Market Overview

The domestic stationery and office supplies market for FY2017 based on the shipment value declined by 1.1% from the previous fiscal year to be 464.2 billion yen, marking the first negative growth since FY2014.

The domestic stationery and office supplies market had been sluggish for a while ever since the demand from enterprises had dropped during the economic recession, but for the past few years, some hit products from writing instruments have attracted general consumers to boost the market. However, for FY2017, The sales in the category of writing instruments which had continued growing, went below the previous-fiscal year results, together with paper products continue declining, and majority of the items in the office supplies had declined from what had been about the same size, which eventually led the whole market size to scale down.

The market size for FY2017 by category is as follows: Writing instruments decreased by 0.3% to 97.9 billion yen, paper products declined by 1.8% to 158.7 billion yen, and office supplies down by 0.9% to 207.6 billion yen.

Noteworthy Topics

The demands of the writing materials and office supplies for customizing according to the users' own liking and for making a collection of those items have been on the rise. This has been largely affected by SNS such as Twitter and Instagram and by wide use of internet stemming from prevalence of smartphones. Because such demands are invigorated primarily among women, the market has created the category of "writing materials for girls," which has been rapidly increasing the presence in the market.


The items in the category have a strong tendency to be produced in small lots and with wide variety. Such tendency can strongly fall under future products in writing materials and office supplies, so that there may need some tactics in production processes. 

Research Outline