MILAN — There’s plenty to highlight in the new strategy of Schwan-Stabilo Group, the German company specialized in cosmetics, writing instruments and outdoor products.
Chief executive officer Michele Molon, who joined the group last year, revealed a series of collaborations poised to fuel the firm’s appeal and growth as he mapped out its new business plan aimed at reaching the one-billion-euro threshold in sales by 2030.
For the 2025-2026 fiscal year, the family-owned company generated sales of 781 million euros, up 3 percent versus the previous year. Schwan Cosmetics remained its main division, accounting for 51 percent of total revenues. The Stabilo writing instruments and the outdoor division — which includes the Deuter, Ortovox, Maier Sports and Gonso brands — accounted for 24 percent and 25 percent of total revenue, respectively.
The group’s next chapter will hinge on different pillars, including pivoting Stabilo from a brand rooted in writing instruments toward a more lifestyle-oriented identity.
“The focus has always been on the functionality of products. The goal now is to bring the brand back at the forefront and have the product be an expression of it,” said Molon, who’s currently serving also as Stabilo’s CEO at interim, in addition to leading the group.
“This is a pop brand, but pop doesn’t mean cheap or without value. We want to fill it with culture and design,” said Molon, underscoring how the stationery industry is facing a stagnation.
Collaborations Galore
Molon’s antidote to the moment will lean heavily on cross-pollination and joining forces with players across industries to boost the brand’s repositioning.
For one, he revealed that Stabilo has tapped pop music star Mika as its first guest creative director. Over the two-year partnership, Mika will work closely with the design and product development teams to create new offerings, contributing to packaging, colors and selected product ranges. The inaugural line is expected to launch in mid-2027.
“Mika understands that creativity is a form of self-expression and that the right tool can give people the courage to be bold,” said Molon, highlighting how the appointment enables the brand to “bring this spirit into the design process as well as our communication” and will allow it “to explore new possibilities rooted in our shared values.”
The artist said in a statement: “Color and creativity have given me the confidence to be myself, on stage and in life. Stabilo has always put color into people’s hands. Now I can help imagine the forms it will take, and I would like the products to invite everyone to leave their own mark, whether bold or subtle.”
Stabilo will also revisit its signature Boss highlighter, with some external help. The brand partnered with Swarovski on a limited edition caging the product in a golden or silver metallic structure embellished with 70 zirconia, in a quest to turn a familiar, everyday object into a collectible design piece. The line, which will launch in selected stores and the Stabilo e-commerce in mid-December, represented a personal project for Molon, who was formerly Swarovski’s chief commercial officer, playing a central role in its repositioning and in transforming it into an omnichannel business.
In the same vein, Molon’s friendship with Kiko Milano’s CEO Simone Dominici sparked the co-creation of a lip collection inspired by the Stabilo Boss Mini highlighters turned into lip markers available in five shades. Launching on Nov. 5, the collection will be available in Kiko Milano stores in Italy, France, Spain, Germany and the U.K., as well as through its directly operated European and Middle East e-commerce platforms.
“Our collaboration with Kiko Milano is a perfect example of how two iconic brands, coming from different worlds, can challenge conventions and create something unexpected,” said Molon. “This is exactly the kind of bold, imaginative thinking that will shape the next chapter of Stabilo.”
Ditto for other renditions of its distinctive products, like a new colorful plush version, or the relaunch of Stabilo’s Move fineliner, which was popular in the early 2000s and that, with its four ergonomic designs inspired by basketball, golf, motorsport and tennis, aims to tap into the current sports craze.
These launches add to the upcoming Stabilo Icons project, a long-term cultural program that will kick off next month and through which the brand will invite personalities hailing from the fields of design, fashion, art and education to boost engagement with consumers and attract new audiences.
Stabilo’s shift toward a lifestyle proposition will also see the brand stepping into the realm of digital accessories, bringing its colorful codes to digital pens, chargers and cables, among others.
The Strategic Vision
The product revamp is ultimately aimed at favoring the opening of new avenues of distribution. Molon was fresh from Cannes’ TFWA World Exhibition travel-retail trade show last month, where he closed deals to expand Stabilo into that channel. The brand recently debuted two outposts at Italy’s Orio al Serio airport, to be followed by others in Germany soon.
It’s a first step that will lead the brand to launch a series of shops-in-shop — the first of which will debut in Europe in few months — before eventually making a big step into retail with the opening of stand-alone stores in two years, said Molon.
The executive is also taking into account growth of Stabilo’s online channel, which currently generates 10 percent of the brand total sales and he believes has the potential to more than double such a share. As for the geographies, the Stabilo’s top-performing region is Europe — spearheaded by Germany, France and Italy — followed by Asia and the Americas.
Molon didn’t exclude the possibility of additional acquisitions for the group and said he is always open to deals, especially for the holding’s cosmetics and outdoor divisions.
Schwan Cosmetics develops and manufactures products for more than 700 customers worldwide and is a leading force, especially in pencil making, and Molon said that acquisitions could be made both to expand into “geographies we are not currently present in or in sectors that we currently don’t cover.”
Last week, the division added an R&D laboratory in South Korea to its global network of 38 sites, spanning from Germany and Czech Republic to Mexico and Brazil.
“We already worked a lot with South Korea,” said Molon, underscoring the key role the country plays in monitoring trends. Rather than planting a flag for skin care ambitions, he said that there’s a new wave in color cosmetics coming from the country he’s interested in. Ditto for India, which he’s keeping an eye on for the local use of different textures and connections between makeup and Ayurvedic medicine.
China will be his focus for the outdoor division, and given the market’s rising interest toward this segment, Molon didn’t exclude adding new brands to the current portfolio.
Conversely, the executive shooed away any interest in opening the holding’s capital to external investments. Founded in 1855 by Gustav Adam Schwanhäusser and headquartered in Heroldsberg near Nuremberg, the German company that today employs around 5,200 people at 38 locations worldwide is still 100 percent family-owned in its sixth generation.