Why Mont Blanc will shut down in the next twenty or less years…

I love Mont Blanc.

Sorry, let me restate that.

I used to love Mont Blanc.

Check out my Mont Blanc collection here:

So, the thicker Maroon and Black pens are ink pens, where as the thin one is a roller ball.

Also note the special ink (a beautiful peacock blue) featured above is an original Mont Blanc Ink Bottle I own and use(d) for my ink pens.

I invested a nice bit of money in my Mont Blanc items.

Then one day, I just stopped using these pens.

Now, let me be honest:

The Mont Blanc pen in a shirt with its just visible signature crown was a Marwari man’s ultimate ‘vanity’ show off symbol!

In fact the fatter the pen, the bigger the vanity.

Men do care about size you know 🙂

But as the curse would have it, I stopped behaving like a Marwari 🙁 

Worse still, I stopped wearing shirts. 

So, there was no use for my Mont Blancs.

Also, in the Internet, digital world, pens don’t find meaning. The pen is your mind – the sheet – the web.

Anyway, I had cleaned and parked my pens off, until I received this e-mail today:

This mail got me excited!

I love Brahms and this pen looked nice. It made me say, “Ok, let me get it!”

I clicked on the web address under the mail only to find that it was an ‘image’, and not a clickable link 🙁

There was no other place for me to visit to buy this pen!

Despondently I searched on Google.

This is what came up:

There was no place for me to go. No web strore that matched my intent (being in India).

I gave up and concluded:

Mont Blanc will close down as a Company in less than twenty years.

And you know why?

Well, here are twenty interesting reasons!

1. The Company is stuck in the past as its communication shows.
2. Mont Blanc doesn’t understand what is the Internet, and how to communicate on it.
3. Mont Blanc doesn’t care about its customers (I got the mail because I am on their database; but then look at how they hand held me!)
4. No one will use pens.
5. No one will use pens that cost US$ 300+
6. The Mont Blanc Company today is unknown to young people. What will happen to it 20 years later?
7. Mont Blanc is stuck in the pre-Internet age of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s..
8. Mont Blanc needs to be making keyboards and mice  – not pens and ink. It needs a product overhaul.
9. The aspiration of a Mont Blanc pen has now be replaced by the iPhone.
10. The phone is the new vanity signature of a man.
11. Fill in yourself ( ps – using a keyboard, not a Mont Blanc)
12. Fill in yourself ( ps – using a keyboard, not a Mont Blanc)
13. Fill in yourself ( ps – using a keyboard, not a Mont Blanc)
14. Fill in yourself ( ps – using a keyboard, not a Mont Blanc)
15. Fill in yourself ( ps – using a keyboard, not a Mont Blanc)
16. Fill in yourself ( ps – using a keyboard, not a Mont Blanc)
17. Fill in yourself ( ps – using a keyboard, not a Mont Blanc)
18. Fill in yourself ( ps – using a keyboard, not a Mont Blanc)
19. Fill in yourself ( ps – using a keyboard, not a Mont Blanc)
20. Did you realize you won’t ever need a Mont Blanc?

I wrote this blog not just to make Mont Blanc look bad.

I think this can be written for every and any luxury, elite, super expensive, vanity driven brand that is still sleeping in the protective ‘caves’ of the 80’s and 90’s.

When they wake up and step out of their caves (like Mont Blanc just did today), and meet Internet barbarians like me – they stand no chance of surviving.

******