Why Is (Graf Von) Faber Castell Not More Popular In The Fp World?

[como]

Ok, I am going to say something less dangerous (seriously): The GvFC "The Perfect Pencil" really is perfect. I wish all my fountain pens can model after it: It's absolutely gorgeous for a wooden pencil, and never has problems of nibs, filling systems, cosmetics, inks or anything else. If it ever does, you can chug it out and buy another pencil for a few Euros, and it looks perfect! I am not a GvFC fan. I normally prefer Italian pens. But the other day I looked at "The Perfect Pencil" and had the urge to sell all my fountain pens, and just buy this pencil to use it to the end... Luckily, or unluckily for me this thought didn't stay long.

[max dog]

Haven't had s chance to wade through all the pages here. Top of mind why FC is not more popular is because of their design and aesthetics isn't for everyone. Maybe if the offered some more traditional pen designs they would gain more traction. Perhaps they should look at Cross, Waterman, and Montblanc.

[ArchiMark]

  On 2/27/2019 at 12:50 AM, max dog said:

Haven't had s chance to wade through all the pages here. Top of mind why FC is not more popular is because of their design and aesthetics isn't for everyone. Maybe if the offered some more traditional pen designs they would gain more traction. Perhaps they should look at Cross, Waterman, and Montblanc.

 

So, let's see if I got this right.....

 

GvFC should make their designs look like other company's pen designs, so, that they aren't unique in order to sell more pens. Even though by looking like everyone else, we you're saying we would now want to buy their pens instead of the ones they're copying?

[loganrah]

I'm definitely with others on the uniqueness and consistency of GvFC's designs as a big draw card.

 

I was recently gifted a Tamitio which came with a lovely wooden storage box (the lid of which even recreates the fluted cap design in more angular form) that has space for three pens. My initial reaction when I saw the pen (I'd never seen a GvFC before, even online) was "god that's ugly" but I didn't want to offend the person who'd given it to me so I didn't say anything. Then I started using it for a few days, and now I'm having a hard time not buying two more to fill up the box because I just know they'd look great as a set in that box on my desk and the GvFC aesthetic has really grown on me.

 

I am also very pleasantly surprised by the build quality (including a very smooth nib) from even the lowest of Faber-Castell's high end line.

 

Edit: One problem I do have with the Tamitio is that frequently uncapping, posting and capping have left visible scratch patterns on the small `section' and end of the barrel where it posts. I presume this is partly because of the rather tight fit between the plastic inner cap and the section/barrel end (which is generally a good thing) but it might be an issue for someone who wants their pens to look pristine rather than well used.

Edited February 27, 2019 by loganrah

[minddance]

do they all have metal sections?

[Houston]

  On 2/27/2019 at 5:29 AM, minddance said:

do they all have metal sections?

 

No. Have a look at the Intuition -- which has no grip section at all -- and the Tamitio. The latter has what one might or might not say is a metal section, but it's clearly designed not to be the grip, unless you hold your pen in a way that positions your fingertips almost on top of the nib.

 

Of the two, I only own the Intuition, and I adore it's section-less design. The barrel flares out, subtly, just before the nib assembly. It's one of my favourite grips.

Edited February 27, 2019 by Houston

[como]

Here in Switzerland if you walk into an ordinary stationery shop where school children buy their things (those that don't sell Montblanc and don't know what Omas/Aurora/Visconti/Montegrappa or whatever else is), you will find lots of Pelikano (the student brand for Pelikan), Faber-Castell, Graf von Faber-Castell, Caran d'Ache. They are anything from wooden pencils all the way to fountain pens worth of worth of a thousand Francs/Euros. The point is that children use FC, Caran d'Ache pens as their first pencil and fountain pen. In fact in schools when they teach children how to use a fountain pen, only a specific Pelikano model is allowed. So it's natural that children from here and Germany for sure will develop a taste for such design. Though it's not my personal preference, I can see why GvFC, Pelikan, Caran d'Ache have still a strong following. Many kids just identify them as their first pen and probably developed a loyalty for them.

[minddance]

  On 2/27/2019 at 7:01 AM, Houston said:

 

No. Have a look at the Intuition -- which has no grip section at all -- and the Tamitio. The latter has what one might or might not say is a metal section, but it's clearly designed not to be the grip, unless you hold your pen in a way that positions your fingertips almost on top of the nib.

 

Of the two, I only own the Intuition, and I adore it's section-less design. The barrel flares out, subtly, just before the nib assembly. It's one of my favourite grips.

thank you for the information. I like the designs on some of these pens. But I am very much put off by metal sections.

[drathbun]

I'm just a newbie when it comes to fountain pens even though I started using fountain pens in 1970. Most of my career as a theatre designer involved doing architectural drawings and I learned to print faster than I could cursively write, so my early fountain pen cursive was replaced when I was a young man. Over the years I've been given fountain pens of various sorts (Cross, Waterford, Faber-Castell). They've all proved to me that I can't write with a fountain pen so I put them away and stuck with my technical pens and mechanical pencils.

 

My love of cursive writing was reignited with the purchase of a JinHao x450. It wrote so smooth, wet and glassy that I started to wonder what was wrong with Cross, Waterford and Faber-Castell. I took out my Faber-Castell Loom (a pen which is still much ballyhooed as being terrific) and tried it again. I smoothed the nib. I used better ink. It still sucks. It is thin, stiff and anaemic. Looking at the pen esthetically and ergonomically it sucks too. It looks like a stick with a lump on the end of it. The section is so slippery and tapered towards the tiny, stiff nib that my hand keeps tracking down to the paper.

 

My pen store has enormous displays of Faber-Castell; Ambition, Ondoro, Essentio, NEO and Loom. The Looms are in all colours and varieties and combo packs. They are all IMO cold, characterless, sticks. I was there yesterday and tried a few samples thinking perhaps my Loom was just a one-off POS? Nope. They were all like writing with nails. I walked two feet away from the FC display to a Platinum display stand with seven different nib test pens (steel)... AWESOME! Each one was awesome and they looked cool too.

 

So I know taste is personal and subjective, but this Loom of mine forced me to write with a Cross Classic Century Medalist rollerball for the last decade. The JinHao x450 is ten times the pen and a tenth of the cost.

 

[max dog]

  On 2/27/2019 at 2:01 AM, ArchiMark said:

 

So, let's see if I got this right.....

 

GvFC should make their designs look like other company's pen designs, so, that they aren't unique in order to sell more pens. Even though by looking like everyone else, we you're saying we would now want to buy their pens instead of the ones they're copying?

No I'm not suggesting they copy anyone. Just saying their designs do not widely appeal to many as other brands do, so perhaps that is why they are not more popular. Stated positively, their designs are very unique. Stated negatively they are odd shaped with weird ergonomics.

[A Smug Dill]

  On 2/28/2019 at 7:33 PM, drathbun said:

I took out my Faber-Castell Loom (a pen which is still much ballyhooed as being terrific) and tried it again. I smoothed the nib. I used better ink. It still sucks. It is thin, stiff and anaemic.

...‹snip›...

So I know taste is personal and subjective, but this Loom of mine forced me to write with a Cross Classic Century Medalist rollerball for the last decade.

Personally, I'd be absolutely delighted if my Faber-Castell Ambition's steel EF nib wrote so finely and left such sharp tails on exit strokes for me when I write cursively in English.

[ArchiMark]

  On 3/5/2019 at 12:39 AM, max dog said:

No I'm not suggesting they copy anyone. Just saying their designs do not widely appeal to many as other brands do, so perhaps that is why they are not more popular. Stated positively, their designs are very unique. Stated negatively they are odd shaped with weird ergonomics.

 

Thanks for clarifying. Understand your point now.

[siddr90]

  On 2/24/2019 at 8:18 PM, Pfhorrest said:

I have been using Graf von Faber Castell fountain pens & pencils, nearly exclusively, for around 11 years now and while I am not an expert on anything to do with writing or writing instruments I think that gives me enough experience to comment in detail on this topic.

 

The first reason I believe Graf von Faber Castell products are uncommon is that their design language seems to target an extremely narrow demographic. Their designs (and also marketing) seem to appeal to people who 1. have a taste for 'heirloom' quality products with an Old World sensibility of handmade quality and precious materials, 2. prefer 'understated luxury' in their personal effects, with a design language that emphasizes simple, unornamented forms that are regardless immediately recognizable as belonging to a high end product, 3. are interested in things which could be described as 'practical, technical, modern, form-follows-function' but at the same time 'classic, recognizable, artisan', and 4. have the economic wherewithal and collector's attitude necessary to accumulate matching sets of accessories all unified through visual and material themes.

 

With specifications that narrow it is incredible that products satisfying them even exist in the first place let alone that anyone purchases them for MSRP. In my personal opinion, if the Graf von Faber Castell products were not backed up by the history and reputation of Faber Castell they might not even be able to exist in the world of bespoke/custom pens and accessories. The high MSRP are certainly justified by the materials, construction quality, labor and customer service that goes into these writing instruments but in my view this is actually a downside.

 

Because the production costs for these products is not particularly low, and because the company aims to unify their products in terms of design language, there is very little room for expanding the Graf von Faber Castell products either in scope or in target audience. The fact that the target audience is so narrow to begin with does not help matters at all. Designs such as those by Montblanc and Pelikan (I only choose to mention these two manufacturers because I assume that they occupy the same market sector that Graf von Faber Castell would like to sell to) can be scaled upward or downward to certain extents to provide a wide range of products at a wide range of price points, but this is not the case for Graf von Faber Castell due to their commitment to producing products that more or less complement each other in a sort of perverse backwards compatibility.

 

Outside of that narrow target audience, (full disclosure, I am unfortunately a part of this narrow target audience myself) when considering Graf von Faber Castell products, at every angle there seems to be a competitor that would be extremely likely to attract more potential customers. This has already been covered at length by multiple people in this thread with regards to price, writing quality, craftsmanship, materials, etc. so there is not much further to say.

 

However I do want to comment further on some of the positive points of the Graf von Faber Castell line in case anyone is reading this topic with a purchase or non-purchase in mind. If you happen to be a part of that narrow target audience that appreciates the design language of the Graf von Faber Castell writing instruments then there really is no one else, whether production, custom, limited or bespoke, who even comes close. Up until the introduction of the Intuition line, I think there may not have been a single series of writing products, present or past, that were as unified in design as the Graf von Faber Castell collection. That in itself is pretty remarkable.

 

Moreover, these writing instruments are extremely durable. By that I mean they can take some serious abuse. My very first Graf von Faber Castell pen, a Pernambuco Classic, has been subjected to a huge range of temperature conditions, physical impacts, altitude changes, being caked in dried ink in a garage toolbox for several months, etc over the course of more than a decade and it is still running perfectly. No it does not look pretty but after 11 years of that treatment I doubt you can find, or think of, a pen that will.

 

The last reason to own these products that I will mention is the customer service. The term "above and beyond" is often used for customer service that stands out as above average, but Faber-Castell's customer service for this line, at least from my many years of experiences with the United States office, really does go above and beyond. One example I can think of was a Platinum Classic that turned out to have mismatched vintage parts, that I purchased second hand and used for nearly 5 years on top of this. They replaced the nib, section and cap all for under $100 USD. They have also sent me replacement parts for expensive components (such as end caps for mechanical pencils) that I have outright lost, multiple times, for free.

 

Finally, great deals can be had on our favorite auction site for Graf von Faber Castell products all the time. If you're not squeamish about used products, the finish on these pens and pencils really is quite durable compared to some of the competitors' products and will look good for a really long time. You can regularly find fountain pens in the Classic line for under $250 USD and ballpoint/mechanical pencils for under $120. At those price points I think the products stand up even to brand-new products offered by competitors.

 

Thank you for your observations! I recently purchased an Intuition Platino and instantly fell in love with the pen, the design and the nib.

 

I've purchased the Classic Macassar and the Ambition Pearwood this weekend. Now I have 3 pens from the company in F, M and B.

 

I usually buy and sells pens as I enjoy the process of getting new pens (might be an addiction ), but this is the first time I feel like buying more pens of the same brand.

 

After trying way too many brands, I think I've found one that I have an instant attachment with.

Edited April 14, 2019 by Sidd

[SpecTP]

  On 3/5/2019 at 1:25 AM, A Smug Dill said:

Personally, I'd be absolutely delighted if my Faber-Castell Ambition's steel EF nib wrote so finely and left such sharp tails on exit strokes for me when I write cursively in English.

 

Me too.. I like my lines to be fine and consistent with little to no variation for most of my note taking. There are a few times when I like a bit of variation, but those times are far and few in between.

[TheRealMikeDr]

I just placed an order from Cult Pens for another Faber Castell pen - the Ambition Black Sands - it's leaving England and headed my way right now! This will make my 5th GvFc pen - other than the Loom (I'm still lukewarm to the section) I love them all!

 

 

 

Super Sharp IMO!!

Edited April 16, 2019 by TheRealMikeDr

[DanceOfLight]

  On 11/30/2018 at 11:36 PM, Handschreiber said:

I always was, still are, and probably ever will be a happy owner of GvFC pens and pencils.

 

For me the combination of wood and metal is unique, the shape of the caps and clips are simple and beautiful. I have quite a line up of them and enjoy looking at them.

 

I bought some other brands, pens made of resin, celluloid or urushi. They are mostly loveley, too, but I always return to the GvFC. Frankly, the cigar shape and the plastic finish don't satisfy me for more than a few days. I need the look of the wood and the metal.

 

I've got two favorites: The Perfect Pencil in sterling silver and the Pen of The Year 2008 (Satinwood). They are my all time highs. If I would be forced to choose three writing instruments they would only be joined by the FC Ambition (coconut wood), a peace of mind solution pen.

 

All my Perfect Pencils are close to my heart. In fact, writing with a pencil makes more fun for me than writing with a pen.

 

In my opinion GvFC is a pencil company with some excellent pens (and the 2008 PoTY for me is the most beautiful pen I have ever seen), that is offering an exceptional service.

 

As a Western German I was raised with (Graf von) Faber-Castell, Pelikan, Montblanc - all of these brands are very popular. Probably GvFC is more common in Germany than in other countries. I have Japanese, Italian, Swiss, and German pens but no American brand at all.

 

Wood + Metal = Love. here is a special one , >240 year old Olive wood + Brilliants on the cap

[Waltz For Zizi]

  On 2/2/2019 at 11:06 PM, como said:

😂😂😂

To me, they are too robotic, cold, machine-like. Almost the opposite of artisan feel. I feel the same way towards Caran dAche. Just personal preference. I am sure that they are nice pens.

Expand  

What aspect feels robotic and cold to you?? I mean have you seen the cap design, dand the design of the imprint on the nib? That is certainly not robotic like, if anything is artistic/artisan feeling. I do not know of any other pen similar in shape. Pens like Lamy sfari or twisbi feel "robotic" way more than GvFC pens will ever do.

[Waltz For Zizi]

  On 2/27/2019 at 5:25 AM, loganrah said:

I'm definitely with others on the uniqueness and consistency of GvFC's designs as a big draw card.

 

I was recently gifted a Tamitio which came with a lovely wooden storage box (the lid of which even recreates the fluted cap design in more angular form) that has space for three pens. My initial reaction when I saw the pen (I'd never seen a GvFC before, even online) was "god that's ugly" but I didn't want to offend the person who'd given it to me so I didn't say anything. Then I started using it for a few days, and now I'm having a hard time not buying two more to fill up the box because I just know they'd look great as a set in that box on my desk and the GvFC aesthetic has really grown on me.

 

I am also very pleasantly surprised by the build quality (including a very smooth nib) from even the lowest of Faber-Castell's high end line.

 

Edit: One problem I do have with the Tamitio is that frequently uncapping, posting and capping have left visible scratch patterns on the small `section' and end of the barrel where it posts. I presume this is partly because of the rather tight fit between the plastic inner cap and the section/barrel end (which is generally a good thing) but it might be an issue for someone who wants their pens to look pristine rather than well used.

Expand  

I don't know how you can call GvFC consistent when they have all sorts of different designs in their pens...Guilloche, Intuition, Tamitio they might be slighty similar in cap design but otherwise thy are definately not the same. Just look at Pelikan, they have one pen shape and just make it bigger or smaller and in different colors, If that is not the definition of consistency I don't know what is!

[Waltz For Zizi]

  On 11/25/2018 at 2:35 AM, Honeybadgers said:

 

When you get north of $350, I will have an expectation that a pen that isn't an urushi work of art be all but required to have a form of self filling mechanism.

 

And a heavy metal cap backweighting a pen that is thin and otherwise seems made to be used as a lightweight premium EDC pen just... eh.

 

I have very eclectic tastes (you should see my canary yellow vintage eclipse. it's so ugly. I love it) but nothing about the GvFC pens appeal to me.

 

"rare woods" is zero reason to increase cost. I can get afzelia crosslay, an insane, curly burl, or Thuya burl, an outrageously pretty wood that is no longer being harvested anywhere on earth, for about $35 for a pen blank sized piece. There is no wood on earth that justifies any noteworthy increase in cost. Honestly, no non-spalted, curly, or burl woods really get me going anymore.

 

Here's a few examples of what I've made. I plan on eventually starting to make solid (non kit mechanism) wooden C/C's with screw in nib units

 

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c101/popnsplat/pens/DSC_0114.jpg

 

 

 

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c101/popnsplat/pens/DSC_0270.jpg

Expand  

Well, different people have different tastes. Since I

 

  On 11/25/2018 at 3:50 AM, ParkerDuofold said:

Hi Adim, et al,

 

So many pens... so little time. C'est la vie.

 

 

- Anthony

 

P.S.: I'm sure this has probably already been said,... I didn't have time to read every reply,... but their price structure and lack of piston fillers and gold nibs doesn't help drive sales, either. Once you hit a certain price plateau; consumers start to expect more than a c/c pen with a steel nib... no matter how good that steel nib may be.

Expand  

What is it with people and complex filling mechanisms? I mean are you all repairing your own pens when they break? Cause I have piston and vacuum fillers but I actually preffer CC cause they are so easy to maintain. I sold my two lever fillers cause they were a pain to use, to change ink, to clean, to fill. A CC is way easier to clean, no need to grease, nothing to repair if the converter breaks. I have about 10 modern Pelikan pens and I see myself needing to grease them every time I clean them.

Is it that by having a complex filling mechanism you feel like the pen deserves a bigger price?

I like the simplicity of a CC more than the headaches a piston filler can give me.

[chromantic]

  On 9/16/2021 at 12:07 AM, Waltz For Zizi said:

What is it with people and complex filling mechanisms? I mean are you all repairing your own pens when they break? Cause I have piston and vacuum fillers but I actually preffer CC cause they are so easy to maintain. I sold my two lever fillers cause they were a pain to use, to change ink, to clean, to fill. A CC is way easier to clean, no need to grease, nothing to repair if the converter breaks. I have about 10 modern Pelikan pens and I see myself needing to grease them every time I clean them.

Is it that by having a complex filling mechanism you feel like the pen deserves a bigger price?

I like the simplicity of a CC more than the headaches a piston filler can give me.

Expand  

 

Valid points. A c/c is the FP stripped down to its barest essentials. As such, there is really nothing to differentiate a $400 c/c from a $1 Jinhao (other than the materials it's made with). Many people feel that when spending north of $xxx, there should be something more there to justify the cost. A piston mechanism, which actually costs something to manufacture (the empty space in the barrel of a c/c costs nothing), easily justifies a higher price. Whether it's better or more convenient is down to personal preference.

 

A good analogy might be dog leashes. You can use a standard, inexpensive chain-type or you can use a fancy retractable one that costs considerably more. But you can also just use a length of thick twine.