Why Smemoranda failed

Smemoranda went bankrupt.
After more than forty years of diaries that accompanied students in classes, on January 20, 2024 the auction for the purchase of Smemoranda was deserted and therefore the company will disappear.
Starting from the 2024-2025 school year, for which registration is open, it will no longer be possible to purchase Smemos.
Why was Smemoranda unable to overcome the crisis that began during the Covid period? There was an attempt to save the company, including through investments by important names, but this was not enough.
read also Maturity 2024: will the oral exam change? Here's what we know The history of Smemoranda: to understand the failure To explain the reasons for Smemoranda's failure it is useful to retrace its history.
In fact, the company was founded over forty years ago, towards the end of the 70s.
The first diary created by its founders, a group of university students, dates back to 1978.
The first to create the diary, which has become one of the most significant objects of Italian design, was a small typographer.
“Smemo”, before the abbreviation became commonly used, was distributed in specific places such as schools and factories.
All proceeds from the sale of the diaries were used to finance the section of Proletarian Democracy, a radical left-wing Italian political party founded in 1975 (Il Post).
For this reason, according to several people, the Smemoranda has long been considered a left-wing thing.
To understand the origins of the name "Smemoranda", however, we need to go back to the interviews of the creators – among which the names of Luigi Vignali and Michele Mozzati emerge, who became famous authors of Zelig – who in 2016 explained how the term tried to recall a sort of gerundive, which “crosses memory, the agenda and the loss of memory or the little memory that justifies the use of an agenda”.
The impact of Smemo in Italy: a revolution In 2015 Treccani set up an exhibition that brought together the most representative objects of Italy and for 1978 the Smemoranda product was chosen.
This is because the diary created by the group of university students for the first time distanced itself from the austerity of other diaries, those with monochrome covers, lined paper and timetables.
On the contrary, “Smemo” was characterized by aesthetics, the use of squared paper, articles, essays on topics such as environmentalism and pacifism is much more.
Over time the agenda increasingly resembled a magazine, managing to involve several important names in the project, including Michela Murgia, Aldo Nove or entertainment personalities such as Roberto Benigni, up to pop culture such as Sfera Ebbasta.
read also How many absences can one make at school and after how many days one is rejected The failure of Smemoranda: what happened Over time, attention towards paper products has gradually waned, with the advent not only of social networks, but especially electronic registers in classes; these allow you not to carry a paper diary with you and to have homework, notes and circulars at hand, even at home.
In an already period of crisis, the company was unable to overcome the years of the pandemic and the very small quantity of copies sold, compared to the average of 300 thousand products sold in previous years.
Another element of the company's crisis is the advent of e-commerce, places where it is possible to purchase diaries not only from all over the world, but also from many other more or less well-known brands, from small businessmen and women.
In short, the competition overwhelmed Smemoranda and not even investments like that of Giochi Preziosi managed to avoid bankruptcy.
A failure that occurred last year and which could have been resolved through the auction of the brand on January 20, 2024, but which also proved to be a failure and therefore without a solution.