Before the advent of metal pens, the Western world's writing instrument of choice was the quill. Finding bird feathers wasn't very hard. Ever since 600 AD, that's how most writing was done.
Once the Industrial Revolution got underway, improved metallurgy and mass production techniques resulted in the dip pen. It was essentially a metal nib mounted on a handle. It could barely hold more ink than a quill and its practical use was about the same.
The first truly practical pens appeared at the end of the 19th century, they are what we call 'fountain pens' and the innovation behind them was that, they had a reservoir of ink inside. The first commercially successful fountain pens were built in 1884 by Lewis Waterman.
He was originally an insurance broker. But, one day, when signing a very important contract with the prototype fountain pen he had brought for the occasion, it broke and leaked ink on the whole document. This accident eventually resulted in the deal getting cancelled and Waterman losing his job.
Making the best out of a bad situation, Waterman decided to build a better fountain pen and it was his design that truly made fountain pens the dominants' writing instrument of the next half-century. It wouldn't be until the 1930s that fountain pens would finally meet their match as a man responsible for that was.
He was a journalist. He had noticed too that the ink used in newspaper printing dried quickly, leaving the vapor dry and smudge free when he tried using the same ink in a fountain pen. However, it wouldn't flow into the tip because it was too viscous. After seven years of trial and error, he developed a new tip for his pen, consisting of a ball. This could freely rotate in a socket.
As the ball ran along the paper, it would siphon ink from an internal cartridge and spread it out evenly. What Laszlo had created was the ballpoint pen. The timing of his invention was a bit unlucky as a Hungarian Jew Laszlo was well aware of what was happening in Germany. So in 1938, he packed his bags and moved to Paris. While there, he encountered a lucky chance of meeting the President of Argentina, Agustin Pedro, who stole this.
He was so impressed by the ballpoint pen that he told Laszlo to emigrate to Argentina which of course he did as he wanted to be as far away from Germany as possible. Once in Argentina, Lazlo sets up a company for his pens and by 1943, he was selling them to his Majesty's Royal Air Force in the UK. This first generation of ballpoint pens wasn't perfect. However, the metal case was prone to leaking and the ink would often clog.
Most of Laszlo's non-government clients ended up returning their pens, which drove his company to the brink of bankruptcy. To keep his company afloat, Lazlo resorted to sending the rights to his pen in Europe. A man who bought the European rights to the ballpoint pen was a Frenchman, Baron Marcel. He had entered the pen business in 1945, when he had bought a damaged factory on the outskirts of Paris and used it to start making fountain pens.
Marcel fell in love with the ballpoint pen and in 1950 when he heard that Laszlo was selling the patent, he threw two million dollars of loud load together. With the patent in hand, Marcel used his considerable resources to acquire plastic and precision stainless steel technology from Switzerland. A few years prior, the shaping machines Marcel bought were cutting-edge for their time. Capable of shaping metal down to 10 micrometers, the design of Marcel's pens was simplistic. The Pen's Barrow was shaped similarly to a pencil, making it very hard to roll off a table. Since it was made of transparent polystyrene, it was easy to see when you were running out of ink. What truly made Marcel's endeavor successful, however was his understanding of economies of scale.
Although they were vastly superior to fountain pens, it was very hard to justify spending the equivalent of one week's wage for one pen. Marcel however streamlined his production and thought everything in bulk, allowing him to sell his pens for a fraction of the cost. Only fifty centimes, the equivalent of eighteen cents. In the US, Marcel's initial plan was to seal the pens under his family name. But, once people told him how English speakers were pronouncing it, he decided to drop the age. Thus, in 1950 he established societal and began flooding France with his trademark pen, which he called the 'Bic crystal'.
The pen was an instant hit, surpassing everything on the market both in terms of quality and price. Within three years, Marcel was selling 40 million pens annually. He could barely keep up with the rising demand and so he started opening subsidiaries left and right. By 1954, he was operating across Western ear and just two years later his pens were also sold in South America and Africa.
Marcel didn't enter the US markets until 1958 and he did so in a very interesting fashion. Remember our friend Lewis Waterman, the insurance broker who started making fountain pens in the late 1880s, the company he had started was now the largest manufacturer of fountain pens in the US. But, the ballpoint revolution had left them near bankruptcy.
To gain a foothold in the state, Marcel offered to buy Waterman and he did so for 1 million dollars. He repurposed most of Waterman factories to make ballpoint pens and he kept the fountain pen division as a luxury brand, which is too around to this day also as a separate entity. In 1961, the big boy was designed,which has remained the part of the company's logo.
That year, the company replaced their stainless steel ball points with much harder tungsten carbide, which they still use today. By the end of the 1960s, big pants were sold on every inhabited continent and Marcel was looking for other products to add to his arsenal. In line with his philosophy, he needed something cheap and disposable that people would use every day. A pocket lighter turned out to be the perfect candidate. Much like with the ballpoint pen, Marcel's affordable lighter outperformed all available alternatives and was capable of producing three thousand flames over its lifetime. Its release in 1973 was met with universal acclaim and today lighter sales make up over 35% of the company's revenue.
Two years later, Marcel found another market he could conquer in. What was essentially a declaration of war on Gillette, BIC released a disposable safety razor in 1975. They heavily undercut Gillette and have been a thorn in their side ever since although.
Making up almost 24 percent of their sales today the razor still is a good one. As a lifetime water sports enthusiast, Marcel established Bic sports in 1979, which made windsurf equipment and sail boards. Today, it is a very minor part of the company and it hasn't been very successful.
Months after starting Bic sport, they decided to enter the clothing market by purchasing Guy Laroche from its founder for ten million dollars. At first, the deal seemed great. But, with the legendary fashion designer in failing health and incapable of making new designs, the fashion company quickly started bleeding money when guy himself died in 1989. Things became even worse after a series of failed successors.
Getting pretty old at that point, Marcel was starting to make mistakes. For example, when he tried to enter the perfume market in 1989 and failed so much, said he scrapped through the whole line of perfumes. Just two years later, Marcel died in 1994 and his son Bruno took up the reins to fix the company. His first move was to strengthen Bic's codons. He began with the white out and tippex, the two largest correction brands in the world. He sold the unprofitable Guy Laroche in 2001 and it eventually ended up in the hands of a Chinese company.
Since then Bic has tried to venture into the realm of consumer electronics, by selling mobile phones, tablets and hydrogen fuel cells. But, the results have been lackluster. At best, even today their most successful products are Marcel's original trifecta.
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