![]() Moleskine’s ascent, and the evidence of it that I observed in Toronto and other places, is symptomatic of a shift that I call the revenge of analog, in which certain technologies and processes that have been rendered “obsolete” suddenly show new life and growth, even as the world becomes increasingly driven by digital technology. ![]() While some of the company’s success, especially among the young consumers who make up its fastest-growing market, can be attributed to its marketing-which is built on associations with such famous creatives as Chatwin, Hemingway, Picasso, and van Gogh (all of whom used similarly styled notebooks)-for many people, the notebook is simply superior to its digital competitors. Last year, Moleskine sold more than seventeen million notebooks, and brought in more than ninety million euros in revenues from sales of paper products, up from just over fifty million in 2010. As I sat among the crowd, which was full of venture capitalists, Google and Microsoft representatives, and other tech-industry fish, I noticed something: the majority of the people in the room, whether clad in hoodies or golf shirts, were balancing on their laps not iPhones or laptops, as I might have expected, but Moleskine journals. Last summer in Toronto, I found myself at a Demo Day, one of those tech-industry events where eager representatives of a dozen startups bound onto a stage and spend five minutes selling their visions of a utopian future expedited by antibacterial screen wipes that will change the world (something one founder promised with a triumphant fist in the air). ![]() PHOTOGRAPH BY TON KOENE/PICTURE-ALLIANCE/AP The popularity of Moleskine notebooks seems to defy the widespread worship of technological innovations coming out of Silicon Valley.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |