Stationery From Thailand

I personally don’t trip across a lot of pens, mechanical pencils and stationery products in general from Thailand and so don’t really think of there being a particularly large or export orientated mechanical pencil and stationery industry in Thailand, but maybe there’s more going on there than I imagine?

Since Thailand has a lot of rubber trees it wouldn’t surprise me to see latex rubber erasers from there, even though I don’t recall ever seeing any. I have seen some plastic erasers from Thailand though, like this one.

Personally I only have one mechanical pencil of Thai origin.

Actually strictly speaking the statement is “Assembled in Thailand”. I have seen some implications that the actual components are of Japanese origin.

I do though know one brand of mechanical pencils and writing instruments associated with Thailand, and that is ‘Niji’. Now that sounds Japanese to me and it is a brand of Yasutomo and Company, who also have housebrands of ‘Yasutomo’ and ‘Y&C’.

From the Yasutomo USA website “Yasutomo and Company was established in June, 1954 by Mr. Ben Yasutomo. A man of vision, Mr. Yasutomo believed that "global marketing" was possible back in the 1950’s because he recognized that consumers in both the USA and Japan wanted products from the other’s country. He decided to set up an office in San Francisco, strategically located to develop commerce between the two countries. The initial goal was to supply stationery and artist materials from Japan to the USA and to distribute American candy and snack food products to Japan.”

Various web searches quickly indicate that Yasutomo seem to source quite a bit of product from Thailand. I don’t currently have any Niji mechanical pencils, but I do have some Niji lead refills, courtesy of JiBi_AI from Thailand. She tells me that they used to be common but these days they are rather rare, perhaps discontinued.