La Compagnie du Kraft

At the origin: notebooks and workshop

Landes foresters

The Compagnie du Kraft is the most unproductive notebook manufacturer in the Western world. That is its charm, shall we say. But it has also been producing notebooks since 1930, originally dedicated to professional foresters. Our products come from popular culture: the foresters of the Landes made notes on the felling of trees. A few words were also intended for the women in charge of forestry. Do you see the picture? Lumberjacks who wrote to their wives - we found no trace of love letters, however.

People of the people
Popular does not mean for everyone, it may even be the opposite. We are the heirs of this culture, a small pocket of positive resistance to ultra-consumption. For all these reasons we are as incompatible with mass consumption as any of us should be. Serenity is at this price. So relax, write, breathe.


The typography workshop

Allow us to introduce you to Philippe! Our historical typographer has trained the new generation that is taking over... But all our notebooks are always prepared in the old fashioned way. The manufacturing workshop takes up 50 square meters and the equipment is maintained by us because spare parts are difficult to find. Philippe's specialty: “butcher's book” perforation. Using a small mechanism dating from 1948 mounted on large German plates, he punches and prints each sheet of kraft. The funny thing is that the drive cylinders jam as soon as he tries to increase the pace... Then begins the ballet of the craziest paper mechanic in the world.


The rest of the story

Often, when a lover of notebooks discovers La Compagnie du Kraft, he asks us if we produce travel diaries. So we return the question to him: what is a travel diary for you? And often the answer is the same: I don't know! Of course, we are told a little about the material, the quality of the cover, a possible layout of the pages, but hey, a notebook remains a notebook. At the factory, we have a very precise idea of the travel diary, inherited from the use made by Landes foresters of liaison books, the ancestor of our productions. The notebook must resist bad weather, not break up when the humidity is high: the use of glue is therefore prohibited. The travel diary can receive a paper or leather cover, but in any case must remain solid, very solid. In our case, the reinforced kraft covers are not indestructible, but they are indestructible, natural fibers oblige! As for our leather covers, no comment: you are in the world of saddlery, a vegetable-tanned leather that resists everything, for several generations. To sum up: a solid and durable notebook, repairable if your conditions of use are extreme, rechargeable, and whose writings can be archived. We then bring a certain idea of the minimum ecological footprint while allowing you to have a highly personalized tool. Our notebooks - travel or not - are not available everywhere, but accessible from anywhere since they are on sale on our online site. So have a good trip, and don't forget: write, breathe...


Compagnie du Kraft in a nutshell

The factory of another time was a business of men: foresters who had been making notebooks with shears since 1928 for brutes who tried to write down instructions for felling pines and maintaining the plots. But since its rebirth, making indestructible and refillable notebooks has become a women's affair...

Who are we ?

Nicholas

The buyer. Only works with women, it's safer when you have an unstable taste for simple and sober things. He revives the factory with the idea that we are what we are, that marketing is above all an act of sincerity and that even the most raw products can have an ounce of delicacy in them.

marion

Manual production, after-sales service, organic hazelnuts and almonds, everything is under control, well almost. It's not easy to produce 25,000 pieces per year in 12 square meters, but she plans to double her work surface by installing a cultivated bamboo mezzanine on her balcony. All that's missing is a driver's license to transport them to the workshop!


Essential, adj. : which is essential for something to exist.

Air is essential to life. Like a perfume long sought after or like a collector's item, rare by definition, your writings are what characterizes you the most. flying verba, manent scripta. Our job, our essence, is to offer you "written guards" whose simplicity allows them to resist fashion and solidity, to the test of time. Neither statutory image nor translation of cutting-edge trends, you will only find benevolence and the essentials in our notebooks: your thoughts, your words inside, the imprint of your hands on the cover. You, finally. So write, breathe...