A quick note on why TRP matters to us

I want to say this up front, I am a Hobonichi fan. Hobonichi is the reason I fell in love with Tomoe River paper in the first place. It is also the tool that inspired me to use a planner every single day and showed me how a minimalist layout could become something truly personal. That experience is what set Wonderland 222 in motion.

We are TRP fans. The only reason we moved away from it was the 2025 quality crisis. This is important context for everything that follows.

What happened in 2025

Wonderland 222 planner and notebook in Deep Pacific and Daffodil

We used Sanzen Tomoe River paper in our 2024 planners and notebooks, when the broader stationery community made the transition from Tomoegawa to Sanzen. Our 2024 batch had no quality issues, and we were happy with how the paper performed.

By early 2025, that changed. It was clear the stationery community had a serious problem. Sanzen shipped paper with significant quality issues. Brands across the industry, not just planner makers but notebook brands and retailers, were dealing with quality problems, customer complaints, and in some cases unusable stock. The community conversations were everywhere: the Facebook groups, the forums, the YouTube reviews. Something was wrong with the paper.

We were fortunate to avoid the disaster entirely because we used reserved Tomoe River paper by Tomoegawa, the original manufacturer of TRP, for our 2025 planners & notebooks. Our 2025 books were unaffected. But as we looked at 2026 production, we had to make a call, and we had to make it with little to no word from Sanzen acknowledging the quality issue.

The decision for 2026

We had two real options:

We could order Sanzen Tomoe River paper and hope the quality issues were resolved, betting our entire 2026 production run and our customers’ trust on a "maybe".

Or we could source a high-quality fountain-pen-friendly alternative from a different manufacturer and protect our customers from receiving a product we could not fully stand behind.

We chose the latter. It was the conservative call, and it was the right one based on what we knew at the time.

How we communicated the transition

When we announced the paper change, we leaned into transparency about the paper itself, even though we kept the manufacturer confidential. We ran extensive fountain pen ink tests with hundreds of inks. We tested journaling pens, gel pens, fineliners, brush pens, highlighters, and watercolor. We asked our customers to tell us which inks they used, and we tested those too.

We showed what worked, what did not work, and where the new paper behaved differently than classic TRP.

We shared multiple blog posts explaining the switch and answered questions directly in our Facebook group, on Instagram, and over email. Our goal was to give customers a clear sense of how the paper performed and where it behaved differently, while recognizing that no test could account for every pen, ink, or setup.

Why we kept the manufacturer confidential

This is the part we want to be most direct about, because we know it created trust questions for some of you.

As a small business, our competitive position matters. Over the years, we have watched small competitors sit inside our community spaces, track our customer conversations, post links to their sites/social media, copy product suggestions, and in some cases replicate design choices we originated. That is a real cost for us, and it shapes how openly we can talk about supplier relationships.

When we switched to the new paper for 2026, we did not know if it would be a one-year solution or a long-term partnership. Disclosing the manufacturer before we had fully evaluated it, and while we were still assessing whether Sanzen would recover, would have handed our competitors a ready-made playbook. So we made the call to protect the source while we evaluated it.

How the 2026 paper is performing

The 2026 paper performs beautifully. Same ultra-lightweight feel, same fountain pen friendliness, same low bleed-through as Tomoe River. Some inks behave slightly differently on it, which is true of any paper, including between different Tomoe River production runs by the same manufacturer.

The response from our community has been overwhelmingly positive. Customers have shared their ink tests with the majority telling us the paper holds up to what they expect from a Wonderland 222 planner. Some longtime TRP users let us know they could tell the difference, and that feedback, along with the broader community conversation, helped guide our 2027 decision.

Why we are returning to Sanzen Tomoe River for 2027

For 2027, based on our observations throughout the industry and the new paper samples we tested, we believe Sanzen has resolved the quality issues. The paper now coming out of their mill appears to be consistent and performing the way Tomoe River paper should. That gave us the confidence to return to it for the 2027 line.

Tomoe River paper has always been an important part of Wonderland 222’s story, and we know it remains meaningful to many of our customers as well. Returning to it for 2027 reflects both renewed confidence in the paper and our continued commitment to making careful, long-term decisions about what goes into our books.