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What's going on with Fountain Pen Hospital?


Mysterious Mose

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Two or three years ago, FPH stopped making calendars.  Instead, they provided a small notebook called Pen Jottings.

 

For years, they've provided free, comprehensive annual catalogs.  The 2020 catalog is 82 pages.  These annual catalogs were in addition to smaller, seasonal catalogs. I relied on the comprehensive catalogs as references.  However, they didn't provide one for 2021.  Instead, I just now received a "2021 - 2022" catalog.  It is skimpy at 38 pages.  For example, it has 1 page each for Montblanc and Pelikan pens.  In contrast, the 2020 catalog has 6 and 4 pages, respectively, for these pens.  The 2021 - 2022 catalog doesn't list any Waterman pens but the 2020 catalog has 2 pages of them.

 

Is Fountain Pen Hospital having serious financial trouble?  Are they going out of business?  I doubt if the pandemic hurt them since they continued to provide online and mail order service.  I think they even had curbside pickup.  Also, they cancelled their calendars before the pandemic hit.

 

I hope not.  I've been shopping there for over 30 years.  They're the only brick and mortar store in New York City.

Dan Kalish

 

Fountain Pens: Pelikan Souveran M805, Pelikan Petrol-Marble M205, Santini Libra Cumberland, Waterman Expert II, Waterman Phileas, Waterman Kultur, Stipula Splash, Sheaffer Sagaris, Sheaffer Prelude, Osmiroid 65

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Could it be that, like almost every successful business today, they are moving away from print media and snail mail and expanding their internet presence?  Is it also possible that again, like every other business, they have assessd what is cost-effective and made decisions based upon that assessment?

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35 minutes ago, ParramattaPaul said:

Is it also possible that again, like every other business, they have assessd what is cost-effective and made decisions based upon that assessment?

 

Exactly. I don't follow @Mysterious Mose's leap of logic. A business decision to shift away from providing what an individual customer or consumer likes, and is accustomed to getting, does not suggest financial trouble by default.

 

Coles and Woolworths, being the duopoly national supermarket chains in Australia, have stopped spamming residential mailboxes with printed catalogues weekly, even though their business and profits have been absolutely booming the past couple of years. Free White Pages phone books have stopped being automatically delivered to households years ago; and the national telecommunications provider here has recently stopped bothering with collecting money (and thus revenue) from its payphones all over the country, but instead made all calls within Australia free of charge to make from payphones.

 

Things change. Don't read too much into it, especially if businesses are discontinuing what you'd personally like, when you can reasonably conceive that it does not provide sufficient return for investment and/or operational costs for those companies.

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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Ask to Fountain Pen Hospital directly Why is doing that ?

Maybe there is other reason than financial troubles...Printed magazines are expensive instead electronic format..

Best regards...

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6 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

Exactly. I don't follow @Mysterious Mose's leap of logic. A business decision to shift away from providing what an individual customer or consumer likes, and is accustomed to getting, does not suggest financial trouble by default.

 

Coles and Woolworths, being the duopoly national supermarket chains in Australia, have stopped spamming residential mailboxes with printed catalogues weekly, even though their business and profits have been absolutely booming the past couple of years. Free White Pages phone books have stopped being automatically delivered to households years ago; and the national telecommunications provider here has recently stopped bothering with collecting money (and thus revenue) from its payphones all over the country, but instead made all calls within Australia free of charge to make from payphones.

 

Things change. Don't read too much into it, especially if businesses are discontinuing what you'd personally like, when you can reasonably conceive that it does not provide sufficient return for investment and/or operational costs for those companies.

 

Hmmmm, very strange: where I live in "Regional NSW", we still get weekly paper brochures from Coles and Woolworths dropped into our letterbox for the snails to munch on - and a local White Pages phone book that goes straight into the recycling...

 

Even so I agree, I wouldn't read too much into the scaling back of paper catalogs - it may just be that FPH are starting to rely more heavily on their website.  Or that with COVID, they've been unable to give their time to put their catalogs together?  Since they're a B&M, it might be worth phoning them to ask!

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9 hours ago, Jamerelbe said:

Even so I agree, I wouldn't read too much into the scaling back of paper catalogs - it may just be that FPH are starting to rely more heavily on their website.  Or that with COVID, they've been unable to give their time to put their catalogs together?  Since they're a B&M, it might be worth phoning them to ask!

I guess my question in this post is whether or not anyone has any insight into the behavior of FPH.

 

Fortunately, in both instances (calendar, catalog), I was present in the store talking with a salesman and asked for a calendar and catalog, respectfully.  The answer I got each time was something like "yes, we don't provide calendars anymore [nor] a 2021 catalog.  That was a management decision."  I didn't probe any further.

Dan Kalish

 

Fountain Pens: Pelikan Souveran M805, Pelikan Petrol-Marble M205, Santini Libra Cumberland, Waterman Expert II, Waterman Phileas, Waterman Kultur, Stipula Splash, Sheaffer Sagaris, Sheaffer Prelude, Osmiroid 65

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54 minutes ago, Mysterious Mose said:

I guess my question in this post is whether or not anyone has any insight into the behavior of FPH.

 

Fortunately, in both instances (calendar, catalog), I was present in the store talking with a salesman and asked for a calendar and catalog, respectfully.  The answer I got each time was something like "yes, we don't provide calendars anymore [nor] a 2021 catalog.  That was a management decision."  I didn't probe any further.

To me, that reply would confirm what I suggested earlier.

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1 hour ago, Mysterious Mose said:

I guess my question in this post is whether or not anyone has any insight into the behavior of FPH. …‹snip›… That was a management decision."  I didn't probe any further.

 

See, I don't get this. You obviously want to delve into the rationale of FPH's business decisions, by raising the question here. The staff there has already told you the source of the decisions; you should “probe” and ask FPH's management directly, even if it makes you appear as a nosy or prying customer, when you've been shopping there for 30 years and seem to feel you have a vested interest. Why ask us here, if you don't want to flag yourself (to FPH, and perhaps to others) as someone who wants to know and who is prepared to ask the question point-blank?

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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Enough said!! There probably is nothing wrong with FPH other than the business decision not to have a big slick page, beautiful pics catalog as as already been said.Because they make such a decision doesn't imply anything is wrong. Get over it!!!!

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I suspect it is simply a sign of the times — moving away from print to digital products. Montblanc used to do beautiful holiday catalogs—they stopped doing that even before the pandemic. My organization used to do a very nice Annual Report in paper — we have gone to entirely digital. It is more cost-effective on many fronts. I love the catalogs from FPH — just received mine and noticed how small it is, in terms of a page count — but, can’t fault them for making a prudent business decision. 

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I used to shop a lot at FPH when I lived in

NYC. It’s a family owned business and I met the son of the current owner/director who was quite young a few years ago. His stated goal was to update FPH’s online business. I think he’s probably doing just that, moving away from print media and shifting to digital. Slowly, so nobody gets upset.

 

I now get weekly sales notices in my inbox and am waiting for them to revamp their website.

 

I also liked the print catalogue but in all honesty, they pretty much looked the same from year to year. Especially the Montblanc and Pelikan pages! The pen world is actually shifting fairly rapidly now so it makes sense to move to more adaptable digital platforms.

 

On the cost-cutting front, FPH used to offer quite expensive pen cases as freebies during their Winter Showcase event. I have a wonderful Pineider and also an Aurora pen case that I got for free - items that easily cost more than $ 100 retail. I

treasure them but can’t really fault them for cutting down on

that.

 

Final thought: FPH used to be one of the main US pen retailers, with very good discounts and great customer service. They now face a lot of competition, especially internationally. Appelboom from the Netherlands just bought a store in Boston!

 

Streamlining their business is probably super important now. Long may they run!

"If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live."

– Lin Yu-T'ang

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I was just in there last week and they offered me a calendar with my ink. I could be they will just be for walk-in customers from now on. 

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15 minutes ago, Calabria said:

Streamlining their business is probably super important now.

This is true for all businesses now -- large and small.  The internet continues create marketing opportunities that were unimaginable as recently as a quarter century ago.  'Adapt or die' has become a reality for retailers today.

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  • 3 weeks later...

What's interesting is that Goldspot's latest catalog is absolutely gorgeous and a good deal larger than FPH's, Fahrney's, and Levengers.  Yes it has primarily Sailor products, but photo and content-wise, just stellar.

 

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Best regards,
Steve Surfaro
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  • 3 weeks later...

I think I heard this before when I was chatting with the owners and the sales people. However do take this with a grain of salt as it's all me hear say.

 

The way the business was run was based a very old model, ie the space in the store and their catalogs aren't actually paid from the store owners pocket. They are "advertising space" that the stores "sells" to the distributors and pen brands. These brands "buy" space to advertise their brands and they do this because fountain pen hospital has a VERY large customer base that they want access to. Unfortunately the nature of the business has changed and I am sure e-commerce has upturned this model.

 

 

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54 minutes ago, gerigo said:

I think I heard this before when I was chatting with the owners and the sales people. However do take this with a grain of salt as it's all me hear say.

 

The way the business was run was based a very old model, ie the space in the store and their catalogs aren't actually paid from the store owners pocket. They are "advertising space" that the stores "sells" to the distributors and pen brands. These brands "buy" space to advertise their brands and they do this because fountain pen hospital has a VERY large customer base that they want access to. Unfortunately the nature of the business has changed and I am sure e-commerce has upturned this model.

 

 

NOoooo.  😞  I'm devastated by this information.

Dan Kalish

 

Fountain Pens: Pelikan Souveran M805, Pelikan Petrol-Marble M205, Santini Libra Cumberland, Waterman Expert II, Waterman Phileas, Waterman Kultur, Stipula Splash, Sheaffer Sagaris, Sheaffer Prelude, Osmiroid 65

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