Meet the Parkers, Part… Actually, Not Parkers (Yet)
Saturday afternoon I went to the Pen Fair and Sale at Flax Art for one purpose: to give the Parker representative a hard time.
I should back up and explain why that was necessary. The first fact you need to know is that Parker is owned by Sanford, the company that makes Sharpies. Sanford also owns Parker competitors Waterman and Rotring.
Rotring is one of my favorite pen companies, for a lot of reasons. First, they make an excellent Rapidograph, one I respect and admire even though I prefer the Koh-I-Noor brand, which once upon a time competed with Rotring but is now owned by them.
Rotring makes good fountain pens as well. Consistent with their other engineering-oriented products, Rotring pens have a long history of delivering a clean, distinct, even line. I’ve often said that if I chose to, I could use my Rotring 700 instead of my #3 Rapidograph. In truth, the line it lays down isn’t quite that consistent, but I really wouldn’t want a fountain pen to be. While the 700 will write an even line, it also responds well to variations in pressure and angle, making it a real workhorse for drawing and writing.
Rotring also makes the ArtPen, which is one of the most popular fountain pens in history. I’m not a big fan of the ArtPen, but I’ve used them from time to time. They’re reliable, but tend to be scratchy and don’t have much weight to them. I was spoiled by using my 700 before I ever touched an ArtPen, so please forgive them any criticisms I put down. It looks like they are running around $20-$25 each and for calligraphy they’re probably a fair choice for beginners. For someone looking for a pen to sketch with, I recommend a low-end Parker fountain like the Vector or I.M./Profile, or heck, the disposable Pilot Varsity is a fantastic pen.
But I digress. The ArtPen is a very popular pen and it’s been around for a long time. Another pen from Rotring that I’ve damned with faint praise for years is the Rotring 600. The Rotring 600 fountain pen is incredibly popular for much the same reasons that I love the Rotring 700, but the 700 had a higher standard of production, was more expensive, and was cancelled as soon as Sanford took over Rotring, so very few people got a chance to compare the 700 and the 600. Tremendous numbers of 600 users love their 600 and I probably would too if I hadn’t gotten to the 700 first. My experience with the 600 is that it doesn’t measure up to the 700. It’s a terrific pen for drawing and writing, but the 700 is better.
This could very easily turn into the story of a great company ruined by being bought by a huge corporate overlord, but the history since 1998 hasn’t been all bad. The production quality rebounded after a dip immediately following acquisition and Rotring has gone on to make some nice writers and gone out on a limb with groundbreaking (some say ugly, I say they’ve had some winners and losers) designs.
Rotring has been doing so well, in fact, that I finally decided to buy a 600. The 600 was renamed the Rotring Newton and subsequently redesigned from the old, angular-and-tubular Bauhaus design to a somewhat more daring and contemporary design. As I’ve been buying fountain pens lately I thought it was time to get the 600/Newton. I see that the design is a departure from Rotring’s old personality, and maybe that’s a dilution of the brand or maybe just a progression of design. I just think it’s a good-looking pen and Rotring makes quality writers, so it’s worth trying out.
The oddest thing happened: I was unable to find one. Rotring products have been disappearing from the shelves and pen cases of the stores I frequent and even the ones I don’t where I went searching to find a Newton.
This is sadly typical of the pen industry. Usually if I want something I have to special order it. I like fine nibs, but they’re hard to find; pen stores often can’t carry all varieties or finishes or colors, so I end up not seeing the one I want in the case, for any number of reasons, I usually can’t find what I want in a store.
But this was more. Not only could I not find the model I was looking for, I could no longer find any Rotrings at all, except for the ArtPen, which isn’t usually sold in the same section. Where several months ago I could find Rotrings in every art supply and office supply and fine pen store in the City, today I find none.
The good folks behind the counters at several of these stores told me that they cannot even get Rotrings any longer. There hasn’t been a Norther California representative for Rotring in some time, and Rotring has apparantly not been filling orders made anywhere in the United States.
Follow-up calls to fine pen stores around the country turned up similar answers. Rotring is simply not returning phone calls to the United States. But the alarm was really sounded when it was discovered that Rotring no longer appears on sanford.com’s home page or their pull-down navigation where the user is asked to select from their list of brands. Rotring is mentioned in their brand list under the «About» section, but that’s hardly a promotion of a brand that should be one of their more prominent. More disturbing, the rotring.com URL offered on Sanford’s site redirects to a Newell/Rubbermaid-branded site with no information about Rotring. Even on rotring.com’s «key brands» page, the Rotring name and logo are conspicuously absent.
A representative from Sanford’s corporate offices told Monochromatic Outlook that Sanford had no interruption of sales nor plans to interrupt sales of Rotring pens. The representative offered kingpens.com as a source for all models and expressed surprise that the Newton was not available on that site. (As of this writing, kingpens.com’s database seems to be malfunctioning and no pens are available at all.) She then said something about the Newton being «redesigned», claimed that the Newton would be available once the redesign was complete, but wouldn’t provide any other specifics.
In the meantime, cultpens.com in the UK, whose Rotring catalog explains that Rotring has been struggling to reposition itself in the face of the move of the vast majority of technical design and drafting work to CAD systems and illustration software, tells me they have no trouble getting deliveries from Rotring. Strange, then, that from San Francisco to New York Rotring is blacked out.
It was with these unresolved questions that I ambushed Pete, the Parker/Waterman representative at Flax Art on Saturday. I’ll make clear here that Pete, despite having only a few months on the job thus far, handled himself with dignity, courtesy, professionalism, and good cheer. When I use the word «ambush» my tongue is planted firmly in cheek, but I did have some direct questions for Pete, who answered directly, plainly, and when he did not know an answer said so straight away.
Rotring’s business in the United States, it seems, is to be absorbed by the Parker brand. It’s unclear exactly how this will shake out, but even a best-case scenario doesn’t look good for Rotring. Certainly we will never see the engineering- and drawing-oriented fountain pens of the last quarter of a century. My guess is that the Rapidographs and ArtPens will continue to be sold under the Rotring name, but that all Rotring fountain pens but the ArtPen will be discontinued entirely. The best-case scenario is that Rotring in Germany will continue to produce fountain pens that will be marketed in the United States as Parkers and in the rest of the world as Rotring. Perhaps just as Pilot/Namiki sells the Bamboo under the Namiki name in the United States and as a Pilot in Europe, we will start to see the Parker Initial and the Parker Newton stateside. That would be hard to get used to, and hardly fits the existing Parker line, but would be a lot better than having to ship Rotring fountain pens from across the Atlantic or not being able to get them any more at all.
As a postscript to this, I also bent Pete the Parker/Waterman rep’s ear about the disappearance of Parker from the relatively low-end fountain pen market in America. Pete seemed to pay close attention, asked questions about my suggestions, and even wrote down a couple of notes. He asked me if I thought there really was a market demand for Parker’s $10-$15 fountain pens in America (again, it’s s easy to get them in Europe but they aren’t offered in America any more). I explained to him my theory that the high-end pen market is supported by the low-end pen market. People don’t just wake up one day and decide they want a $200 pen. Instead they try out a $10 pen and use it for a couple of years and then move up. Also, people like me give less expensive pens to friends who are curious.
Finally, in my eyes the most important reason for maintaining the inexpensive end of one’s product line. The quality of Parker’s $10-$15 pens — their seven dollar pens back when I started — builds my confidence that Parker can make a great pen for $50, $200, or even $800. Because of the excellence of Pilot’s three dollar disposable, I wouldn’t bat an eye at spending $400 on a Namiki Bamboo. I know Pilot/Namiki makes an excellent pen, period. Shaeffer’s low-end pens are unreliable, leak-prone pieces of garbage. I believe that their high-end pens are of excellent quality, but deep in my bones I don’t trust it. As a consequence, I’ll never own a Shaeffer.
A company willing to pay attention to the small customer can be trusted to take care of the big customer. While that might sound radical in today’s business environment, fountain pens are high-value, high-markup discretionary products. Trust is intangible and easy to neglect; when margins rest on the brand recognition, how can a penmaker afford not to invest heavily in building the customer’s trust?
Great piece! You’re right -
Great piece! You’re right — it’s very sad to see the rOtring brand seem to be abandoned by Sanford/Newell Rubbermaid. They had a great thing going, and unfortunately due to lack of brand awareness, it’s probably as good as gone.
Did you ever get your 600? If not, send me an email — I’ve got some leads on where you can still find one.