Fountain Pen Companies With Continuous Histories

[Opooh]

The reasons give, I too am sure play a part. But I almost never hear of the costs of employing someone in these discussions. Every time the minimum wage increases, employers must make difficult decisions. Do they increase the price of the goods and services they offer which most likely will reduce sales or do they cut costs to recover the increase in wages? If they reduce costs, do they lower the quality of what they offer, again risking losing sales or do they cut employee hours and or benefits?

When the cost of our favorite ink goes up, we have choices to make. We buy less of this ink or cut back on buying something else so that we have the increased amount of money needed to continue buying the same amount of ink. At some point we may switch to a less expensive ink.

Corporations are forced to make the similar choices each time the union goes on strike or higher costs are imposed upon them by various laws and regulations or market increases. This fact seems to be left out of every discussion of why companies close shop and move overseas.

Also, how much are we the customer at fault. Many folks on this network post about going to a brick and mortor store to test out pens then buying them online at a discount. Is it corporate greed that shuts down the brick and mortor store downtown and shifts operations to an overseas warehouse?

Corporate greed exists. But it is not soley responsible for the economic problems we are facing. There are many other factors staring us in the face that no one wants to discuss that are IMO at least as important. Step one to solve any problem is to identlfy the problem. Instead, we colectively villify the easy target of corporate greed as the only facet of the problem. If the other parts of the problem aren't discussed, the solution will always remain elusive.

I also totally agree with your comments on long hours not equalling productivity. That is part of what I meant when I wrote earlier that it is a very difficult comparison to make. Oh! The stories I have about productivity over here!! Would be laughable if I didn't have to slug my way through it.

Thanks for the comments, BTW. I hope I do not come across as being combative, that is not my intent.

First of all, I get my information on the internet, but when it comes to buying a FP, I always go to my favourite brick and mortar store La Couronne du Comte, with a nice discount in surplus.

Now back to the original thread : there are also Visconti and Delta, not so old as some others, but still alive and kicking.

[Tinjapan]

First of all, I get my information on the internet, but when it comes to buying a FP, I always go to my favourite brick and mortar store La Couronne du Comte, with a nice discount in surplus.

Now back to the original thread : there are also Visconti and Delta, not so old as some others, but still alive and kicking.

I'm glad you do. You then were not one of those I was mentioning.

[Florida Blue]

I think you make some good points tinjapan, but my belief of the collapse of the American fountain pen industry has more to do with a change in the market than unionism or corporate greed.

 

Companies like Parker and Sheaffer could not survive in the way they did during the 1940s or 50s. Parker cannot sell 2 million+ fountain pens in a year. Americans don't buy fountain pens in the millions anymore. The American fine writing instrument market was destroyed by cheap disposable ballpoints, but it has survived in some capacity in Europe and Japan, which is how the Newhaven plant was able to buy Janesville and French Bic bought Sheaffer. Fountain pens sales have been relegated to the luxury, niche, hobbyist market, which cannot support a large, multinational corporation.

 

Pilot would go bankrupt if it had to rely on sales of fountain pens, but they stay in business because they are primarily a maker of cheap, mass-produced ballpoint, rollerball and gel pens. They couldn't survive off of Namiki maki-e and urushi lacquer fountain pens. Parker's biggest seller is by far the Jotter and has been for 50+ years. Doufolds and Custom 823s exist to give the cheaper, mass-produced pens some prestige and cache as well as to elevate the status of the brand.

 

Companies like Bexley, Conklin, Edison etc. (all American-made) exist because they are small, niche businesses that sell speciality products to hobbyists.

 

I do agree with your point on consumers destroying downtowns and small businesses. We are always out for the cheapest price and we have sacrificed service, quality and millions of American jobs in the pursuit of cheap disposable goods.

Edited March 21, 2014 by Florida Blue

[Tinjapan]

I think you make some good points tinjapan, but my belief of the collapse of the American fountain pen industry has more to do with a change in the market than unionism or corporate greed.

 

Companies like Parker and Sheaffer could not survive in the way they did during the 1940s or 50s. Parker cannot sell 2 million+ fountain pens in a year. Americans don't buy fountain pens in the millions anymore. The American fine writing instrument market was destroyed by cheap disposable ballpoints, but it has survived in some capacity in Europe and Japan, which is how the Newhaven plant was able to buy Janesville and French Bic bought Sheaffer. Fountain pens sales have been relegated to the luxury, niche, hobbyist market, which cannot support a large, multinational corporation.

 

Pilot would go bankrupt if it had to rely on sales of fountain pens, but they stay in business because they are primarily a maker of cheap, mass-produced ballpoint, rollerball and gel pens. They couldn't survive off of Namiki maki-e and urushi lacquer fountain pens. Parker's biggest seller is by far the Jotter and has been for 50+ years. Doufolds and Custom 823s exist to give the cheaper, mass-produced pens some prestige and cache as well as to elevate the status of the brand.

 

Companies like Bexley, Conklin, Edison etc. (all American-made) exist because they are small, niche businesses that sell speciality products to hobbyists.

 

I do agree with your point on consumers destroying downtowns and small businesses. We are always out for the cheapest price and we have sacrificed service, quality and millions of American jobs in the pursuit of cheap disposable goods.

Thanks for the informative post. It filled in a lot of gaps.

 

Not questioning your information, just seeking more. I was under the mistaken impression that Sheaffer was the sole surviving big American pen company still American owned. Was Bic's purchase of Sheaffer recent? Are Sheaffers still being made in the U.S.?

[Florida Blue]

Thanks for the informative post. It filled in a lot of gaps.

 

Not questioning your information, just seeking more. I was under the mistaken impression that Sheaffer was the sole surviving big American pen company still American owned. Was Bic's purchase of Sheaffer recent? Are Sheaffers still being made in the U.S.?

 

You're welcome. Unfortunately, Bic purchased Sheaffer in 1997 and closed the Ft. Madison factory in 2007. There have not been any USA-made Sheaffers since. The nibs are made in Germany by Bock and the fountain pens are made in China, Italy and the Czech Republic. Ink is made in Slovenia.

 

Despite this, I think Sheaffer still makes some great pens. I have several bottles of Slovenian Skrip and it's good ink.

[welch]

As Florida Blue mentions, there are no American pen companies of any size.

 

- After about 1955, the ballpoint became more reliable. Big innovation was Parker's tungsten ball, and variations that oither companie smade to avoid a parker patent. The original Lazlo Biro ballpoint had a solid spherical ball. The ball rubs ink from an ink-paste in the refill. The early ballpoints would blob and skip. Parker engineers realized that they needed a ball with many tiny fractures to scrape ink from the paste. Business writers complained that Parker was slow to release a ballpoint, but the T-ball Jotter is still in production.

 

- People disliked the mess of using liquid ink. My parents (high school class of 1940) insisted that I used washable ink, and used ballpoints themselves.

 

- Parker (and probably Sheaffer) could not figure out how to make money with low-priced ballpoints, or any low-end product. That's a complaint found in Tony Fischier's http://parkercollector.com/

 

- Overall, Parker was not a big business. Somewhere in Tony's site, he mentions that their annual revenue in the early '70s was about $50 million. The Parker family had bought a temporary employment agency, Manpower (I think), and that had revenues of about $500 million per year. The Parker family sold the business to Parker's managers in UK, who ran the company until the '90s. The Sheaffer family sold to Textron even earlier. The other two "Big Four" US pen companies had collapsed in the 50s: Eversharp was sold to Parker in 1957 or so, and Waterman went bankrupt about 1950. Waterman had a subsidiary in France that continued to use the name: that's the Waterman we see today, and they, like Parker, belong to the Sanford Office Products division of Newell Rubbermaid. Parker and Waterman have their HQs in France; some production is in Europe, some in China. Sheaffer is part of BiC, and rumord says that BiC is looking to sell Sheaffer because they cannot find a market.

 

- In the US, the "writing instrument" market dried up after about 2000. Faber-Castell bought all the pencil companies during the '80s and '90s; then Sanford bought Faber-Castell (except to Faber's luxury oen division). Sanford also bought Paper-mate, the US ballpoint company. Sanford sells pencils and throw-away ballpoints under the Paper-mate name; Parker and Waterman sell "fine writing instruments". However, North Americans hand-write less and less. People take notes on many types of digital device; some began as celphones and grew up to play music, play videos, take photos, and store typed notes. Others grew down from portable microcomputers to laptops to other hand-held devices.

 

- Europe is close behind the US and Canada in reducing the use of ink-on-paper

 

- Trade Unions had nothing to do with this movement. There is an interesting political and social-economic discussion to be had, as Florida Blue mentions, but the collapse of US and UK pen companies should not be part of it.

 

Incidentally, I have worked in the computer industry for more than 30 years. We have always worked as long as it took to get a system running. Companies began to outsource to programming "factories" in India about 20 years ago; they knew that a system could be broken into components...that is how techies solve complicated problems. The companies have ignored the evidence that humans cannot be split the way the human brain splits a problem. In techy terms, I write a module that passes information -- called "arguments" -- to a secialized routine that works on the arguments and returns a value. The routine should be context-free...the processing logic in one part of a system should not spill over to change the values directly inside other modules. The rule: one path in (the arguments) and one path out (the return values).

 

All this was explained almost 40 years ago as people reviewed the first large operating systems: IBM's OS 360, for instance, in a great book by Fred Brooks called "The Mythical Man-month". Brooks warned that adding people to a project that was alreeady late only makes it later...because the new staff must learn everything the current team knows and because more people must communicate.

[Water Ouzel]

Incidentally, I have worked in the computer industry for more than 30 years. We have always worked as long as it took to get a system running.

Same here. Having a project wrap up and ship increased the odds of not going completely crazy. Usually. Telecommuting, if you can do it, can be a wonderful thing, unless you just can't put it away at the end of the day.

 

I don't recall ever during my 30 years (so far) not having my vacation time accrued being close to the "use it or lose it" maximum permitted. Did get sent home for a week to two a couple times to make sure I didn't run over. I was more the norm than an exception, too.

[Tinjapan]

Florida Blue and Welch,

 

Thank you for you comments and info. The information you gave details why fountain pen companies in the US did poorly economically. It does not, however, answer why the overseas buyers of Parker and Sheaffer shuttered their American plants. Why would a company shut down an existing plant with all the machinery and experienced work force needed to continue production and set up shop in a different country if you planned to continue the product line?

 

Florida Blue, Welch and Water Ouzel,

 

Look guys, we are not talking about the same thing. Yes, I know that we Americans do not use all the vacation time we have coming to us. I know we work until the deadline is reached, the project finished. But, have any of the companies you worked for required fifteen (15) years of service before you could put in for a private vacation? Most companies do shut down for the main holidays of "golden Week" ( not a week off as the name implies, rather a week with 2 to 3 holidays which some years ends up being almost a week of when weekends are included) and New Years just as most US companies shut down for Thanksgiving and Christmas. And most employees get this time off as the company is shut down. Many end up working weekends after the holiday to make up for lost working hours. However, if you want to take a vacation then in one of the companies I work for, you must work for 15 years before you can get your first 10 day vacation. One of my current students skipped class for his 15 year vacation that was cut short by 6 days due to work obligations. So, during fifteen years of service to the company, he received one, four day vacation. Have any one of you or anyone you know rescheduled their wedding because you or they were dispatched overseas? How about being sent overseas for at least 3 years maybe 5 years just six months after you sold your house in one city and bought a new one in a larger one due a transfer just six months prior.

 

Gentlemen, we are not talking about the same thing.

[Florida Blue]

Thank you for you comments and info. The information you gave details why fountain pen companies in the US did poorly economically. It does not, however, answer why the overseas buyers of Parker and Sheaffer shuttered their American plants. Why would a company shut down an existing plant with all the machinery and experienced work force needed to continue production and set up shop in a different country if you planned to continue the product line?

 

I can't tell you why Bic closed Ft. Madison, but the (several) new owners of Parker had existing factories and machinery so I suppose it made sense to move production to where the new owners were located. When Parker UK in Newhaven bought their parent company they just moved production to the Newhaven plant. When Newell Rubbermaid bought Parker from Gillette (Newhaven management sold the company to Gillette in 1993) they moved production to their existing Waterman factory in Nante, France.

 

Perhaps it was cheaper for Bic to outsource production to various makers of pens. When Bic purchased Sheaffer in 1997 they had been losing money for years. I wonder if Sheaffer missed the boat on revitalizing their brand as a luxury marque the way that Montblanc and Waterman did in the 1980s.

 

To answer the other point that you made, I personally don't know of any Americans that have sacrificed that much except for the men and woman who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they work for the US Armed Forces and not a company so that is a different scenario.

[Tinjapan]

Florida Blue and others.

 

Thanks for the info. If they moved operations to their pre-existing plants then it makes sense to shut down the old plants belonging to the compaies they just bought. I had the impression that Parkers and Sheaffers were being made in China and elsewhere.

 

Lots of great information here, thanks.

 

Edwaroth, sorry for hijacking your thread. I too was wondering which companies really had connections to their original companies.

[tryphon]

They stopped making fountain pens for many years in the late 60s.

 

For the Italian ones only Aurora, Omas and Montegrappa have continous production.

 

Simone

..and Columbus!

[georges zaslavsky]

wahl eversharp is reborn thanks syd saperstein

[Argee]

So what are the biggest names that are yet to be reborn? Esterbrook I think, any others?

[Florida Blue]

So what are the biggest names that are yet to be reborn? Esterbrook I think, any others?

 

Wearever?

[OLD TIMER]

It's sad that the US has lost all of our companies to others due to corporate greed. Pilot, Platinum, and Sailor have kept their ownership, in part due to the work ethic of pride in one's company and treating its workers like family. Positions in these companies are often times handed down from one generation to the next. You would not sell off a cousin for a doller, but that's what we have done...

 

US corporations are taxed at the highest rate in the free world. But you probably weren't aware of that

[rwilsonedn]

US corporations are taxed at the highest rate in the free world. But you probably weren't aware of that

Very compelling, but unfortunately not true. If you look at what corporations actually pay rather than nominal rates, we are about average for a developed country.

ron

[Tinjapan]

Very compelling, but unfortunately not true. If you look at what corporations actually pay rather than nominal rates, we are about average for a developed country.

ron

But then there is this.

 

"Heather Bresch grew up around politics. Her father is Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator from West Virginia and a former governor. She has heard him say repeatedly, “We live in the greatest country on Earth,” as he did in countless political advertisements. And it appeared to rub off on her: Ms. Bresch was named a “Patriot of the Year” in 2011 by Esquire magazine for helping to push through the F.D.A. Safety Innovation Act.

 

But on Monday, Ms. Bresch announced plans to renounce her company’s United States citizenship and instead become a company incorporated in the Netherlands, where the tax rates are lower. She did so by agreeing to acquire Abbott Laboratories’ European generic drug business."

 

You'd think that a Senator's daughter might be in the know, no?

[basterma]

Centropen has been making fountain pens since the 1940's.

Universal in Italy still makes fountain pens as part of their promotional line. They started making pens in the 1950's

[basterma]

Meisenbach in Germany claims to be making fountain pens since 1880.

http://www.meisenbach.org/index.php?id=44&L=1

[pajaro]

The reasons give, I too am sure play a part. But I almost never hear of the costs of employing someone in these discussions. Every time the minimum wage increases, employers must make difficult decisions. Do they increase the price of the goods and services they offer which most likely will reduce sales or do they cut costs to recover the increase in wages? If they reduce costs, do they lower the quality of what they offer, again risking losing sales or do they cut employee hours and or benefits?

 

When the cost of our favorite ink goes up, we have choices to make. We buy less of this ink or cut back on buying something else so that we have the increased amount of money needed to continue buying the same amount of ink. At some point we may switch to a less expensive ink.

 

Corporations are forced to make the similar choices each time the union goes on strike or higher costs are imposed upon them by various laws and regulations or market increases. This fact seems to be left out of every discussion of why companies close shop and move overseas.

 

Also, how much are we the customer at fault. Many folks on this network post about going to a brick and mortor store to test out pens then buying them online at a discount. Is it corporate greed that shuts down the brick and mortor store downtown and shifts operations to an overseas warehouse?

Corporate greed exists. But it is not soley responsible for the economic problems we are facing. There are many other factors staring us in the face that no one wants to discuss that are IMO at least as important. Step one to solve any problem is to identlfy the problem. Instead, we colectively villify the easy target of corporate greed as the only facet of the problem. If the other parts of the problem aren't discussed, the solution will always remain elusive.

 

I also totally agree with your comments on long hours not equalling productivity. That is part of what I meant when I wrote earlier that it is a very difficult comparison to make. Oh! The stories I have about productivity over here!! Would be laughable if I didn't have to slug my way through it.

 

Thanks for the comments, BTW. I hope I do not come across as being combative, that is not my intent.

 

How about Americans struggling to make a living wage in an inflationary economy while corporate big shots pull in millions per year?

 

People in other countries may have all the fascism they want.