Another Moleskine Monday tidbit I had to share: an interesting take on the private equity company that owns Moleskine and how they envision the company’s prospects in an age of cheaper knock-offs and digital competition.

British office supplies store Ryman will sell you a lovely A5-sized Moleskine notebook for a hefty £12.99. Leather-bound, quality paper, beautifully finished and that dead-cool little pocket at the back to hide notes from lovers.

So where’s the deal? Sitting alongside those Moleskine notebooks this writer’s eye was caught by identical ones but stamped with the Ryman name (the privately-held retailer is chaired by Theo Paphitis from the BBC’s popular “Dragons’ Den,” a kind of “X Factor” for wannabe entrepreneurs). Same quality, same dead-cool little pocket at the rear and almost certainly the same printer in China. Ryman will sell you three of these at a discounted £3.33 each.

That suggests the Moleskine name — owned by a Milanese publisher formerly called Modo&Modo but originally attributed to a similar style of black notebooks found in France — allows a near-quadrupling in asking price.

The margins, oh the margins!

Sweet, if you’re Moleskine’s European mid-market private equity owner Syntegra.

Read more at  Moleskinned Alive – The Source – WSJ.