Arts & Entertainment
Mark Your Calendars: Saturday Is Stationery Store Day and Chicago Shops Have the Paper Goods
(Patty Wetli / WTTW News)
For folks who love paper and notebooks, pens and journals, Aug. 2 is no doubt a date they’ve had circled in their old-school planners for months.
It’s the fourth annual Stationery Store Day, a big day for shoppers and an even bigger day for mom-and-pop stationers.
The day is the brainchild of Kristina Burkey, who runs a stationery store in Massachusetts. The concept is similar to Record Store Day or Independent Bookstore Day, Burkey has said, in that it encourages people to support locally owned businesses in a specialty category.
“When you Google ‘stationery stores,’ often what comes up is your closest Staples,” Burkey wrote on the Stationery Store Day website. “And that’s not what we want.”
On Saturday, nine stationers in northern Illinois, mostly in Chicago, are participating in the event. Many of them will be selling exclusive merchandise and offering giveaways, swag bags and more.
“People come out for it,” said Amber Favorite, founder of the letterpress greeting card company, A. Favorite Design, and owner of an Albany Park stationery store of the same name.
Since it started in 2022, Stationery Store Day has come to rival Small Business Saturday for sales, Favorite said.
Customers can pick up a Chicago Stationery Store Day passport at any of the nine locations, collect stamps at each shop they visit, and turn it in at their final destination to enter a drawing for a gift basket loaded with stationery goods.
Chicago has been at the center of the stationery revival, not just limited to paper products but all the accessories that go with them — from washi tape to stickers to fountain pens. This past spring, the inaugural Chicago Stationery Fest, organized by the owners of Andersonville’s Paper & Pencil, was a runaway success, with tickets selling out in a matter of days.
2025 Stationery Store Day participants:
Atlas Stationers (Chicago)
& more Paper Goods (Bartlett)
a. favorite design (Chicago)
Bari Zaki Studio (Chicago)
Festive Collective (Chicago)
Greenstar Paperie (Downers Grove)
Papel Arcano (Elmhurst)
Paper & Pencil (Chicago)
SRM Prints Studio + Gift Shop (Rockford)
Check out our coverage of Chicago’s booming stationery scene:
Contact Patty Wetli: @pattywetli | (773) 509-5623 | [email protected]
