Colouring books for grown-ups may be the new lifestyle craze, promising ways to combat stress, unleash our creative spirit and generally take time out from our increasingly tech-frazzled, gadgetobsessed lives. Staedtler is a small family-run firm employing a workforce of around 2,000 and has seen demand for some of its coloured pencils explode, more or less overnight.
But for the makers of crayons and colour pencils, the trend also poses a fundamental strategic question: is the current boom in demand just a passing fad or is it a new sustainable trend? “I dream about crayons at night,” says Andreas Martin, who manages a factory of the manufacturer Staedtler in Nuremberg, southern Germany. Staedtler is a small family-run firm employing a workforce of around 2,000 and has seen demand for some of its coloured pencils explode, more or less overnight.
“These are models we’ve been making for years and demand always chugged along unspectacularly,” Martin said. “But then all of a sudden, we weren’t able to manufacture enough. It’s incredible.” Just behind him, a machine spits out yellow ink pens at a rate of around 6,000 per hour. Another next to it is currently programmed to produce orange ones. On the next floor down, finished crayons in a kaleidoscope of different colours are packed into boxes of 20 or 36 for shipping to the United States, Britain or South Korea. Those are the countries at the centre of the current adult colouring craze, said Staedtler chief, Axel Marx.