Tokyo (SCCIJ) – Geneva is one of the rather expensive cities in the world, but the famous Swiss writing and drawing instruments maker Caran d’Ache has been manufacturing here for over a hundred years. Now, it is finishing its new headquarters and factory building.
Iconic Swiss brand
Anyone who grows up in Switzerland is familiar with the brand Caran d’Ache. Many Swiss buy its colored pencils and oil pastels because they have always written and painted with the same pencils, pens, and colors at school. The company name means “pencil” in Russian and has Turkish roots.
With about half of its sales in Switzerland, Caran d’Ache wants to maintain this brand awareness, so the company produces everything in Switzerland. Foreign business with exports to 90 countries accounts for the other half of sales. Its Japan subsidiary operates a flagship shop in Ginza, an official e-commerce site, and distributes products to retail partners nationwide.
Currently, Caran d’Ache is building a new house for its factory and administration, larger, more efficient, more environmentally friendly, and closer to the highway than the current one. Over the next few years, the company will move its 700 machines and 300 employees in Thônex on the Eastern outskirts of Geneva to the new site in the industrial eco-park of Les Rouettes in Bernex at the other, far Western end of the city.
50-year-old factory
Founded in 1915, Caran d’Ache moved from downtown Geneva to the current factory in 1974. However, in recent decades, the company has dramatically expanded its range. Everything it sells is produced here, be it watercolors, ballpoint pens, or wooden pencils. Hence, the company has added more machines over the years or enlarged existing ones.
Despite the digitization of everything in daily life, Caran d’Ache believes in a future for its vintage machines and its art and writing materials. Other pencil makers moved their factories to countries with cheaper labor and lower costs in South America or Asia to produce larger quantities and to keep costs down. Instead, Caran d’Ache sells its products in the upper price segment.
Strategic Swiss focus
“Of course, we could have built the new factory somewhere else,” told Carole Hübscher, Chairwoman of the Board of Directors and a representative of her family as the principal shareholders, the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung. “But moving away would have risked losing many long-standing employees and expertise.” The second line in the Caran d’Ache logo reads “Genève,” thus emphasizing its unique position in the Swiss market.
In early 2022, Pierre-Alain Dupraz Architects won a design competition for the new headquarters. The design puts the industrial production workshops across the ground and first floors, while the second floor is home to the administrative staff, Haute Écriture, and manual packing. A double-skin timber frame, a reference to the wood of the pencils, forms the structure. The façade with the company name and logo picks up the folds of the bottom section of the metal tin for the pencils, an appropriate representation for the maker of Switzerland’s iconic pencils.
Text: Martin Fritz for SCCIJ
