PENCO

Accessible everyday design. PENCO transforms ordinary stationery into objects with character, without sacrificing price. A €5 notebook can have as much personality as a €20 Moleskine.

Fukuoka, 1994. A Japanese surfer and a design enthusiast found Hightide, not in a Silicon Valley garage, but in southern Japan, between the sea and rice paddies.

PENCO is born as Hightide's utilitarian stationery line. The concept: the aesthetic of 1950s-60s American office objects, when a binder, stapler or notebook had character, revisited with Japanese precision and care.

Notebooks have impeccable paper feel. Staplers have a satisfying click. Metal pencil cases look like they came from a Mad Men editorial office. Everything designed in Fukuoka, manufacturing split between Japan and Asia.

PENCO isn't luxury stationery, it's character stationery at honest prices. A notebook at €5, a stapler at €15, a metal pencil case at €10. The kind of objects you buy for yourself and end up gifting because everyone wants them.

Hightide shops in Tokyo and Los Angeles, worldwide distribution through concept stores that love Japanese design. In Japan, PENCO is in every Loft and Tokyu Hands.

Penco embodies a very Japanese paradox: mundane stationery, notebooks, pens, cases, rulers, transformed into objects of desire through design and detail alone. The Penco notebook (B5, thick cardboard cover, stapled binding) has become a Japanese office classic: understated, functional, with typography and colors recalling 1950s-60s American stationery.

Sold at Tokyu Hands, Loft, and Daikanyama stationery shops. Prices are trivial, €3-15 for most items. The 'small pleasure' format of Japanese stationery.