Idea Cafe

New to Idea Cafe: Prints

Tue, 02 Nov 2010 09:25:05 -0400

An essential aspect of a comfortable and productive office environment is an attractive work space. Nice notebooks help create that, but so can items that offer only form, not function. When I created the store, I always had a vision of offering various types of items, and quality prints was high on the list.

And so, I’m excited to offer a new type of product on Idea Cafe. Each month, we’ll be featuring a new artist, each with a small number of our favorite photos. Starting today, there are a few hand picked prints available from one of our online friends and favorite artists, Joshua Longbrake.

Check out the images for November and if desired, order a print (available in various sizes). It’s an honor to be able to make these available to you, so I give a big thank you to Joshua for being the first featured artist on Idea Cafe.

New Month, New Features

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 17:55:00 -0400

We’re pretty excited to be entering our second month of business here at the Idea Cafe. And with a new month comes a new group of featured items. Here’s what in focus for September:

The Red Eye Bundle: three notebooks targeted for the designer.
The Action Runner from Behance
Large Squared Moleskines are 20% for the entire month

Well Come!

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 12:39:54 -0400

Or, as we say nowadays, welcome.

I’m so excited to announce that Idea Cafe is now open for business. It’s been a long couple of months of preparation, but so worth it. There’s nothing quite like the experience of entering a market in which you have zero experience, only a sprinkling of capital, plenty of terrific competition, and you’re armed only with a bucketload of passion.

My name is Chris Bowler — I have a notebook fetish.

I know I’m not alone. Thousands of blogs dedicated to subjects like the PigPog Method and the Hipster PDA proves it. And although most of us fanatics have recognized that working is in fact better than tinkering, plenty of folks still enjoy the action of writing things down on paper, and crossing them off. With a pen.

Over the past 5 years, I’ve used a lot of the higher quality notebooks available. With pleasure.

What is often not a pleasure however, is getting those notebooks to my home. For some reason, a lot of the people creating these notebooks tend to operate like a traditional brick-and-mortar organization, highlighted by unfriendly web experiences. As well, I never found that one great resource where I could browse and purchase all my favorite notebook brands. I wanted a shop where I could pick from Moleskine or Rhodia, Field Notes or Behance.

Finding none, I decided the Internet would be a better place with such store and created my own.

And so, I bid you a warm welcome.

Idea Cafe?

The big question in every new web venture — what’s in a name? In this case, it’s simple — ideas are cheap, execution and implementation much less so. But you’ll never get to step B and C if you fail to capture A. And since many people, myself included, enjoy thinking out loud on paper, this is a place you can arm yourself with the tools to capture your great — and not so great — ideas.

As for the Cafe, well, that’s another passion of mine. I love coffee, espresso, and all the culture that goes with that crowd. And I’ve always had a romantic notion of owning my own cafe, despite the reality of being an incredibly hard business to experience success. But this is a first step. At some point down the road, Idea Cafe will hopefully offer more than notebooks. Stay tuned.

Lastly, cafes evoke a warm, comforting atmosphere. And that’s my aim here. So stick around — laptop squatters welcome.