I'm A Sad, Pathetic Stationery Junkie.

[Misfit]

Shame on them. My advice is to contact them, and share your disappointment, plus the reasons to carry the paper. It might not change anything, but the old saying about the squeaky wheel might still apply. Especially if your fellow Australians on this forum also contact them.  

[inkypete]

27 minutes ago, Misfit said:

Shame on them. My advice is to contact them, and share your disappointment, plus the reasons to carry the paper. It might not change anything, but the old saying about the squeaky wheel might still apply. Especially if your fellow Australians on this forum also contact them.  

I'm sure it is purely an economics decision. If they were selling plenty they would still stock it. 

[Misfit]

Well, when I was looking for a certain De Atramentis ink, Vanness let me know it was usually a long time to get new shipments of De Atramentis ink. I always encourage contact with the online store. If you reach out, nicely, complimenting their good points, then asking your question; the nice things you say can make their day. Then they will let you know maybe more about the why. It doesn’t take that much time to find the Contact icon, and write a message. You might will feel better if you do. 
 

Do it! Do it! Do it!

(I ordered from them once. I’ll do it… I’ll contact them.)

[Misfit]

Done! I sent a message to Milligram asking if Rhodia and Clairefontaine would return. First I let them know how happy the message inside the shipping box made me feel. I included the photo I took of it. 

[AmandaW]

1 hour ago, inkypete said:

Interesting to see that the main seller here (Australia) of Clairefontaine and Rhodia (Milligram) has dropped the lines. Shattered.

No...  

 

Officeworks has some of them. And PenCity.

[inkypete]

5 hours ago, AmandaW said:

No...  

 

Officeworks has some of them. And PenCity.

Not sure how much longer as they were supplied by Milligram as the Australian agents.

[Gloucesterman]

9 hours ago, inkypete said:

Interesting to see that the main seller here (Australia) of Clairefontaine and Rhodia (Milligram) has dropped the lines. Shattered.

That's a downer 😳.

Any idea as to why this happened? Or, do you think that it is simply an economic issue... not selling enough paper?

I just bought three Clairefontaine notebooks at my local consignment store for $3.00 total.

[inkypete]

7 hours ago, Gloucesterman said:

That's a downer 😳.

Any idea as to why this happened? Or, do you think that it is simply an economic issue... not selling enough paper?

I just bought three Clairefontaine notebooks at my local consignment store for $3.00 total.

I am certain it is just sales not justifying their investment. They wouldn't drop lines that make them money.

[Misfit]

I got a reply from Milligram that mirrors what @inkypete thought.  
 

Here is the pertinent part:

“As for Clairefontaine and Rhodia, I'm afraid that we no longer carry those brands and there are no plans to bring them back into our range at this stage.”

 

They did appreciate my comment on the message in their shipping box. I wish it was better news. 

 

 

[ParramattaPaul]

2 hours ago, inkypete said:

I am certain it is just sales not justifying their investment. They wouldn't drop lines that make them money.

👍👍

[A Smug Dill]

23 hours ago, inkypete said:

Interesting to see that the main seller here (Australia) of Clairefontaine and Rhodia (Milligram) has dropped the lines.

 

Milligram and Dymocks are owned by the same company, and Dymocks (so its website shows me) still sells Rhodia. I don't really think Milligram was ever the main seller of those brands here, anyway; it's just visible, and available for people to test. Officeworks always carried Rhodia nationally, long before Milligram started opening brick-and-mortar stores outside of Victoria.

[inkypete]

3 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

Milligram and Dymocks are owned by the same company, and Dymocks (so its website shows me) still sells Rhodia. I don't really think Milligram was ever the main seller of those brands here, anyway; it's just visible, and available for people to test. Officeworks always carried Rhodia nationally, long before Milligram started opening brick-and-mortar stores outside of Victoria.

Milligram are/were the agents before they were bought out by Dymocks. Will be interesting to see if Dymocks and Officeworks continue to have both available in the near future. Maybe they are importing to wholesale to a few other retailers but I note the range at Officeworks has reduced considerably. I don't follow Dymocks as closely so I am not sure. In Victoria they sell only a little stationery unlike their Sydney stores.

[AmandaW]

In WA only the Dymocks store in Perth has stationery. 

 

I did hear an announcement while in Officeworks a few days ago saying that prices on many items had been reduced. I looked and it did appear to include Rhodia, but not Clairefontaine products. 

[A Smug Dill]

22 hours ago, inkypete said:

Milligram are/were the agents before they were bought out by Dymocks.

 

I thought Telegram was (and probably still is) the distributor. Milligram is a retail brand owned by Telegram; previously it was Notemaker (and I'm not entirely sure whether it was a case of Telegram buying out Notemaker and then changing the name). My loyalty programme qualifications with the company was from the Notemaker era.

[inkypete]

17 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

I thought Telegram was (and probably still is) the distributor. Milligram is a retail brand owned by Telegram; previously it was Notemaker (and I'm not entirely sure whether it was a case of Telegram buying out Notemaker and then changing the name). My loyalty programme qualifications with the company was from the Notemaker era.

Correct - I go back to The Source (Queen St Melb) where it all started before it became Notemaker etc etc. Telegram-Co has sadly moved more to lifestyle products to the detriment of paper and pens, however as I said I am sure it is all about $$$s, which is fair enough. Telegram-Co is the wholesaler.

[A Smug Dill]

More not-going-as-smoothly-as-I'd-hoped orders on Taobao AliExpress (my bad! the hazards of posting at 3AM):

 

Edited April 10 by A Smug Dill

[drakolord]

2 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

More not-going-as-smoothly-as-I'd-hoped orders on Taobao:

 

What store front? Also do you plan on doing a fountain pen review of the notebook?

[lamarax]

5 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

More not-going-as-smoothly-as-I'd-hoped orders on Taobao:

 

 

Some bad manufacturing (and materials apparently) right there, but an appealing design nonetheless.

[A Smug Dill]

5 hours ago, drakolord said:

What store front?

 

Vividora Art Store, for the Traveller's style notebook covers. However, the careless and inadequate packaging is more of an AliExpress thing than the oversight or laxness on the part of a particular seller. Anything that doesn't have loose parts (e.g. charging cables), instruction manual/leaflets, etc. that need to be contained in a (retail packaging) paperboard box would usually be shipped without one unless otherwise stated; and where such boxes are used, they usually arrive at the overseas destination completely bashed up, deformed and/or torn thanks (yes, sarcasm there) to AliExpress's consolidated shipment practices that can scarcely be avoided these days, and certainly not for items in either the Bundle Deals section or the Choice programme. If you're not already familiar with how AliExpress does in that regard, it's too involved a topic to really get into in a thread about (pen, ink, paper) products, as opposed to how to negotiate or watch out for known hazards as a consumer.

 

As for the pricing, that certainly doesn't seem to be deliberate manipulation or adjustment on the part of the particular seller. It certainly looks to me to be algorithm-driven, in the way the marketplace platform wants to automatically fluctuate pricing as happens on Amazon as well. I can also see that AliExpress seems to be reversed the changes made to Bundle Deals (that were effective 1 April 2026) for now. Maybe it was the effects of a ‘bug’, or maybe it was the marketplace operator dipping its toes into the water.

 

5 hours ago, drakolord said:

Also do you plan on doing a fountain pen review of the notebook?

 

Not really, when I have dozens of other uncommon types of paper that are far more interesting to me. As far as I'm concerned, the buyer/recipient/user of the set would either use the included notebooks because ‘fountain pen friendliness’ is not a decider, or just toss the inserts aside (never mind the waste or loss of built-in value of the product combination) instead of trying to salvage what's there.

 

If anyone else is really that interested, it'd only cost them a ‘micro-transaction’ level of spending to buy order one on AliExpress (thus circumventing Taobao's non-trivial international shipping charges as an obstacle), test the included inserts to their hearts' content, and find out for themselves.

 

My intention is to simply replace the inserts before giving two or three units of the ‘product’ to select recipients in the fountain pen hobby community local to me (in terms of social group, as well as being located in Australia), or let my wife use these as promotional items or prizes as-is, in the course of her side gig (as a book publisher, author, and organiser of writing workshops).

 

I got AliExpress and Taobao confused earlier partly because I only just ordered another 11 units, all in different colours (and none of them a repeat of the navy blue), on Taobao. Not as cheaply as I got these navy blue ones from AliExpress, once shipping has been taken into account, but still cheap enough but also decent enough as giveaways. 

[A Smug Dill]

2 hours ago, lamarax said:

Some bad manufacturing (and materials apparently) right there, but an appealing design nonetheless.

 

Yes, it looks very much like a Lihit Lab Smart Fit A5 cover model N-1647 (which I love, but alas has apparently been discontinued, looking at Lihit Lab's Japanese-language website) in design on the outside, except for the absence of an elastic closure; and of course the quality of the material and construction is leagues apart from the Japanese branded product even though I'm confident the N-1647 is also made in China. This cheap one does have a ‘slot’ behind the front pocket into which one could slip a thin flat object, and that's a feature the N-1647 does not have, although I wouldn't recommend using it to hold a mobile phone the way the marketing images and videos of this Chinese product suggest.

 

The PU material on the inside of the Chinese product (which is tan in colour in my unit) is much better than the flaky stuff used in Kinbor organiser/notebook covers. It's a shame about the crease in the lining on this one. One of my ‘issues’ with Chinese products is that so many manufacturers seem not to ‘know’ to reject/discard pieces of raw material that are just not fit to be used.

 

The price of these notebook covers is between one-sixth and one-eighth of the N-1647 (still sold on Taobao, in small numbers, in spite of having been discontinued by the manufacturer) on Taobao. (Note: The current prices of the N-1647 on AliExpress are absolutely ridiculous.)