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The most unusual brand in history
The first patent for a ball tip pen was filed in 1888. The patent was filed by John Loud, a leather tanner of Massachusetts. Fifty years later, Lazlo Joseph Biro, a Hungarian journalist, discovered the fountain pen. But its problem was that every time it had to fill in, clean the pen, and even dry the ink immediately. He started thinking about another option to overcome this problem.
The Eureka moment came when Biro and his brother George were playing with marbles in his society one day. When it went into the mud, she left a line behind her. Seeing this, he thought of making a ball point pen that has a point fit. A cone tube was filled with ink and a point fitted in front of it and rolled on to the page.
An inquiry was made by the US Army to ensure that the pen could run at high altitude and not have to be filled frequently. In addition, the brothers left for Argentina to meet an investor. He met the President of Argentina. They filed a patent for this pen and set up a factory.
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Then, the story of Reynolds began. Milton Rensburg was a dropped out, businessman and risk-taking investor who grew up in Minnesota. He was 53 years old. He had earned a lot of money and also had a huge loss in three businesses. So, he changed his name to Reynolds which means a 'powerful' ruler. One day he saw The Biro's Pen at a shop in Buenos Aires. After World War II, the Americans were crazy to do something new.
Though he did not know anything in the pen industry, he began experimenting in Birona Pen Ink with an engineer, renamed it as ‘Satin Flo’ and made a sample pen. He didn't start production.
With a single pen, he convinced the Gimbels Department Store in Manhattan to order fifty thousand pens. With the support of only one pen, and without his own factory, Milton made 300 workers work for him in just 23 days. Machinery and factories were established and production started.
Each ball was inserted with the bearing hand. On the very first day of production, they made seventy pens. The New York Times News reports that the pen that can be run anywhere in the world has entered the market. On 29th October 1945, Milton's Ball Point Pen was put on the market for a price of 12.5 dollars. that would be $170 today.
Overnight, 5000 buyers arrived with a capital of 2,25,000 dollars. Seeing this, police were called into the market. Emergency counters had to be set up. In a week, 30,000 pens were sold. An additional twelve thousand pens were delivered by courier. Calls from national buyers started and demand suddenly increased. Reynolds' pen was found everywhere, from the hair saloon to the gas station. In just two months, orders for more than one million pens were in the backlog.
Reynolds began to pay a cash prize for the window display of the pen. Excluding taxes, its profit was $541,000 in just one month. Within three months of its launch, 5.3 million pens were sold worldwide.
'It Writes Under Water' – was the tagline of Reynolds which could write on the cocktail napkin without being blurry. Unbelievably, smuggling for such was started. Reynolds Pens worth about $750,000 were smuggled. In just five months, Reynolds' company had 800 workers. Since inventory could not be maintained against the demand, Milton issued gift certificates to the people. Thirty thousand pens were manufactured every day. Even after all the expenses, the profit reached nearly $1.5 million. In just six months, 36 countries around the world were selling Reynolds Pens. Reynolds pen was sold in Hong Kong for about $75.
The manufacturing figure reached eighty thousand pens per day. The Reynolds Rocket really reached the people in just one year. Reynolds' ad appeared in magazines. The ads were published with the question, “Got a rocket in your pocket?”. President Henry Truman invited them and took photographs at the White House.
Additional profit was invested in Douglas A-26 Invader. The invader was named 'Reynolds Bombshell'. Pen reached the world through Reynolds Bombshell. You may be surprised to know that the pens used to be delivered by an aircraft in the fifties. It was indeed unbelievable.
Perhaps, Reynolds wouldn't have existed today if there wasn’t a risk taker like Milton.
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