Welcome to 「HEAVY」

𝐇𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐲 𝐁𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐔𝐬. It's the official shop birthday of our original Rittenhouse location at 1608 Pine Street, opened on this day in 2006. Today we're taking a moment to...

The leaves are falling, the days are getting shorter, and we're adding new songs to our store playlist. This fall edition of Omoi Radio focuses on the shift of the seasons,...

Beautiful sunny weather for exploring the city. Leisurely conversations with friends of the shop. The excitement of new stationery. The creative spirit stoked by simple exchanges of pen and paper....

It's spooky season. Here are five short stories to make the metaphorical hairs on your arms stand up.

It’s been a long time since we last had a meetup, but pandemic precautions are still necessary to operate safely. Since we can’t linger and party in our busy storefront,...

Where do you journal? For some, journaling is best done on the go: on the bus during the morning commute, in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, or in...

A public service announcement to please refrain from asking our Asian staff questions that you would not also ask other staff.

Part 3 of a Brief History covers ghosts, fire, and all the challenges of the last five years and the possibility to come.

Welcome to Omoi Radio, Summer 2021 edition. This season the sounds are mellow but also easy to tap your foot along to. August is always bit of a curious time...

"I have to be able to sit down at either table and open up my biggest notebook, and have space around that for my pencil case and my three beverages...

New to the shop this year is Sailor, a Japanese manufacturer of fine fountain pens and inks. We dive deep into the history of Sailor, the difference between styles and nibs, and ponder...

"When the tools I use resonate on a visceral level, the act of doing these things become more mindful and enjoyable." Today we feature the deskie of our logistics manager, April.

We return with Part 2 of our Brief History of Omoi. By 2012, Philadelphia indie retail seemed to be reassembling itself post-recession. Instagram was on the rise, small business e-commerce...

As we prepare to move our original store into our larger sister store in Old City, we take this opportunity to wax poetic about was it like when Omoi first...

Inspired by my mom likening the closing of the Pine store to sending a kid off to college: our 15-year-old is growing up, so I bring you PROM SONGS: OMOI...

We've very excited to get our many ducks in a row, and start making our Old City location a cozy haven for stationery fiends, cat people, and Baggu fanatics of...

The latest Omoi Radio features the best of what we've been bopping our heads to in the shop: a bit of 90s nostalgia that’s feeling fresh in our minds, alongside...

Love letters have a reputation for being old-fashioned, a relic from a time long ago when lovers were kept apart by great distances, political conflicts, and plagues (sound familiar?), and...

In times as confusing as ours it can seem silly, even pointless, to plan anything. Why bother, when so many things are changing? How do we plan for a future...

On making it through 2020 thanks to our favorite analog companions.

At the height of lockdown we found ourselves reading, journaling, sitting at the kitchen table and staring outside over tea and cookies. In between news doomscrolling, sleeping, coordinating on neighborhood...

Since the last meetup in June, our customers were asking when the next TRAVELER'S notebook meetup would be, and the 2020 planner items were scheduled to drop internationally in autumn....

The angle of the sun has been gradually shifting, and its warmth is now joined by the cool breezes of approaching autumn. Take a September shop tour with us.

A brief meditation on slowing down.

On June 7th, the weather was somewhere in the 80s and generally quite pleasant (no wild storms or intense humidity as in the days before and after). The light of...

January 25th, 2019 saw our second TRAVELER'S meet-up. It was blustery, mid 30ºs with intermittent sun. A classic Philly winter's day. (Although the day before it was almost 60º and...

The weekend before Christmas is near, and we're ready at both shops for all our last minute gifters. We hope this entices you to come out and visit.

Enjoy this little tour of our Old City location in the days before the kickoff holiday sales. 

On September 12th, 2018 in Philadelphia it was 85ºF and the sky overhead was bright and diffuse under a blanket of low, unbroken clouds. We had announced just a few weeks earlier...

Welcome to the second installment of our Burn This series, where we review our own selection of incense and other home fragrance goods. This time we're reviewing the five fragrances of...

Just a few days after Valentine's Day of this year, a four-alarm fire broke out on the corner of 3rd and Chestnut, engulfing multiple buildings in flame and displacing residents and...

Read up on why we love the work of Philly illustrator and muralist, LCAT.

After stocking incense for over a decade, we've been inspired to review our best-selling fragrances. We start off with Nippon Kodo's popular Kayuragi line.

Find out why a single letter determines the two unique meanings of these oft-confused words.

Greetings from Philadelphia! Take a tour of our Rittenhouse location as we step into June.

From the Kanto region to Kansai and back again, read up on where we went, how we traveled, what we ate, what we saw, and where we shopped!