imSTONE RockBook: a stone-paper notebook with almost no independent coverage

A notebook whose pages are made from pulverised stone rather than wood pulp — waterproof, tear-resistant, and unusual enough that the idea alone sells it. The campaign behind it posted 46 updates for 462 backers, which is an unusual amount of communication. Outside verification is another matter: the one piece of coverage that turns up is by a paid campaign collaborator.

Maker: imSTONE, founded by Jeff Chow. The campaign page gives Tainan City, Taiwan; the creator profile gives Norwalk, CA
Price: US$32.99 for the White Rock Book on the maker’s own store. The range runs from US$6.99 for a pocket size to US$42.00 for the larger assorted-pages RockBook. Confirmed on 7 August 2026 and may change.

46 updates on a US$26,000 campaign

We normally report update counts as a footnote. Here it is the headline finding.

Source: the campaign page, read on 7 August 2026.

Forty-six updates for 462 backers works out to one update for every ten people who paid. A creator who writes that often is not a creator who took the money and stopped answering.

The rest of the record is thinner

Three campaigns, and each one raised less than the last.

Two things about this table. None of the three carries Kickstarter’s “Marked as fulfilled” label. And the creator account last logged in on 14 January 2021 — over five years before we looked.

Neither of those means the company stopped trading. The shop is live, takes orders, and quotes shipping times, which we confirmed on 7 August 2026. It does mean that if something goes wrong, the Kickstarter page is not where you will reach anyone.

The account carries Kickstarter’s Backer Favorite and Repeat Creator badges, and shows zero backed projects.

The one piece of coverage, and why we are discounting it

We looked for reviews by people who had used a RockBook. We did not find one.

What search returns instead is a page at Gadget Flow. Gadget Flow Official is listed as a collaborator on the RockBook campaign itself, on the campaign’s own creator page, alongside a marketing agency and several named individuals. A collaborator is a paid promotional partner. That page is advertising, and we are not counting it as an outside source.

Beyond that: Amazon listings for four RockBook variants, which are shops rather than reporting, and the maker’s own materials. No named writer at a publication with editorial staff, that we could find, has put one of these notebooks on a desk and written about it.

For a product on sale since 2018 and carrying a design award, that is a thinner record than we expected, and it is the reason most of the claims below sit in the second list rather than the first.

What the maker publishes

Three notes.

The weight is missing, and for stone paper that is the specification that matters most. Stone paper is denser than wood pulp. A 128-page notebook of it does not weigh what a 128-page notebook usually weighs, and the maker does not say what it does weigh.

The Red Dot claim is dated 2016 and the campaign ran in 2018. That ordering is plausible — the award would attach to an earlier product in the range, but we could not confirm the entry in an independent record, so we are reporting it as the maker’s claim.

“Waterproof” is asserted, not specified. There is no immersion time, no ink-and-water test, no standard cited. For the product’s central selling point, that is a gap nobody outside the company has filled.

One detail we found honest

The shop carries listings headed “Amazon Returned Product, Sold As Is” across the range — twelve of them when we counted on 15 August 2026, including the White and Gray Rock Book — sold separately from the new stock.

A small operation could quietly return those to the shelf. Listing them as returns, under their own heading, is a choice, and it is the kind of small honesty that tends to travel with larger ones.

Pros

• 46 campaign updates for 462 backers, or one update for every ten people who paid
• Three funded campaigns, and the product reached open retail on two channels
• 128 pages at 14.8 × 21 cm, the first 64 cross-dotted and the last 64 lined
• Writes with four named pen types, which is a more useful claim than “smooth”
• Returned stock is listed as returned stock rather than quietly resold
• A genuinely unusual material at a normal notebook price

Cons

• No review by anyone outside the company that we could find, in eight years on sale
• The one piece of coverage search surfaces is by a listed campaign collaborator
• The waterproof claim — the product’s whole premise — has no test or standard behind it
• No weight published for a paper whose defining property is that it is denser than paper
• The creator account has been dormant since January 2021, and none of the three campaigns is marked fulfilled
• Each successive campaign raised less than the one before
• No published account of how the pages behave over time — whether ink smudges, whether the surface scuffs, how the binding holds

Where this leaves a buyer

If the appeal is the material — a notebook you can spill coffee on — this is the product that makes that claim, and the maker has shipped three campaigns and stayed on sale for eight years. If you want that property confirmed by someone other than the company, wait: nobody has published a test.

FAQ

Is it really waterproof?
The maker says so and the material is plausible — stone paper does not absorb water the way wood pulp does. But no published test exists that we could find, from the maker or anyone else, so we cannot tell you how it behaves when actually soaked.

Can I write on it with a fountain pen?
The maker lists ballpoint, erasable pen, pencil and permanent marker. Fountain pens are not on that list, and on a non-absorbent surface that omission is probably deliberate.

Is the company still trading?
The shop is live and takes orders, which we checked on 7 August 2026. The Kickstarter account has not been logged into since January 2021.

Did the Kickstarter backers receive it?
The evidence points that way: 46 updates, an open comment section, and the product on open sale since.

Is US$32.99 the real price?
It is the price on the maker’s store on 7 August 2026. Smaller sizes start at US$6.99. Check before you buy.

Where to buy

Loupe has not handled this product. Every figure above is linked to the source it came from.