Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Welcome to today's episode. I am in Hamburg, Germany. Today is February 5th. I'm sitting at the headquarter of a company who's soon to celebrate 108 years anniversary this year. And this company is a premium quality stationery company.
For us in China, it's really unthinkable for a stationary company that can survive this long. So I reach out. I wanted to talk to their CEOs. At the moment, I have co-CEOs sitting in front of me. I want to ask them, how did a company survive these many years and still standing strong, especially for stationary people need to write?
So for us in China, you must have come across this brand called Leuchtturm. I hope I pronounced it right. Leuchtturm. It's a high-quality notebook, and they have various different forms of notebooks, but it's basically writing on your notebook with pen. Now, this is unthinkable in a technology age.
So sitting in front of me, I'm very fortunate to have the co-CEOs, who's also the family that still own and run the company these days. So I have Axel and Max Sturcken, right? Did I pronounce your last name? Very good. Welcome to my show. So I wanted to ask you first question. You are co-CEO of the company and your brother. Is that a deliberate decision?
to have a co-manager of the company or this is just a natural sequence that you know wanted to keep the company family-run? My brother Axel, he's a bit older than me. We have four brothers and he was the brother who was asked by our dad to join the company. Okay. After he had been there for four years, five years, I don't know, he came up to me and asked me, "Max, can you imagine joining the company?"
I thought about it for a while and we discussed all the possible struggles we could have and then we said yes, we can do it together. That was in 1998, 26 years ago. And since then we did it as a team. Okay, so that's your decision of inviting your brother Max to join you?
Yes, right. A lot of people think that this is an idea of our father, that all his sons should join the company. But he did not mix into this discussion. This was really our decision. It was based on the idea that we would fit very well together. I know the company, I think, only started with your father that became a family-owned and run company.
Because before your father, the first founder of the company is called Paul Koch, right? He then sold the company or he then came together with a businessman called Wolfgang... - Schön. - Wolfgang Schön, yes. And then Wolfgang Schön bought the share from Paul Koch. This Paul Koch, the founder of the company, he died in '53. His son, Eberhard Koch, took over.
And he needed a partner because he was an engineer, very well in engineering, but not a very good businessman. And he needed somebody to look after the figures and look after sales. And this was Wolfgang Schoen, who started his career in China. Really? Really. He's a merchant of Hamburg, but he moved to China and spent about 20 years in Far East. And then he came back.
In the early 60s, he hired our father to start the export business of the company because at this point of time it was Germany only. So now you've been managing the company for more than 26 years like Max said. So if you look back the last 108 years,
What's the difference of the brand and the company under your leadership versus the first, I don't know, 80 years, would you say? The first 80 or 85 years, the company focused on just one thing. It started with this, at the time, very popular coming up, a new hobby, stamp collecting. And Leuchtturm was a very early adopter at the time. Over the decades became market leader.
but it was kind of a one theme company. It was all about stamp collecting dominating the market worldwide. And that was still the case when Axel joined the company. Even when I joined, we started making changes and widening the company. The lines of products. Yeah. Oh, so even when Axel took over, there's still very much a stamp collection or stamp album. That's what they called it. So all the notebooks that we're seeing now started when you guys took over the company.
But why did you decide to from Stem albums to go into Notebooks? You said that you find it so amazing that the company is in business for such a long time. The reason for this is this market for Stem albums, which we took care of only first 85 years of the company.
It used to be so stable because stamp collecting was an important topic, hobby, behavior for many people for a very long time and that's why everyone needed stamp albums for such a long time. As we entered the company this started to change.
because other means of communication came into our life like fax, later than emails, other ways of communication and that's why the stamps started to disappear from our life. So as we entered the company we kind of knew that this is a very profitable nice market but
We were sure that it will not last until the end of our time being in business. We were sure that we needed to shift the company into other markets.
We had different ideas. One thing was that this was the first step was to move into the field of coin albums. We took the opportunity of the invention of the coin, the euro coins, and then we started to have coin albums and became market leader in euro albums. Within two, three years later, we thought about doing something in the stationary industry and then it happened to be notebooks.
I think everyone who buys now a Leuchtturm notebook will see it comes with a notebook with three little cards. One of the cards has got your signatures and your father's signatures. I thought that was a very nice touch. It's a little thank you note. I think it's a nice touch for you and your family because that's the first experience coming into the engagement with your brand.
You moved from stem album to coin album, now to notebook, and then you have so many different kinds of notebooks. And you also said that because of the means of communications have changed and therefore stem collection slowly disappear.
When you took over, I think it was 1998, coming up to the Y2K, the year 2000 shift, everybody was so scared that the computer was shut down and freeze and everything. And also came the internet bubble burst. So that's actually a perfect timing.
for writing or coming back to writing in paper. Now 108 years old, you're celebrating it this year. What is the success, the key to the success behind this? Because from Y2K to the internet bubble burst to now, it's already 25 years, almost 25 years gone. And because of the internet's development, there are
There's so many different platforms that emerge among young people. I don't know if they still think because you've got a TikTok, it's a very passive viewing of the content, right? But your company is still standing strong now. What is the key to those success? Because you put a link between the development in the past years and you're talking about digitalization.
Why we are in business with analog products. It seems to be a paradox, but it is not. Because the more the world changes with digitalization and the need to use electronic devices and to be in connection with the Internet and the rest of the world, why electronic means digital.
the more the need for analog experiences, for real encounters with people or for haptic impulses is growing. There's no contradiction, it is a direct connection between these developments in our view. So you're saying that everything is actually happening quite naturally because the more the world goes digital,
the more people actually wanted to return to a real thing like the fields of paper, the writing with pen. That started with a small group of customers who have that reflection. They themselves are influencers or opinion leaders, or they started influencing people around them. Is that how this phenomenon happened, you think?
This is difficult to say. For sure, it was not us who started this and we wouldn't be able to do this. It is certainly, it's a big wave which certainly started small because...
Note-taking is nothing new. Using a notebook, writing on paper, this is not at all new, but it used to get a different meaning. Above note-taking, reflecting, taking care of yourself, there are very different reasons for writing a notebook, just writing.
writing a diary. So there are many reasons to write a notebook. And what we think is that digital devices became so important in our life, the desire of having paper in your hand and writing in a paper notebook had grown so much. But you must have done something right, because I have one of your notebooks in front of me, and I've been writing on
First of all, I think the paper that you've chosen, the quality of that paper, you make writing a pleasure. You must have done something right as well with the color because people, our listeners will see from the photo that were taken from this podcast recording. In the backdrop, we have this display of your notebooks, your choice of color. I walk into a bookstore, I saw your display.
I'm drawn to that already because of that color. And you have different color, themes of color every year. And then also I know that you have different formats of the notebook. You have the dotted ones that must be very popular among the creative community, right? So you must have done a lot of the thinking, you observing how your customers use or how your customers write with pen. And therefore you come up with all these product innovation. They're so relevant to your customers. These are the things that between the two of you, you must have done right.
Well, thanks for recognizing that we... I'm not recognizing. I'm just talking about it as a consumer. We had this culture way before we actually did it. We were notebook lovers, not just Axel and me.
Also our partner, Philip, who is very important in the game, who joined us a few years after I joined. And then we did develop this idea. And as I said, we were all notebook lovers. And we didn't know at the time that this such a strongly growing market happened in the last 20 years. We didn't predict it that way because it's still a growing market, which makes it so attractive. But we thought we can do a better product than what we find in the marketplace.
And that really motivated us. And many things you already mentioned. The colors, which is key for the brand. And all the details we added. The different sizes. The dotted. Notebook. Which has a big market share today. All that. Yeah.
We constantly work on that all the time. That's really fun. I've got one more, one question in the later part of the episode recording about innovation. We can come back to that because you've got a very amazingly, you know, pleasure to write with kind of pen, right? Pencil as well. So we can come back to that. But I want to ask you another question about your family, family-run business. This is still a private company and it's family-owned and run.
You must have had so much temptation or invitation from the markets to be either acquired or to go listed in the German stock market. But you have chosen not to. How did you... What was the thinking behind that? How did you fight off those temptations? Especially under your leadership in the last 26 years, how did you fight off those temptations? Fighting off is a bit too much.
I mean, there were talks from time to time. We get some investment bankers, some family office comes up to us. Or private equity. But that's...
That's not the plan. It doesn't feel like fighting off because we love what we do. I'm not saying this will never happen in our life, but there is no reason. We have strong cash flow and there was never a reason to get big money in order to finance plans which we couldn't finance ourselves. Sure. The reason why I want to ask this question, I ask this question of all the multi-years history brands that I've interviewed with.
In China, in the last, I would say, 40-some years, brands or companies are doing very well because there's so much hot money in the market. And then the IPO was such a big attraction. So a lot of the companies, when they gain success, they will all want to take their company to public.
First of all, is to, of course, to get more funding from the market in order to expand and to grow the company. But another reason is to have more people participate growing the company because you have lovers or loyalists of your brands, right? So taking it public is not necessarily enhance your cash flow because you, like you said, you're cash rich, but to have more people participate. But you also didn't go down that route. You want to keep it private.
Why is that? If you just want to raise money in order to invest in more business, then you need an idea what to do with the money. Unless you just sell the company and then somebody else would do it. Because we very much love what we do and we love being independent and not being responsible to other people like shareholders. We like to keep it like it is. Yeah. Thinking from porto to porto,
would have changed a lot here and many things wouldn't have worked out as they did. And we love to be a family business and all our people, most of our people who work here like it. They like there's a family and we strongly believe in the values of a family business. And anyway, this is probably the backbone of the German economy. You have thousands and thousands of very successful family businesses
many really world-class hidden champions and they would never even think about going public. So I guess not going public, the one benefit is you don't have to disclose your financial details. So people don't need to come in and finger point how you do your business because there will be investment decisions that you make. So that could add pressure to your cash flow, but that's your decision. It's nobody's business, right? Exactly. Have you done merchant acquisition as well during your years?
acquire other people's business? Yes, we did. There were some occasions and we did it. This is not the main driver of our growth. The biggest brands, we developed ourselves. So it's organic growth so far? Mostly. Okay. Then I want to talk to you about the
I don't know whether it's a trend of people thinking writing these days. Because ever since the launch of the mobile phone, especially the smartphone, the launch of the smartphones, I think the writing has gone a very different direction. For instance, before smartphone, you got mobile phone. So you type SMSs. Because SMSs, you type it really quickly. So your SMSs writing becomes very short.
And then you got Blackberry making email typing also very quick and short. And then you have Twitter, 140 characters. So there's a lot of acronyms in people's writing. And now we've got platforms like TikTok. It's about video. And before TikTok, it was YouTube. It's all about video.
So these days a lot of the young people they're still using their hands but they use their hands more in writing, sorry in typing and also making video or swiping the screen on TikTok. Actually I actually resonate very much what I found on your website.
Your manifesto stated: "Thoughts grow into words, sentences and pictures. Memories become stories. Ideas are transformed into projects. And notes inspire insights." I actually still like very much writing with hands because it's free flow.
typing is not able to go that free flow writing. But that's just me. I'm sure, I don't know, when I write public transport in China, I don't see a lot of young people writing on paper. They're just like, you know, watching video.
So how do you convince the customers, especially the younger customers, to either stay with writing on paper because that's your business or return to writing on papers? We don't do that. You don't do that.
We're not convincing anybody to write on paper. We may reassure people who do this to further do this. But what we see in the market is big movement into this direction. And many people still write with the hand. First is I don't know the situation in Asia, but in Germany, you have to write by hand during school. This is what you do.
When you go to a university, then it's writing by hand as well. So young people have to write a lot by hand. In Germany? In Germany, yes. This is still the case. I think this is because it's very difficult to control people with an electronic device, not to...
get information from somewhere else. Because we, with our marketing budget, we can't change behavior. The behavior is there. You need a big desire to write by hand. There's an emotional aspect in this. It is something else. Type something, your own thoughts.
making notes, writing it down, maybe add some drawings. There's a lot of research that writing by hand is different than typing. Scientists put students, they divided a lesson and half of it took notes by typing and the other half by writing. And then three weeks later, they tested what they recalled from the lesson. And people writing by hand, they were able to remember more.
The explanation is when you type, then you're quicker. It is when you're good at it, then you're always quicker. You're quicker than somebody very good at handwriting. And because you are slower in handwriting, you have to process the information. You can't write down everything. You can only write down the most important things. And so you're already processing information. And that's why you can remember what you have written down better than what you typed.
It's so interesting that you mentioned education. Writing is still very much insisted by the German education system. Even when you're in university, you're still required to write a lot. I was gathering information. I mean, my generation is like that. I mean, I grew up in Taiwan. Even at some years of my education, we were required to write our weekly journal in calligraphy, not just pen and pencil, but calligraphy.
But the young people, the young generation these days, the school introduced computer writing at a very young age already, right? Because I think it's easier for the teachers to receive those papers so they don't have to carry paper them, they receive the digital file. So if in Asia, in Greater China, computer writing was introduced this early,
We don't really give our kids enough time to really enjoy handwriting because there is pleasure in handwriting. I think that's why your business is so successful here in Europe. But in Asia, there's not that part of that education to introduce people to the pleasure of handwriting. And then handwriting becomes...
Not so elegant, especially with Chinese handwriting, you know, the character that we have to write, it requires some skills to make it
good-looking handwriting characters. It's not the case over here in Asia, definitely not the case in Greater China. So if you have such a big contrast, you've got a very much insisted on handwriting education system here in Germany or even most part of EU, but in Asia it's very different. How do you as an international brand cope with that very different habit,
or phenomena over there in Asia with your product? Never really thought about that problem.
I mean the world is changing worldwide. We have a similar development here, but maybe it's not as quick. But I think the development in this direction is happening worldwide. I recognized the other day somewhere in school they use iPads. Pretty young age already. I thought that's kind of scary.
even though it's supposed to be very modern and good, as long as people know how to write. The need we saw in the last 20 years, we look back on 20 years experience, we see a constantly growing market, not just our company is growing, the market is growing. At the beginning, it was a bit of a hope. We keep saying this sentence, the more we become digital, the more people see the need to keep at least a part of your life physical.
You know, keep writing, keep having a book under your arm, putting a book in your shelf and all these haptic moments. Mm-hmm.
At the moment, we are not scared that this trend will disappear soon. I think what you're referring to is people, the more digital our life and our world becomes, I think more and more people are trying to turn around and look for real things. Absolutely. I think that's what you said on your arrival in the lobby, right? And there is a trend of vintage. For instance, you know the keyboard?
Now there is a typewriter sensation keyboard being used by a lot of young people because strength of hitting a key, keyboard that feedback you would get from a typewriter-like kind of feedback is very different than just typing on a regular keyboard. Vinyl records...
record players now are being reintroduced and these are all by young people not the old generation. These are the young people. So the more digital their life has become, they actually wanted to come around and say what is real? And I think you're riding on that very interesting trend of now the world's digital more than you can think of but the reality, the real thing is still very much what people are pursuing. Absolutely.
I mean, look at the music industry. We have Spotify and all this system, but musicians make their money today as in live events. That's where the money comes from.
And that's totally the opposite of other developments, you know, that everybody stays at home and everything is virtual. No, it's live events. That's in the music industry, that's what drives the market. Look at books. Some 10-15 years ago when digital books started to evolve, there were a lot of people saying that the printed books will disappear and it is not the case.
We have a certain market search of digital editions, but the growing part is the printed part. So there's not much growing in the digital versions anymore for the same reasons. Because you want to have the book in your hand, maybe you want to make some marks, whatever. Maybe you like the changing of the book while using it.
making coffee spots into it or whatever, but it's not the price because it's cheaper to buy the digital version. Your business is in writing on paper, right? It's pen, it's pencil, it's actual high quality paper. You must have come across, can I call them competition, of e-ink, e-notebook. You write with the e-pen. It's interesting that
The way that they innovate their product is to make the writing on e-pad more like writing on paper. They're trying to come, you know, trying to innovate their product so that it resembles close to 100% of writing on paper. If they eventually come to close to 100% resemble writing on paper, are you also not worried that it might make your product obsolete? Because...
I can carry a small e-writing pad with me anywhere I go. And I can index it, I can store it, I can search it very easily, I can classify them. But with handwriting on notebook, I finish one book, I have to leave the book behind. In my study room, I have to bring a new book with me. Are you concerned that it might impact your business in the long run? No, of course we observe these developments and we thought about going into this direction somehow.
Because there's technology, you combine a paper notebook with electronic devices. But we think that these devices have their place, but we don't really see it as a threat. Development of these devices and the great effort that goes into imitate technology.
writing shows the great appeal and attractiveness of the original form of writing. Of course, you can buy a device for several hundred euros with the need of electric power and network access and you need a virus scanner and mobile phone cards and whatever.
But you can have it much cheaper, simpler and more reliable because these power can go off and whatever and you can be harmed by viruses. And this is all not the case by paper notebook. And maybe there are some information you are writing down. You don't need 25 hours direct access via full text search to all you have written down in your lifetime. It's maybe just not the case. Yeah.
It's interesting that you mentioned a scenario where the pen or the paper or e-paper running out of battery. I had exactly the same experience the other day.
I also had an iPad. So I was in a meeting trying to write on my iPad, but unfortunately my pencil was broken. I just could not write. What a nightmare. Exactly. Exactly. But luckily I got your book, so that was my first page. It was part of my meeting. You use both? I use both. Physical? Yeah, like you said. I use both. You know why I use both? When I do writing, I like...
to cross out things instead of erase. Because when I cross out things, I can always go back. That's an evidence of my thinking, if you know what I mean.
But if I just type with typewriter, you can erase it, but you don't know what was there before. But with ePAD, they also comes with an electric electronic eraser. I also don't use the eraser. I like to cross out things because I can go back. You know, I think therefore I am. That's the evidence of my thinking on that paper. That's why I still like writing on paper. And I think you said it on your website, writing is thinking on paper.
Absolutely. God, I read it with goosebumps, you know, because that's how I appreciate writing. I go back to the writing on paper. It's really nice that you just said that with goosebumps. Yeah. Because about five or six years ago, we had a project like refocusing the brand. And that was exactly this phrase, right?
you just said that was exactly what came out after months and months of thinking and discussing. So what is this brand about? It's Denk mit der Hand. And also on your website, part of your manifesto, you list down eight reasons why writing makes you smarter, even happier. I think I saw you reference a medical study. Those eight reasons, just for my listeners' benefit,
I will include it in the show notes, but just quickly read out. The eight reasons are the hand, the grip and the grasp, the think, writing trains the mind, you understand, you write to learn, like you said, even in school education,
Act, writing is thinking on paper. Classify, lists are liberating. Discover, writers are wanderers. Let go, you're writing down, you freeze up your mind because you know you're going to leave some proof behind, you can always go back. And the last one is remember, writing by hand is the way to stay.
So I, again, I read those eight reasons with goosebumps. Even when I have meetings with my team, I wanted to choose a meeting room with a whiteboard. You can draw on whiteboards, you can write, you can invite your team members to come onto the whiteboard and join up in writing and co-creation, right?
However, there is this one disadvantage of writing on paper, even though I still very much love writing, is about how do I store those? Because a lot of those are meeting notes, especially in your business world, right? I'm sure a lot of your customers are CEOs and CFOs. I have to leave it with the books in my behind. I can't go back if I need to go back to what I wrote three months ago.
Have you thought about what innovation you will be able to come up with? Or maybe you already have a product now to help your customers cope with that need that at the moment, storing on paper or notebook is not able to answer. Well,
Why can't you go back to your old notes? Because I'm here, I'm in Hamburg. I can't go back to that. I need something. I remember writing down three months ago. Well, yeah, okay. You can't take all your notebooks. Yeah, exactly. But I'm very proud of my system.
I have them 20 years, more than 20 years, in my shelf. It says from February until June 2018 or something. I have a date on each page. Always there's a date. My diary is in Outlook. So I will always find when did I talk to who about what. I find that in 10 seconds. And then I know when it was and then I just pick the book.
The whole process takes maybe 30 seconds and then I'm on that page. And many people in my team, they sometimes see me doing that. I'm always impressed. And I think I would put it the other way around. We see the development of electronic storage techniques in the past 40 years. A lot of them appeared and disappeared again. And you were always forced to change technology to keep your information.
Properly stored, a paper notebook lasts for centuries. And as Max described, it's not so difficult to access the information. And what I think is that I'm not sure that the enormous amount of information you are storing, if really it is so accessible like you think. All the emails I wrote in the past...
I have it in somewhere stored, but Outlook is not really allowing this. I always have to delete some emails because I think they're only 10 gigabyte they are allowing. So it is with my notebooks, there's nobody saying you have to tear out some pages because it's too much information.
Plus, you own the company, so you have unlimited supply of notebook that you can write on. Does that mean that your customers, I assume that you also have an 80-20 principle between your customers and your revenue, meaning 20% of your customers contribute to 80% of your revenue. If that's the case, how would you describe your customers? Do they have particular interests?
interesting or different characteristics to, I don't know, the general customers, meaning because you're writing with book, writing with paper is a very lean forward behavior. Instead of sitting back watching video produced by others, writing involves you being proactive, that active involvement. So how would you describe your customers, those especially the loyal ones that keep coming back and buy your books?
Are they in particular industries? When you're talking about customers, you mean consumers, so really users of our networks. It is certainly what you would expect because we do regularly some market research and to know our customers and they are better educated than the average. They tend to have a university degree more than the average. So this is what you would expect.
And this is because of what we talked about before. You need to be trained in handwriting. If you did it only in your childhood and then never again, maybe not something you would really do. Buy a notebook and bring your thoughts into a paper notebook. But in this way, describing what our customers are. Yeah. Also people who are attracted by it.
I call it the sexiness of our products, especially the colors. I'm also of your opinion. Yeah, I mean, it's also, it certainly has a lifestyle aspect, buying a Leuchtturm book, just more than pure function of writing into it. It's a product that people like to show. We can even say it's a statement, having a Leuchtturm. We always get the feedback that, as you mentioned that, with the colors, that's really important.
and a key element of the brand. Do you find your users, your consumers mostly in the creative industry? At least. Yeah. Certainly not only. And your consumers, are they mostly individual consumers or you have a good split between corporate customers and general consumers? Well, we cover that part as well because we have a department doing all the corporate business.
And we have very attractive brands actually using our product as an incentive for their customers or for their co-workers. Two-thirds is probably the individual customer. Oh, okay.
Okay, so most users. Even more than two-thirds. Right. But it's still a strong and growing part of the business. It's the corporate gift industry. Yeah. Because I look at your products, I don't have any information from your company, but I'm just looking at your products, and I immediately believe that you have a lot of your users in the creative industry because you have the dotted book that's creators, right? You also have a music notebook that's for musicians when they have to compose music. So that...
Why wouldn't I use that? You're not surprised? Well, it's not the number one seller, but for this niche, it's a good product. There is another niche in North Asia. I don't know if you have product for it, but I don't know if you've noticed. In North Asia, I think it started with Japan. There's this thing called Techo.
In Chinese we call it 手帐, 拆拙. It's like a journal, but it's not journal with just text. The journal creator, they will use, they will draw, they will write, they will cut off some stickers to glue to the page. They will pick up leaves from the ground and glue it to the page. They will take photo, print it out, put it to the page.
That journal is so full of content, you know, writing and all that. It started with Japan, but it got very popular. You mean scrapbooking? It's called journal. I don't know how you call it here, but it's called general in general. That habit actually started in Europe.
But it got discovered by a Japanese traveler back then in the 19th century and he brought the concept back to Japan and it started getting very popular and it's very popular in North Asia, Japan, Greater China and Korea. That's another niche but those are just like creator, they're very very into creation on paper.
I don't know if you have noticed that phenomenon or if your team on the ground has come to you with that consumer insight. Have you heard about it? Yes, we did. We think it's quite familiar with what Europe and America is called scrapbook, combining drawings and written parts with something glued into your book or notebook or whatever. So we thought about developing something special for it. But
But in general, the belief of our brand and how we look at the needs of our customers, we offer empty space for writing and drawings and whatever. And that's a good example because the bullet journal concept of Ryder Carroll. And years ago, he approached us and asked if we can develop with him a special notebook. He wanted to raise the money at Kickstarter. And we supported him and then said, OK, we can.
produce more than you wanted to. I think you wanted to make 2000 books and we said we produce more because we believe in your idea. And so that's why the official bullet journal from Ryder Carroll comes from us, Leuchtturm 1917.
But what we know is that much more people than buying the bullet journal just buy our notebook and do bullet journaling with our notebook. And we think this is the same people in Asia following this Ted Draw concept. They just buy a Leuchtturm 1917 notebook and do it in these products. But if the creator, they will use watercolor.
as part of their journal creation, that actually requires special paper to absorb the colour.
So, do you have a product like this? We do. You can use it for it, but of course it will make the paper quite wavy and it's not really made for it. It's quite good for using fountain pens, but not really for using watercolors. But we have a book with heavier paper.
So we have sketchbooks, special sketchbooks. They're especially made for it. They're 120 grams. That's the version. So it is more than the normal paper has 80 grams. This is 120 grams. And this is...
would be suitable for watercolors and for markers with a lot of liquids. So it would absorb the liquid out of it. I want to also talk to you about innovation. I'm sure you, under your leadership, your company constantly either innovate, be creative or reinvent yourself to stay relevant, right?
Do you want to introduce some of those innovations you have done under your leadership in the last 26 years? Whether it's products or whether it's line, different expansion, can you mention some of those innovations to us?
Before we started the notebooks, we certainly did some invention and we already mentioned the Euroalbum. Our notebook itself was an invention because we did not just copy the notebook. It's what Max said that we improved the product with the numbered pages, with the index page, with the sticker sets.
We invented the dotted, which is now an industry standard. We invented the colors, which other brands followed us on this. A big innovation for the brand is the invention of the Drehgriffel, a rotary pen, which goes back to a writing instrument of the 1920s. And this is certainly, and not us who are saying this, it's the industry, it's our customers, also our corporate customers,
This is really this launch, this product launch is the most successful invention in the stationery market in the last 20 years because it's enormously successful and it's bringing our brand into another dimension because the trigger for themselves, they have such a success in the market, it's overwhelming. Yeah, what do you call it? The pen, the pencil bit. You can carry several refills.
in the tube inside the pencil. Is that correct? The refill, right? Inside. This is a ball pen, but I just saw that. You mean the pencil? That's right. That's an interesting one. So you don't run out of refill very quickly. But you have several very interesting notebook 411. That's more pages, I guess, 411 pages, right? That's a thicker...
Is that requested by your customer? You go into a series that's got more pages? Yeah, this was a request from the market for quite a while. Of course, this is very individual, but I myself, I need two notebooks of about this size, A5, a year. The 411 is just double the space.
want to have just one notebook a year, then it's a good product. And so it's just the idea to be, because this is what you said, when you were abroad and your notebook with you, but not the former one. And so this is just the idea to have more information with you. For some people, it's for their whole life.
They just want one notebook. So you listen to your users in general. But also, going back to the 80 years before, the Leuchtturm, the collecting brand, that brand has a history full of innovations.
Yeah, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that Leuchtturm invented the way people collect. Because many of the collecting systems were invented by Leuchtturm. You know, the... You started with stamp collecting. The systems with loose pages and pre-printed country albums for each country of the world. Many things where Leuchtturm was first mover. Mm-hmm.
I mean, back 100 years, there was always an innovative part of innovation. Innovation was always a driver of the brand. Right. Is that how you also come up with a different color theme for every year? Do you listen to your users, your consumers, and then you will introduce different colors? Like I think your color for this year, dusty rose. No, no, no, no, no. Not from that world. That world is exactly the opposite. Oh. Because a collector...
Never wants changes. Never any changes. He wants the album in itself and he wants them to be exactly the same 50 years later.
So that's a completely different consumer. - Right. So the consumers would like different color every year. You would introduce different color every year, right? - Yeah, for this brand, yeah, it works. - Right. So when did that start? And then it obviously went down really well. So you kept doing it. So do you remember when that start, introducing a theme color every year? - We started with black notebooks. And then first thing we introduced red and this was not so bad.
And then we got inspired by the fashion industry because fashion is very much based on colors. Our idea was to emotionalize our brand and the product. And this was the way to do it, was to bring color into the brand.
It is the question of taste and the question of what is fashionable in a certain time. And so we have to keep changing all the time because taste is changing very quickly. I think there are four colors that you introduced this year. The dusty rose, spring leaf, deep sea and spice brown. Do you like any of those?
I like them all. I like the dusty rose the best. But I like it the way that you name your color. Even though there are two words only, but it puts the coloring in my mind because the way that dusty rose, it might not necessarily come up exactly like your dusty rose. But when I see it, it's sort of, oh, that's quite similar to what you have planted in my mind with that description.
No, it is, wording is extremely important because we invented this spice brown, which is not the most successful color of this set. And we know before because the bright colors are always more successful than the dull colors. But it's, we, we,
want to have a certain nice mix and there are people who want more darker colors whatever and it is quite a while I think 15 years ago we invented a brown color and called it tobacco
This was maybe not the smartest name for a color. Yeah. The problem is that we discontinued colors. I chose, and this is also quite politically correct, this is called Army. And I started with Army. I really like the color still. When Army was discontinued, I made sure I got 20 pieces from a warehouse.
And I thought that was kind of last forever, but now I have only two left. Oh, wow. So I don't know what to do. I talked to Philip the other day that we were writing email to all our dealers worldwide and who has some army books left for Max. So I guess the popular color gets to be kept.
And then not so popular companies would just stop, right? Yeah, of course. We would never discontinue Black, for example. Exactly. And I think Navy is right from the beginning, it's on the set and will, I think, last forever. Right. And you also do cross-brand partnership. I saw that your partner in Monaco and I guess Bauhaus in a way is a partnership.
How did you choose partners? Did you approach them or they approached you and then you'd be very cautious of which brand that you partner with? Of course. Like these two, Monocle, did they come to you? With Monocle, we are in touch for a while for different reasons. So this was a process. I think Bauhaus, they approached us. Meanwhile, there are more brands approaching us than we make a collaboration with.
Because it should be a fit. It should be a mutual benefit. And we really think it should be an add-on for the brand and for the consumer as well, seeing this partnership. And you're also, part of your most recent initiative is in sustainability. Obviously, you're in the paper business. You need to answer to that. So what are some of the sustainability-related initiatives you have done? Obviously, recycle paper,
Anything else in that sector that you're doing? Our answer about sustainability is always: we only make and sell products which should last forever.
We don't sell anything which should go to the bin after a few weeks or that feels really good. You mean product that are worth. We sell things to last, not to get thrown away. Right. So other than the product quality itself, it's the content that your users put into your notebook.
that will make that notebook last forever. You mean the information brought into it? The content that you use. Yeah, okay. That's very much depends on how they use it. But it is the concept of we sell notebooks to last. It is not a short-term throwaway product. So this is a general idea. They don't land in the bin. But then it is, of course, a big portion of the paper is made by recycled pulp.
Very important is the cover material. We changed to eco-friendly non-plastic material. We start because this was the industry standard 20 years ago with PVC, which is very durable, but of course it's not very suitable. If you burn it, it's very dangerous. And so this we changed, for instance. And so we are working on this to constantly improve the product because we
We very much believe in using paper instead of other materials like plastic because there's this so-called stone paper notebooks and they are mainly made of plastic. Frankly speaking, we need at the end trees, but they should be from sources which will be regrown.
And another innovation of yours is also, I'm sure a lot of your consumers are outdoor activists. So the outdoor activities. So you have this waterproof notebook with water resistance cover. So when they go camping or they go hiking, they can bring that notebook with you and they can just, even it's raining, they can write on it.
I have never come across any water resistant or waterproof paper. So that also is an answer to your consumers demand? They came to you and said, "I have this need." It's a nice story because we are in touch with many raw material producers, especially paper mills.
producing special paper. There's one German paper mill and they have one special product they are producing for the German Navy, for sea maps. Is this the right term, sea maps? German Navy is navigating electronically, you can imagine. But it is still, by law, they have to have two sets of all the operation area with them in case the electronic systems break down.
they still have maps with them. And these maps, they have, because it's bought for the Navy, they have to be extremely durable and must resist water and being wet, you still must be able to ride on it and all these things.
This is really a paper specially produced for DC Maps. And we ask them if they can produce it for us to make notebooks. And so these outlines, notebooks, we call them outlines, made for outdoor, they are made of this special paper. My last question. What does the future look like? Do you want to go into even more geographic coverage or footprint? Do you want to...
require more company or what? Or we can talk about, yes, AI, in the AI, because I think in AI, in the future, I don't think we can get rid of AI very easily, very quickly. No, we are not putting it on the side. No, no, no. No, we are not ignoring it. We are using it today where it makes sense, especially the graphic people use it for editing pictures and things.
And it might also be a part of customer service. Customer service functions might be done by AI. We're not doing it yet. So there are many possibilities, but we are not scared because, I mean, we just talked in the last 90 minutes, we talked about what our business is about, and this is not affected by AI at all in my eyes. So it's not a threat. It will help in many ways. So I have a positive view on that. Okay.
I think we could even say this development, which is a nice tool, it will help us a lot, but maybe make our product even more relevant. Because the haptic experience, writing by hand, the more everything is done by machines, will make it more relevant. No impact on handwriting. I actually asked Chad GPT that question.
Interestingly, ChatGPT told me he believed that AI and paper will definitely coexist because he gave me several reasons which you both mentioned like this cognitive and psychological benefit of writing on paper. That's something that AI can never take that away from human.
He also talked about the emotional and personal connections at Excel you just mentioned. So I think it is, it's promising that AI is telling me that.
Smart guy, this chat GPT. Exactly. Will there be a next generation of stricken coming into the picture of running the business in the future? They are all at universities somewhere. Your kids are having their first jobs. That hasn't been decided yet. You know that our dad is still here in the company? I know. I saw a lot of his photos. He still comes to the office every day, right? Just to intimidate you or annoy you. Yeah.
So maybe there'll be a lot of strickens in the future wandering around. No, but we are maybe not the youngest anymore, but we feel pretty young still. And there's a lot to do for us. Right. I'm very inspired by what you're sharing with us today. For a company of your business to survive 100, I shouldn't use the survive word anymore. You're doing so well and so successfully. Survive. But I think there are several things that you've done right. You kept it private.
So it's a family business at the moment. So you can grow it, develop it at your own pace. You don't really need to answer to the markets because what does analysts know about any business to be honest, right? So you have your own pace. And you actually put a lot of thoughts behind details of products, not just the quality but also the details. And you listen to your consumers and you're happy, even however niche that consumer is, you're happy to come up with products to answer their needs.
you're just doing it step by step. So that quality, I've interviewed several other brands, one of them is more than 300 years old,
The devotion to quality and never compromise the quality of the brand and of the product is very universal across these, you know, the brands are yours with heritage and history. So a lot of your success stories, hopefully some of our Chinese listeners, they're young brands, brand owners, brand founders. I think they will find a lot of inspiration from your story.
So I wish you plenty of success going forward. So hopefully we'll see even more Lochtung in China. I do think you have a great potential in that market given not just the population, but we have a huge creative community out there.
and there are more and more exciting creations coming out of that community in China. So your products are going to be a great product for them to evidence their creation. Thank you very much Axel and thank you very much Max. Thank you. Thank you Bessie, it was really fun.