Showcasing pricey pen sets: retailers selling status with writing instruments

Discount Store News, Sept 3, 1990 by Laura Liebeck

Showcasing Pricey Pen Sets

Retailers selling status with writing instruments

A $6,000 pen set now available in the mass market?

WORKplace, St. Petersburg, Fla., the 9-unit office supplies superstore, will offer pens and pen sets in the $2,500 to $6,000 price range this Christmas, blowing past the $350 price ceiling in most office supplies superstores.

If the pricey pens do well, they may find a permanent place in the chain's line-up of fine writing instruments, according to Jim Nakamura, vice president and chief merchandise executive.

WORKplace offers 200 sku's of fine writing instruments sold from a full-service showcase. Until the fourth quarter, the most expensive pen will be a $300 Parker Duofold. The new items will be 18-karat gold ballpoint and fountain pens from Parker's Premier series.

In the past few years, the selection of expensive pens and pen sets in the mass market have been rising steadily, capping at the $300 to $350 range. But that price ceiling has weakened lately, jumping hundreds and even thousands of dollars in an effort to satisfy consumer demand for symbols of their success.

Fine writing instruments, pens over $10, fit those requirements, especially if the items are made of sterling silver and gold. The status of such names as Montblanc, Pelikan and Waterman have added to the allure of the pens and have energized the category for other manufacturers, according to several industry sources.

Particularly popular now are roller balls and fountain pens, which have been the hot sellers over the past few years.

In fact, according to the Writing Instrument Manufacturers Association, retail sales of all writing instruments rose 12 percent last year from 1988 to $3.25 billion. Rollers charted a 17.5 percent sales increase, the highest of any category, to over $201 million. Fountain pen sales rose 8 percent to $68.4 million.

Ballpoint pens remain the most popular type of writing instrument. Sales of ballpoints exceeded $560.4 million in 1989, up from $516.1 million in 1988.

The association does not track pen sales by price point but Frank King, a consultant to the association and its retired chief executive, said the incidence of pen sales over $10 has been rising for years in direct proportion to the accumulated wealth of young professionals. "It's a status thing," he noted. "An expensive pen is like any other luxury item."

To many in the industry, a fine writing instrument has taken on the position of a dress accessory.

"It is an accoutrement of a person's success," said George Pursglove, vice president and general merchandise manager and one of the founders of HQ Office Supplies Warehouse, a 14-unit chain headquartered in Long Beach, Calif.

According to Dave Connors, sales director for the U.S. division of Parker Pen U.S.A. Ltd.: "Fine writing instruments have become a dress accessory." The more expensive they are the greater their attraction.

While most mass market retailers are not even looking for pens and pen sets anywhere near the thousand dollar mark, they are tapping the market, putting themselves in direct competition with upscale specialty retailers and department store operators, traditional outlets for expensive pens.

At HQ Office Supplies Warehouse, for example, a $625 Montblanc ballpoint pen was added to the line-up in early July, "stretching the outer limits of the pen category" for the office supplies chain, said Pursglove.

OfficeMax Plans Remodeling

OfficeMax, with 31 units in seven states, will more than double its store count by next summer. Michael Feuer, company president, said by next July OfficeMax will have 65 stores in 14 states. Its largest market will be Chicago, which will have 18 stores within 18 months.

OfficeMax acquired the seven-unit Office World chain last April and just finished remodeling and remerchandising the stores to the OfficeMax format. The stores are now called Office World by OfficeMax.

So far the new Chicago locations include Calumet City, Maryville, Northbrook, Darien and Arlington Heights. Other store openings through the end of the year include Ann Arbor, Mich., South Bend, Ind., Syracuse, N.Y. (two), plus additional units in Detroit, Peoria, Ill., Rochester, N.Y., Appleton, Green Bay and Madison, Wis.

All the new stores will be 23,000 square feet to 25,000 square feet and include 6,000 sku's.

Among the stores' new features are a furniture department that doubled in size, now 4,000 square feet, plus a company-operated company software department, improved lighting for brighter stores, wider aisles, improved adjacencies and tile floors.

But the very expensive pen was not the only change at HQ. The chain recently revamped its entire fine writing instrument category, switching out 40 percent of its inventory, mostly at the lower end of the price spectrum, said Judy Dunn, buyer. HQ focused on updated colors and styling while maintaining its existing vendor list which includes Pelikan, Waterman, Montblanc, Parker, Sheaffer, Cross and Fisher.

While WORKplace is poised to add the super-expensive pens later this year, the chain is reinforcing its selection in the $300 range, and is now looking to add a line of Pelikan products in the fourth quarter to further increase the category's sales, said Nakamura.