Penmaker to the World

Along with the Coca-Cola bottle, the Singer sewing machine and the Willys Jeep, the Parker pen ranks as one of the best-known symbols of the U.S.

around the world. Parker's shapely"51" pens signed the Japanese and the German surrender agreements after World War II, the Korean cease-fire at Panmunjom and the Japanese Peace Treaty. Truman, Attlee and Stalin used a Parker to sign the Potsdam agreement, and Khrushchev flew home with a sup ply of Parkers after his shoe-slapping U.N. visit three years ago. In develop ing nations, where the fight against il literacy is constantly creating the need for more pens, a Parker pen is one of the status symbols of the educated man.

The Parker Pen Co. of Janesville, Wis., is busy taking advantage of this worldwide renown with a lively spirit that belies its 75 years. It deliberately ignores national boundaries in its planning, now does two-thirds of its busi ness overseas in 156 nations. "We are a company of the world which happens to have its headquarters in the U.S.," says President Daniel Parker, 38, the grandson of Founder George Parker.

Since he took over three years ago, hard-driving Dan Parker has given up his sports-car racing hobby in favor of 19-hour working days (with an occa sional five-minute nap). Under him the company has pushed its sales to record levels ($43.3 million last year) and, best of all, has won the race against rising costs: its earnings last year jumped 16%, to $3,600,000.

Lucky Curve. Founder George Par ker was a telegraphy teacher back in 1888 when he became tired of the primitive fountain pens of the day and invented a pen of his own. His business surged after he developed the "lucky curve" -a curved ink-feeding device that prevented ink from leaking when the pen was stored upright in a user's pocket. He kept adding technical improvements, caught the public fancy with such gimmicks as the showy orange and black Duofold pen that be came the raccoon coat of the pen indus try in the 1920s, and soon was leading all the world's penmakers in sales-a distinction his company still holds. Over the years since then, his company has introduced the first pen with a metal cap, the first pen that could fly (could be used in an airplane without leaking), and the first pen ever to fill itself (by capillary action).

Founder Parker boasted that his pens could write in any language, but after World War II, under his son Kenneth, the company was slow to read some handwriting on the wall. It consisted of one word: ballpoints. "The ballpoint pen," said Kenneth Parker at the time, "is the only pen that makes eight carbon copies without an original." Parker finally got into ballpoints in 1954 after developing what it considered a good point. Luckily, it was shored up meantime by the success of the "51," which was introduced in 1941 and is still the world's bestselling pen in the over-$5 category (total sales of the "51" are approaching $500 million).

One Problem. Parker pens sell for as high as $150, but the bestseller right now is the $1.98 "T-Ball Jotter," of which nearly 50 million have been sold. Ballpoints now account for nearly 40% of Parker sales, and their sales are rising faster than fountain pen sales; but the company feels that there will always be a big market for the fountain pen, particularly overseas. When countries raised high import barriers to protect local penmakers, Parker set up local subsidiaries and licensed manufacturers in 21 nations. Now well past the high cost of developing the ballpoint and setting up overseas operations, Parker has only one big problem. That, says Dan Parker, is increasing its production fast enough to keep up with the expanding world demand for pens.

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