More Moleskine Knock-offs, Less Innovations from Modo e Modo

After my last report on Moleskine Knock-offs in Oct 2007, more knock-offs appearing nearly every few months now.  At first glance this 2008 weekly diary from our colleague is a Moleskine 12 months soft cover.  Turn it over it shows a silver color hot stamped UA Cinemas logo, but where is the Moleskine logo?

She got this free gift right after her membership registration with UA Cinemas.  It was a promotion done in second half of 2007.  After examining the pocket, I determined that it was definitely not Moleskine.  The paper was less yellowish than Moleskine paper, the font was different from the original, the round corners had bigger radius, no holiday information, etc etc.
Furious at them as a fan?  No, not at all, on the contrary I'm getting less patient for Moleskine's development.  Yes, Modo e Modo is churning out dozens of new products every year (IMHO too much as I just saw their 2008 line up), but retailers are starting to have difficulty keep tracking/following/managing the ever increasing SKUs while imitators took over portions of the market. 

As production capability from China factories are getting stronger, more efficient and quality is getting higher with lower minimum quantity requirement, the whole thing becomes a typical nasty "differentiate or die" scenario.  Stop lingering in the "legendary notebook" era and move forward to true product innovations!  The "legendary" appeal is going to die off soon in this internet age, to be a true legend requires a lot more consistent innovations to stay in the market, not just numerous iterations of already successful product form factors with minor changes of the cover materials, colors and printed contents.  Well, simply think of the Apple Computer story.

City Notebook was a great move to create new market (despite very slow sales from retailers' point of view) with new and refreshing look to a typical travel guide, supported by a great online community of travelers. What's next?

It will be such a great thought experiment and exercise for marketers, inventors to get into this game and play collaboratively to think about the future of Moleskine.