Signed, sealed, delivered

Nicolas Baretzki, CEO of Montblanc, partnered with one of the world’s most recognisable luxury brands, Ferrari, earlier this year. Here’s where the partnership, and the German company as well, is headed next

VARUN GODINHO

As far as iconic personalities who shaped the 20th century's auto industry go, Enzo Ferrari, ranks at the very top alongside the likes of Henry Ford and Ferruccio Lamborghini. Ferrari became a larger-than-life personality, a brand unto himself, with an outsized aura in motorsports and by way of its production cars too which were always exotic, expensive, and rare. It's a marque that has managed to retain its positioning as one of the world's most coveted and aspirational brands. This year, Hamburg-headquartered Montblanc, one of the foremost manufacturers of luxury writing instruments, decided to partner with Ferrari on a new collection. “It's a story that started many years ago, explains Nicolas Baretzki, CEO of Montblanc, of the genesis of the collaboration between the Italian and German powerhouses. “We started to talk and understand, from a Montblanc point of view, how we can approach this so that we have a story to tell together. Obviously, going through the Great Characters (collection], [highlighting) the individual and the founder behind the carmaker, I thought was the best way to approach it.

The Great Characters Enzo Ferrari Special Edition has a cone engraved with two dates: 1898 and 1923. The former is Enzo's birth year and the latter is the one in which he won his first victory on a racetrack. The Great Characters Enzo Ferrari Limited Edition 1898 features metal used on the cap and barrel that resembles the grille of a Ferrari 125S engine, and is available as both a rollerball and fountain pen, with the Au750 solid gold rhodium-coated nib embellished with the wheel of a Ferrari 250 GTO.

The Great Characters Enzo Ferrari Limited Edition 98 meanwhile, of which there are only 98 to be had, has design elements of the bodywork of the 1952 Ferrari 500 F2 which bagged the first F1 Championship win for Scuderia, replicated on the pen.

As Baretzki says, the collaboration between Montblanc and Ferrari has seen feverish interest. He cites the example of an Italian client who couldn't find the product in his home country and so travelled to a boutique in Switzerland and put a EUR25,000 down payment to secure the pieces. He emailed Baretzki to tell him of it, only to hear back from the CEO that he was being returned his down payment as there were no more of those pieces to go around.