The Excellence of Hagoromo Chalk

These wiggly little tubes will end up as sticks of Hagoromo chalk. You'd be forgiven if this writing utensil doesn't make you emotional, but the world's mathematicians might disagree with you. From a very personal point of view, I love that feeling. It's been said that the secret ingredient is angels tears and legend has it it's impossible to write a false theorem with it. Business Insider was unable to confirm or deny these claims. What is certain is that fans of this chalk swear by its smooth performance, consistency and colour range which are unmatched by cheaper brands. You can buy a box of 12 white pieces for $10.50 on Amazon. while Crayola's version goes for as little as 62 cents. These days, it's made in South Korea, but back in 2015, the chalk almost disappeared forever after the original Japanese company and announced it was shutting down. I did remember scavenging for chalk. So as other companies'chalk sales decline, how is this expensive chalk still selling out? And what keeps Hagoromo Heads coming back for more? It sort of like melts on the blackboard. That's the feeling. As you go, it's just like melting very, very gently. And it just writes a lot better. Alvaro Lozano Robledo is a professor of math. at Yukon and would only ever use Hagoromo chalk if he had his way. Like there was some video that I made about it was like Gollum and my precious, you know, the one ring but it was like me, you know, just like looking at pieces of chalk that somebody left behind or something. So I started making more and more videos that were jokes about mathematicians and chalk. The law that surrounds this brand runs deep. People say that it's possible to get a job. You don't have to eat it on purpose, but you can eat up to 70 kinds. But the real secret to making Hagoromo chalk distinctly smooth, pigmented, easy to erase, nearly dustless, and therefore more expensive, is its special formula and production methods. It's these qualities that keep mathematicians reaching for the brand. Making a stick of Hagoromo chalk starts in one of these industrial mixers. The main ingredient is calcium carbonate, which is a compound often referred to as chalk. It makes up 70-80% of the recipe. Cheaper chalks will sometimes be made with gypsum, a mineral used in plaster as the base. It's very cheap and easy to make. But the particles are too light, so it can blow up in the air. With other types of chalk, the piece of chalk will break, pieces will fly, but also a lot more dust is being created as you go along. This one, as I write, just like a couple of dusts, So you put it in, and it made the powder harder. The last known ingredient is kaolin, a natural clay essential for making porcelain. Adding this helps bind the ingredients. The rest of the Hagoromo formula is confidential. All we know is its consistency. It's a top secret. It's a liquid ingredient. It's these materials that Shin Hyung Seok says differentiate Hagoromo from its competitors and bump up its price tag. At this point, white chalk is ready to be shaped into sticks. But there's an extra step for colourful chalk. I mixed the same raw materials with pink alu. In South Korea, Agaromo's white chalk costs 201 per stick. Regular colors cost 401, and the fluorescent line costs 601. The camera can see the color and the saturation is very good. Typical fluorescent pigments contain harmful chemicals like formaldehyde, but Hagoromo uses premium pigments without those substances. Hagoromo has seen the demand for these colours grow as online lectures have been held. have become more popular over the last few years. Alvaro needs a multitude of colours when he's teaching to visualise complex ideas. So here I actually coloured in the triangle in purple, so I'm going to do that also here. So you see the triangle, that that triangle in purple is the same one. that we had before. And just as importantly, he needs them to erase. If you use other brands or cheaper brands like Cariola, if I wrote this on color, it would not come off, you know, for like a week. Colorful chalks with more abrasive formulas tend to leave deposits on the board that muddy the clarity of whatever he wants to teach next. It was amazing the first time I tried with... Color chalk with Hagoramo, it erases just like white chalk does. Once they're mixed, white and colorful chalk are treated the same way. This batch will be left to dry out in a maturation room for about a day and a half before it's ready to be rolled and shaped. It's like the clay we used to play with when we were kids. Much of the equipment used in this process was specially developed or repurposed to make hagaromo chalk, like the machine that kneads the dough before it can be moulded into sticks. It's called a rolling press, and it's made of hard, hard clay. Then, these freshly cut lumps are moulded by a machine specially designed by Hagoromo's former president. Watanabe Takayasusu The machine forms thicker chips. than the average chalk manufacturer. Inside, the dough is compressed so the final texture is firm. It's very compressed. It's almost like making rice cakes. The extruded dough is then cut and left to air dry for up to a day. If you wrap it right now, at 70 to 80 degrees Celsius for about eight hours. When you take it out and shake it, you can hear the sound of pottery clanking. When you hear the sound of cutting, it means it's dry. The average stick of chalk would be ready to package and ship at this point, but Hagoromo takes the extra step of branding and coating its chalk with another specially developed machine. We use rubber to stick the ink on the rubber and push it out. The stamped sticks are then clamped and dipped in a special coating that keeps the dust off your fingers. When they're used side by side, the difference between coated and uncoated chalk is immediately noticeable. Can you use some of that chalk and board and show me why it's different? If I must. It's a little rougher to handle. I'm already getting more dust just from my hands just from using that piece of chalk just for one equation. Alvaro is an official Hagoromo social media ambassador. I started making videos on TikTok, and because writing with Hagoromo chalk is sort of like a meme about mathematics, I would make bits about chalk. And then at some point, I was like, well, maybe I should contact them. And then they said, yes, you can be an ambassador. It's a simple arrangement. He posts about the brand online. And then they send me, from time to time, they send me a box of chalk. So I have a lot to go around, and that makes me happy, so... But a plentiful supply was not always guaranteed. When the original owner, Watanabe Takayasusu, announced that he intended to shut down Hagoromo's only factory in Japan in 2015, Alvaro and his fellow mathematician, felt. They would say that this is starting to like, you know, ration, ration like what chocolate was going to use. Now I want to keep these for like research talks and if I had to teach undergrad. some calculus and oh well I'm gonna have to use the badge hug for a while. Some people went as far as to buy lifetime supplies in anticipation of the closure. I don't think anybody here went so crazy about it to get you know like huge box huge amount of boxes to last us through like the apocalypse. You had your last supplies and that was whatever you had that had to last you through. I don't know, like the end of your career, I guess. Emergency supplies of chalk in case, well, the factory was going to close. And it nearly did. Takayasusu was ill and having a difficult time finding a successor. But the course of that side job led him to form a relationship with Takayasusu. He found it somewhere, so he took me there. So I took it and saw the machine and the factory. He had no idea how to get the machine he was filming. He was just interested in mixing it with the recipe and making it. You wasn't exactly looking to take over, but that visit got him thinking. And in the morning, before I left for Korea, I had breakfast with the owner. I told him this. If the world changes, there are things that will disappear depending on the flow of the world. But even if it disappears, I think the best product should disappear at the end. So the boss cried and said, Takayasu Suk was moved by Hyung Sukk's passion for the brand, but he originally discouraged Hyung Sukk from taking over. It took over six months and 16 shipping containers to get everything from Japan to South Korea. Eventually, staying true to Takayasusu's formula and production methods paid off. I can't tell the difference. I think it still feels great and much better than anything else that I've tried. Chalk usage has been declining internationally for some time. But the unique challenge here is that Hagoromo can't keep up. up with demand. It takes about three days to make a stick of Hagoromo chalk, and much of the process requires a human touch. If we produce a large quantity of products, we can provide more to the users. But any change is a risk when the brand's current success is thanks to honouring tradition. People around the world who use this product want to continue to use this technology and recipe and make it available to the world. But the users have now become manufacturers. If the 2015 transition is any indication, as long as Hyung Sukk can maintain the level of quality fans have come to expect, they will be grateful to get their hands on it. I love that feeling. I love the feeling myself as I'm drawing things and how neatly I can write things down, how precise I can do my lines, how I know that it's not going to, like as I draw that, it's not going to fade.

Business Insider was unable to confirm or deny these claims. What is certain is that fans of this chalk swear by its smooth performance, consistency and colour range which are unmatched by cheaper brands. You can buy a box of 12 white pieces for $10.50 on Amazon. while Crayola's version goes for as little as 62 cents. These days, it's made in South Korea, but back in 2015, the chalk almost disappeared forever after the original Japanese company and announced it was shutting down.

I did remember scavenging for chalk. So as other companies'chalk sales decline, how is this expensive chalk still selling out? And what keeps Hagoromo Heads coming back for more? It sort of like melts on the blackboard. That's the feeling.

As you go, it's just like melting very, very gently. And it just writes a lot better. Alvaro Lozano Robledo is a professor of math. at Yukon and would only ever use Hagoromo chalk if he had his way.

Like there was some video that I made about it was like Gollum and my precious, you know, the one ring but it was like me, you know, just like looking at pieces of chalk that somebody left behind or something. So I started making more and more videos that were jokes about mathematicians and chalk. The law that surrounds this brand runs deep.

People say that it's possible to get a job. You don't have to eat it on purpose, but you can eat up to 70 kinds. But the real secret to making Hagoromo chalk distinctly smooth, pigmented, easy to erase, nearly dustless, and therefore more expensive, is its special formula and production methods.

It's these qualities that keep mathematicians reaching for the brand. Making a stick of Hagoromo chalk starts in one of these industrial mixers. The main ingredient is calcium carbonate, which is a compound often referred to as chalk.

It makes up 70-80% of the recipe. Cheaper chalks will sometimes be made with gypsum, a mineral used in plaster as the base. It's very cheap and easy to make. But the particles are too light, so it can blow up in the air.

With other types of chalk, the piece of chalk will break, pieces will fly, but also a lot more dust is being created as you go along. This one, as I write, just like a couple of dusts, So you put it in, and it made the powder harder. The last known ingredient is kaolin, a natural clay essential for making porcelain.

Adding this helps bind the ingredients. The rest of the Hagoromo formula is confidential. All we know is its consistency.

It's a top secret. It's a liquid ingredient. It's these materials that Shin Hyung Seok says differentiate Hagoromo from its competitors and bump up its price tag.

At this point, white chalk is ready to be shaped into sticks. But there's an extra step for colourful chalk. I mixed the same raw materials with pink alu. In South Korea, Agaromo's white chalk costs 201 per stick. Regular colors cost 401, and the fluorescent line costs 601. The camera can see the color and the saturation is very good.

Typical fluorescent pigments contain harmful chemicals like formaldehyde, but Hagoromo uses premium pigments without those substances. Hagoromo has seen the demand for these colours grow as online lectures have been held. have become more popular over the last few years. Alvaro needs a multitude of colours when he's teaching to visualise complex ideas. So here I actually coloured in the triangle in purple, so I'm going to do that also here.

So you see the triangle, that that triangle in purple is the same one. that we had before. And just as importantly, he needs them to erase. If you use other brands or cheaper brands like Cariola, if I wrote this on color, it would not come off, you know, for like a week. Colorful chalks with more abrasive formulas tend to leave deposits on the board that muddy the clarity of whatever he wants to teach next.

It was amazing the first time I tried with... Color chalk with Hagoramo, it erases just like white chalk does. Once they're mixed, white and colorful chalk are treated the same way. This batch will be left to dry out in a maturation room for about a day and a half before it's ready to be rolled and shaped. It's like the clay we used to play with when we were kids.

Much of the equipment used in this process was specially developed or repurposed to make hagaromo chalk, like the machine that kneads the dough before it can be moulded into sticks. It's called a rolling press, and it's made of hard, hard clay. Then, these freshly cut lumps are moulded by a machine specially designed by Hagoromo's former president. Watanabe Takayasusu The machine forms thicker chips.

than the average chalk manufacturer. Inside, the dough is compressed so the final texture is firm. It's very compressed.

It's almost like making rice cakes. The extruded dough is then cut and left to air dry for up to a day. If you wrap it right now, at 70 to 80 degrees Celsius for about eight hours.

When you take it out and shake it, you can hear the sound of pottery clanking. When you hear the sound of cutting, it means it's dry. The average stick of chalk would be ready to package and ship at this point, but Hagoromo takes the extra step of branding and coating its chalk with another specially developed machine. We use rubber to stick the ink on the rubber and push it out.

The stamped sticks are then clamped and dipped in a special coating that keeps the dust off your fingers. When they're used side by side, the difference between coated and uncoated chalk is immediately noticeable. Can you use some of that chalk and board and show me why it's different? If I must.

It's a little rougher to handle. I'm already getting more dust just from my hands just from using that piece of chalk just for one equation. Alvaro is an official Hagoromo social media ambassador.

I started making videos on TikTok, and because writing with Hagoromo chalk is sort of like a meme about mathematics, I would make bits about chalk. And then at some point, I was like, well, maybe I should contact them. And then they said, yes, you can be an ambassador. It's a simple arrangement.

He posts about the brand online. And then they send me, from time to time, they send me a box of chalk. So I have a lot to go around, and that makes me happy, so...

But a plentiful supply was not always guaranteed. When the original owner, Watanabe Takayasusu, announced that he intended to shut down Hagoromo's only factory in Japan in 2015, Alvaro and his fellow mathematician, felt. They would say that this is starting to like, you know, ration, ration like what chocolate was going to use. Now I want to keep these for like research talks and if I had to teach undergrad. some calculus and oh well I'm gonna have to use the badge hug for a while.

Some people went as far as to buy lifetime supplies in anticipation of the closure. I don't think anybody here went so crazy about it to get you know like huge box huge amount of boxes to last us through like the apocalypse. You had your last supplies and that was whatever you had that had to last you through. I don't know, like the end of your career, I guess. Emergency supplies of chalk in case, well, the factory was going to close.

And it nearly did. Takayasusu was ill and having a difficult time finding a successor. But the course of that side job led him to form a relationship with Takayasusu.

He found it somewhere, so he took me there. So I took it and saw the machine and the factory. He had no idea how to get the machine he was filming. He was just interested in mixing it with the recipe and making it. You wasn't exactly looking to take over, but that visit got him thinking.

And in the morning, before I left for Korea, I had breakfast with the owner. I told him this. If the world changes, there are things that will disappear depending on the flow of the world.

But even if it disappears, I think the best product should disappear at the end. So the boss cried and said, Takayasu Suk was moved by Hyung Sukk's passion for the brand, but he originally discouraged Hyung Sukk from taking over. It took over six months and 16 shipping containers to get everything from Japan to South Korea. Eventually, staying true to Takayasusu's formula and production methods paid off.

I can't tell the difference. I think it still feels great and much better than anything else that I've tried. Chalk usage has been declining internationally for some time. But the unique challenge here is that Hagoromo can't keep up.

up with demand. It takes about three days to make a stick of Hagoromo chalk, and much of the process requires a human touch. If we produce a large quantity of products, we can provide more to the users.

But any change is a risk when the brand's current success is thanks to honouring tradition. People around the world who use this product want to continue to use this technology and recipe and make it available to the world. But the users have now become manufacturers.

If the 2015 transition is any indication, as long as Hyung Sukk can maintain the level of quality fans have come to expect, they will be grateful to get their hands on it. I love that feeling. I love the feeling myself as I'm drawing things and how neatly I can write things down, how precise I can do my lines, how I know that it's not going to, like as I draw that, it's not going to fade.

Transcript for:The Excellence of Hagoromo Chalk

Transcript for:
The Excellence of Hagoromo Chalk