Holy heck, Pencil People, 2017 was a VERY eventful year for CWPE. We hardly recognize ourselves from the beginning of the year. Despite some pretty major challenges, we are doing better than ever in our full-sized, fully functional, all-in-one location that we hope to be at for years and years to come. The phrase "When one door closes, another opens" has a whole new meaning to us. 

Here's a recap of our year! 

• After learning a lot of lessons from Pencil of the Month (RIP), we successfully launched a new subscription service and grew it from 300 to 700 subscribers. If you're getting the FOMOs from the box don't fret - we have plans to add even more spots in 2018! 
• Caroline's book about pencil history was published! It made for the most exciting shop birthday/National Pencil Day EVER, and has become one of our best-selling products. Have you read it yet? 
  
• Around the same time, our extra, extra special collaboration with Caran d'Ache was revealed: our dream pencil, The Editor. Half red, half graphite, 100% the best idea we've had. 
• In other collaboration news, we also had special products made with our friends at Dudek Modern Goods, Viking, Moon Products, Damaged Goods, the Pen Addict, and our own Meredith Miotke and Alyx Cullen (both of whom are also responsible for our amazing sampler packs!).
• We redesigned and rebuilt cwpencils.com with all-new product photograph (which, believe us, was a huge undertaking) and new features like wishlists and back-in-stock notifications.
• We very sadly and unexpectedly closed our original location at 100A Forsyth and took a several month hiatus. It really sucked, but it lead to the most important event of the year... 
  
• We opened a brand new shop! The new and improved CWPE is 3 times the size of our original location and even has office space and a full basement where we do all our online fulfillment. We have found our forever home! And bonus: it came with so much extra space that we fulfilled another dream: we opened a STICKER STORE! 
  

Thank you, thank you, you beautiful pencil people. Without your support, none of this would have been possible. Thank you for helping make our pencil dreams into reality and reveling in the joy of freshly sharpened points with us. Now on to 2018! 

With lots of love and graphite,

Caitlin and the Pencil Ladies

Photos, from top: One of the final days in 100 Forsyth Street, and one of the first days at 15 Orchard; the Pencil Ladies celebrating Caroline's brilliant triumphs, the release of The Pencil Perfect and our 2nd birthday; the saddest day - dismantling 100 Forsyth Street; the happiest day - the Pencil Ladies staring very exhausted but happy at the just-completed 15 Orchard store, hours before it opened October 20; the new Pencil Dream Team on opening day (sans Olivia and Antonia, who you can read all about here!).