Victim of popularity: Popular Japanese stationery brand’s website buckles under pressure on ‘Hobonichi Day’

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 1 — Hobonichi – heard of it? If you’re a stationery buff you might have seen promotions for Japanese company Hobonichi Co Ltd’s Techo (pronounced tet-cho not tek-kho)yearly planner.

It has even designated a special ‘Hobonichi Day’ for when the planners go on official sale with an entire month of daily reveals and events leading up to the date.

This year it fell on September 1 and the company might have thought it was prepared for the inundation of customers, but it wasn’t.

Within just minutes of the site opening for business, customers from all over the world as well as Japan struggled to make orders, and finding their desired designs or items already sold out.

Any attempt to make payment was met with ‘the server is busy, please try later’ messages.

The site did eventually become usable slightly before 3pm with many popular makes restocked including the limited edition Paddington planners that are a Japan exclusive.

Fans of the brand tend to camp on the website early as some designs are produced in limited quantities or only sold on the website/official Hobonichi stores in Japan.

The popular Animal Crossing cover, using the designs from the hit Nintendo Switch game, sold out almost immediately and can now only be found selling on eBay with prices from US$200 (RM864) onward.

Meanwhile in Malaysia, the only partner store officially selling the much coveted planner in-store is Stickerrific, who opened doors at 11.30am today and already saw long queues waiting for the coveted new releases.

Whatever hasn’t been snapped up in-store will be placed online on Stickerrific’s own webstore.