Creator Spotlight - Mo Bekdache

The co-founder of the Dingbats* Notebooks Ltd. joins us to answer a few questions

I haven’t interviewed many entrepreneurs but I was sufficiently intrigued (and delighted) when my first Dingbats* notebook purchase that I sent the company an E-mail expressing my admiration for their product. Much to my surprise, one of the co-founders of the company answered my E-mail! After exchanging another E-mail or two I was able to get Mo Bekdache, co-founder of Dingbats*, to answer a few questions for Creator Spotlight.

Here’s Mo!

Mo Bekdache

Please tell us a little bit about where you are from and your personal history.

I’m a Lebanese Millennial, born in 1992. I was raised by two amazing parents who always taught us that a good work ethic is what will help us succeed in life. Ever since I was 12 years old, I would do summer internships at my father’s factory and even started with cleaning the factory floors. I graduated from school and undergrad in Lebanon and then graduated with a Master’s degree at the University of Warwick in the UK. I would say my postgrad experience was the main factor that led me to where I am today.

After that, I worked at Amazon in the UK, launching the first airfreight network in the EU and then later worked at Rolls-Royce Aerospace. While I was working at Rolls-Royce in 2016, I decided to fulfil a dream and established the company selling on Amazon UK at first. My days were basically going to work until 5pm, coming back to my apartment, sitting on the couch while still in my suit and working on Dingbats* until 2am everyday. One year later on March 2017, after things started to pick up, I submitted my resignation, moved back to Lebanon and focused all of my efforts on Dingbats*. The rest is history. I am now proud to represent the fifth generation of the family business which is the oldest established paper company in Lebanon and the Middle east (since 1800), and have successfully expanded the businesses’ reach to the Western Market.

What is your current role with Dingbats*?

My current official position is simply the Co-founder. I have no one specific task or role within the company as I am still hands on basically every single aspect. But to break it down, I’m more involved in Sales, Business Development, Product Development and even Customer Service.

When was Dingbats* formed and how long has the company been selling the Wildlife collections and other products?  And, of course, where did the name Dingbats* come from?

The brand was actually created back in 2011 by my father, the same year he opened up a huge, state of the art production facility in Lebanon. The brand’s purpose was to sell educational notebooks to the local market in Lebanon. After an unstable economical situation in the region, the brand almost came to an end towards 2015/2016 until it was revived again with a completely fresh look, collections and more products in multiple categories. The Wildlife collection was the introductory and staple range of the brand.

Fast forward 6 years later, we have the Earth Collection, Pro Collection, the Atopen Collection and the Backpack Collection selling in North America, Europe, Asia and Oceania. This was treated as a completely separate business and with just £100 and 0 loans, we were able to start the new operation and have it reach where it is today.

Dingbats*, in the printing world means an ornament, or any symbol used in typography. Our brand is full of representations, like the animal logos on the covers themselves, the footprints that are resented on the endsheets of our notebooks and the animal representations inside our Earth notebooks.

from the Dingbats* Wildlife collection

My personal observation is that the Wildlife collection uses a very high quality paper than limits the effect of ink bleed and penetration to the other side of the page.  Would you say that your paper is the cornerstone of your product?

Paper is definitely the cornerstone of our product, it is our core competency and one of the main reasons why we were actually able to penetrate such a saturated market. There is a layer of coating that we apply on our paper that is made from potato starch that prevents any ink to seep through the other side. While the big brands started sacrificing the quality of their paper in favour of increased profitability, we saw a lot of fans switching from them to us at no extra cost.

What's it like to compete with global brands like Moleskine and Leuchtturm1917?  Do you feel that Dingbats* has any particular advantages over its major competitors?

To be honest, we don’t really consider ourselves competitors to these brands, their mission and values are completely different and their strategy and way of work does not match ours. We see a future in which humans live in harmony with nature and communities committed to protect wildlife, fresh waters, forests and oceans. At the moment it is mainly through providing a greener and higher quality alternative in the most traditional product, a notebook, and we have more recently done that in backpacks. We aim to continue in a series of new products in order to achieve that.

We are proud partners of the WWF-UK where we donate 2% of our UK revenue, are proud holders of the FSC certification that ensures our paper is responsibly sourced and the only notebook brand in the world to hold a Vegan certification. Meaning that no animal derived materials are used in production including the adhesives.

Would you say that the COVID-19 pandemic and also global issues have had any impact on the stationary business?  Positive or negative?

COVID-19 has unfortunately broken many lives and was a terrible year for a lot of people. For us as a business, the first couple of months were a complete nightmare. However, due to the extremely agile and flexible setup that we had, we were able to adapt quickly and actually had the biggest year ever due to our business being mostly online.

2022, which in my opinion is the real COVID aftermath, has seen many challenges, mainly when it comes to extremely higher prices to secure raw materials, higher shipping costs, higher fees to sell in our channels and really long lead times to produce which had an effect on how well we can forecast.

Everyone remembers the terrible tragedy in the port of Beirut in 2020 when the ammonium nitrate explosion occurred. Did that have any effect on Dingbats* the company?

Indeed the Beirut explosion was a huge tragedy and traumatic experience for everyone living in Beirut and its vicinity. I can assure you that every single person that survived the blast has a story on how luck was by their side that day. We were personally all affected and it was a devastating period. It was Lebanon’s lowest point and no one can ever forget that.

For Dingbats*, it happened just after a year we actually moved the entire production operation to Turkey, so we were fine in that sense and grateful we had made that decision. So there wasn’t any disruption to the business itself in that sense, but emotionally, it was very challenging.

from the Dingbats* Wildlife collection

Some of your competitors (Leuchtturm1917) sell notebooks with index pages and prenumbered pages. I don't believe that the Wildlife collection has those although the Earth collection does. Is it something you would ever consider adding to the Wildlife collection or was it a deliberate choice to stick to unlabeled and unnumbered pages?

Our goal is to have a notebook option for everyone and for every purpose, so the idea of having those extra features in a separate collection was a deliberate action so people can still have the freedom to customize their notebook however they want which they can currently do in the Wildlife Collection.

The Wildlife Collection also attracts a lot of professionals, using the notebooks for a more generic purpose and we’ve seen that they prefer the notebooks to be this way, especially with having perforated pages throughout the entire notebook and the multiple ruling options available.

Do you think that paper products will thrive in an increasingly digital world or do you see significant headwinds in the marketplace?

I believe that the significant headwinds in the short to medium term have already occurred and those that switched 100% digital have already done so. There is still however a huge audience that is using notebooks and journals and this audience is more mindful on the quality and credentials of what they’re getting. This is where we come in this niche segment that is growing and aim to provide the ultimate solution.

More recently, we are also seeing many individuals converting to using pen and paper again as a nostalgic act along with the rising trend of planning, mental health and bullet journaling.

What's your personal relationship to pen and paper and is there a challenge or conflict there with our increasingly digital world?

I am a Tech guy at heart. I’m the one who fixes everyone’s tech devices at the family gatherings. I would also associate the main driver of success of the brand to how well our backend is geared up and connected.

However for me personally, the best way I can learn is by writing things down again and the best way for me to keep track of my tasks and progress is through physical note taking. I love to doodle as well for stress relief and the sound of a pen’s nib on paper gives me ASMR vibes!

Pretend that you wake up one morning to learn that the Internet has been destroyed overnight.   What's the first thing that you do?

The first thing I would do is take the chance to sit with my family and loved ones and just take advantage of the situation that we can hang out all day without anyone looking at their phones. And then I would dedicate all my effort to bring it back!

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Thanks to Mo for agreeing to be interviewed! I sincerely recommend taking a look at a Dingbats* notebook for yourself if you are a notebook