Bic Interview: We are looking for an offer that accompanies the change produced by post-pandemic hybrid worlds in the consumer

The return to face-to-face classes next school year is an opportunity for the school materials industry to reactivate. However, the confinement due to COVID-19, which promoted teleworking and imposed virtual classrooms, is not the only thing that has brought effects to this economic sector that sees the need to adapt to a hybrid world, a legacy of the pandemic.

Mobile phones or tablets have replaced notebooks and pens, especially among young people. The prohibitions on the use of technological equipment during classes were left aside and in everyday life they are part of the routine. Are they a threat to the office and school supplies industry? What is being done to face this reality?

Paula Griglione, general director of Bic in Mexico and Ecuador, a company that has created stationery products for more than 60 years, reveals that the firm will not neglect materials for students and office workers, but the creativity market is part of its strategy and the second semester of the year they will introduce new and novel articles.

How is Bic in Ecuador facing factors such as technology and the pandemic that promoted teleworking and virtual education? It is increasingly common to see people taking notes on their cell phones or recording instead of writing in a notebook and in Ecuador, particularly, when talking about Bic, people think of pens.

If we speak, in general, of stationery products, it is a reality in all countries. In these two years of pandemic, students had to adapt to a new way of learning (…), in Ecuador we see that most students have access to the Internet to continue the learning process, although sometimes the tools with those that are counted are not the optimal ones to be able to take advantage of it, such as accessing classes from a cell phone, because we know that it is not an optimal tool for that. What we do see is that there was this disruption, these changes, in the learning processes and that both these digital communication tools and traditional tools, in the case of the products marketed by Bic, are complementary elements. On the one hand, the digital media help to have this fluid communication in these remote work environments between teacher and student, but the writing and creativity tools also help to develop other learning processes. A study by the University of Tokyo, carried out last year, shows, for example, that handwriting is the best technique for memorization, if we compare it with other activities such as writing on a computer or cell phone.

But have you as an industry felt an impact from confinement and technology?

Yes, clearly 2020 was a year where the industry was greatly impacted… We estimate that it was an affectation that could reach up to 50% in what is the stationery products business, it is an internal estimate, we do not have concrete data on it. The pandemic arrived in Ecuador just at the moment that we were beginning the process of entering classes, which is the period with the highest sales of stationery products, 70% of the business is sold.

And what is the expectation now that the return to the classroom is announced in the 2022-2023 school year?

In 2021 there was a market recovery process, although we did not reach the levels of 2019. The estimate is that the trend will continue and, at least, this year it will come quite close to the levels of 2019. We see that these trends of hybrid work and remote, or certain forms of learning, are going to continue, it is not that a cut is going to be made and now we are going to return, in the educational field, to what it was before; the same as in the offices, hybrid work will continue and that is the adaptation process that as a company we have to do together with this hybrid concept in all areas.

For this new reality, do you already have a strategy or a project as a company?

It has to do, to begin with, with changes in the consumer. If we talk about teleworking, for example, offices have multiplied, now there is an office in every house, a smaller one, but we also have the opportunity of an office at home and what we are looking for is precisely to have an offer, an assortment of products that accompany that change that these hybrid worlds produce in the consumer. We are reinforcing some segments that are obviously the heart of our company, such as ballpoint pens… In Ecuador I highlight the fine line, there is a marked preference in Ecuador for the fine line when taking notes, there we also have products for that segment, and then also accompany other developments such as the world of creativity, which was a way during the pandemic to remove children and adolescents from the world of screens or the digital world to do certain creative activities and there we are expanding our lines of products: this year we are going to launch a marker called Color Shein, you can write with a color and then change the color of the ink with an eraser that has the product incorporated, it is a patented Bic technology and this allows you to personalize a jot down or update to-do lists for students or professionals. Then we are reinforcing this entire line of creativity of school and professional markers, we are launching a double-ended highlighter that allows proper highlighting, but also underlining and writing with the fine tip, as well as some brush tip markers for a younger audience. All these products are going to reinforce the concept of creativity in different ways and, on the other hand, we are also reinforcing our basic business, which is the part of pens.

When will these new products be in Ecuador?

We have the releases approximately for the middle of the year.

What is the import volume of Bic to Ecuador?

Bic Ecuador currently imports or markets 265 products. We have been in the country since 1979.