Be True to Who You Are
A platform which celebrates talent, champion’s originality and cherishes long-term thinking, Moleskine offers an eco-system of objects which inspires imaginations and fuels creative practice, offering versatile tools for both the everyday and extraordinary journeys. Here, we spend some time with company CEO Christophe Archaimbault to learn about the philosophy of the business.
The Moleskine brand originated from the 19th-century Parisian notebooks championed by such artists and thinkers as Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway and Bruce Chatwin, who famously described them as ‘moleskines’ due to their black oilcloth binding.
The current iteration of the business took shape in 1997 when the Milanese publisher, Modo & Modo, led by Maria Sebregondi, revived the product and trademarked the ‘Moleskine’ name. The company went public in 2013 and was acquired by D’leteren in 2016.
“While we are renowned for our notebook and while it is a core part of our operations, Moleskine is more than this, it is a cultural project,” explains Christophe Archaimbault, CEO of Moleskine. “This drives everything that we do and we constantly say that it is not the cover of the notebook that is important, it is the possibilities that exist inside the notebook, what people do with the notebook and what this represents. Our mission is to unleash inner genius from hands to paper and help the individual feel better.”
The CEO highlights that through writing, you are going to be creative, you are going to memorise better, you are going to relieve anxiety and slow down the pace of a life that continues to take place at breakneck speed. In addition, the company focuses heavily on its ‘Moleskine Loves Students’ program, which is about bringing the young generation back to paper.
“While the black notebook is our heritage, today it is a device that we want more and more people to have access to, as a way for them to feel better by writing, so that is something that has been guiding us in recent years,” comments Archaimbault.
Moleskine has refocused on its core activities and products and returned to its foundations, stripping back from its pre-Covid operations which were stretched across too many categories and assortments. This has coincided with a rise in growth of its paper business as it went back to its reason for being, the little black notebook.
Using paper as its base, product expansion is growing from this, incorporating items around paper, such as pens, pencils, bags, glasses and the thing a lot of people want when they are writing, coffee, which has led to the Moleskine café concept.
Another pillar of growth in recent times has been the younger generation, Gen Z, who are becoming the first generation to pair the notebook and the phone. Through the Moleskine Smart Writing System, people can link their phone and their notebook and whatever they write, draw or doodle in their notebook, is replicated on their phone which can then be saved for future use. In essence, the concept highlights that physical paper offers something a phone cannot, while the digital elements of a phone offer something a notebook cannot.
Today the company’s footprint consists of their portfolio being sold in around 25,000 doors around the world across stationary, bookstores, travel, museum sites and city stores and through 70-owned sites.
Their latest store concept was recently launched at the groundbreaking Battersea Power Station project in London. This concept incorporates the Moleskine ethos of ‘a book yet to be written’ and instead of having the entire store dedicated to products, there is instead a community table at the heart of the space which offers people the opportunity to sit, connect, write and communicate with other individuals, a rare commodity in an online world.
“Through this community table, people can test the whole Moleskine collection through painting, colouring, drawing and writing. Then, the remaining space around this central table displays all the products of Moleskine. This concept has also been copied in our Paris store on Saint-André des Arts and we have seen sales grow by more than 30 per cent,” explains Archaimbault.
To meet the evolving needs of creatives, professionals and everyday note-takers, Moleskine today approaches product development in three ways. The first of these goes back to its core product assortment and how they continue to innovate how the notebook is used today for a modern audience. The second is their expansion of collaborations and the third is how they develop products that surround and relate to the notebook.
The business has recently unveiled in Europe its collection which celebrates the Year of the Horse. Coming up in the next 12 months are collections that celebrate Sakura and another that highlights The Lord of the Rings.
Working with the Moleskine Foundation, another major activation next year will see the launch of My Detour, which will allow everyone to submit a piece of art to the foundation. The winners will be invited to Milan and their art will be entered into the Moleskine Foundation collection.
Sustainability is a concept that has been embraced by the company and they were FSC compliant on paper over ten years ago. They will also be EUDR compliant by the end of the year and utilises recycled leather on all of its notebooks. They also measure their green electricity. They measure and control how much of their stock is transferred by plane versus boat as they look to reduce the carbon footprint of their products and company.
With so much coming up for Moleskine in the months and years ahead, Archaimbault is invigorated by what lies ahead. “As we look to the future, I am excited by the possibilities of where the brand is going and I will continue to be true to myself and promote the business in the way it should be promoted, helping people to stay true to who they are.”
