I judge cities by coffee + stationery. Also: A wearable sleeping bag #91

Welcome back to the latest installment of what’s hot in brands and products.

We’re technically already on our way back and just a few hours from home, but Asia is still loud in my head.

On Friday in Hong Kong, our first stop wasn’t Victoria Peak.

It was CN Square in Kowloon — a nerdy little place for paper and pens, and (unsurprisingly) impossible to leave empty-handed.

That’s when the pattern showed up again: when I travel, I’m not chasing highlights. I’m looking for an anchor.

In every city I travel to, I arrive with a list of the most promising specialty coffee places and stationery shops.

Coffee is the obvious one. Stationery is the quieter tell. A great pen shop rarely sits next to an “I ♥ HK” neon tank-top store. It’s a neighborhood signal.

If you want to know why these 'third places' matter more than the landmarks, I wrote about it here.

If you’re new around here: Every week, I share 5 of the nicest products from Europe I’ve discovered in the past 7 days.

I scout, you explore. Let’s get to it!

With love 🌞
Jakob

P.S.: Missed the last edition? The salt + pepper mill by Sebastian Marbacher was the most-clicked product.

Someone found 100-year-old pudding molds and said: “That’s the shape.” Designed by STUDIO BERG and hand-blown in Germany, a little dramatic, and it makes whatever you put under it look 10x more intentional than it deserves. Cake, keys, a single lemon — all valid. (I’d even cover nothing, just to feel like a curator.)

Cover something random.

A lamp for people who hate visual noise. Martinelli Luce makes the Grammoluce, and the trick is beautifully simple: three glass spheres control the light — place them on top and it shifts in brightness and warmth. It’s a small tactile ritual that also happens to look calm on a sideboard. Designed by Min Dong (Studio Habits).

Watch the spheres in action.

The rare power strip you don’t want to hide. AVOLT turned an everyday eyesore into a clean little block — minimal form, magnetic mounting, and a layout that makes sense for real desks: sockets + USB-C. It won’t change your life. It will clean up your cables.

Fix your cable mess.

A Berlin classic that looks like it was drawn with a ruler — on purpose. Schindelhauer builds the Siegfried, and it’s as clean as bikes get: belt drive (so no lube, no grime) plus a flip-flop hub so you can run it fixed or singlespeed depending on your mood / city / knees. Quiet, fast, and good-looking.

Configure yours.

Standing in the 3° rain at Munich airport, waiting for the train, this would be my February hero: a wearable sleeping bag that lets you stay outside without the 7 layers. Sittingsuits makes it windproof, water-repellent, breathable, one-size, and designed to throw over whatever you’re already wearing. The Artist Edition “Vino Baby” is the fun one.

Throw it on.

Not a subscriber? → Join for free

Know someone who’d love this? → Share it with them in one click.

Help me scout better. What’s missing from your shelf? → Take the Reader Survey.