Fountain Pen Market Share

[fojeremiad]

So I have always been curious about market share of pens. I am biased by my professional background, I suppose. Just this week I was reading the annual report for Compagnie Financière Richemont SA - the company that owns Montblanc and Dunhill (as well as IWC, Piaget, or Cartier for watch people out there), and I was wondering how many pens they sold. They give sales numbers for writing instruments, but no volumes (for the curious €362MM in fiscal year ended March 31, 2008, €307MM in FY2009, €296MM in FY2010, €359MM in FY2011, €357MM in FY2012).

 

So I turned to Google, eBay, and FPN to take a semi-educated guess of the mix of fountain pens out in the world. Since this isn't a professional or comprehensive study, I will irresponsibly throw up some charts/tables first with some commentary, and then describe my methodology further below.

 

Googleshare

Here I was just looking at Google searches on fountain pen brands to see what the number of page hits were. I had forgotten how dominant the American pen brands were: Cross, Waterman, Sheaffer, Parker. For me, German, Italian, brands come to mind first. Some of this could be biased by my search on google.com instead of google.de or google.it. Is there a google.world? The Cross number strikes me as a little high proportionally - not sure what would drive that.

 

eBayshare

This is probably a little more representative of actual number of pens out there. The American brands are still surprisingly high - the big 4 taking almost half the listing. Montblanc and Pelikan are about 12% of the listings. I was a little surprised to see TWSBI so low on this index. But all this list suggests the fountain pen world is very concentrated, with an HH index of 86.5%. But keep in mind this is based on number listings, not dollar value nor sales. I suspect the dollar share numbers look very different, but would be harder to put together.

 

FPNshare

Next I focused my google search to just the FPN site, to see what brands were being discussed here. Here you see an uptick in brands that have a more vintage history. A newer brand like Delta, falls down the list, and a historical stalwart like Esterbrook jumps higher.

 

Niche pens

Another aspect that jumped out at me as I looked at the numbers was which pen brands were more niche to FPN. Like Stipula where google only returns 4,700 page hits, but 2,600 or 56% of those page hits come from FPN. The chart below shows which brands get most of their mentions from here on FPN versus google at large. I was also struck by the fact that of the 12MM hits that showed up for the various brand on google, about 10% of them were here on FPN. I would be surprised to find many bodies of knowledge where such a high percentage is located in one place. Yes, its a crude measure, but impressive nonetheless.

 

Methodology

 

Again this "study" was not exhaustive or systematic. For the Google searches, I looked on google.com. I searched for [brand name] fountain pen. I hope this helped keep some homonyms out of the results. For example if you search for just "cross" you get the geometric shape, the religious symbol, the fitness program, the acronym, the game, the clothing company, etc. But you also get problems like Platinum, where any fountain pen that has platinum hardware could show up in the google results. Oh well. The search was conducted this evening on 11/3/2012.

 

For the ebay listings I used a similar search as google but I also excluded the terms ink and refill to avoid biasing the results by a brand who has a lot of cartridges vs a pen that has no branded ink cartridges. The search was conducted this evening on 11/3/2012.

 

For the FPN searches I used google and searched for [brand name] site:www.fountainpennetwork.com. I tried searching the just the classifieds section to see if I could get an assessment of the market place here, but my google-fu is weak and I couldn't quickly find a way to isolate just that section with results that made sense. The search was conducted this evening on 11/3/2012.

 

For the brand list I started with the brand focus section here on FPN, then I added the ones that came to mind. Undoubtedly I have offended many unintentionally. Noodlers and Edison come to mind as I finish this post. But you can do the three simple searches above and post the results below.

Edited November 4, 2012 by fojeremiad

[stefanv]

Did you search German eBay, etc. when searching for pens?

[fojeremiad]

Did you search German eBay, etc. when searching for pens?

 

No just ebay.com, but if the seller ships the the US, the foreign listings will show up. But not the ones that only ship to Germany or the EU.

[Miketsheehan]

Your results don't come close to reality, as the brand loved to be hated here on FPN, Montblanc, has about 70% of the world's fountain pen market. Just cuz Parker used to make great pens, doesn't mean they're selling a lot of them-in fact one could hypothesize it's a finite pool of old vintage Parkers, Esterbrooks, etc. just cycling thru different collections.

[LedZepGirl]

I guessed Parker and I was right!

 

I went by what I usually find in the wild and around these parts (Michigan) Parker followed by Esterbrook pens seem to be the most commonly found, with Sheaffer following in a close third- Balances are everywhere around here.

 

I guess I shouldn't be surprised really because Parker use to make and sell pens all over the world and the company is still around producing affordable pens as it had in the past. It also seems older folks- like my parents and grandparents are familiar with Parker pens because they were popular when they were younger- for example my dad clearly remembers his father's Parker '51' Vac filler (it's in my uncle's possession now). My great uncle remembers Vacumatics and still owns the one he bought in the 1940s. Mont Blanc used to make work-a-day pens but those days are long over and it seems many people now know them as a producer of expensive things.

Edited November 4, 2012 by LedZepGirl

[mirosc]

Montblanc, has about 70% of the world's fountain pen market.

 

Is there any hard evidence to support this?

it doesn't seem likely at all.

 

The last figures I have heard were from the French CEO about three years back and he talked about 50-60%, but only in the high end luxury niche, definitely not on the whole market. That's more likely.

 

For example: MB doesn't produce pens for the mass market, like school pens, pens for giveaways like subscriptions (well, they did some years ago, but not anymore), they are hardly present on the main Chinese market (despite many of the Chinese still use fountain pens).

 

Here in Germany the governmental antitrust division only cares about the "Basisfüller" (school pens for juniors, mass market pens for adults) which is dominated to about 80-90% by Lamy, Pelikan, Herlitz with all their different brand names - the other niches (where, for example, Montblanc pens belong to) are just so called "Bagatellmärkte" (means: minor/petty markets) without big impact on the overall number of sales. (referring to their investigation from 2010)

 

By the way: that's another interesting idea not just to compare individual brand names, but rather the companies and their strategies. For example both Montblanc and Montegrappa belong to Richemont,...

Edited November 4, 2012 by mirosc

[myn]

I think this is a fascinating undertaking and as you say fojeremiad "this "study" was not exhaustive or systematic." I certainly would not have had the patience to wade through all the data you did. It may not be fully accurate but it does give an interesting overview.

[BrandonA]

Your results don't come close to reality, as the brand loved to be hated here on FPN, Montblanc, has about 70% of the world's fountain pen market. Just cuz Parker used to make great pens, doesn't mean they're selling a lot of them-in fact one could hypothesize it's a finite pool of old vintage Parkers, Esterbrooks, etc. just cycling thru different collections.

 

What do you count as "the world's fountain pen market"?

 

Do you mean by units sold or revenue? I'd be hard pushed to believe the former as they do not make entry level pens like Parker and Lamy.

 

I'd have thought that MB was discussed more than Parker of these forums. I've not done the stas recently but the total number of threads created in the tw soul forums has been decreasing over time and the number of posts per threads is higher.

 

Looks like these results are biased towards America.

 

I'd have thoughts the higher the value of the pen the more likely you are to search the web for info. Mif you just want one entry level pen I suspect you would not bother to do so much research. I suspect in the Uk most pens are bought in places like WH Smith or similar types of shop.

[olivier78860]

It was complete chance, as I do not watch TV usually, but for once I was in front of the set, and there was a short documentary about S.T. Dupont, and I learned they produced 120000 pens in 2010, in progression.

I don't know if you can use this data, but it was what the CEO said.

[mirosc]

Looks like these results are biased towards America.

Definitely, but that's the nature of FPN with its high percentage of US-posters. If you look in other national message boards you will get other biased results.

That's quite normal.

 

Still, thank you very much, fojeremiad, for this interesting survey!

 

Edit: corrected the wrong name.... :embarrassed_smile:

Edited November 4, 2012 by mirosc

[katanankes]

Apparently someone has tried to answer your questions here:

 

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/68738184/The-World-Market-for-Pens-Pencils-and-Fountain-Pens-A-2011-Global-Trade-Perspective

 

too bad that the market research report is being sold for a few hundreds bucks.

 

Having said so, your research is useful and well done, it gives an idea of the internet reputation of the brands, that does not necessarily reflect actual market size.

 

Cheers,

[stefanv]

Still, thank you very much, stefanv, for this interesting survey!

 

I wish I could take the credit, but I was just the second poster, who asked if eBay Germany was considered.

 

The survey was done and posted by fojeremiad.

[rochester21]

Thank you for gathering the figures, very interesting.

[mirosc]

I wish I could take the credit, but I was just the second poster, who asked if eBay Germany was considered.

The survey was done and posted by fojeremiad.

 

Ooops, somehow I mixed that up.

 

I'm very sorry for that mistake, fojeremiad, thank you for your efforts and please accept my apologies.

[penmaster1]

How comes Visconti is not even mentioned???

[inkstainedruth]

When I first found FPN, I only had had Parkers. I attempted to read all the threads on the Parker forum which at that point (this past February) was something like 175 PAGES of topics; needless to say my grand plan didn't work so well....

So I'm not surprised that Parker is the most talked about/recognized brand -- I've even seen it used as a crossword puzzle clue!

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[bemyhorcrux]

I voted "other" as I see Pilot mentioned quite a lot, but maybe that's just the type of threads I tend to visit...

[Regulateur]

I think this is a fascinating undertaking and as you say fojeremiad "this "study" was not exhaustive or systematic." I certainly would not have had the patience to wade through all the data you did. It may not be fully accurate but it does give an interesting overview.

 

+1

[fojeremiad]

Montblanc, has about 70% of the world's fountain pen market.

 

Is there any hard evidence to support this?

it doesn't seem likely at all.

 

The last figures I have heard were from the French CEO about three years back and he talked about 50-60%, but only in the high end luxury niche, definitely not on the whole market. That's more likely.

 

For example: MB doesn't produce pens for the mass market, like school pens, pens for giveaways like subscriptions (well, they did some years ago, but not anymore), they are hardly present on the main Chinese market (despite many of the Chinese still use fountain pens).

 

Here in Germany the governmental antitrust division only cares about the "Basisfüller" (school pens for juniors, mass market pens for adults) which is dominated to about 80-90% by Lamy, Pelikan, Herlitz with all their different brand names - the other niches (where, for example, Montblanc pens belong to) are just so called "Bagatellmärkte" (means: minor/petty markets) without big impact on the overall number of sales. (referring to their investigation from 2010)

 

By the way: that's another interesting idea not just to compare individual brand names, but rather the companies and their strategies. For example both Montblanc and Montegrappa belong to Richemont,...

 

Yes, it would be interesting to have more data. As a few have pointed out, there are a lot of ways to slice the market. I imagine when Montblanc looks at the world, they don't count Lamy or TWSBI as competitors. Ideally, we would be able to split the market into various price points and then see what the split is among the mass market, mid-market, luxury and limited editions. The dollarshare would be very different too as others have mentioned. So if for every MB classique that sells, Lamy sells 20 pens, you might see a 50/50 split on dollar share, but 5/95 market share based on number of pens.

[82Greg]

I love hard data! But I'm not sure I agree with the premise some are making in the thread. I'm sure mentions on FPN does not equates to market share. One really needs to look at sales volumes in terms of units and revenue. That would be very hard to get from some of the public companies in the fountain pen business and impossible to get from the private companies.

 

But what great fund to try and provide some insight on the topic.