random notes on design, the universe and everything
A spot of bother
A short while ago, Moleskine introduced a new range of products: their Reading, Writing and Travelling collections. The reaction around the blogosphere has been quite enthusiastic. Not very surprising, given that Moleskines seem to be one of those must-have accessories for anyone fancying themselves a ‘creative’. At first glance, the bags indeed look very nice, and those reversible glasses are very clever. Neat!
But there is always something that bothers me when a popular brand – synonymous with a specific product – feels the need to suddenly and extensively branch out into completely different product categories.
The Moleskine ‘Booklight’
This time it was mainly the pens that raised an eyebrow with me. Because what qualifies Moleskine to make pens? They never have. How do they have the relevant experience for making high quality pens? Actually, don’t even mind the pens. What’s with the reading light? A reading light?! Really?
Obviously, there are times when it makes perfect sense for a brand to branch out. Apple comes to mind, moving from computers into phones and music. Amazon with the Kindle, OXO Good grips expanding into different ranges of kitchenware, and so on. But such moves only feel right when the experience a company gained in doing what they do makes them uniquely suited to succeed in a new venture.
I trust Moleskine to make great notebooks. They’re very good at that. They’ve been doing it for ages. Now they seem to want to capitalise on that trust by selling me other stuff. Bags, pens, glasses, a reading light. And although their marketing does a reasonable job of explaining why Moleskine users might need or want these things, I fail to see how they as a company are uniquely suited to supply them.
This is what separates extending your brand from merchandising. And this is what bothers me about these new offerings: they feel like merchandising. Admittedly, very sophisticated and attractive merchandising – quite a step up from randomly slapping your logo on something – but merchandising none the less.
And however sophisticated and attractive, merchandising cannibalises a brand. These products derive almost their entire reason for being from their brand, and don’t in turn add lasting value back to it. In the long term, that’s bound to be detrimental.
Wooden wallet
A piece of wood, an elastic band and your cards come together to make the smallest wallet possible.
Now everything fits snugly in your back pocket. You don’t really need to carry that much cash around anymore these days anyway.
Available for € 9,50, for the time being only at the Datscha shop in Delft or by e-mailing me at bob@sjokola.nl.
Things and stuff
Seeing Core77’s coverage of the current Home and Housewares show is making me kinda depressed.
Now I like nice stuff. Hell, it’s my job to make nice stuff. But stuff comes at quite a cost to the world, as we all know by now. So it seems to me, that to justify the making of a new thing you have to have make a pretty compelling case that that thing is going to make the world a better place, someone’s life a little easier, or at least nicer.
When a new design replaces something else with a truly better version, or provides a new version more suited to a specific kind of person that case is easily made. In stead of buying the old thing, people can now buy your new thing. Worst case scenario: no (extra) harm done.
But when a product is something wholly new it has to be pretty damn awesome to justify the resources needed to make it, no?
And then you see the seemingly endless parade of gizmo’s and thingamajigs coming out of the Home and Housewares show, each being presented as the second coming…
Not so nice.
