To our customers in the United States, we hope you had a chance to enjoy giving thanks with friends and family. To our customers around the world, we hope the same for you as you enter this holiday season. To celebrate giving thanks, we would like to offer 15% off orders over $20 from today, November 26 through the end of Monday, November 30. Please use coupon code KUROKIN at checkout.
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To all our loyal fans who have waited patiently on out of stock items: nearly everything has been topped up! We just received our long-awaited, first product shipment from Japan. Sufficed to say, moving a made-in-Japan shop to a country other than Japan adds quite a few challenges. We hope we can stay on top of things in the future, and we sincerely thank you for waiting. Please check below to see everything that is no longer sold out, and check back soon for some new products. Those of you who are already familiar with Palomino, and their ever popular Blackwing line, may know that they are based in California. What you may not know is that all of their pencils are made in Japan. So they seemed the perfect addition to our lineup, as our first non-Japanese brand, after our own relocation to California. For the time being, our focus remains on "Japanese stationery", and we think Palomino's made-in-Japan pencils still fall within that parameter. We hope you like the range of Palomino products we selected. Palomino pencils are of excellent quality, and the Palomino Blackwing pencils are without peer. Their unique design makes them truly feel like tools, and just holding them makes you want to write or draw. We hope you utilize them well in all your creative endeavors. On a recent stopover in Tokyo, I found time to visit one of our favorite stationery companies, Craft Design Technology. In typical Japanese fashion, our friends at CDT apologized profusely for their modest office. But more than visiting a flashy office, I had been looking forward to seeing all the products CDT makes and meeting some good people I had previously only communicated with via email. We had a great time getting to know each other in person, and I happily tried out several CDT products I had still never handled in the flesh. Of course they exceeded my expectations, so expect to see more CDT products available from us over time. I am also more than a little excited to announce that we are carrying a new pen from CDT, and thanks to the fortuitous timing of my visit, Fresh Stock was actually the first shop in the world to receive inventory! The CDT Tradio EnerGel Pen is a fantastic new pen that CDT made in conjunction with Pentel. It resembles the CDT Tradio Plastic Fountain Pen, but instead uses a quick drying gel ink rollerball. We’re offering the pen in both black and red ink for $4 each or $7 for a pair. We are also adding the CDT Leather Pen Case to our lineup. It is made in Japan of genuine leather and comes in a rich cinnamon brown color. As our first travel case, we’re setting the bar pretty high with this one. If you’ve been looking for a way to protect your best pens and pencils on the go, this case will not disappoint. For those of you keeping up with the last few months of Fresh Stock news, you know we moved shop from Japan to the United States in May. We have been temporarily operating out of the midwest for the summer, and we will soon be finalizing our move to Northern California, from where we will run Fresh Stock for the foreseeable future.
The logistics involved with moving our inventory and other equipment out west mean that orders received between August 16 and August 24 will not be fulfilled until August 25. We thank you for your understanding, and feel free to contact us if you have any questions or additional concerns. Before completing Fresh Stock's recent relocation to the United States, we were scrambling to check off things on our Japan bucket list. And while I hope we'll still have plenty of chances to keep checking things off (the list remains long after living in Japan for many years), we were able to do one of the big ones: we finally visited Hokkaido.
Hokkaido is Japan's northern island and the second biggest of its four main islands. It's famed for its nature, containing vast tracks of wilderness and several of Japan's famous national parks. Its capital, Sapporo, is Japan's fourth largest city, and it offers world class shopping and culture. Thanks to its proximity to Russia and Arctic winds, Hokkaido gets some of the highest snowfall in the world. The Sapporo Snow Festival, held annually in February, features an epic international snow sculpture contest. Lots of Japanese and foreign tourists alike flock to Hokkaido for the food. It's famous for its ramen, sea food, and as Japan's main producer of potatoes and dairy products. Besides some epic bowls of ramen (which can even be found in the airport!), we especially enjoyed eating a local favorite called "Genghis Khan", a lamb yakiniku dish named after the round grill that resembles a Mongolian helmet. Hokkaido has a fascinating history. Before becoming an outpost and later a prefecture of modern Japan, it was home to the Ainu, one of Japan's often neglected native peoples. After centuries of difficult dealings with the mainline Japanese, the Ainu were only recently officially recognized as an indigenous people with their own unique language, religion, and culture. While exploring Hokkaido, we saw less evidence of Ainu than I would have liked to have seen, but there are special attractions and museums where you can learn about their unique heritage. The city of Hakodate, Hokkaido's second biggest, was one of several port cities to open up to the western trade during the 19th century. This history is evident throughout the city, and numerous historical western buildings abound. The 19th century star fort, Goryōkaku, was even more impressive than our expectations and definitely made the long trip worth it. Before leaving Hakodate we stopped by a more modern attraction, Hakodate T-site, one of Tsutaya Books' flagships. This epic concept store is one of only two in the country, the other being the Daikanyama T-site in Tokyo, and they seem to be Tsutaya's answer to keeping the book store relevant. In addition to the usual books, music, and movies, the store was filled with premium lifestyle goods, limited collaboration products, and one of the best stationery sections around. Below are just a few photos from our adventure. I always dreamed of visiting Hokkaido, and I was not disappointed. In fact, I left thinking that if anything, Hokkaido is underrated, and more Western tourists should put it on their Japanese itineraries. To all our customers browsing Fresh Stock from the Great White North, we have some good news: lower shipping rates! After our recent relocation from Japan to the United States, we created shipping prices based on rates available from the United States Postal Service. But until now, we had only set a domestic rate and an international rate. And while most countries fit nicely into the international pricing structure, cheaper rates are available for nearby Canada. These rates have now been applied to our shipping rules, and they will appear automatically if you enter a Canadian shipping address. As announced at the end of April, Fresh Stock has made a big move. While we continue to offer a tightly curated collection of Made-in-Japan stationery products, we are now offering said products from the United States. We are temporarily operating nomadically, presently shipping packages from the midwest, but expect us to land on the West Coast in a couple more months. Our most loyal fans know we've been back online for about a month. Now we're making it official, and to celebrate, we want to share a wave of new products that we picked up before our exit from Japan. Most of these additions are from brands that are new to Fresh Stock, including Pilot, Hum, Mitsubishi Pencil, and Kokuyo. Please check out all of our new products below. We look forward to serving you by continuing our mission to find unique Japanese products with thoughtful designs to inspire you and make your creative endeavors a little more enjoyable. Pilot CorporationHum (Graf × Hightide)Mitsubishi Pencil Company
We’re excited to announce that Fresh Stock will soon be closing down shop in Japan and re-opening in the United States. This change will not affect our product selection, and we're actually planning to introduce a number of new products after the move. Being based in the US will allow us to offer more competitive and timely shipping rates to our North American customers. We're also planning to offer some regular free shipping options with minimum purchase.
After the move, shipping prices will likely increase for our loyal fans living in Asia. While our entire operation will become based out of the United States in the short-term, we are considering drop shipping Trusco Tool Boxes (our heaviest and costliest items to ship) to those customers living in close proximity to Japan. Please contact us if you live near Japan and are interested in a custom shipping quote on a Trusco order, and we will take such requests on a case by case basis. Our last orders will ship from Japan on May 4. Please consider the time difference between Japan and your own country to ensure we have received your order before our final shipping window. We will not be taking orders between May 4 and May 19. Orders after May 19 will be sent from the United States. Thank you for your support. Our notebook lineup currently consists of five different products with multiple colors that add up to 17 unique items. The CDT Graffiti Pad comes with grid paper. Grid paper is a fairly standard option among Japanese notebooks, and it conveniently allows you to choose between using just the horizontal lines for writing or the full grid to create precise sketches or drawings. The PH Letter Pad comes in ruled dot, which is similar to grid but with more white space for those who don't want to feel boxed in.
The PH Memo Pad and PH Notebook both offer blank paper, a blank canvas for your creativity. The CDT A5 Notebook offers lined paper. Combined with the useful A5 size, this is our best option for serious writing. The notebook utilizes great materials and has beautiful binding and design details that make it a worthy purchase. We hope our notebooks help you to come up with a new idea or piece of art or let you take a critical note or make a to-do list in style. |
AuthorBenjamin Stock founded Fresh Stock in Kobe, Japan and now runs it in the U.S. along with his wife, Rebecca. Archives
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