Interview of Michel Adé,Montblanc french CEO

Montblanc is a mythic brand. Are there any elements less known by the public that you think should be pushed forward?
The brand is more than a century old: it was born in 1906 and the general public might not be aware of this fact.
Montblanc is German, although the name could lead to think that it is French or Swiss.
The brand was established by 3 people with very different skills in the technical, commercial and financial fields. This was a very healthy basis to start with. And the brand immediately had a very precise vision of marketing. One must imagine what communication was in the early 20th century; it was almost non-existent, except perhaps for some detergent manufacturers and a few advanced companies and this was the case for Montblanc, since the name itself was chosen to be international. Then appeared right away this special link with writers as the first success was a fountain pen called Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black), a reference to Stendhal; the brand’s universe was thus very close to France. And I will mention the creation of the famous signet, the Montblanc star that is today our communication icon since we use this star for the development of several products, especially in jewellery. This star was created in 1913 and was used as early as the 1920’s: the pens’ delivery trucks had some Montblanc star-shaped rims. So, there was already a very advanced sense of external communication that kept on growing over the decades to now lead to a worldwide brand with 360 shops all over the world, the brand being marketed in 200 countries. We are today the world leader in pens and this means that more than one pen out of two sold in the world in the 250 euros plus segment is a Montblanc one. But pens now merely represent half of our turnover although the public often has only a pen in mind when referring to the brand. 

Why did the brand diversify and how did this happen?
This is a purely strategic question. When you have a 50-60% market share, you know that you will not absorb all competitors, and competition is healthy. So, we are rather interested in winning other markets in order to develop. If you take the watch market, we only have 1% of the global market and thus huge perspectives in terms of development. Furthermore, the pen market has a growth rate that is different from the watch, jewellery or leather market and it is therefore in our interest to develop on new markets wherein we have enormous perspectives with much higher growths than the pen market.  
If we take France for example, writing instruments represent 50% of the market, leather 30%, watches 10% and jewellery 10%.
Some countries had a stronger and faster development on the watch market than France where we are rather bound by our strong pen image.
On the other hand, jewellery was launched in 2005 and France was one of the fastest countries in terms of market development for this product.

Is it mainly a matter of culture?
It is quite surprising because in large emerging countries like Brazil, Mexico, India, China or Russia, the brand is considered as a general luxury brand and not as a writing brand. In France, as soon as you mention Montblanc, you get this simplistic image of pens. In one way, we are victims of the historic success of the brand because despite its German origin, we always made a very strong turnover in France. The brand is very powerful in France since it is the fourth country worldwide after China, United States and Italy. If you consider Italy, they are much more involved in watches than we are in France. Italy is a driving force in terms of watches. They discovered before us the passion for Rolex or Patek. Therefore, if you succeed in Italy on this segment, it is a very good sign.
We are today slightly saturated in terms of production; I mean we cannot produce much more than we do at the moment. This means that the markets that started to develop fast keep on growing, so France still has some very nice development perspectives in watch making. 

Montblanc does not get advantage of the historic capital of the brand in the watch sector. What is its strategy?
This is true, though we recently saw in the luxury watch sector some other newly created brands that had no historical legitimacy. I refer to brands like Richard Mille, François Paul Journe, Roger Dubuis or Franck Muller who sell watches at over 10.000 or 20.000 euros. The watch market is so dynamic that is has a lot of space. The real legitimacy is in the precision work, the artisan know-how and in the end we thought that we could transpose on watch making what we did on pens. Secondly, we are fortunate to be integrated in Richemont group that is currently the most legitimate group in watch making in terms of brands diversity and creativity. As such, Montblanc being ranked second in the group for its turnover, we were given appropriate means. So, we do not have any history yet we bought two manufactures in Switzerland and we now produce our own mechanisms on a few small ranges.
We will thus compensate this historic gap by creativity, technicality, investments that will bring us up to the level of the most legitimate brands from an historical point of view, since we have been existing in this sector for 10 years now and we can lie on our 360 shops as well as our quality sellers network for marketing. Therefore, everything is gathered for our success in watch making.
Coming back to the global strategy, we defined 4 pillars from which we do not depart: writing instruments, small and large leather goods, watch making, jewellery.

Can you tell us about Minerva Institute of research for top watch making?
Richemont group keeps on trying to invest in watch making, have an upstream strategy in the watch sector, and this Minerva manufacture happened to be for sale. There was a department in Minerva that had the capacity to produce top watch making, entirely hand-made, in traditional style, with the vocation to make very rare products with an exceptional finishing off. The group took over this manufacture and this narrowly specialized workshop in terms of watch making and entrusted its development to Montblanc. The strategy is clear: it allows us to advance by leaps and bounds in terms of legitimacy and we thus go back to historic legitimacy because if Minerva becomes Montblanc, since Minerva is more than a century old in the watch sector, then we are back to square one on what we earlier said. 

Is it possible to have a tailor-made pen at Montblanc?
We work on very specific projects and limited editions, as well as tailor-made pens. 

In 2007, the limited editions Prince Rainier and Marlène Dietrich were very successful. What are the 2008 stars?
We had in 2008 a Mécène des Arts Edition (Patron of Art) with the François I, a beautiful pen with several developments. The less limited version (4810) is a version with a tiger-eye body and some ornamental Renaissance patterns such as fleur-de-lis. There is also the 888 Edition featuring an all white nacre body and some white gold ornaments.
Then we’ll have the Etoile de Montblanc (Montblanc Star), somewhat the equivalent of the Dietrich pen, but with two versions: a non limited edition and 3 pieces edition. The shape is new, quite sophisticated, rather art deco. It is called “Etoile de Montblanc” and the system is similar to the StarWalker one, i.e. a diamond star floating in a transparent cap top, instead of a white star. It is a rather feminine pen, with a nib or a ballpoint. It is black and its shape is very elegant, sophisticated. It will be released in October and is designed to create a new line that will complete our 3 main lines: Meisterstück, Bohème and StarWalker.
We also have a Writers Edition every year. This year it refers to the British writer George Bernard Shaw. It is a silver and malachite pen. It will be a limited edition with either a nib or a ballpoint.
The Bohème range is also developing with the Bohème Pirouette some very feminine products with slightly different and trendy materials.

Do you plan other versions of the 149, using steel, carbon, titanium, other materials, colours?
Yes, some new developments are forecasted for this model, but I can’t yet unveil them. Some should be available as early as this year. There are many themes. This pen is so strong that it can be declined endlessly.
Could the 139 be re-edited? This ultra refined model is very much sought after on the second-hand market.
Its patterns have been more or less used on the Hemingway pen. It is also pretty much like the Solti, although the Solti’s clip is different, piano-shaped.
For the time being, we are in pure creation rather than re-edition. But this is also part of the brand’s rich heritage; we have such a large range that we can afford re-interpretations. However, since vintage is in fashion, why not? Still, we rather look at pure creation.
The 139 is an exceptional pen and it must have inspired some limited editions. But we do not intend to remake a non limited edition.
Where do the decisions on models take place?
At the head office in Germany, but suggestions are welcome. France is at the origin of a special Airbus pen that is a development of the StarWalker in 2 versions: a blue one with a rather large limited edition that costs about 600 euros and the other one that is a white gold and diamond collector’s pen priced at around 15.000 euros.

Do you plan to produce new inks?
There are always some new developments with inks. We produce some limited editions like for instance the Valentine Day perfumed ink. Our inks are really accomplished, but we can always issue some original ones. We plan a new ink for Christmas

Do you intend to reduce the traditional distribution in favour of corners?
As far as France is concerned, our range is very wide and we need more and more room to display it. Some selling points do not have the capacity to display the whole range. We must choose the most strategic and qualitative selling points. The brand’s price range is getting higher, so we must improve the quality of our distribution.
We will then have several levels in our selling points. Our very sophisticated shops will display the whole range. At retailers’ level, we will favour the ones who deeply develop the brand and a nice image, using a corner or a Shop-In-Shop. Considering the brand’s image and its weight in front of our competitors, we request more space. But this will go through a real development. One must admit that certain selling points present an image of the past that does not correspond anymore to the quality growth of our range.

Is it possible to change the cap’s white star that is resin-made even on certain limited editions for a cap’s nacre star? No, one can’t do that. Certain products have a nacre star; it is not standard and therefore cannot be transposed onto other models. For example, the star is nacre-made on the Garbo and it does not have the same dimensions as the star of a Meisterstück or a Bohème. However, the stars are less and less resin-made since they are made with nacre or even diamond for limited editions, as was the case for our centenary products, for instance. How can Montblanc guarantee the quality of the end product? The brand benefits from a long experience on the problems linked to after-sales service. From this experience, we gathered some very informative and operational solutions; therefore, when you are part of today’s leading brands, you have an optimized quality. After-sales service is never a profitable activity; the most important is to release an impeccable quality from our production centre.   When’s the creation of an official collectors club? Good question. There have been some attempts in the past, but there was always this problem of rivalry between collectors clubs in general and purely Montblanc collectors. So, we consider the possibility to chair a club or rather to assist some fans and we are prepared to support initiatives even if they are not exclusively linked to Montblanc. Of course, we would prefer a club exclusively dedicated to Montblanc.   It’s not easy to organize it on our own. Internet now provides enough means to do so. There are a few clubs or attempts, but they are related to our sellers, and thus to our customers. One can’t be judge and referee. I would be interested in a real club without any commercial vocation, even if its members could then exchange or sell pens to each other.

What are your 3 favourite pens, irrespective of brands? The Montblanc Hemingway fountain pen limited edition. The Montblanc A380 rubber pen for its modernity. A Montegrappa Vatican fountain pen. I enjoy pens for their aestheticism but also for their balance. For my liking, a pen must remain comfortable for writing, even though it is a collector pen.  What is your nicest recent memory about writing? Recently, while I was on holidays in the Balearic Islands, sitting on the veranda in front of the sea. I was taking notes with a fountain pen on a Montblanc notebook, thinking at what should be done on my return from a professional and personal point of view. To me, to take time to write is a luxury. I’ve always got real pleasure out of writing and I’ve always loved pens. I bought my first nice pen when I was 19 or 20, a Meisterstück fountain pen, and I share the same passion for pens and watches. The good thing with a pen is that you can change it during the day. I always have 3 or 4 pens with me and can change them from one meeting to another, but a watch, you wear it all day long.

Penandco thank you people from Zoss,Pentrace and FPN for their ideas.