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> From 2005, Leuchtturm.. took on Moleskine, matching them for quality.. older companies like Clairefontaine, Rhodia, and Paperblanks refreshed their offerings.

> From 2005, Leuchtturm.. took on Moleskine, matching them for quality.. older companies like Clairefontaine, Rhodia, and Paperblanks refreshed their offerings. Western hipsters, always alert to high-end Japanese design, started to import notebooks from companies like Midori, Hobonichi, and Stalogy, which bested any of the European brands with their exquisite papers and bindings (Moleskine and Leuchtturm both use mainly Taiwanese paper). In the US, Field Notes struck a utilitarian chord with a mid-century aesthetic. All presented a fresh spin on the basic product, and all benefited from the product building that Moleskine had done. Stalogy has thin paper with minimal bleed, enabling small notebooks with more pages for writing and reference.

sgu999 2y ago
> (Moleskine and Leuchtturm both use mainly Taiwanese paper) I guess us Europeans can't even make paper anymore... I hope one day it'll be widely obvious to everyone that the true architects of our impoverishment are these CEOs who organized the offshoring of all our supply chain. But in the mean time we'll probably keep on blaming migrants for a while.
- FredPret 2y ago
  That cannot be true: 1) A class of people (here it is “the CEOs”) consistently behaving a certain way over time can only be explained by one of two things: a conspiracy (unstable; almost impossible to pull off), or their behavior is shaped by the reality facing them 2) if CEOs consistently offshore manufacturing over decades, this must be because it’s most profitable to do so. This must then be because people elsewhere can make more widgets per dollar / euro of wages, or we’re back to conspiracy theories 3) If workers elsewhere can make widgets cheaper, it’s either because they’re further along in industrializing and have more automation (not the case here) or because they do more work for less money. The blame here is not with the CEO’s, and indeed not with the rich workers either, because they’ve evolved past that point 4) The rich workers should now switch to working at a higher level of abstraction - knowledge work. This way low-wage work gets offshored or automated or ideally both, consumer prices stay low, and wages go up. If you failed at step 4, that’s because it’s really hard. Adapting to the post-industrial paradigm is easier with a young population and a culture that celebrates change, neither of which is common or easy to maintain. “The CEOs” and “the politicians” are not to blame if the entire system isn’t working.
  - walterbell 2y ago
    > their behavior is shaped by the reality facing them Yes, e.g. public policy. See tariffs and subsequent relocation of some manufacturing from China to SE Asia. Or export controls on ASML and other technology.
  - _aavaa_ 2y ago
    > “The CEOs” and “the politicians” are not to blame if the entire system isn’t working. Yes they are. The CEOs and the boards are choosing to focus on maximizing short term profit over the wellbeing of the people in the countries they operate. That's a choice. And the politicians are directly responsible for setting up the rules under which such systems develop. That they allow companies to offshore to other countries and pay the people there much lower wages than the employees they fired is a choice. That they let them pollute in other countries in order to not pay for it is a choice, see the EU's border adjustment for the carbon pricing.
    - FredPret 2y ago
      Both the politicians and the CEOs are only successful in direct proportion to how well the public responds to their decisions - buying their stuff, voting for their party. The public wanted cheap imported products, and so now that's what we have.
      - _aavaa_ 2y ago
        That's an overly simplistic picture. See for example recent tariffs of Chinese EVs to the US. The people buying EVs want cheaper models, but they get tarrifed just the same because the US manufacturers are complacent and far behind, yet again. People vote against their own interests all the time, all you need is a little propaganda.
        FredPret 2y ago
        People usually vote for lower prices, which translates to lower trade barriers and cheap imports. But the EV tariff thing is another instance of people voting for their interests, even if the result is the opposite: US conservatives are a) concerned about Chinese influence and b) rightly or wrongly think tariffs are the least bad form of tax, and at the same time on the left there are very numerous car union members who vote as a bloc and want to protect their jobs. So the easy answer for the politicians - in this case - is to levy tariffs. But it's all driven by the people and the way they vote and buy.
- wrp 2y ago
  If you want to buy European, Clairefontaine/Rhodia is still made in France.
  - Analemma_ 2y ago
    I want to like Rhodia, but the problem is that their “sheen”-y paper doesn’t cooperate with left-handed writers: it doesn’t like pencil at all but if I write with pen it just ends up smeared everywhere. I’ve had to stick to Stalogy and other companies using Tomoe River (or similar) paper.
    - wrp 2y ago
      Clairefontaine paper has a clay coating that makes it hard and smooth, but causes wet inks to dry slowly and remain prone to smudging. With the right combination of fountain pen and ink, particles of the clay will be dislodged and float up into the pen, eventually clogging the feed. I had one pen+ink combination that would clog up after writing about 2/3 of a page on Clairefontaine paper. Rhodia paper is made by the same people but has less clay coating, so these problems are a bit less. Still, neither takes pencil well, so I would just use ballpoint or a drier gel on either.
Al-Khwarizmi 2y ago
Rhodia and Leuchtturm, and probably others, also have better paper than Moleskine... this is especially noticeable as a fountain pen user. I'm locked into Moleskine, though: I started using them around 20 years ago, when there wasn't so much competition in the market (or at least not where I lived) and also their paper was better than now. And now I have a long row of them in a shelf, which keeps slowly growing. And they are slightly smaller than other brands (Moleskine pocket notebooks are 90 x 140 mm, Leuchtturm 90 x 150, Rhodia 95 x 140, Stalogy I've never used but from Google search it seems to be 105 x 148). So if I switched brand, the new ones would stick out like a sore thumb. If anyone knows a brand with better paper but the same size as Moleskine pocket notebooks, I would be grateful.

sgu999 2y ago

> (Moleskine and Leuchtturm both use mainly Taiwanese paper) I guess us Europeans can't even make paper anymore... I hope one day it'll be widely obvious to everyone that the true architects of our impoverishment are these CEOs who organized the offshoring of all our supply chain. But in the mean time we'll probably keep on blaming migrants for a while.

FredPret 2y ago
That cannot be true: 1) A class of people (here it is “the CEOs”) consistently behaving a certain way over time can only be explained by one of two things: a conspiracy (unstable; almost impossible to pull off), or their behavior is shaped by the reality facing them 2) if CEOs consistently offshore manufacturing over decades, this must be because it’s most profitable to do so. This must then be because people elsewhere can make more widgets per dollar / euro of wages, or we’re back to conspiracy theories 3) If workers elsewhere can make widgets cheaper, it’s either because they’re further along in industrializing and have more automation (not the case here) or because they do more work for less money. The blame here is not with the CEO’s, and indeed not with the rich workers either, because they’ve evolved past that point 4) The rich workers should now switch to working at a higher level of abstraction - knowledge work. This way low-wage work gets offshored or automated or ideally both, consumer prices stay low, and wages go up. If you failed at step 4, that’s because it’s really hard. Adapting to the post-industrial paradigm is easier with a young population and a culture that celebrates change, neither of which is common or easy to maintain. “The CEOs” and “the politicians” are not to blame if the entire system isn’t working.
- walterbell 2y ago
  > their behavior is shaped by the reality facing them Yes, e.g. public policy. See tariffs and subsequent relocation of some manufacturing from China to SE Asia. Or export controls on ASML and other technology.
- _aavaa_ 2y ago
  > “The CEOs” and “the politicians” are not to blame if the entire system isn’t working. Yes they are. The CEOs and the boards are choosing to focus on maximizing short term profit over the wellbeing of the people in the countries they operate. That's a choice. And the politicians are directly responsible for setting up the rules under which such systems develop. That they allow companies to offshore to other countries and pay the people there much lower wages than the employees they fired is a choice. That they let them pollute in other countries in order to not pay for it is a choice, see the EU's border adjustment for the carbon pricing.
  - FredPret 2y ago
    Both the politicians and the CEOs are only successful in direct proportion to how well the public responds to their decisions - buying their stuff, voting for their party. The public wanted cheap imported products, and so now that's what we have.
    - _aavaa_ 2y ago
      That's an overly simplistic picture. See for example recent tariffs of Chinese EVs to the US. The people buying EVs want cheaper models, but they get tarrifed just the same because the US manufacturers are complacent and far behind, yet again. People vote against their own interests all the time, all you need is a little propaganda.
      - FredPret 2y ago
        People usually vote for lower prices, which translates to lower trade barriers and cheap imports. But the EV tariff thing is another instance of people voting for their interests, even if the result is the opposite: US conservatives are a) concerned about Chinese influence and b) rightly or wrongly think tariffs are the least bad form of tax, and at the same time on the left there are very numerous car union members who vote as a bloc and want to protect their jobs. So the easy answer for the politicians - in this case - is to levy tariffs. But it's all driven by the people and the way they vote and buy.
wrp 2y ago
If you want to buy European, Clairefontaine/Rhodia is still made in France.
- Analemma_ 2y ago
  I want to like Rhodia, but the problem is that their “sheen”-y paper doesn’t cooperate with left-handed writers: it doesn’t like pencil at all but if I write with pen it just ends up smeared everywhere. I’ve had to stick to Stalogy and other companies using Tomoe River (or similar) paper.
  - wrp 2y ago
    Clairefontaine paper has a clay coating that makes it hard and smooth, but causes wet inks to dry slowly and remain prone to smudging. With the right combination of fountain pen and ink, particles of the clay will be dislodged and float up into the pen, eventually clogging the feed. I had one pen+ink combination that would clog up after writing about 2/3 of a page on Clairefontaine paper. Rhodia paper is made by the same people but has less clay coating, so these problems are a bit less. Still, neither takes pencil well, so I would just use ballpoint or a drier gel on either.

Al-Khwarizmi 2y ago

Rhodia and Leuchtturm, and probably others, also have better paper than Moleskine... this is especially noticeable as a fountain pen user. I'm locked into Moleskine, though: I started using them around 20 years ago, when there wasn't so much competition in the market (or at least not where I lived) and also their paper was better than now. And now I have a long row of them in a shelf, which keeps slowly growing. And they are slightly smaller than other brands (Moleskine pocket notebooks are 90 x 140 mm, Leuchtturm 90 x 150, Rhodia 95 x 140, Stalogy I've never used but from Google search it seems to be 105 x 148). So if I switched brand, the new ones would stick out like a sore thumb. If anyone knows a brand with better paper but the same size as Moleskine pocket notebooks, I would be grateful.