Flax Pen to Paper: The Next Generation

Outside its home area of Southern California, Flax Pen to Paper flew under the radar for decades. Now under new ownership, this is about to change.

- REINHARD KARGL

It takes a lot of courage and long-term vision to acquire a niche business in times of a global crisis. The new purveyors of Flax Pen to Paper, business partners Jeremy Saumure and Jeremy Schuster (affectionally known together as “the Jeremys"), certainly courage and vision.

I caught up with Jeremy Saumure while he was partaking in a typical Southern California ritual: commuting long distance on the infamous 405 freeway. By 2015, he was in a management position at Francis-Orr, another iconic, high-end stationer and gift retailer in Orange County, California. But Saumure was looking for a new challenge. After meeting the owners of Flax, there was talk about going to work for them. When Saumure heard that they were planning to retire, Saumure and Schuster ended up buying the store instead. The two Jeremys have known each other for 20 years, which has forged them into a natural team.

In January 2020, much of China was already in COVID lockdown. And yet, Saumure says, "Some Flax customers from the nearby UCLA medical faculty were still thinking that the danger would pass in maybe six weeks." But it didn't. By February 2020, Los Angeles County announced an emergency and required non-essential businesses to suspend face-to-face operations.

Flax was completely unprepared for a lack of in-person sales. According to the UCLA campus newspaper the Daily Bruin, in 2014, the former Flax owners had "made the personal decision not to sell merchandise online because they felt it would diminish the personal dimension of their product."

Despite the crisis and uncertain future, the two Jeremys continued the negotiations and officially became the new owners of Flax on July 1, 2020. With that, they had acquired not just a brick-and-mortar store, but an institution built by a family dynasty.