Several years ago, I reviewed a classic Scottish notebook: the Alwych Book.
I bought mine at a shop in New York, but I think they’ve always been easier to find in the UK. However, thanks to some unusual web traffic coming to my review, I noticed that it seems like they may be getting hard to find no matter where you live!
The Alwych website shows many of their products as Out of Stock:
The versions with an A-Z index are available, but all on sale, so maybe they’re being cleared out?
The same company makes another line of retro-looking notebooks under the Denbigh brand name. Looks like some of these ones are going out of stock too:
Amazon has sometimes had listings for Alwych notebooks, but they don’t seem to be available right now. They’re also out of stock at European Paper.
I found a Reddit thread discussing the situation. Sounds like they actually stopped producing these a couple of years ago, and have been telling customers that although they hope to bring them back into production they don’t have any current plans to do so.
I hope this company isn’t going out of business, though I imagine it’s hard for a small, independent brand to survive and compete nowadays in a world dominated by international paper conglomerates. These are charming, well-made notebooks that deserve to live on!
They may show up on auction sites with inflated prices soon. Sad to see them fade out.
I remember reading your original review, buying one and using it to start keeping a diary a few years ago. I’m based in the UK and can concur that I’ve been unable to get another one since, which is a shame because I very much enjoyed writing in it.
I received this message from the company:
“Unfortunately, we do not have any idea when the books will be restocked.
Due to ill health in the family, production has not been scheduled.”
I think they were victims of Covid and just haven’t been able to recover. A shame–they were on the brink of being discovered by the broader world, especially after your pioneering review. I love these notebooks. I do hope that they come back someday.
I can’t claim to be a pioneer in reviewing these– I think I found out about them via the new defunct blog Black Cover.