Fountain Pens And Non-Pen Brands: Mercedes, Balmain, Laguiole

[amk]

I'm just back from a day's foraging at the sales and today has really had me wondering why, why, why... do good brands in other sectors dilute their brands as soon as they touch pens?

 

I saw a Balmain ballpoint pen and key fob set, very expensively laid out in an expanse of white silk in a luxurious box. I picked the pen up: cheap, nasty, seemed like a Chinese Montblanc knock-off. Yet Balmain is an haute couture brand - it sells leather jackets at north of 3,000 euros.

 

Laguiole is the premier French cutlery brand - everything from table knives and carving sets to superb penknives. Their fountain pens are horrible; one I handled had a broken clip, snapped right across the middle. Investigation revealed why; the 'metal' clip was made of metallic-painted plastic.

 

The message coming over to me as a fountain pen collector? "These brands are cheap and nasty." Okay, not everyone collects pens - but surely someone in the company must look at a horrible bit of plastic and say, gosh, that's not what we're about?

 

The only brand that does seem to have done it right is Mercedes with their Lamy 2000 special edition. It's exactly right for Mercedes - a great design, great engineering, and real quality. And I want one... (because eight Lamy 2000s is not enough.)

 

There's the Deutsche Telekon Pelikan of course, which is also a high quality pen, but I think that was a promotional item rather than a brand extension.

 

I wonder whether anyone else has good (or bad) examples of non-pen brands getting involved in the market?

 

[legume]

The Mercedes-Lamy 2000 may only have been good because all they did was modify the cap of an existing pen. Another non-fountain pen brand that makes fountain pens is Cartier. I remember a member here telling a funny story once about this phenomenon and why in the world would anyone want a Cartier fountain pen? All I know about them is that they make sunglasses.

 

I suppose some people would assume that everything from an established brand must be a high quality luxury good.