Buying Leuchtturm1917 for Your Team? 4 Mistakes That Cost Me $1,200

If you're buying Leuchtturm1917 notebooks for your team, here's the answer before the story: match the product to the workflow, or you'll waste money. The A5 hardcover medium (#251) and the pocket bullet journal are not the same notebook in two sizes. They're different tools with different jobs. I learned that by spending $1,200 of my company's budget on the wrong ones.

Why you should trust this

I've handled office supply orders for a 40-person marketing agency since 2019. Six years, roughly 200 orders, including a lot of Leuchtturm1917. I've personally made—and documented—4 significant purchasing mistakes, totaling about $1,200 in wasted budget. Maybe $1,400, I'd have to check the spreadsheet.

I'm not a stationery expert. I'm not a paper engineer. I'm the person who processes the invoice and then watches whether anyone actually uses what I ordered. That's a useful, and honestly pretty revealing, vantage point. After the third mistake, I created a team ordering checklist, and we've caught 47 potential errors with it in the past 18 months.

Four mistakes that cost me $1,200

Mistake #1: I bought A5 for everyone

The A5 #251 is a brilliant notebook. For a desk. The project managers who ran client calls loved the numbered pages, the index, the thread-bound construction that lets it lie flat. Great for documentation.

In my first team-wide order, spring 2020, I bought 30 A5s. I didn't ask the team what they needed. But 40% of them worked in the field—they needed something that fits in a jacket pocket, something you can write on while standing at a loading dock. The A5 is too big for one hand. They didn't tell me, because they didn't want to seem ungrateful. 30 notebooks ordered, 12 actually used. The remaining 18 sat in the supply closet until I redistributed them last year. Worse than expected.

Here's something the product pages don't make obvious: the "medium" in "A5 medium" refers to the size class—A5 is their mid-size format, with A6 called "pocket" and A4 called "master." And the pocket bullet journal is not a miniature A5. It's a different system, designed for rapid capture, with an index and dot grid that support the Bullet Journal method. The A5 is for collecting and reflecting. The pocket is for catching thoughts before they disappear. If your people move during the workday, they probably need the pocket size.

Mistake #2: I ignored ruling preferences

Ruled, dotted, plain, grid. It sounds like a minor detail. Here's the thing: it is not.

A designer on ruled paper feels constrained. They want dots—subtle enough to stay out of the way, precise enough to anchor a layout. A writer doesn't care. An engineer wants grid. In September 2022, I ordered 50 ruled A5s for the agency. The design team just... stopped using them. When I asked, they said "we didn't want to be difficult." That's the polite version of "you bought the wrong thing." Never expected that response. Turns out, people would rather silently dislike a notebook than tell you you've wasted budget.

I still kick myself for not showing them samples first. A two-minute physical test beats a two-page product description. I keep one notebook of each ruling type in the supply room now and make people choose before I place the batch order.

Mistake #3: I assumed everyone knew how to use a fountain pen

Leuchtturm1917 notebooks have a reputation for being fountain-pen friendly. The 80gsm paper handles ink well under normal writing conditions. So I bought the team Drehgriffel fountain pens as a year-end thank-you. A terrible assumption followed.

Roughly half the team had never used a fountain pen. They pressed down the way you do with a ballpoint. Bent nibs. Complained about blobs and "scratchy" writing. The pen wasn't the problem. The technique was.

This gets into pen-and-ink territory, which isn't my expertise. I'm not a nib specialist, and I can't speak to ink chemistry. What I can tell you from an operational perspective:

• A fountain pen writes with gravity and capillary action, not pressure. If you're pushing the nib into the paper, you're fighting the pen.
• Hold the pen at roughly 40–45° to the paper. Too upright and the nib catches. Too flat and the ink flow gets messy.
• If you press hard, you can cause ink pooling. On 80gsm paper, those pools can ghost through to the next page. Not always bleed-through, but visible enough that the next page feels less clean.
• Keep the cap on when you're not writing. A dry nib is a skipping nib.

Put another way: the notebook is not the problem, and the pen is not the problem. The technique is the problem. A 10-minute "how to write with a fountain pen" session for new users would have saved us three returned pens and a lot of grumbling.

For a quick reference point: standard office copy paper is 20 lb bond (about 75 gsm). Premium letterhead is 24 lb bond (about 90 gsm). The Leuchtturm 80gsm paper sits between those two. Heavier than a disposable memo pad, lighter than a dedicated art paper. It's a sensible middle ground for everyday writing, and it rewards a light hand.

Mistake #4: I never tested before scaling

Here's the common thread in all three previous mistakes: I ordered the batch before any real user touched a real notebook. I was working from product descriptions and a general sense that "Leuchtturm is good." It is. But "good" is not the same as "right for this team."

Look, I'm not saying every notebook order needs a month of market research. I'm saying the expensive ones do. One unit, one week, one person in the target group. That's the whole test. A designer would have told me "dotted, definitely" in the first ten minutes. A field auditor would have handed the A5 back and asked for something pocket-sized. I skipped those conversations and paid for the silence.

The checklist I use now

After the third mistake, I wrote this down and put it on the supply room wall. It's not fancy, but it works:

1. List the tasks, not the job titles. Do they write at a desk or write on the move? Desk people get the A5 #251. Mobile people get the pocket bullet journal. A field inspector and a client success manager have entirely different notebook needs, even if their job grades match.
2. Show samples of the ruling options. Physical paper. Five minutes in hand beats five pages of specs online.
3. Ask about fountain pens before someone buys them. If yes, plan a short primer or expect the complaints. The 40–45° angle and a light touch matter more than the notebook model.
4. Order one unit first. One week with one person in the target group. Then place the batch order.
5. Write down the exact product code. "Leuchtturm1917 A5 #251" and "pocket bullet journal" are different orders. I've mixed these up at 2 a.m. during a restock. Never again.

This checklist has caught 47 potential errors in the past 18 months. That's 47 near-misses that I paid for with earlier, dumber mistakes.

Where this stops applying

This advice comes from a B2B buyer's perspective, and it has limits. I don't have hard data on which Leuchtturm1917 products sell best overall or which ruling is the global favorite. My sense is that dotted is trending, but that's anecdotal, based on one agency's supply closet.

If you're buying for a legal practice, a writers' retreat, or an architecture studio, the answers may be different. Legal teams often prefer ruled. Poets sometimes want blank pages. And if you're buying for one person as a gift, skip the analysis and ask them. Surprises are overrated in stationery.

I'm also not a logistics specialist, so I can't speak to supply chain quirks or why certain editions show up backordered. What I can tell you from an ordering perspective: check the product code twice, order early enough for a backup plan, and don't rely on memory.