I have been doing this for a long time, which is a little strange to say because I still very clearly remember when it started.
The 1407 Planners officially started in March of 2015. At the time, it was really about planner inserts, with some deco mixed in, and I was printing and creating things for people who wanted their planners to work a little differently than whatever they could buy off the shelf.
Then in August of 2018, The 1407 Planners became Tula XII.
That was a much bigger change than just a new name because that was when I launched the actual planner system — covers, interchangeable inserts, and the idea that you shouldn't have to buy an entirely new planner just because one part of your life changed. You could build it, change it, add to it, take things out and make it work for whatever season you were in.
And then, because apparently I cannot leave anything alone forever, we changed again.
In July 2026, we made some pretty big changes behind the scenes, changed platforms and officially became Tula XII Paper Co. I wanted the name to reflect what we had actually become. We are making journals, paper goods, creative projects, stickers and all kinds of things that still have paper at the center of them.
We've also been having entirely too much fun on TikTok, but that's another story.
Somewhere during all of these years, I started thinking about opening a storefront.
Last year I actually considered it pretty heavily. I looked at spaces, thought through what it could look like and tried to figure out whether it made sense, and ultimately decided it wasn't the right time. I still wanted to do it, but wanting to do something and it actually being the right business decision are two very different things.
This year, though, things started coming together again.
My original thought was absolutely downtown Troy. I love downtown Troy, I'm on the Troy Main Street board, I love the businesses that are there and I love what downtown has become. I could picture the store there, and I spent quite a bit of time trying to make that version of the idea work.
It just didn't.
Not because I stopped loving the idea, and not because I suddenly decided I didn't want to be downtown, but because sometimes you can keep trying to force all the pieces into place or you can look around at the pieces you already have.
And apparently I already had a store.
While I was working through all of this, I had converted part of our existing building into a workshop space. We had put time and money into it, and when it was finished it was beautiful. I loved being in there. It had the feel I wanted, we had parking, we already had the building, and all of the printing and production that happens behind the scenes at Tula XII was literally right there.
At some point I looked at this beautiful room and thought, Why am I about to go spend a whole bunch more money creating another space when I could turn this into a store?
So that's what I did.
And once I made that decision, Inked Leaf started to make a lot more sense.
I didn't want to open a Tula XII store where the only thing on the shelves was our own product. Of course Tula XII is a huge part of it, and I love that people can finally come in and touch the covers, flip through inserts, look at paper and actually see how all of these things work together instead of trying to figure it out from a photo or a 47-second TikTok where I am talking too fast.
But I wanted more than that.
I wanted the kind of stationery store I like walking into. Pens you want to try. Journals you definitely do not need but somehow leave with anyway. Paper, stickers, little creative things, local Troy goods, gifts and things that make you stop because you've never seen them before. I wanted room to bring in things from other brands alongside the things we make here. I wanted a place where someone who isn't a planner person could still walk in and find something they love.
And I still wanted the workshops.
That part never went away just because the workshop room became the store. If anything, the idea got bigger. I want people to come here to shop, but I also want them to come here to make things, learn something, journal, play with paper, meet other creative people and occasionally make something they weren't quite sure how to make when they walked in.
So no, Inked Leaf isn't sitting right in the middle of downtown Troy like I originally pictured.
We're about a mile away.
Which, by the way, is a distance we would all happily walk on vacation in Europe while carrying three shopping bags and talking about how charming everything is, so I feel like we can handle the drive.
Looking back, I actually like the way it happened better.
I didn't sign a lease somewhere because I felt like opening a storefront was the next thing I was supposed to do. I didn't need to suddenly become a traditional retail business because we've never really done things in a particularly traditional order anyway.
I took a space I already had, looked at what we'd built over the last eleven years and asked what else it could become.
The 1407 Planners was inserts.
Tula XII became a planner system.
And now Inked Leaf gives all of it a front door.
I think that's my favorite part.
After more than eleven years of selling paper through a screen, packing orders into boxes and watching this business change approximately 900 times, you can actually walk in.
And I can't wait to show you around.