A house-keeping note: I’ve restructured the “weekly” dates to start from Monday and end on Sunday after realizing that most events tend to run its course on the entire weekend (duh, right?) and it felt awkward to split the reports to different weeks.
On to this week’s news: Both G.Itoya’s System Techo Salon 2020 & Nagasawa’s System Techo Summit ended last Sunday. Meanwhile, Bungu Joushi Expo 2020 takes place this week from November 27-29 in which several system techo makers will make an appearance, with special editions for the event.
For those of you who are not familiar with the event, “Bungu Joushi” translates to “Stationery Women” and the event focuses on stationery items (of all sorts) that appeal to the female user base, with last year’s event attended by a record 38,000 people. Despite its name, the event is not limited to women only, nor are the marketed items specifically designed for a female user base. You could say the general theme of the event tend to exude a soft & pastel touch, and aimed for cute, casual & fashionable. Oh, and lots of free washi tape.
It’s also a place where stationery makers can interact and receive feedback from their customers. Some companies also prepare opportunities for visitors to create original notebooks, pens, inks, etc.
Ashford’s Weekly Planners’ Room Live
This week’s session has been canceled to due to G.Itoya’s “Makers Talk Session”.
Next week’s session will be a joined session with Mark’s, and will most probably be on HBxWA5 planners & refills.
System Techo Salon 2020: Makers Talk Session
Group discussion among representitives from the six major system techo makers in Japan: Ashford, Raymay, Brelio, Knox/Plotter, etc. (I couldn’t catch the names for the other two)
The theme was to show & discuss their “first system techo”. “First” was used quite liberally, of course. I think it was a good starting point as an ice-breaker topic but because they ran out of time, they could not get into “backstage” stories which I was excited about because it’s a rare opportunity to have a roundtable discussion among these six players.
But the constant point that came up, over the course of all the various sessions throughout the event, is the fact that these makers can no longer ignore the new wave of system techo users who are primarily a female user base and willing to own and buy multiple system techos.
The M5 size was a classic example where the more traditional brands decided to put out a few M5s to ride the trend, and experimenting with pastel colours. Then they discovered these were the ones that completely sold out during the event. Saitou-san, from Knox/Plotter, also openly apologized for not anticipating the popularity of the pastel range that were the special edition Plotter covers made available during the event.
System Techo Salon 2020: Brelio and HIDEKI talk show on Cordovan leather
Primarily discussions on cordovan leather itself, as well as how Leder Ogawa processes the leather after they receive the “nume” version from Shinki-Hikaku.
Quite an enlightening session, if you’re like me with not much knowledge on cordovan leather.
Raymay DaVinci: How to maintain your Roroma Classic
The original recording from the System Techo Salon event did not make it so they re-recorded it.
Plotter LIVE @ Bungu Joushi
This week’s session was streamed live from the Bungu Joushi Expo, but not archived to respect the privacy of those who attended the event. It was also filmed in an odd angle (just at the merchandise). I only caught the tailend of the event so I have no idea what was covered in the initial part of the livestream, but it eventually became part Q&A and part show-and-tell of the wares available at the event.
There will be a break next week, and will resume the week after on Dec 11th.