Making the notepad into a thing of beauty
As mass market fades, local bookbinder goes for luxury
Third-generation bookbinder Chris Rothe wants to change the perception of the spiral-bound notepad.
“We want to make the notepad cool again,” the 34-year-old said at his workshop located in the back of his father's 50,000-square-foot bookbinding plant in Washington Village just west of M&T Bank Stadium.
Rothe's Write Notepads & Co. is an offshoot of the family business, Allied Binding Co., a company in the slowly fading business of printing and binding booklets for a variety of uses.
Using Allied Binding's equipment, Write Notepads produces a variety of spiral wire-bound notebooks and writing pads with custom covers printed on classic letterpress machines.
But Rothe is selling more than just a stylish and sturdy notebook. Taking a page from Toms Shoes, which donates a pair of shoes for every pair sold, Write Notepads donates a notebook to a Baltimore school for every one it sells. A code on the inside of the cover allows consumers to see which school received the paired pad.
“No matter how modest of a gift we can give, we want to give back and we want to make sure that we can help and do our part,” Rothe said. “The kids that are in these schools, they are going to one day be the workforce that run these machines, that drive the trucks, that are programming the computers.”
Even as many consumers are ditching paper for digital communications, some higher-income customers are seeking luxury paper products, said Pam Danziger, market researcher, author and president of Unity Marketing.
“These are people who are enthusiastic with paper and paper products,” she said. “You have to be a dedicated journaler or note-taker to pay a premium for a notebook that you could find very cheaply. But that is the new psychology. Marketers have to play to the special niches in this market.”
Manufacturing office stationery in the United States is a $7 billion industry; however, revenue has shrunk the last five years and is expected to continue to shrink, according to an analysis by IBIS World.
But even as the mass market contracts, the high-end niche appears to be growing.
Moleskine, the famous Italian notebook company, has seen revenue increase from its paper products about 87 percent since 2011, according to financial filings released by the company. Its notebooks brought in about $133 million in 2015.
Moleskine itself wasn't founded until 1997, but the company has capitalized on a market driven by a desire for sturdy notebooks like those used by Ernest Hemingway, Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso and others.
“Moleskine is a brand that has a tremendous amount of heritage and a tremendous amount of investment in the category,” Danziger said. “It is going to be very hard to unseat them because they just have such a hold on these enthusiastic note-takers and journalers.”
While Write Notepads competes with Moleskine, Rothe, who bound his first book at 13, said he sees the products as complementary and believes his company offers a unique product.
Using environmentally friendly materials such as vegetable inks made in the United States, Write Notepads produces limited-edition and regional-specific notepads in order to create excitement over the product. For example, Rothe said its line of Edgar Allan Poe-themed notepads sold out.
It's also produced a line of notebooks imprinted with names and iconic images of Baltimore, Fells Point, Washington, D.C., and the five boroughs of New York City. Locally, they're sold in Atomic Books and Trohv in Hampden, Su Casa in Fells Point and The Pleasure of Your Company in Green Spring Station.
“They sell great,” said Benn Ray, co-owner of Atomic Books, which has sold Write Notepads for about three years. “People are always looking for a good journal, even in this digital age.”
After graduating from York College of Pennsylvania in 2005, Rothe went back to work at Allied Binding. . But after five years, Rothe wanted to see the family business grow in a new direction.
“I've been binding books my entire life,” Rothe said. “It just didn't excite me any longer. I wanted to find a way to capture the great manufacturing capabilities that we have and spin it into something that everybody can enjoy.”
Rothe's father, Tom Rothe, said he didn't really want his two sons to go into bookbinding.
“My father started the business in 1969. Right out of high school, this is what I did,” Tom Rothe said as the whirring of his machines began to fade at the end of a Friday work day. “At the time it seemed like a good thing to do, but the digital age has really killed this business.”
Many of Allied's competitors have closed as business has slowed, he said. The company's primary source of revenue comes from binding labor union manuals.
Tom Rothe said he's hopeful his son's spinoff company offers a way forward for the family's binding business.
“There used to be seven or eight binderies, now there are down to four in Baltimore,” Tom Rothe said. “That's where Write came along. It's going to try to fill the void.”
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