Gillio Meet Up 2023

It’s been a long time since I was at a planner meet up. 2019 was the last time, and it was PlannerCon Europe. It’s been even longer since I went to a brand specific planner meet up, so when a planner friend told me about this, I immediately jumped at the opportunity.

Instead of doing the work I was supposed to be doing, I reserved my place and booked a hotel. This time I decided to stay at the same hotel that a lot of the others were also going to stay at. I’m really glad I did this as we were able to hang out long after the actual planner event happened.

Tom had a bus pick us up to take us to the “secret location”. This ended up being an old paper mill. It was a beautiful old building and we could take a tour of the place if we wanted. We arrived and had some time to mingle and chat before Mella started with the reveals.

So what was revealed? First up was a B6 slim appunto for those Jibun Techo lovers out there. The queen of appunto’s (Theresa) was there to help with the reveal as well which is always fun. It’s the same layout as all the other Appunto’s, so nothing different there, but now you have something for your B6 slim notebooks and planners.

The next items were a limited edition collection inspired by gillionaires and their pets, specifically their cats! They came in 3 different colour combinations (Tuxedo, Sphinx, and Ginger) and will be available in 3 different models.

After this came the very long awaited bags!!! Yes, Gillio sells bags and it’s been so long since they restocked them. Not only did they restock some bags models that they already had, they also adjusted some of them (for example extending the length of the strap for the large tote), and introduced some new bag models. Underneath are pictures so you can get an idea of what the inside looks like. And on top of that, they are in their new leather type.

New leather type? Yes! Gillio has challenged their beloved Epoca leather. They have tried to see if they can do even better than their Epoca and try to recapture some of the qualities that their “vintage epoca” had. My initial impressions are that they have done a pretty good job if I have to go on smell alone. I have a couple of Gigliodoro planners and the smell was VERY similar. Just amazing! Will Epoca be leaving us? No! Epoca will stay, however this new leather type called Toscana will be along side it. All the classic colours will be available (e.g gold, brown, rust, undyed, black, green, red, etc) and there are also new colours available in this leather type.

This was not the only new leather type Gillio had for us. They also revealed that they are testing out planners in real croco leather, and they had a couple of prototypes for us to already get a feel of it. Let me tell you, THEY ARE GORGEOUS!!! Be warned, they are in another price bracket all together. As in, they make the ostrich leather prices look budget friendly! Just saying!

They had 4 colours available and I fell in love with the burgundy and green one. The blue and red are also lovely. They are surprisingly soft and pliable and seem like they will be very durable.

That is already quite a lot of reveals and releases, but there was “one more thing” – The Mella planner. Mella was asked to design a planner and she did so for a planner size that is not common here but apparently is something that can be obtained in Japan. From what I understand the paper size is basically the height of a personal size paper, but even wider than B6/personal wide. People who like rings and the real estate of A5 paper but don’t necessarily like the bulkiness of carrying around A5 rings may find this to be the perfect solution. She also said that Gillio had been in contact with SM Plans and she would be making inserts in that size.

So, that was it! As you can imagine there was a lot of excitement and a lot of shopping. So much so that I didn’t actually do the paper mill tour which I found a pity. The time flew by and before we knew it, the bus was there to take us back to Brussels center. Even if you didn’t buy anything you didn’t leave empty handed because we all got a goody bags!

This post is already getting quite long which is why I haven’t gone into deep details. However, I plan to make a separate post about the limited edition and perhaps also on some of the other things (with some better photos). If you have questions do leave them down below.

Thank you Gillio for a lovely event and creating the opportunity to meet with other planner and Gillio lovers. Hopefully it’s not another 4 years before we can do this again.