A year-round gift with very little shelf space required – colourful, useful and easy to pick up on impulse, with an attractive recommended retail price giving room for a good margin.
Genuine handmade Lokta paper from Nepal – naturally individual and quite different from the rather soulless, mass-produced notebook.
A provenance customers can actually see – selected designs include a QR link to behind-the-scenes footage of traditional Lokta paper being made in Nepal.
A properly renewable paper story – the Daphne shrub naturally regenerates after harvesting, so no tree needs to be felled to produce Lokta paper.
Made to be picked up and admired – tactile paper, visible fibres, pressed flowers, leaves, bold colours and unusual fastenings help the collection sell itself from the display.
Plenty of gifting possibilities – ideal for journaling, travel memories, daily thoughts, creative ideas or that all-important list of things we really must do one day.
Easy to merchandise throughout your shop – display alongside pens, cards, crystals, wellbeing gifts or other fairly traded and artisan-made products.
Strong repeat-purchase and gift appeal – different sizes, colours and cover styles encourage customers to choose one for themselves…and quite possibly another for somebody else.
Lokta paper is, quite literally, Ancient Wisdom. This remarkable Nepalese paper-making tradition is said to stretch back around 1,900 years. Thanks to its strength and resilience, Lokta paper was once used for sacred Buddhist texts and important documents. Long before filing cabinets and cloud storage, this was paper made to keep things safe.
The story became personal during an AW sourcing trip to Kathmandu. David and Toni were determined to get beyond the middlemen and find the people actually making the notebooks. Eventually, they found the son of a family-run business and travelled to the workshop in a village on the outskirts of Kathmandu.
There they met the family and watched the notebooks being cut, covered and bound. Then David spotted a huge stack of handmade Lokta paper in the corner and asked the obvious question: “Where does all this come from?” So, the following day, they headed to another village to see the paper itself being made. One question generally leads to another journey around here.
It all begins with the Daphne shrub, growing naturally high in the mountains of Nepal. Fibres from the inner bark are used to make the paper, while the shrub regenerates naturally after harvesting, usually within several years. No tree needs to be felled.
The fibres are softened, turned into pulp, spread onto frames and dried in the mountain air. The finished sheets retain a wonderfully tactile texture, with gentle variations that immediately tell you this is not ordinary factory paper.
Flowers, leaves, cotton fibres and rich natural colours are worked into selected covers, giving the notebooks their unmistakable character. Slight differences in colour and texture are all part of the handmade charm—perfectly imperfect, as a proper artisan product should be.
Selected designs also feature a fabric bookmark and a QR code linking to behind-the-scenes footage from Nepal. Customers can actually see where their notebook came from and how the paper was made.
These fairly traded wholesale notebooks, imported from Nepal, give retailers a lovely little story to share: an ancient craft, a renewable mountain shrub and a family workshop keeping traditional skills alive.
And after travelling all that way, the finished notebook is ready for somebody’s dreams, plans, poems, travel memories…or possibly just the weekly shopping list.
Sell More With These
Customers Recently Bought
Last seen