Pen company mission statements

[meanwhile]

Not satisfied with incurring the wrath and enmity of Rolex, Mont Blanc, and Pelikan lovers, I thought I'd also take a swipe at MBAs and every other pen company I could think of....

 

Sheaffer: For most of a century we will design the world's most diverse and innovative range of pens - then give up and sell nothing but watered-down versions of the 1959 PFM...

 

Parker: We shall engineer the most innovative and unique pen the world has ever seen (thus irritating hell out of Sheaffer). Then, decades later, while the Chinese are still making are still making the an authentic version of the pen and selling it for $30, we'll sell a copy of the cheap copies that people made back in the forties and sell it for hundreds of dollars...

 

Rotring: It might be impossible to hold, but you can use one end to pierce armour plate and the other to beat a man to death with. (PS We'd much rather still be designing Tiger tanks - it doesn't show, does it?)

 

Waterman: As Parker's sister company, we shall sell our imitations of the classic Sheaffer Targa at a greater price than people pay for Parker's, thus irritating both great American companies. Vive le France!

 

Mont Blanc: We shall design 10 new limited editions each year and sell 50,000 pens of each design..

 

Pelikan: We designed the world's least imaginative and interesting looking pen in the 1930's. As a concession to modern tastes, we now produce it in several different sizes and colours.

 

Italian pen companies: Eversharp designed the world's most attractive pen in the 1930's - the Doric. If their lawyers ever find out where we live, the Italian pen industry will be finished.

 

Japanese pen companies: What's a mission statement? And could someone please explain what marketing is...?

Edited October 8, 2006 by meanwhile

[Blade Runner]

:ltcapd:

You missed a few companies though.

[kissing]

Highly satirically

 

I especially love the Rotring one :roflmho: :ltcapd:

 

That's exactly what I've been feeling about my Rotring Newton all day :bonk: The thing is so darn difficult and heavy to hold, and the nib is like an armour piercing shrapnel. :ph34r:

[meanwhile]

:ltcapd:

You missed a few companies though.

Yes. In particular I still can't think of anything satirical to say about Esterbrook, who produced sensibly designed and excellently constructed pens at a great price and sold huge numbers of them.

 

But:

 

Conway Stewart: Our new pens are authentic recreations of our historic vintage models (which you can buy on ebay for a quarter of the price).

 

Hero: One day we shall sell a thousand different models of fountain pen. We just have to decide which one thousand, four hundred and seventy seven to stop producing first. Um, one thousand, four hundred and seventy eight...nine...

[meanwhile]

Highly satirically

 

I especially love the Rotring one :roflmho: :ltcapd:

 

That's exactly what I've been feeling about my Rotring Newton all day :bonk: The thing is so darn difficult and heavy to hold, and the nib is like an armour piercing shrapnel. :ph34r:

K -

 

You should try the Initial!

 

The slippiest, least holdable part of the pen is the grip...

 

...The nib makes the other 'Trings I've held seem like paint brushes...

 

......The cap is designed to provide maximum grip in a clenched fist, and the other end of the pen ends in a metal ferrule...

 

(But that hard nib is good enough so that I'm going to work on the section of mine with sandpaper in an attempt to salvage it - it's like writing with a nail tipped with smooth glass, if that makes sense.)

[BillTheEditor]

There is a problem with all of your mission statements: each of them comes too close to telling the truth about the company's business model.

 

The one thing that a corporate mission statement absolutely cannot do is tell the truth. Also, a corporate mission statement absolutely cannot be written in plain English (or French, or Japanese, or Chinese) -- there must be polysyllabic marketingspeak gobbledygook terms and they must compose at least 80% of the statement (measured word-for-word). Extra points for passive voice. Remember the three criteria for a great corporate mission statement: OB-FUS-CATE.

 

There are few things that I miss about corporate life. One of the things I am totally grateful that I no longer have to put up with is the annual revision of the corporate mission statement (annual, or whenever the company changes CEOs, whichever happens first). Nobody ever liked my standard mission statement: "We are here to win and to make lots of money while doing so."

 

The reason you can't come up with a statement for Esterbrook is that they did such a good job of making great pens that apparently will be around longer than the dinosaurs, they are no longer in existence as a fountain pen manufacturer.

 

But I enjoyed reading your versions of "what they really meant."

Edited October 8, 2006 by BillTheEditor

[Ray]

Porsche: Look we make fantastic cars. We're only talking about a pen. How hard can it be to make a good pen, for crying out loud? Oh, hang on...

 

Ray

[meanwhile]

There is a problem with all of your mission statements: each of them comes too close to telling the truth about the company's business model.

 

Well, I've not been to business school to have my soul removed...

Edited October 8, 2006 by meanwhile

[meanwhile]

Porsche: Look we make fantastic cars. We're only talking about a pen. How hard can it be to make a good pen, for crying out loud? Oh, hang on...

 

Ray

Ouch.

 

THAT bad?

 

Closely related:

 

Faber Castel Snobbery? Moi?

Edited October 8, 2006 by meanwhile

[Phthalo]

Brilliant!

[meanwhile]

There is a problem with all of your mission statements: each of them comes too close to telling the truth about the company's business model.

 

Well, I've not been to business school to have my soul removed...

I've just realized that this may offend forum users with MBAs, so I'll point out that there's a good reasons why getting an MBA requires giving up your soul: much of modern business involves dealing with lawyers*, and they eat them.

 

There - that shouldn't offend anyone...

 

Of course, there is a reason we have lawyers - they're an ecological counter to MDs.

 

*A great thing about the FPN forum software is you can see who is on a thread at the same time as you - hello, James!

Edited October 8, 2006 by meanwhile

[WillAdams]

LOL!

 

How's this?

 

Esterbrook: We're not here to change with the times, we're here to make enough Gregg shorthand steel fountain pen nibs that they'll always be available.

 

William

[london]

Love the Rotring one. Looking at my Studio, it could also apply to Lamy.

 

We do need a few more 'Achieving excellence' and 'No1' in there thought ;-)

 

Personally in the UK, I think Parker's vision is more along the lines of 'We will monopolise the shelf space in all high street stationery stores with 30 slightly different variants of the same pens'.

 

Three good sized stores near me and all they have is Parker. Yet, still they all have Sheaffer, Waterman and Lamy ink.

 

- Mark

[JimStrutton]

Just love it............... :bonk:

 

Jim :ltcapd: :roflmho:

 

PS However should they find out that you have revealed the truth............. :ph34r:

[kissing]

Parker: We'll just make sure we over-polish our nibs so that they're as slippery as one can make them. Who cares if they're not easy to write with

[wspohn]

Porsche: Look we make fantastic cars. We're only talking about a pen. How hard can it be to make a good pen, for crying out loud? Oh, hang on...

Porsche used to make interesting sports cars. I know, I used to spend a lot of time and money making sure they stayed in my rear view mirror on the race track.

 

They also made superb if at times idiosyncratic street cars.

 

Then they decided to chuck 50 years of tradition and appeal to the lowest common denominator (the dreaded yuppie horde) and put the hallowed name on a 2 1/2 ton piece of (Potty Mouth) known as a Cayenne, in the hopes that all of the Escalade and Navigator and Hummer owners would think it had enough appeal to lure them over to the lacklustre beast.

 

For shame! Could cheesy pens and sunglasses be long in coming?

[kissing]

Quoted from Rowan Atkinson:

 

"I have a problem with Porsches. They're wonderful cars, but I know I could never live with one. Somehow, the typical Porsche people — and I wish them no ill — are not, I feel, my kind of people. I don't go around saying that Porsches are a pile of dung, but I do know that psychologically I couldn't handle owning one."

 

 

http://www.johnny-english.com/synopsis8_01.jpg

[meanwhile]

Esterbrook We'd rather close the company than make a pen that isn't a lever filler... ooops!

[kissing]

Iridium Point Germany: Ni-hao! Welcome to China.

[wspohn]

Quoted from Rowan Atkinson:

 

"I have a problem with Porsches. They're wonderful cars, but I know I could never live with one. Somehow, the typical Porsche people — and I wish them no ill — are not, I feel, my kind of people. I don't go around saying that Porsches are a pile of dung, but I do know that psychologically I couldn't handle owning one."

 

Hear, hear!

 

I used to wear this T shirt at Laguna Seca as I walked through the Porsche pits.......

 

http://www.rhodo.citymax.com/i/non-rhodo/porker.jpg