It’s an important year for Montblanc. There are few brands that can boast a rich 100-year history while remaining strong and steadfast in the contemporary market. In the age of video killing the radio star, this centennial company has managed to manoeuvre its way out of the term antique into antiquity, while remaining a significant punter in the luxury-brand races.
P.Ramakrishnan had a serendipitous chat and coffee with Wolff Heinrichsdorff, the head of the billion-dollar company as he brewed on the past, the present and the ever-encroaching future.
Let it not be said that no good can come from misplaced temperance. The crowning jewel in the constellation of luxury goods churned out of the Montblanc factory (a production line that dishes out an array of hand-crafted pens, fashionable accessories and, well, within the next year even more products that the company remains tight-lipped about as we go to print!), the bejewelled pen that glistens between manicured fingers and rests within the jacket of the high and mighty, has a rich history.
“In 1992, I was in New York, on a business trip and I met the CEO of Tiffany’s,” recounts Wolff Heinrichsdorff, Managing Director of Montblanc. “Tiffany was my biggest client in the US at that time and they were presenting our pens like asparagus on a vegetable market! And I was just a little bit upset with the guy…”
“Just a little bit…” mischievously echoes his marketing manager, seated in his shadow at the excessively elegant (but of course!) oblong conference room at the head office. She knows only too well the illustrious and humorous history and covers her mouth with a furtive smile.
“Yes, just a little bit!” reiterates Heinrichsdorff. “‘Look’, I said to him, ‘Don’t you think these beautiful writing instruments, they are precious and they are little jewels by themselves aren’t they?’
He laughed at me and said, ‘They are pens. They are pens, they are expensive pens! They are pens... full stop.’
A deep breath interrupts his flow of prose and he continues.
“Then they showed me all the Liz Taylor stuff – the Hope diamond and all that in their showcase. That was style. That was jewellery I was told. I was impressed but when I went home, I was still foaming! I was still foaming in the plane!! I came to my people here, to the factory and I said, ‘We have to do something!’
At that time we had a golden 149-carat pen, that was in Sean Connery’s film as a little rocket-pen in the Bond movie, a killing writing instrument. That was selling well - the pen, not the killing machine! - and it was one of the more expensive ranges.”
“I talked to these guys and said, ‘I need a pen that has to be encrusted with diamonds and if possible can you calculate it so that it has 4,810 (the height of Mont Blanc!)?’
So six months later, they came to me with a pen and it was a prototype and I put it in my jacket and went straight back to Tiffany. And when they saw it, ‘Whhaa….’”
With aspirated ‘H’s, Heinrichsdorff continues, ‘Whaha…this is w’h’onderful! I h-have never seen something like it and we want to display it on the fifth ‘h’avenue, in a special case!”
With a visible glint and a risible tone, Heinrichsdorff’s thrill is as conspicuous as the signature diamond glistening beside his right arm, in an emblematic little box on his table.
“He called me a week later and asked, ‘How much is the pen?’
I had no clue. I had no intention of selling it, I just wanted to show them that it can be done! I just said ‘US$100,000’! I didn’t know what the production cost was or anything but at that time, it was a sizeable amount of money. The next sentence, he said, ‘Ok, two sold’.”
With an open-mouthed pause, he sputters, “I was in deep shit!”
Laughter circumnavigates the boardroom before Heinrichsdorff continues. “I said that you cannot give away that pen, it was just a prototype and I need another six months for production. And we did deliver it six months later. It was selling. Seven sold within that time. To my own surprise! Out of the blue, sudden business comes.”
Hard to argue there.
With rich memoirs with similar tales of alpine heights of success born from glitches and bursts of inspiration, Montblanc the brand has an arresting history. As luxury brands get swallowed up by others, or fail to swim the tide of change in the market, it is quite an achievement that 100 years since three pioneers decided to make a polished, fountain pen (with an independent “ink tank” i.e. independent of an ink pot!), Montblanc remains a finely honed pinnacle of success in its field.
Wolff Heinrichsdorff joined the company less than two decades ago but his vast influence on the direction of where the brand must head, how it must maintain its pristine standards, has helped it from turning into a relic. Perhaps under a misguided direction the pen would have been seen as an antique relegated to archaic writers and for the signatures of erstwhile kings. But its not. It’s still an aristocratic symbol of dignity and decadence, power and purpose. You don’t write grocery lists with this pen, but perhaps hand over a state to a larger governing sovereign body!
Having enforced the value of tradition, privilege, as well as style and luxury in the range of products that currently roll out of Montblanc (watches, leather goods, jewellery and so on), to find out more about the company, its motto, its purpose and mission, all one needs to do, is find out more about the man. Judge a ship by its captain.
“I received this pen [taking out a weighty instrument from his breast pocket] when I arrived 15, 16 years ago in the company,” he says with a wisp of reminiscence. “This is the 149th Meisterstuck, a famous signature pen, which was renowned for being held only by the hands of the world’s most powerful people. In America, in Washington, it was called the ‘Power Pen’ because it has signed more mergers and acquisitions than any other pen in the world. This is my pen, the nib has been ground to my handwriting and its just absolutely perfect!”
Opening a leather-bound book and turning to the blank sheets of white paper, Heinrichsdorff signs his name in a flamboyant autograph.
“I’ve used many other pens because I have to but this is a pen that’s close to my heart. It has signed as well, many important things in this company. I like to write with fountain pen. I have my own exquisite ink, green ink. It’s very dark. This has been made particularly for me. I don’t use different ink. Everyone who sees it will know its from me and know that there’s a certain seriousness and gravity attached to it!”
The nib dances on the white sheet as the MD of the multinational corp answers, can you pinpoint a particularly proud moment since you joined the company?
“My proudest moment, to be very honest, I had at the very beginning,” he says as he tents his arms and rests his head in his hands. “That I did something totally against the odds and succeeded and that was when we founded the Mont Blanc de la Culture project in New York, in 1992. At that time the basic idea was to give patronage awards to the best patrons in the world. The jury was supposed to be famous artists. Artists at the peak of their career, they are the ones who should be able to treasure the importance of patrons for the further development of culture,” he says. “Good friends of mine, when I told them the concept, they said, it’s a great concept but it has one big flaw. Famous artists want to have money. They should do something for you. And I said artists have a conscience, they know that they should give back to society and how important it is for the stars of tomorrow to be supported today. They should be honoured to do something.”
“They laughed at me.”
It’s all a bit déjà vu, the ink not quite dry from recapping the Tiffany anecdote…
“And when I started to talk to famous artists, people like Catherine Deneuve and others. They all said, they liked the idea. Nobody asked for money. They were serving to that purpose, to that foundation, as jury members like Placido Domingo, Robert Wilson, Peter Ustinov or Jackie Chan, all of them served the jury because they understand the campaign of patronage.”
“And that made me very proud. In my judgement even big stars who make money, and rightly so, for being famous, they understood the importance of the development of culture. Protecting culture that is the backbone of civilisation. That made me proud. It was my proudest moment – all those people who said it’s impossible were wrong!”
In an era of celebrity marriages with brands with a pre-nup of multi-million dollar deals, it is hard to imagine that every star, tanned by flashbulbs, signed on for free. Which is perhaps why he adds, “There has been one, one singer, a famous guy who insisted through his agent to receive money,” confesses Heinrichsdorff. “And that gentlemen, a famous tenor, one of the famous three tenors, wanted to have money for that purpose. And after three years, he came to us and wanted to do it for free but we didn’t agree!”
Cocooned in a yawning room that’s clearly built for larger numbers, Heinrichsdorff seated at the head looks like a man who doesn’t have to agree with just anyone. Not even the overlords at Richemont, the monolithic Swiss-based luxury that has over the last few decades acquired all the best brands in Europe, Montblanc included, in the early ‘90s.
In a sea of sycophantic PR gargled sound bytes that hound heads of companies, it was an absolute pleasure to hear the uncensored musings of Heinrichsdorff. The managing director’s cut, if you will; “The takeover of Richemont was very silent,” he says monotone. “Before Richemont there was another company that had bought out Montblanc and then there was another reshuffling of who’s the boss but all that hasn’t affected the product.”
“At Richemont, the companies are being led totally independent from each other. And Richemont is not the super company that tells us how to run the business. We have certain targets and objectives, of course short term operative targets too and we have to survive as a company. They see that we are competitors with each other as well as Cartier or whatever and, really, we’re all selling to the same customer out there. They don’t interfere. We are in the direct competition with each other, we bite each other and we are like a group of lions peacefully sleeping next to each other but if there’s a zebra to eat, I tell you, we tried to get the biggest piece out of that!” he says reaching a crescendo.
“Some big holdings are doing it in a different way, trying to regulate things. Like in a zoo. They put them next to each other but there’s a fence between so they can’t harm each other. We are not a zoo, we’re a wild life!”
What happens if you don’t meet your target?
“I get bashed! I don’t get my bonus. If I don’t meet my targets in a row for one, two, three years then I look for a new job. We are responsible, not only for the money, we are responsible for our people, with people who have families and children and they depend on their income. If I am not successful, then I might be forced to fire people, that means people are suffering under my inability to be successful, then I have to be removed and make place for somebody who can do it better. And that’s not cruel, that’s how life is. And that’s how it is in the wilderness by the way eh?”
And we return to the National Geographic imagery.
“You don’t get a bite into the zebra, you starve! Rightfully, I get fired. We understand our budgets, we understand our targets which we have a promise to supply.”
Supplying a wealthy tradition of pens, coated with history, marked with tradition – the leap in diversifying into ladies jewellery seems… sudden. Unexpected. Unconventional. Even wrong perhaps? I’m quickly corrected.
“We asked ourselves the question on how far can we can in diversifying this brand,” he says. “It has to do something with the credibility of the brand. Let me go back. When you look at writing instruments its our core competence, its our roots, its our history, our heart-blood. This pen, this style of pen will always be the pen of the leaders of the world. What is handwriting nowadays? Why do people use writing pens? It all stems from the medieval times when writing was still the privilege of kings and the church. For normal people, they were left stupid, uneducated and left in the dark. The world had been ruled by writing. Nothings changed. The world is still ruled and managed by the people who have a signature which counts. The makers and shakers in this world are still in that kind of business by ruling by writing. The big bosses of companies when they sign the contract, they do that themselves. The act of power is in the signature. To go witch it, you need a power tool of value, of sustaining value.
If you look at the history of jewellery, it stems from the same origin. The church, the kings, the crown, the sceptre, the ring of the pope, its all an insignia of power. Its very close to the other instrument of power, the writing one.
You show your power, as well as your social status and the rich jewellery and the brands, you show your influence, your financial power, your social status. In other words, the same people who use this pen behave in other areas with the same target.”
So its never was just about the pen?
“These are not pens anymore, these are pieces of jewellery that happened to write.”
Indeed.
