Stationery Pal: Chinese Stationery for Less, Until You See the Shipping Costs

Stationery Pal is a stationery store based in New Territories, which is next to Hong Kong, but not quite in China yet (that's Shenzhen). Therefore, it is able to take advantage of the price differential between China and other continents. Unfortunately, it is a small company and does not have fulfillment power like Temu or Alibaba (Aliexpress), and therefore, the shipping costs are... shocking when you try to check out, no matter how many discount codes you were able to stack on. 

It's probably easier to show you my shopping cart as an example. There aren't that many items, really. 

• 2 stacks of loose leaf paper, A5 (100 sheets and 50 sheets, resp)
• 2 notebooks (A5, at least 100 sheets)
• 4 small fold-flat storage boxes (more like totes)
• 1 brush rest
• 3 small ink bottles
• 1 pen holder (for tying around notebooks)
• 1 micro tip gel pen
• 2 Sanrio "blind box" items

and the June Mystery Set (which is a random mix of stationeries, but will have many pens, pencils, highlighters, markers, erasers, correction tape, stickers, notebooks, and so on). 

The price may seem low, but with 2 discount codes, I was able to drop the total EVEN FURTHER From $38.xx to $32.49. 

However, here's the shipping cost shock: The shipping cost estimate for my order is $24.90.  

One becomes so used to "free shipping" offered by Amazon in the US and Temu from China, the actual shipping costs are just truly "shocking". They almost doubled the price of each item. Which means for the "fungible" items like spiral notebook, Stationery Pal does not **feel** competitive, unless you specifically want those Chinese Kokuyo Campus notebooks (which are NOT the same as the Japanese Kokuyo Campus notebooks!)

SIDENOTE: Kokuyo is a Japanese brand, but they have a branch in China licensed to locals, who has their own domain, kokuyo.cn. And they have a different product line than Kokuyo Japan... and because its priced to compete with Chinese domestic products, the prices are also MUCH cheaper than Japanese Kokuyo. Either it comes in a much larger pack, or the prices are much lower than the ones "made in Japan". 

What you need to do is search for the same items on Temu, and if it's available on Temu, order them on Temu instead, as Temu was often able to offer the same items for "almost" the same price, with free shipping to the US. 

I found the fold-flat storage boxes on Temu for just a few dimes more ($1.77 vs $1.40 here, which is more like $2.50 when you count shipping). 

As for the small ink bottles, generic cylindrical bottles with metal caps are like 10 for $3 (10 ml each) on Temu with free shipping. They don't look as good as the square ones, but they are also a SMALL fraction of the price. 

And only order those you can't find on Temu on Stationery Pal, AFTER factoring in shipping costs (rule of thumb: add 80%) to make sure it is still worth ordering there. You *may* find that your continental store (Amazon, Jetpens, etc.) actually have the item for competitive prices without waiting 8-12 days shipping.