What makes Iroshizuku so special?

[Claes]

Why has Iroshizuku become so popular -- or hyped?

What makes it so special?

 

Wonderingly Yours,

Claes in Lund, Sweden

[Karmachanic]

Why ask why?

[LizEF]

I think the only things that make it special would be:

• The bottles are attractive.
• You really like the ink's color.
• The ink works without problems.

I'm not sure there's anything else particularly special about it.  If there is, I'm waiting to learn it.

[inkstainedruth]

And not all the colors are without problems.  

There are some Iroshizuku inks I would never want to be without -- Yama-budo, Yama-Guri, Murasaki-Shikibu and Kon-peki are great colors.  Take-sumi, while not the blackest ink out there, has a quality to it that is just really interesting -- it looks almost three dimensional on the page, like it was velveteen.  And I was really sad when Tsuyu-kusa was discontinued, because it's such a quiet, restful color.

OTOH, back when I started on FPN, a lot of people said that Asa-Gao was their "go-to" blue ink.  But I found it just drippy: I'd write about a page and then watch a big blob of ink roll down the nib and go splat onto the paper.  And by "big blob" I mean that it was nearly half an inch in diameter....  And Kosumosu?  In the reviews I saw, it was an interesting mix of pink and orange.  But under incandescent light it looked like overripe grapefruit.... 

So, like pretty much every brand of ink I've tried, there are some that are winners in my book, and some that are definitely in the category of "Thanks but no thanks...."  Which is why I like samples so much (and REALLY glad I didn't spring for a full bottle of Kosumosu before trying it...).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[arcfide]

I think they deserve their place and their hype, personally. Here's what I think sets them apart:

• Some of the most elegant bottles out there, extremely nice while also being simple and functional
• The colors are sophisticated, saturated, and stand out well, they are subtle and very well done; even their more subdued colors tend to "pop"
• The inks tend to have extremely good flow without sacrificing too much good behavior on the paper
• Lubrication on these inks is much better than average, leading to a very smooth, refined experience
• Unlike many dye-based inks, their blues have an abnormally high UV resistance
• They are surprisingly affordable for "boutique" inks
• Their fungicides and other anti-mold treatments are above average, and you rarely hear of an ink going bad
• The production tolerances are very high, meaning that the colors are among the most consistent of the industry, IME

IMO, these inks set the standard for what "premium" inks should be. In contrast, we can look at the premium line from Jacques Herbin and Sailor.

 

Jacques Herbin has even more intense colors that are insanely bold and rich, but at the cost of some of the inks clogging more easily, some being excessively wet, and some cases of mold showing up in their bottles over time (though they obviously try to fix those). The natural dyes used by JH also tend to not be that UV resistant compared to Iroshizuku inks. They are also among the most expensive out there.

 

Sailor's standard inks are terrifically lubricating, smooth, wet, and saturated. They make some of the most interesting chromoshading inks and other inks with interesting properties. However, their inks can be excessively dry or wet, can clog a little easier, and often their colors are much more muted or subdued. The price is very high and the bottles are very small and or hard to fill (for their premium/boutique inks). 

 

The other premium inks offer unique things that set them apart, and they are all good in their own way, but Iroshizuku, in a lot of ways, is like the Waterman of Premium inks. They are consistent, reliable, saturated, bold, and generally well behaved across the line. You might not like the color, and they are too wet for some people, but that's true for pretty much any ink line that tries to make more saturated, bold, premium inks. 

 

In some ways, this makes the Iroshizuku line a little "boring," because other makers are producing hyper shading inks, or hyper sheening inks, or chroma shading, or shimmer, or pigmented, or iron gall, or whatever, and the Iroshizuku line is just a very well done line of sophisticated and beautiful colors that have very good ink properties. But that's kind of also what makes them so worthy of the hype. 

 

Reminds me a little of the phrase, "Shakespeare is so derivative." 

[arcfide]

1 hour ago, inkstainedruth said:

OTOH, back when I started on FPN, a lot of people said that Asa-Gao was their "go-to" blue ink.  But I found it just drippy: I'd write about a page and then watch a big blob of ink roll down the nib and go splat onto the paper.  And by "big blob" I mean that it was nearly half an inch in diameter....

 

😄 I have to say, my copy of Asa-gao is just...lovely, and it's the kind of wet ink that I can get behind. It's one of the only "Royal Blue" style inks that I can find which writes bold and clean on the page while still retaining some good behavior and also having well above average UV resistance. I haven't found another blue in that category yet that can compare. 

[Lithium466]

13 minutes ago, arcfide said:

The other premium inks offer unique things that set them apart, and they are all good in their own way, but Iroshizuku, in a lot of ways, is like the Waterman of Premium inks. They are consistent, reliable, saturated, bold, and generally well behaved across the line. You might not like the color, and they are too wet for some people, but that's true for pretty much any ink line that tries to make more saturated, bold, premium inks. 

 

In some ways, this makes the Iroshizuku line a little "boring," because other makers are producing hyper shading inks, or hyper sheening inks, or chroma shading, or shimmer, or pigmented, or iron gall, or whatever, and the Iroshizuku line is just a very well done line of sophisticated and beautiful colors that have very good ink properties. But that's kind of also what makes them so worthy of the hype. 

 

Reminds me a little of the phrase, "Shakespeare is so derivative." 

Excellent post in general, and I couldn't agree more on the part quoted, that is exactly my thinking about Iroshizuku inks 👍

[XYZZY]

• Everything @arcfide said.
• Yama-budo.
• Asa-gao.
• @Claes I have no idea what prices you pay in Sweden.  I can frequently find Iroshizuku 50ml bottles on Amazon with Prime shipping between $16.50 and $21.00 depending on the color and the day.  So while not cheap, they aren't the $30/bottle I found when I was starting out in fountain pens. 
• I like the 15ml mini-bottles.  That's the size I think samples should come in.  I have 34 colors in the mini-bottles, missing only the Tokyo limited editions.  I only use the 50ml Asa-gao bottle for filling the Custom Urushi which doesn't fit in the 15ml bottle, otherwise I re-fill the 15ml bottles from a 50.  The main downside to these bottles is that it's tricky to buy them in specific colors, and usually you need to buy three different colors--I infer that Pilot considers these as gift sets and not merely a convenient size.

[Misfit]

16 hours ago, inkstainedruth said:

Take-sumi, while not the blackest ink out there, has a quality to it that is just really interesting -- it looks almost three dimensional on the page, like it was velveteen.

Now that sounds really interesting. Next time I’m getting samples, this will be on the list. Does the nib size matter in getting this result?

[RJS]

When I lived in China I could find these inks close to the Japanese prices- when I returned to the UK I refused to pay 3x the Japanese price. Aside from the bottles being nicer, I find it hard to say the inks are superior to Waterman, for example (though of course there is much more variety). Both are excellent, but Pilot have branded their inks are more premium outside of Japan - as have Sailor, for that matter.

 

Ultimately, clever premium marketing and pretty bottles have more to do with making Iroshizuku special than the admittedly top quality contents, IMO.

[Karmachanic]

2 hours ago, RJS said:

Pilot have branded their inks are more premium outside of Japan

 

Cost of Euro ink is higher in Japan than Eurolandia.  Same difference.  Might have something to do with the added costs of shipping, handling, insurance and so on?

[inkstainedruth]

14 hours ago, Misfit said:

Does the nib size matter in getting this result?

I don't remember.  I'd have to dig out the testing notebooks (of course, those are cheap top spiral-bound sketchbooks from Barnes & Noble, with not the best quality paper in them).  

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[RJS]

14 hours ago, Karmachanic said:

 

Cost of Euro ink is higher in Japan than Eurolandia.  Same difference.  Might have something to do with the added costs of shipping, handling, insurance and so on?

When I was in Japan a decade ago, European pens cost the same or less than in Europe- sometimes substantially less. European inks were maybe 10-20% more pricey than in Europe. Nothing like the 200% markup Europe receives when receiving Pilot inks. It's impossible to compare the two. Shipping/handling/insurance don't put 200% on top. 🤦‍♂️ Grey market importers were a big thing for a while, and they could do it for a fraction of the price. It's clever marketing indeed if they've conned even one person into believing the huge markups are justified.

[dftr]

They may have been hyped 10 years ago but now theyre kind of a standard. So many people have konpeki as their favorite blue and their ink for dealing w difficult pens… much like people used to have waterman blue or pelikan blue for that role. 
 

whats hyped now are inks w shimmer or pale inks or color changing inks. Hyped in the sense that they are appealing more to people who make swatches or use brushes than those who would fill the ink  in their fountain pen. 

[Arkanabar]

On 1/11/2024 at 11:57 AM, Karmachanic said:

 

Cost of Euro ink is higher in Japan than Eurolandia.  Same difference.  Might have something to do with the added costs of shipping, handling, insurance and so on?

Not to mention tariffs. . . .

[RJS]

43 minutes ago, Arkanabar said:

Not to mention tariffs. . . .

? So I as an individual can order these inks online from Japan and have them shipped to me for less than the price in the UK, but you think that the shipping/tarrifs/yada yada are MORE EXPENSIVE for Pilot when they ship in bulk? Hmmm...

[Karmachanic]

Link please!

 

32 minutes ago, RJS said:

I as an individual can order these inks online from Japan and have them shipped to me for less than the price in the UK,

 

[arcfide]

13 hours ago, RJS said:

? So I as an individual can order these inks online from Japan and have them shipped to me for less than the price in the UK, but you think that the shipping/tarrifs/yada yada are MORE EXPENSIVE for Pilot when they ship in bulk? Hmmm...

 

From a business perspective, kind of. Let's say that you're setting up shop as a separate foreign entity for the distribution of PIlot products. I believe this is at least how Pilot USA operates. You now at least have to incur the standing costs of warehousing and inventory management, distribution sales, marketing and in region brand management, support (since Pilot now expects support to go through you instead of them), and all the associated costs of employees and business operating costs. You have to replicate websites and other things, as well as ensure that you are staying in sync with the main parent. You have to do your own logistics decisions and research. Now, of course, you *also* want to profit. You have to account for the fact that the region doesn't work the same way that Japan does, and so you can't just copy their sales model. 

 

So, if you take all of that into account, then, yes, I would expect that in order to make a healthy profit and also position the brand into the healthiest space for the UK or Europe or the US you would need to potentially charge more than a single retailor out of Japan could offer a single customer a bespoke shipped bottle of ink. In essence, PIlot USA/UK/EU and the retailors have already done all of the work to get you to look for the Japanese retailor, and so they can piggy back on the efforts and costs already invested into the region by those people, and the only thing they have to do is the work to maintain a relatively simple to manage storefront online, such as through Amazon. They don't even really have to provide support to a very high level, either. 

[DrPlush]

Quote

What makes it so special?

 

It’s really, really reliable. If I want an ink from, for example, Sailor or Diamine, I need to try a sample before I commit because their inks can behave quite differently even within the same line. But with Iro I can just trust that the ink will be well-behaved and feel confident ordering it untried based solely on the colour. I have wasted heaps of money on inks that I like the look of and hate the experience of using, but none of them are Iroshizuku.

[RJS]

6 hours ago, arcfide said:

 

From a business perspective, kind of. Let's say that you're setting up shop as a separate foreign entity for the distribution of PIlot products. I believe this is at least how Pilot USA operates. You now at least have to incur the standing costs of warehousing and inventory management, distribution sales, marketing and in region brand management, support (since Pilot now expects support to go through you instead of them), and all the associated costs of employees and business operating costs. You have to replicate websites and other things, as well as ensure that you are staying in sync with the main parent. You have to do your own logistics decisions and research. Now, of course, you *also* want to profit. You have to account for the fact that the region doesn't work the same way that Japan does, and so you can't just copy their sales model. 

 

So, if you take all of that into account, then, yes, I would expect that in order to make a healthy profit and also position the brand into the healthiest space for the UK or Europe or the US you would need to potentially charge more than a single retailor out of Japan could offer a single customer a bespoke shipped bottle of ink. In essence, PIlot USA/UK/EU and the retailors have already done all of the work to get you to look for the Japanese retailor, and so they can piggy back on the efforts and costs already invested into the region by those people, and the only thing they have to do is the work to maintain a relatively simple to manage storefront online, such as through Amazon. They don't even really have to provide support to a very high level, either. 

I do get all of that. It's just the extraordinary difference in this instance. Look at Amazon Japan- Kon Peki was £8.60 equivalent last I checked, yesterday. It's been offered for 30% less than that too at times! Compare that to £35 at Cult Pens. (Both full sized bottles). It's simply a brand positioning itself differently in different countries. It's done was very many companies. Pilot don't sell their standard inks in bottled form in the UK to further project this premium imagine. If they sold their basic inks for £2ish a bottle in the UK, as they do in Japan and China, they would harm their image in the UK- even if they quadrupled it, it's still 'too cheap' compared with what they're aiming for.

 

Japanese denim can hit 5x the Japanese online price in Europe. Look at Iron Heart and how they had to fiercely guard their product from being resold by Japanese sellers to Europe.

 

Look at Smirnoff and Absolute vodka. In some countries one will be positioned as a more premium band while the other isn't. Absolute screwed themselves in the UK about 30 years ago by selling themselves too cheap, and it's never been able to shake the cheap image, even when technically it's quite a decent vodka and is positioned much more favourably in the market in other countries.

 

Edit: A question: Why do you think it only works in one direction? Japan>Europe price goes up. Europe>Japan price goes down in many cases. A Pilot pen flies to Europe and price goes up 2/3 times. A Lamy pen flies to Japan and almost halves in value. What is that if not market positioning?

 

Edit 2: Pilot pricing abroad has been discussed many times on these boards before. They charge what they feel a market will pay, essentially. An example: 

 Marketing is the consensus here, and in others. I did not participate in the thread I linked to, for what it's worth.