Tattoo Transformation

Board mem­bers should be role mod­els for their employees—meaning as authen­tic, flex­i­ble, and per­sua­sive as pos­si­ble. But does that mean they should imme­di­ate­ly get them­selves tat­tooed? CEO Per Led­er­mann, born in 1975, did exact­ly that with his own ink in the ser­vice of trans­for­ma­tion. His company’s new course was launched on his left upper arm.

But let’s start at the begin­ning. When the Edding com­pa­ny was found­ed in 1960 by two young entre­pre­neurs with the min­i­mum start­ing cap­i­tal of 500 Ger­man marks (about 260 euros), no one could have fore­seen that the name “Edding” would soon become syn­ony­mous in Ger­many and abroad with high-qual­i­ty felt-tip pens. It would sell around 100 mil­lion of them in its first ten years—today that fig­ure is approx­i­mate­ly 150 mil­lion annually.

“Per­ma­nent mark­er” is the gener­ic term for these con­spic­u­ous­ly wide-tipped pens. They were orig­i­nal­ly used by pro­fes­sion­als at ware­hous­ing, logis­tics, and ship­ping firms to mark pack­ages quick­ly and clear­ly. Then they were dis­cov­ered by artists, drafters, mar­ket­ing agen­cies, and pri­vate indi­vid­u­als. And for decades they were a fix­ture at lec­tures, sem­i­nars, and work­shops for pur­pos­es such as writ­ing on flip charts. In short, they had a broad mar­ket with a secure demand.

The logis­tics sec­tor now needs far fewer Edding mark­ers. And the col­or­ful pre­sen­ta­tion cases of work­shop orga­niz­ers are an increas­ing­ly rare sight. Like almost every­where else, here too the future is dig­i­tal. The trend toward paper­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion could very well elim­i­nate the need for writ­ing uten­sils. In 2020, the mar­ket for office sup­plies already dropped by 25 per­cent. This down­ward tra­jec­to­ry is con­tin­u­ing, not least of all because com­pa­nies are for­go­ing paper and pen­cils for sus­tain­abil­i­ty rea­sons. This puts Edding AG, which went onto the stock mar­ket in 1986, in the midst of a major trans­for­ma­tion. It has to rein­vent itself and become more versatile.

Its course began to change in 2016. That was when the man­age­ment team led by Per Led­er­mann, the son of the company’s co-founder, posed the ques­tion: “Do we dare to strike out on new paths?” Led­er­mann asked a young grad­u­ate stu­dent to con­duct inter­views in the indus­try. The stu­dent, who was research­ing dis­rup­tive tech­nolo­gies, was charged with deter­min­ing where and how com­pa­nies were using Edding mark­ers and what would be replac­ing them in the future. Her results quick­ly con­firmed the sense that felt-tip pens had hard­ly any future in stan­dard busi­ness or indus­tri­al set­tings. And gave her the mate­r­i­al for a doc­tor­al dis­ser­ta­tion with the work­ing title The cul­ture of inno­va­tion at Edding. She was right on tar­get. After earn­ing her PhD, the for­mer stu­dent intern was tapped by Led­er­mann to lead the newly formed depart­ment of cor­po­rate inno­va­tion management.

The sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion CEO of Edding takes a clear-eyed view of the sit­u­a­tion: “We’re fac­ing enor­mous change. Mark­ers will hard­ly be need­ed any­more, aside from a few for design think­ing. We’ve also moved beyond sim­ply apply­ing color to sur­faces.” But Led­er­mann sees the inher­ent value in his company’s decades of expe­ri­ence. “Our prod­ucts have always been about help­ing peo­ple express themselves—which also and cru­cial­ly means the free­dom of expres­sion.” Com­mu­ni­ca­tion knows many chan­nels, includ­ing uncon­ven­tion­al ones. Which is how tat­toos entered the pic­ture in 2020 as an espe­cial­ly strik­ing innovation.

As Led­er­mann recalls, “We had already devel­oped the idea back in 2009 when our man­age­ment com­mit­tee was meet­ing for strat­e­gy nights over pizza and beer, but we didn’t pur­sue it.” Per­haps the impromp­tu notion was ahead of its time. And Edding was prob­a­bly not ready for it. At any rate, the idea lay dor­mant for a good five years—until Led­er­mann took it up again fol­low­ing renewed men­tion by a friend and pro­ceed­ed to cause a sen­sa­tion at the com­pa­ny head­quar­ters in Ahrens­burg, north­east of Ham­burg. He pulled out all the stops, approv­ing a “seven-digit fig­ure” for the ini­tial bud­get, order­ing inks to be devel­oped in accor­dance with the lat­est E.U. guide­lines, hir­ing five tat­too artists in 2020, and open­ing the company’s first tat­too stu­dio in the his­tor­i­cal Chile­haus build­ing in Hamburg’s upscale city cen­ter. And he got his own first tat­too, a hereto­fore unusu­al action by Led­er­mann fam­i­ly mem­bers except for the director’s nephews. “If we’re enter­ing new ter­ri­to­ry, then I have to go there too,” says the CEO, who can now also imag­ine open­ing stu­dios in other large cities.

The new busi­ness model was not entire­ly with­out detractors—as might be expect­ed when an estab­lished man­u­fac­tur­er shifts to pro­vid­ing a ser­vice. “The tat­too com­mu­ni­ty was skep­ti­cal at first, because a large com­pa­ny was mov­ing into its small-scale mar­ket.” The work­force at Edding also had some reser­va­tions. “Our long-stand­ing ensem­ble had been play­ing flaw­less­ly togeth­er for years and sud­den­ly had to deal with a dif­fer­ent kind of music,” remarks Led­er­mann. “That was a source of unease and critique—like a wild rock band crash­ing the con­cert of a phil­har­mon­ic orchestra.”

But Per Led­er­mann, whom some of the older employ­ees had known since his child­hood as the son of the founder, appealed direct­ly to the peo­ple at the com­pa­ny. Small three- and four-mem­ber project teams were cre­at­ed and he joined them too. “I got per­son­al­ly involved in an effort to build the bridges we need­ed to pivot from a rather hier­ar­chi­cal orga­ni­za­tion to an agile one.”

Actu­al­ly imple­ment­ing the trans­for­ma­tion was of course not quite as sim­ple as it might sound. Led­er­mann is very open and self-crit­i­cal on this score. “Despite being on a num­ber of dif­fer­ent teams I real­ized I still wasn’t vis­i­ble enough. So I start­ing hold­ing one-on-one talks in order to learn from peo­ple. But also to do some con­vinc­ing.” The employ­ees could see how seri­ous their boss was about the trans­for­ma­tion. For his part, Led­er­mann real­ized that “we had bur­dened our­selves with too many areas of inno­va­tion. The gap between man­age­ment and the team was too big. Some­times I was hell-bent on get­ting my way. At other times I shied away from conflict.”

Good com­mu­ni­ca­tion can be an impor­tant part of mak­ing a trans­for­ma­tion work. One employ­ee launched a series of infor­mal evening get-togeth­ers over wine called the “Strat­e­gy Spir­its.” Gath­er­ings out­side the nor­mal rou­tine made it eas­i­er to chart a new course and ensure every­one was on board. Tat­too inks alone, of course, would not be enough for the com­pa­ny to sur­vive, let alone grow. But Edding has remained true to its col­ors, albeit in novel ways. Its port­fo­lio now even includes nail pol­ish, whose pri­ma­ry buy­ers are large drug­store chains.

In addi­tion to cos­met­ics, Edding is con­tin­u­ing to tar­get its long-stand­ing clien­tele in other busi­ness­es and indus­tries. Now, how­ev­er, the prod­ucts it pro­vides for pro­fes­sion­al appli­ca­tions are dig­i­tal. The “Edding code” tech­nol­o­gy, for exam­ple, uses con­duc­tive dig­i­tal inks to detect forg­eries of doc­u­ments such as driver’s licens­es and to elec­tron­i­cal­ly ver­i­fy brand-name prod­ucts. In pro­duc­ing inno­va­tions of this type, the north Ger­man com­pa­ny has been work­ing close­ly togeth­er with start-ups, which it invites in dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tions to dis­cus­sion ses­sions at its headquarters.

One of these young com­pa­nies is Pris­made, which invent­ed the dig­i­tal ink used at Edding. In 2018, Edding acquired a 50 per­cent share of it. To han­dle the devel­op­ment and inter­na­tion­al sales of inno­v­a­tive dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies, Edding found­ed a busi­ness unit in Munich called Indus­tri­al Tech Solu­tions. Its port­fo­lio includes the Edding com­pact print­er, a small label­ing device—made in Germany—for indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion process­es. As Led­er­mann explains, “It’s essen­tial­ly a dig­i­tal and fully con­nect­ed 4.0 ver­sion of a clas­sic Edding prod­uct.” Which takes the spe­cial­ist in per­ma­nent mark­ers almost back to its roots. How­ev­er, that’s not the end of the trans­for­ma­tion for this world-famous maker of writ­ing instru­ments. Led­er­mann, who runs a nature reserve in Namib­ia with his fam­i­ly while on vaca­tion, is espe­cial­ly clear on this point: “In many respects we’re still right in the mid­dle of the process of change.”

One thing that def­i­nite­ly should not change, how­ev­er, is the company’s iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with its his­to­ry. When the inter­view is near­ly over, Led­er­mann, in keep­ing with his role as head of a fam­i­ly-run com­pa­ny, puls a black “edding no. 1” mark­er out of his pock­et. He twists off the cap with two fin­gers in light­ning speed, and writes the company’s name on a piece of paper. Although six decades old, the orig­i­nal prod­uct still works per­fect­ly. “Our very first mark­er was refill­able,” says the boss—who upholds the tra­di­tion of writ­ing the com­pa­ny name in small let­ters but attach­ing great impor­tance to sustainability.