What Changed at Papertess

What Changed at Papertess

I want to tell you what really happened.

Not the polished version. Not the one that sounds like a brand statement. The real one. The one that kept me up at night.

There was a moment in 2025 where I sat in my studio, surrounded by products I had spent years building, and genuinely didn’t know if any of it would still exist a few months later.

The year that changed everything

2024 was the best year Papertess had ever had.

Orders were coming in from across the US, from Canada, Australia, Japan, and all across Europe. The community was growing. I had more products than ever. Planners in B6, Pocket, A6, Traveler’s Notebook formats, inserts, notebooks, accessories.

It felt like everything was working.

And then, almost overnight, it wasn’t.

When it stopped

Tariffs.

New import duties on goods entering the US made my products significantly more expensive for American customers before they even reached them.

And then, as if that wasn’t enough, Deutsche Post effectively suspended affordable international shipping to the United States.

The US had been my largest market.

And it was gone.

The hardest year

I don’t say this lightly: 2025 was the hardest year I’ve known as a business owner.

There were months where I made almost nothing.

Days where I refreshed my shop dashboard and saw nothing. No orders. No notifications.

Just silence.

And in that silence, I had to ask myself questions I had been avoiding for a long time:

Should I close the shop?

Clear the stock?

Walk away?

Why I stayed

I didn’t walk away.

But I had to be very honest about why I was staying.

At first, the answer wasn’t what I wanted it to be.

I wasn’t just staying because I believed in Papertess.

I was staying because I didn’t know who I would be without it.

That wasn’t a strong enough reason to keep building.

So I had to find a better one.

The paper question

For three years, Tomoe River Paper was Papertess.

It was the thing that set us apart. Thin, luminous, fountain pen-friendly. I had built an entire brand around it.

But it had always been a fragile foundation.

Produced in Japan, shipped onward through Asia, then to me in Germany, then to customers around the world. Complex. Expensive. Vulnerable to changes I couldn’t control.

And over time, something else had changed too.

What once felt special had become crowded.

More brands. Same paper. Same formats.

The difference was disappearing.

Letting go of Tomoe River Paper wasn’t just a product decision.

It felt like letting go of an identity.

For a while, that was uncomfortable.

And then I realised:

A chapter.

Not the whole story.

What I learned from almost losing everything

When the orders stopped coming, I had time.

Too much time, some days.

And I used it to look — really look — at what I had built.

I had spread myself too thin.

Too many formats. Too many sizes. Too many slight variations of the same idea.

I was trying to be everything for everyone.

And in doing so, I had lost the clarity that made Papertess worth building in the first place.

I had also built on fragile foundations.

A supply chain stretched across continents.

A primary market that could disappear overnight.

That needed to change.

For every customer — everywhere

I want to be clear about something.

This is not a story about losing one market and finding another.

Every customer who has ever ordered from Papertess — whether from the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, or anywhere in Europe — matters.

Every order. Every message. Every person who chose to plan with Papertess.

I see you. And I’m grateful.

What changed is not who I’m building for.

It’s how I’m building.

Made in Germany. A decision, not a marketing line

The new planner collection — the heart of what Papertess is becoming — will be produced in Germany.

The production. The binding. The making of each planner.

The materials are sourced where they are best suited for the product.

Paper chosen for how it feels under a pen.

Cover materials selected for durability and use.

Everything comes together in one place.

Not because it sounds good.

But because it gives me something I didn’t have before: control.

What is coming

I’m not ready to show you everything yet.

But I can tell you this.

Two products.

Designed as a system.

Produced in Germany.

On paper chosen for how it feels — warm, calm, unhurried.

New colours with names that describe a feeling, not a season.

And a philosophy that has always been there, but is now at the centre of everything.

The right moment is not January first.

It is now.

Whenever now happens to be.

This is not a reinvention

This isn’t a reinvention.

It’s a return.

To clarity.

To intention.

To what Papertess was always meant to be.

begin anywhere. the rest will follow.

— Theresia