Cutebee DIY Book Nook Kits and DIY Bookends: Gift Guide
Who’d have thought that buying someone a DIY book nook kit would be so tricky? Just when you think you have it nailed, you find the same designs on different stores with multiple brand names. It leads one to question who the original designer is so as to avoid buying a replica that’s possibly lower quality than a genuine Cutebee book nook kit. Truth is, most of the companies selling the same kits are genuine. They come from the same manufacturer.
Who Really Makes Cutebee Book Nook Kits
The manufacturer is Qianhaishi You International Trading Co., Ltd. Cutebee is the official brand name for the consumer facing retail arm of the company. On the business side, they sell the kits wholesale to any business with the money to buy multiple versions of the same kits. Pricing on some models are lower than $10, but there’s a minimum order quantity of 25 so unless you want a couple of dozen spare kits, it’s cheaper to buy from any of Cutebee official stores, or most of the resellers, depending on the price they’re asking. Some stores jack the prices up a lot.
About Cutebee
Behind the Cutebee brand is a team of 30+ illustrators, and graphic designers. The factory is based in Guangdong China, and has over 100 production machines including laser cutters and UV Printers, and of course, the packing line. They do OEM and ODM. OEM is Original Equipment Manufacturer and ODM is Original Design Manufacturer. The Cutebee book nook kits are the ODM products.
As Cutebee have an in-house design team, the kits sold under the Cutebee brand are ODM. OEM, means any client with a design they’d like to have made can have Cutebee make the book nook kit based on the client specifications. As an example, our Tokyo Alley book nook kit was designed by our team in San Diego, USA. We could have commissioned any overseas factory to make it for us and put our branding on it. The downside of doing that though is the kits are subject to import restrictions. We wouldn’t be able to include certain things needed to complete the kit due to shipping restrictions on air freight.
You’ll notice on every website reselling similar designs as Cutebee that glue is not included. That’s because international shipping protocols have restrictions on hazardous materials.
What Stores Sell Genuine Cutebee Book Nook Kits?
The official stores of Cutebee are
- Cutebee.net
- The Official Cutebee Store on Aliexpress.com
- The Cutebee store on Amazon
- The wholesale store on Alibaba
Why are Some Stores Cheaper than Others?
Every marketplace has costs. Given the kits are made in China, Aliexpress is the cheapest. That’s because the Aliexpress platform is primarily for small to medium sized Chinese businesses to sell products to international customers. Aliexpress is part of the Alibaba Group. Those two websites always have the cheapest prices. Alibaba though, is for business buyers. Anyone can buy from Aliexpress. The main difference you’ll find is the shipping times. Unless the kit is already in a US warehouse ready to ship, it can take weeks to arrive.
Other than that, the other channels you can buy direct from are Cutebee.net and the Cutebee store on Amazon. If you are buying a Cutebee book nook kit as a gift for someone, keep your order details handy because where you buy determines where to direct customer support queries to.
All Cutebee kits have a 90 days parts warranty (if you buy from Cutebee). Resellers may have different warranties, or none at all. For kits bought on Amazon, customers need to email 3564708360@qq.com. For kits purchased from the Cutebee.net store, it’s the company email: cutebee0708@hotmail.com.
It is possible for the instruction booklet to be in Chinese. The instructions are pictures and should be simple enough to follow. If you are gifting a Cutebee book nook kit, you may want to check that there are no missing parts and that the instructions are in English. If they aren’t, contact them by email to get English instructions sent, or to request missing parts. They send the English manuals by email so you’d need to print them and pop those into the box.
The Difference Between a DIY Bookend and a DIY Book Nook Kit
Cutebee have two types of kits. DIY Book Nook Kits and DIY Bookends. Both are 3D puzzle format, and follow the same assembly process. The only difference is size and where they fit on a bookshelf.
A DIY bookend is functional piece of bookshelf decor. It sits on the end of bookshelves to hold the books up. These are marketed as miniature dollhouses and do vary in size. Some designs have things like pen holders integrated into the designs making them suitable as desktop accessories too.
The signature products of Cutebee are the DIY book nook kits though, and these are for aesthetics. Part puzzle, part decor. These are like miniature dioramas in a box the size and shape of a book. That’s why they’re also known as a ‘bookshelf insert’. They slot between books, adding a miniature three-dimensional scene between books on a shelf. You can take a VR tour of the showroom on the website to see 30 of their book nook kits assembled on display.
Choosing the Perfect Cutebee Book Nook Kit as a Gift
Cutebee, being one of the largest manufacturers of DIY book nook kits have a wide variety of designs. As they’re used for bookshelf decor once they’re assembled, the simplest way to make them personal is to pick a design based on a genre the person likes. That way it goes with the titles on the bookshelf. The Cutebee.net website is one of the few that make selecting a kit based on book genres simple.
The menu item labeled “Book Nook Kit” expands when you hover over it on a PC. On your phone, tapping it opens up sub-menus. Both let you narrow the designs by genre. For example, if you were looking for a Harry Potter book nook kit, select “Into the Wizarding World”. The “College of Magic” category takes you to the page with kits for each of the four Hogwarts houses.
For something more suitable as a gift for international travel lovers, the “World Travel” category has options for Chinese destinations and Japan, although, they only have the one design for Japan at the moment - Under the Sakura Tree. There are other Japanese themed book nook kits, including Rolife's Sakura Densya, our Tokyo Alley kit, and Anavrin has a one of the Kyoto Gion district.