper - I didn't test them by myself.
There was also another company which presented scented notebooks, not bad but not as nice as the notebooks from Scent-in. I can even imagine Limited Editions with different smells.
Ningbo Huart Stationary makes notebooks from eco-friendly material with some nice wooden covers and so-called stone paper or washable paper. What is exactly is, I couldn't find out.
Another company with notebooks having lovely covers is Cru-Cial from Japan. They have extraordinary notebooks, the cover is beautiful and the paper is extremely good, no bleed-through, no ghosting.
However, these covers are permanently fixed to the notebooks and some of the notebooks are Japanese-style used for getting stamps at different shrines and temples - see an unfolded example in the picture below. Many of these notebooks are sold out at their online shop.
The company Keep-a-notebook from Taiwan also had some nice-looking notebooks. However, I didn't test their papers. Look at their homepage for details.
I met with the maker of a famous notebook who told me why there are no 68g Tomoe paper notebooks. 68g Tomoe paper is only order-made and you have to order a lot of it. So, this paper is too expensive to be used in notebooks. The 52g paper is always in stock at the producer, so easy to obtain in smaller batches.
A company from Thailand, Papery, showed a notebook on which you could write underwater. It dries without any change to the paper. Missed to take a photo as too many people were looking at it. It was impressive.
Watanabe Bookbinding presented their notebooks. No bleed-through but ghosting.
The Taiwanese maker EVARICH has a lot of nice-looking notebooks. I also couldn't test these.
Some of them have unique shapes.
I even saw a shoulder bag made for notebooks - made by "和 design".
Wao!Pop is the maker of greeting cards with some impressive pop-out structures.
At the same time were several other exhibitions which I could visit with my ISOT ticket, Giftex Tokyo, Health&Beauty Goods Expo Tokyo, Interior Tokyo, Design Tokyo.
If you like ball-pens and flowers.
Or how about this one:
Finally, I met with the founder of a DIY digital camera where you can choose the look and the details of the camera by yourself.
Addition: If you comment, please do not add links into your comment, if they are not related to the content of this post. I cannot edit these links out, therefore, I will not allow such comments to be published.
As most of the readers will not have the opportunity to visit, I will show some pictures of the Tokyo Big Sight centre. It is located on a man-made little island in the Tokyo Bay; link to Google Maps
As you can see, it is big. The exhibition takes place behind this tower and in a near second exhibition centre.
While the pamphlet says, 340 companies would present their products, a short count of the number of booths reduces this number to 200. This was also my impression. Among these 200 were at least 100 from China, Taiwan and Korea. Only a few companies from other countries were present. If I compare with last year, I think much less Japanese companies were present. Are stationary products out?
The only really famous Japanese company present was Kuretake. I am sure stationary insiders will consider other companies also as famous names.
Kuretake copied the ink mixing station of Sailor. They call it "ink cafe".
The Chinese and Taiwanese companies were often not targeting end users but searched for Japanese customers to provide products for stationary and 100-yen-shops.
Fountain pens were only shown by one company - made in China, nothing remarkable, looks like pens from Jinhao or similar companies: Fonte.
Even ball-pens were few, all made in China. Only Kunitake showed some of their expensive fountain pens made from antler.
Notebooks were shown from several companies, from low to high quality. The low-quality products were made for 100-yen shops. Often, I wasn't allowed to test the paper quality.
Many of these notebooks had some really nice covers, from paper, fabric or wood. However, not every notebook had fountain-pen friendly paper.
Another trend was scented notebooks. Adding scent to paper is nothing new, I remember 15 years ago meeting a Chinese researcher with scented business cards. I quarantined that card immediately, copied it and then threw it away. The notebooks I saw (and smelled) this time were not so intrusive. Some smelled even nice. Still not sure, if I would want them.
I liked especially the notebooks from Scent-in, a company from Taiwan. This company prints the scents using concentrated oils. You can their products below: drawer liners, wrapping paper and notebooks. The notebooks have a fabric exterior, are thread-stitched, glued and case-bond. They contain 160 pages of a fountain-pen friendly paper - I didn't test them by myself.
There was also another company which presented scented notebooks, not bad but not as nice as the notebooks from Scent-in. I can even imagine Limited Editions with different smells.
Ningbo Huart Stationary makes notebooks from eco-friendly material with some nice wooden covers and so-called stone paper or washable paper. What is exactly is, I couldn't find out.
Another company with notebooks having lovely covers is Cru-Cial from Japan. They have extraordinary notebooks, the cover is beautiful and the paper is extremely good, no bleed-through, no ghosting.
However, these covers are permanently fixed to the notebooks and some of the notebooks are Japanese-style used for getting stamps at different shrines and temples - see an unfolded example in the picture below. Many of these notebooks are sold out at their online shop.
The company Keep-a-notebook from Taiwan also had some nice-looking notebooks. However, I didn't test their papers. Look at their homepage for details.
I met with the maker of a famous notebook who told me why there are no 68g Tomoe paper notebooks. 68g Tomoe paper is only order-made and you have to order a lot of it. So, this paper is too expensive to be used in notebooks. The 52g paper is always in stock at the producer, so easy to obtain in smaller batches.
A company from Thailand, Papery, showed a notebook on which you could write underwater. It dries without any change to the paper. Missed to take a photo as too many people were looking at it. It was impressive.
Watanabe Bookbinding presented their notebooks. No bleed-through but ghosting.
The Taiwanese maker EVARICH has a lot of nice-looking notebooks. I also couldn't test these.
Some of them have unique shapes.
I even saw a shoulder bag made for notebooks - made by "和 design".
Wao!Pop is the maker of greeting cards with some impressive pop-out structures.
At the same time were several other exhibitions which I could visit with my ISOT ticket, Giftex Tokyo, Health&Beauty Goods Expo Tokyo, Interior Tokyo, Design Tokyo.
If you like ball-pens and flowers.
Or how about this one:
Finally, I met with the founder of a DIY digital camera where you can choose the look and the details of the camera by yourself.
Addition: If you comment, please do not add links into your comment, if they are not related to the content of this post. I cannot edit these links out, therefore, I will not allow such comments to be published.
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