About Us
Kimberly cares about making fine Japanese stationery goods accessible to those who don't live in Japan. After finishing her M.A. in the midwest, and finding it difficult to access Japanese pens and notebooks online, she and Frank founded Tokyo Pen Shop. Having been both a student and teacher of Japanese, she cares about the unique needs of those studying a character-based language. The fine precision detail required a finer pen, and the quest for the perfect pen began.
Kimberly got into e-commerce technology a little by accident. Her first job out of school was in a technical role at an e-commerce start-up in the San Francisco Bay Area. She then went on to work in other technical roles for the worldwide Apple Online Store for Apple Inc. until 2013, when Kimberly + Frank both left their ‘day jobs’ to work on Tokyo Pen Shop full time.
Frank was an early convert to fine Japanese pens (Kimberly can be very persuasive) and hasn't looked back. Even though his background is in hardware engineering (he also worked for Apple until 2013), he leads development of www.tokyopenshop.com and loves every second that doesn't involve fixing bugs that only appear in IE6.
Frank loves technology and the internet as much as Kimberly loves Japanese pens. When Tokyo Pen Shop is experimenting with accepting BitCoin, low-speed product photography, or improvements to your shopping cart, Frank is usually the one behind the scenes voting for the experiment and making it happen.
We are so grateful for the support of our customers, who have allowed us to combine our love of merchandising Japanese stationery with technology. Tokyo Pen Shop was founded in 2008 and has been thriving with your support ever since!