Молескин: История итальянской компании и её культовые блокноты.

Italian manufacturing company

Moleskine (Italian pronunciation: moleˈskiːne) is an Italian manufacturer, papermaker, and product designer founded in 1997 by Francesco Franceschi, based in Milan, Italy. It produces and designs luxury notebooks, as well as planners, sketchbooks, leather backpacks, holdalls, journals, wallets, various accessories, and stationery. Moleskine's notebooks are stylised to follow the aesthetics of a 'traditional' black notebook with rounded corners and ivory coloured paper. They are bound in cardboard with a sewn spine that allows the notebook to lie flat. An elastic band is used to seal, and a ribbon bookmark is included along with an expandable pocket inside the rear cover, which is packed in a paper banderole. Bruce Chatwin's name is used to sell Moleskine notebooks. Chatwin wrote in The Songlines of little black oilskin covered notebooks that he bought in Paris and called "moleskines". The name Moleskine does not have an official pronunciation.

In the mid 1990s, Maria Sebregondi pitched the idea of resurrecting the iconic notebooks to the company Modo & Modo, despite the shelves of stationery stores already being stocked with blank books at the time. As a result, Modo & Modo trademarked the Moleskine brand and began production of 5,000 notebooks, officially reintroducing them in 1997. By 1998, Modo & Modo were producing 30,000 notebooks a year and expanded their market, distributing their products across Europe. By 2000 Modo & Modo SpA had an office with a small staff and sales of €20M ($26M) in Milan.

Moleskine's notebooks are based on notebooks distributed in Paris during the 19th 20th centuries, handmade by small French bookbinders who supplied the local stationery shops around the turn of the 20th century. They are fashioned after author Bruce Chatwin's descriptions of the notebooks he used. Moleskine items are designed in Italy with most of them being printed, stitched, and assembled in China. Since 2008, some components have been manufactured in Volant, Cahiers and Folio hard covers in Turkey, watercolour paper in France, and some components in Vietnam. The paper used in Moleskine products is Forest Stewardship Council certified and acid free. Since August 2010, all Moleskine products, offered to retailers in California and throughout the world, comply with the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986. After concerns in 2008 about PVC traces in some notebooks, all items are now PVC free.

Moleskine manufactures device covers that emulate the trademarked notebooks. In August 2012, Moleskine partnered with Evernote to produce a digital friendly notebook with specially designed pages and stickers for smartphone syncing. In October 2012, Moleskine forayed into print on demand with Moleskine Photo Books, a collaboration with MILK Books that lets users upload their own photos into a Moleskine notebook style photo book. In 2016, Moleskine launched The Smart Writing Set with Evernote and Livescribe. The notebook costs approximately $200 and is able to automatically transfer notes from the notebook onto a laptop or smartphone.

Timepage is a mobile planner and calendar app developed by Moleskine. It organizes events from calendars on mobile devices and syncs information, contact info, and weather forecasting. The app includes a Heat map calendar and timeline, and has included access to Uber.

The Moleskine brand is supported by worldwide communities of enthusiasts who write, sketch, paint and draw on Moleskine notebooks. Communities often share images of decorated pages through blogs, social networks or photo and video sharing sites as well as Moleskine's own service "MyMoleskine", through which customers can interact with company staff.

In early 2018, the company announced that it would be opening up Moleskine cafés in major cities such as Beijing, London, New York and Hamburg. The first café was opened in Milan, where the company is originally from.