Denik

Denik's first notebooks were assembled in a room of Tyler Tolson's apartment in Logan, according to the Herald Journal in 2012. The company had no office, and no one drew a paycheck. It had a Logan business license that cost under $100 and a school to build in Mali, which was getting $1 from every notebook.

Tolson was a Utah State student and a former student body president when the idea, in his words, hit him like a lightning bolt the summer before. An earlier company he had started, Pargo Tech, which let customers reserve parking at big sporting venues, covered Denik's startup costs. Square One Printing, a local business, printed the notebooks while Tolson got the materials and put them together himself.

The pitch was that buying a notebook should come with a story. Tolson started with his own designs and then asked people at Utah State to submit art. Later he added artists from Salt Lake City and Southeast Asia, whom he reached mostly through social networking. Jordan Haws and Chris Reese helped found the business, and the three planned to look at schools in Nepal and Honduras the following year.

By 2017 the Deseret News was calling Denik a Logan-based notebook manufacturer, and Tolson was its CEO. The company says it now sells in more than 8,000 retail stores and offers more than 500 exclusive designs from hundreds of artists, or a custom notebook in any quantity from your own art. Print-on-demand orders spend five to ten business days in production before they ship. Artists can also put their own work on notebooks to sell to their audiences, and the catalog runs from $11.99 classic notebooks to a $38 hardcover sketchbook with a vegan leather cover.

The schools kept coming. The company says it has funded almost ten, beginning with Zambougou, Mali, in 2015 and Sebela in 2017, with its partner Mali Rising, which says it has helped villages build 20 schools since 2004. The seventh, in Nguebeul, Senegal, was finished in 2023 with 1,195 volunteer days from the community and replaced a structure of zinc panels where scorpions were often found.

Denik says it will reprint any notebook that arrives damaged or fails within three months, and it does not take returns on custom items because they were made for one customer. The catalog includes a layflat notebook called What Am I Even Doing, $11.99.

The first dollar came from a notebook assembled in a Logan apartment, and the seventh school stands in Senegal.