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Only a few more days to wait until the Mini Pen Show!!

Previous owner, Alan Cohen, will be at the store selling vintage and other pens not usually available here.

We are very excited to also have local pen maker Joe Little set up shop!
Little Pen Designs, owned by Joe Little, is a small business in North
Carolina. Since 2018 he has been dedicated to creating custom fountain
pens, as well as exclusive pen material. All pens are made by hand using
hand tools and a lathe. Joe uses simple designs to create functional
works of art.

Bring in those not so perfect nibs and the very talented technician Deb Kinney will help make those nibs dreamy!

UPDATE 2024-07-24: All positions have been filled.

Crazy Alan’s Emporium is a family owned business in Chapel Hill, in
the Timberlyne Shopping Center at 1129 Weaver Dairy Road.

We are a stationery and art supply store, specializing in fountain
pens, that also carries a constantly changing selection of creative
and eclectic gifts.

One of our long-time employees is moving on, so we are looking for a
new person to join our small team who loves art, stationery, and
helping people find the perfect gifts.

The store has been in Chapel Hill for decades, but changed ownership
in September 2023. The owners are committed to a vision where all
employees earn a living wage with health benefits, and are working
hard to build the business enough to make that a reality. We value
diversity in backgrounds and experiences.

Responsibilities and duties

• Learning about the products we carry, answering customer questions
  about them, and making recommendations
• Running the register (tablet) to check guests out
• Helping to process incoming inventory, including receiving
  deliveries, counting items, entering them in the inventory system,
  pricing them, and putting them out on the shelves
• Helping to keep the store clean and organized, including
  vacuuming, dusting, breaking down boxes, taking out trash, filing,
  and reshelving merchandise
• Answering the phone
• Opening, closing, and staffing the store on your own, once you are
  up-to-speed and comfortable enough
• Occasionally helping to lift and move shelves and other fixtures
  as needed

Qualifications and experience

• Strong communication skills, including: eagerness to initiate
  conversations, and being a good listener
• Knowledge about stationery and art supplies, or an enthusiasm for learning about them
• Dependable and on-time
• Attention to detail even with repetitive tasks
• Ability to occasionally lift and move up to 50lbs for short
  distances
• Ability to move around the ~4,000sqft store for an entire 4-8 hour
  shift

Hours and pay

• At least 20 hours per week on average, with potential for more
• Paid hourly, at a minimum starting rate of $12.00/hr, with
  potential for higher depending on prior experience and knowledge
• Opportunity for wage increases as you gain experience
• Some of our busiest days of the year are weekends, as well as days
  around holidays like Thanskgiving and Christmas, so availability
  to work on some weekends and before/after holidays is a
  requirement
• Our current opening hours are on https://crazyalansemporium.com,
  but are subject to change

Benefits

• Substantial employee discount
• Flexible scheduling within the basic requirement to keep the store
  covered between team members
• Opportunities to have input into the products we carry and how we
  display them
• Work and communicate directly with the owners

How to apply

Please email your resume and a little about a few of your favorite
stationery and/or art-related products to
info@crazyalansemporium.com. We’ll also ask for a few professional
references from candidates we interview. While there is no deadline
for applications, we will be following up on them as we receive them.
We’ll update this posting once the opening has been filled.

This past week, we’ve already seen some of you in the store with
visiting family members — grandkids in need of an art project,
college students home on break — and it’s been so much fun!

Keep us in mind over these next few days if you’re looking for
activities to do with family (jigsaw puzzles, coloring books, or a
game of Ouisi, anyone?) or just to relax and be creative on your own
with pen, paper, and ink.

Now’s also a great time to pick up the gift wrap and bags you might
need for the rest of the year, while our selection is at its peak. We
have local options from Innisbrook and New South Pattern House, as
well as attractive seasonal patterns from Gift Wrap Company.

Updated holiday hours

We will be closed on Thanksgiving Day (November 23).

On Friday, November 24, and Saturday, November 25, we will be open an
extra hour, from 10am – 7pm.

On Sunday, November 26, we will be open from 11am – 6pm.

Visiting artist on Friday and Saturday

From 12pm – 4pm on both Friday (November 24th) and Saturday (November
25th), Jacqueline Sullivan — an amazing painter, calligrapher, bookbinder, and instructor — will be in the store making free custom bookmarks and gift tags for you! In the process, she’ll be demoing some of the calligraphy and other art supplies that we have in the store.

Discounts

Will we be having a sale? Yes, we will be — much of the store will be
10% – 20% off from Friday through Sunday!

Thank you for your support, and for shopping local!

First things first: TOMORROW (Friday, November 3rd) for Fountain Pen Day, we will have Mike Matteson of Inkdependence streaming live from the store! He’ll be streaming from 5pm-6pm, and in the store at 4pm, with some Fountain Pen Day goodies to share. Come geek out about pens, ink, and paper! We’re also having a flash sale — buy $75 or more, and receive a free Pilot Varsity, either to enjoy yourself or give to someone else to introduce them to the hobby.

Now, below, all the other things we’ve been meaning to tell you about. We’ve
been working out the kinks in our mailing list and blog systems, but going forward, you’ll be hearing from us more frequently.

On September 1, 2023, Crazy Alan’s Emporium was sold by Alan Cohen to
new owners John and Michele (us). The store is open for business, with
the same hours you’re used to — Monday through Thursday from 10-7,
Friday and Saturday from 10-6, and Sunday 1-6.

The store has continued to be open since the 1st. We stayed very late
the first couple of nights to rearrange and organize the front of the
store, and are currently working on the back. Please stop in and see
what we’ve done with the place, and let us know what you’d like to see
available in the store!

We’ve received many great suggestions already, and have been acting on
them. We’ve heard the call for more art supplies, and have received
our first big shipments, including watercolors, pastels, many
different art papers, paints, canvas, and much more. We heard the
desire to see more local items, and we’ve brought it some local jigsaw
puzzles featuring images from around North Carolina, and locally made
wrapping paper with cityscapes of Chapel Hill and Durham.

We know it’s time to be picking out your new planner/calendar for 2024
— we have the Quo Vadis, Exacompta, At-A-Glance, and Leuchtturm ones
that Alan has carried for years.

Besides making sure we have what you’ve asked for, we’re also bringing
in products that we love and want to share with you. We have Fresh Cut
Pop-Up Flower Bouquet Cards; many attractive editions of Field Notes
pocket notebooks, including the latest two releases (“Birch Bark” and
“Foiled Again”); Lochby waxed canvas products, including a pocket
field journal that is a perfect way to carry your Field Notes, and a
larger A5-sized field journal with Tomoe River paper inserts; washi
tape; and many new boxed card and letter sets, including some from
Midori. When it comes to fountain pens, we are keeping stocked in
Pilot, Kaweco, LAMY, and Sailor, and have added TWSBI — brightly
colored piston-filler pens that are great for showing your favorite
bottled ink through their translucent, large capacity bodies.

A little about our story

Michele and I are both fountain pen enthusiasts and lovers of all
things stationery. We were customers of Alan’s for years before this,
and are very grateful to him for all of the fun and the many beautiful
pens, inks, and notebooks he’s provided us over the years. It means a
lot to us to be able to keep the store going, and we greatly
appreciate how hard Alan worked (and is still working!) to make this
transition successful. You’ll still find him in the store most Mondays
(but sometimes Tuesdays or Wednesdays if he was at a pen show over the
weekend) from 12-4, for the next ~4 months.

This is the first retail business Michele and I have owned, but we
jumped at this opportunity because of how much sense it makes with our
story. In high school, we worked together in my mother’s store in Michigan selling custom cards, invitations, and calligraphy prints. Later, Michele was assistant manager at several Borders stores. She graduated with a degree in English literature and gender studies. I graduated in philosophy and then earned an MFA from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. Michele has been working in Occupational Therapy with seniors for the last several years, and I was the executive director of a nonprofit focused on solving the social issues created by Big Tech. We share a passion for words, writing, art, creativity, and finding the perfect gifts for loved ones and friends, and we will be shaping the store around those interests. Besides Michele and I, you’ll also still see familiar faces Aya and Alina, who worked with Alan and are staying on. They have extensive knowledge about the items we carry, and we couldn’t be doing this without them!

The future!

We’ll be posting regularly about new products as they come in, and
about upcoming sales and events. We’ll have a grand “reopening” event
once the dust settles a bit, and we plan to have space for classes,
presentations, and meetings going forward. To keep up with everything,
you can:

• Subscribe to the mailing list
• Follow us on:
  • Mastodon (our preference!)
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
• Subscribe to this blog by RSS

We’ll be making making many improvements to our online presence in the
coming months, including enabling online ordering with in-store
pickup, and a better web site design. We look forward to seeing you in
the store, and hearing all your ideas for events, and products to
have. You can also reach us by email at info@crazyalansemporium.com
or through our contact form.

Thank you for your support, and for shopping local!

P.S. Check us out in the Daily Tar Heel!