We love watching our competitors and admiring what they do and how they do it. This keeps us humble, on out toes, and constantly pushing ourselves to do our very best. Moleskine, one of Spaces for Ideas’ admired competitors, has recently launched 3 collections of non-paper products that celebrate the nomadic aspects of their brand and iconic notebooks.

Designed by Giulio Lacchetti, the 3 collections (writing, traveling and reading) take visual cues or design languages from the classic Moleskine notebook and applies them on to bags, pencils, pens, leading glasses, computer cases, a rechargeable reading light and an e-reader stand.

The Writing Collection
The Traveling Collection
The Reading Collection

Furthermore, in addition to the 3 collections, there is a range of small accessories such as clips and holders that pull these non-paper products back into their paper cousins’ hold and tie everything together into a nice workable package.

Leveraging off the success of their iPhone 4/iPad 2 cases, these collections signal quite a significant change in business direction as Moleskine has finally broken out of the box by seriously expanding their product range into non-paper products. If we consider how they are marketing their collections, they do seem to be logical range extensions. However there are still financial risks, and only time or the market will tell how well they will perform. Regardless, it is very exciting to see the strategies that Moleskine is employing to keep their brand and product range alive in a very competitive market.