This Guy is "Mad, Crazy"

I would like to introduce to you the interesting misadventure of Tyler Farrer who’s new blog Make One Pencil chronicles his efforts to make one pencil all by materials and tools made and acquired only by himself. This effort is inspired by the famous essay entitled I, Pencil first published by the Economist Leonard E. Read in 1958.

Tyler describes himself as follows:

I am a self-proclaimed "Free-market", "Free-Trade", and "Capitalism-loving", "globalist". I also believe that it was probably impossible for one man to make a pencil in 1958. Will it be impossible in 2008? I don't know, but I want to be the one to try.

Another description might be simply he’s “mad, crazy”. I told him I’d like to help with raw material supplies given my involvement in the industry, but that would defeat the whole purpose of “one man, one pencil”. He can’t just buy the pre-manufactured components and assemble them either, to follow the concept of Read’s essay he has to produce the tools to produce the pencil and then the final product all by himself. As it is he’s at least benefiting from the internet as a resource on how to make the pencil since he doesn’t have to invent it just make it from scratch. He’s asked for financial contributions on the website, but doesn’t that defeat the “one man, one pencil” credo also?

But what real basis do I have to claim Tyler is “mad, crazy”. Simple, he’s working against some of the greatest principles of economics. He’ll either end up broke producing one pencil for some outrageous cost if he succeeds at all or he will have a breakdown ending up needing major therapy and probably pharmaceutical treatment as well. What’s more he knows all this to start as a good a good "Free-market", "Free-Trade", and "Capitalism-loving", "globalist”. If he’s not really insane now he may well be after this effort.

If you’re unfamiliar with I, Pencil I encourage you to read it. It’s essentially a lesson in these great economic principles best summarized by Milton Friedman in his Introduction to the essay on the Library of Economics and Liberty website. In Milton’s own most eloquent words:

I know of no other piece of literature that so succinctly, persuasively, and effectively illustrates the meaning of both Adam Smith's invisible hand—the possibility of cooperation without coercion—and Friedrich Hayek's emphasis on the importance of dispersed knowledge and the role of the price system in communicating information that "will make the individuals do the desirable things without anyone having to tell them what to do."

Milton even used this essay in his popular TV Show “Free to Choose”. Anyway Tyler’s Make One Pencil quest strikes me as very coincidental timing as I have recently been re-reading various Milton Friedman works. So I guess this post can serve as a bit of my own memorial to Milton.

Finally, if you need any further support for my prediction of Tyler’s fate I encourage you to read this post at the Reach Upward blog. This is where his flash of brilliance to begin this odyssey got its initial spark. In any event I am very much enjoying Tyler’s prolific posts so far and intend to follow his progress and offer my moral support. It’s really all great fun and I’ll leave the decision to make financial contributions up to you. All the best of luck to Tyler.

Image Note: Particularly fitting for this post the drawing above by Dan Mignano was a runner up in one of our Incense Cedar Institutes Pencil Doodle Contests from the mid 1990s. The theme "No. 2 Pencil, Still No. 1 in a High Tech World."

Pencils: Popular in Any Language

One of the most common questions I receive from those who learn I work in the pencil industry is "How do you get the leads into the wooden pencil?" This leads to any number of further questions and discussion about different aspects of the pencil business according to what any particular person finds interesting. There is no shortage of interesting and related topics depending upon how detailed and how technical one wants to get. In reality I have only touched on a very few areas in all the posts about industry issues over the past 18 months or so, whether it's anti-dumping duties, environmental aspects of forestry management and FSC certification, etc. FYI: Today I've added Labels to most of my posts so it should be easier to find different posts by subject matter.

Yesterday I came accross the following post "¿Cómo se meten las minas en los lápices de madera?" which answers just this question on the general interest Spanish language blog Ya está el listo que todo lo sabe (Here is the list of everything to know). The post includes a brief history of the development of the graphite pencil and a description of the pencil manufacturing process. This post as many other websites I have found over the years has liberally borrowed the photo from our How to Make A Pencil page on our Incense Cedar Institute Pencil Pages site on how pencils are made.

What I found most interesting about this post was the "commentarios" left by readers and in particular a long treatise on the wood used in pencils by Dr. Amio Cajander who provided a knowledgeable discussion of the use of Incense-cedar ,other pencil woods and even composite substitutes in his long comment in addition to describing some of the technical factors that make for a good pencil wood. He even generously noted my Timberlines blog as a resource for his information for those who wished to practice thier English. Additional comments indicated readers seemed generally interested in learning about how the pencil was made. This is not unlike my experience with reactions to my Timberlines posts and our feedback over many years from information provided on the Incense Cedar Institute Pencil Pages.

While my Spanish is just okay, I was able to make my way through this post relatively easily and it was good practice. So for those interested in testing their Spanish, practicar aqui.

Honestly, it's nice to see that there is such interest in the manufacturing process and the pencil itself from all over. I would take the time to link to a few other foreign language sites on the topic of how pencils are made that I've found over the years, but unfortunately I never bothered to save any of those links. So if you're visiting from another country and know of any such web pages in your native tongue please feel free to link to these in a comment to this post.

Spring Cleaning Sale Kicks off with Palomino Bulk Pack Offer

It’s been a busy Winter and Spring and I haven’t had much of a chance to be active with new Timberlines posts or to address new items for the Pencil Word Creativity Store @ eBay. Since we’re trying to do a bit of Spring Cleaning we’ve come up with a couple new listings as special offers. When you do this at home in your study or kitchen you typically find pencils and other writing instruments tucked away in some drawer somewhere. Well we’re no different here so over the next several weeks we’ll be offering a number of Spring Cleaning Sale Items.

A number of our repeat customers have asked about possibility of buying Palomino products in higher bulk quantities. As luck would have it we found some basic sample packaging for a 72 count item lying around and have decided to run a test. So while listed supplies last we now have the following 4 items available in 72-count bulk quantities at a price offering something over 10% savings on a per pencil basis versus our normal graphite 6 pack counts. Each is packed with 6 banded dozens in a ½ gross box. Click on any of these items to link to that item in the store.

Palomino HB Orange – 72 count Bulk Pack
Palomino HB Orange w/ Erasers – 72 count Bulk Pack
Palomino 2B Orange – 72 count Bulk Pack
Palomino HB Blue – 72 count Bulk Pack

We do have some 36 count packaging as well and will look at listing these after the 72 count volumes sell through. Following these tests we’ll evaluate whether a full time addition of a 36 or 72 count Bulk pack option for certain Palomino items makes sense. We appreciate your feedback and interest in spurring us on to try out these bulk packs.

Next we’ve now added a simple Palomino Orange 2B - 6 pack offering so customers don’t need to go to trouble of ordering a Variety pack and sending us a message just to say they want 6 2B pencils since a 6 count pack in 2B has proved to be a popular request on our variety pack offering.

As our Spring Cleaning process continues we’ll be adding other special one time offers with a few combo sets of a variety of KUM sharpeners, some notebooks and journals with our pencils and perhaps a new series of Vintage & Collectable pencils that we have on hand.

Berolzheimerianum: 100 Year Anniversary Celebration

Back in March I wrote a post titled “Lieber Philip: A Letter Lasts 100 Years” that discussed the final letter my Great-Great Grandfather Heinrich wrote from his home in Nürnburg, Germany to his son Philip, my Great-Grandfather in New York before he passed away about one month later. I introduced a bit of family history in the pencil industry to my own son Philip through this letter.

As it turns out there is another recent 100 Year Anniversary related to Heinrich Berolzheimer’s accomplishments. My wife, son and I have just returned from a week in Germany where we participated in activities celebrating the 100 year anniversary of the construction of the Berolzheimerianum in Fürth, the city of Heinrich’s birth and original founding of the pencil company, Berolzheimer und Illfelder. Donated by Heinrich with assistance of his son’s Emil and Philip (then running the Eagle Pencil Company in New York) the Berolzheimerianum was established according to the foundation document as a “home for popular education in the town of Fürth”. Tis document stated that it should “serve the whole population of town of Fürth, regardless of social class, religion or political opinions”. The building included an extensive library with over 10,000 volumes (later growing to over 20,000 volumes) as well as an auditorium with 800 seats for performances and various cultural events and included a number of works of art both interior and exterior art.

Unfortunately Heinrich passed away a month prior to the completion and inauguration of the building. The photos in this post show the Berolzheimerianum both at it’s completion in 1906 and as it looks today. The painting of Heinrich was commissioned when he was named as an Honorary Citizen of Fürth for his patronage towards the city. Other famous Honorary Citizens include Ludwig Erhard who served as the second Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1963 to 1966 and Henry Kissinger, who I was told recalls studying as a child in the Berolzheimerianum.

The Berolzheimerianum has an interesting history. A few of the highlights include:

- Attendance at the building inauguration by Prince Ludwig III of Bavaria (later the last king of Bavaria)
- Functioned as a military hospital during the 1st World War through 1919
- The building was renamed by the National Socialists during the period of the Third Reich erasing for a time the recognition of the Jewish Philanthropist Heinrich Berolzheimer
- Following post war repairs in 1945, the Berolzheimerianum name was restored and the building continued to function for it’s original purpose of supporting education and the arts
- In 1998 following extensive renovations the Berolzheimerianum was reopened as ComÖedie Fürth, one of the leading comedy clubs in Germany including a restaurant and bar.

As a part of the 100 Year Celebration my wife, son and I were honored to be the guests of the City of Fürth along with other of Heinrich’s descendants (3rd and 4th cousins) whom we met for the first time. In conjunction with the anniversary celebration a four month exhibit at the Jewish Museum of Franconia, entitled “Benefactor Berolzheimer: A Family Tradition of Philanthropy and Patronage”. While our families converted to Christianity several generations back, we very much enjoyed learning more about our Jewish heritage in Germany during this visit. The entire staff of the museum did a very nice job with the exhibit and with additional activities scheduled over a three day period.

In addition to the Berolzheimerianum, Heinrich also made important financial and artwork contribution to a library in Nürnburg, known as the Luitpoldhaus, as well as to the Nürnberger Künstlerhaus art institute and supported the Natural History Museum in that city as well. For his contributions to Nürnburg where he lived the final years of his life he was also named and honorary citizen there as well. This I understand makes him one of only two people who have been named honorary citizen to both of these cities. This tradition of supporting education and the arts in our home communities has been continued by Heinrich’s descendants to this day, first by Emil and Philip and down to current times.

I am slowly adding to my Flickr site here a a new set of historical, current day and other photos associated with the Berolzheimerianum and the 100 year Anniversary Ceremonies. Some of these are captioned to tell more of the story of the building.

Japanese Design Pencils

I am certain you have all seen, admired and perhaps even purchased"fancy" theme or holiday pencils before. Such decorative features are produced through a variety of techniques which include 4 color offset printing, transfer, foil or paper wrap, roll-on imprint, silk screen, etc. The proper combination of lacquer base color with a design overlaid and other finishing touches such as unique eraser color and style or end dipping can create quite interesting pencils for general use or collectable.

I can say with no hesitation that no one part of the pencil industry produces the quality and variety of "designer" pencils comparable to those produce Japanese pencil industry as a group. Starting with extremley uniform dimensional characteristics and a high quality base pencil is the first step to assuring an exceptional product. The quality, creativity, detail and variety of designs produced by Japanese manufacturers is truely amazing and surprisingly not often duplicated to such extent by other producers. One theme pencil trend recently in Japan was the advent of "game" pencils in which the 6 sides of a hexagonal pencil each represent a different result for the game when the pencil is rolled like dice.

Often such design pencils are viewed as purely of interest to children, although many knowledgable collectors appreciate these pencils as well. One of my own favorites from my collection is a 15 pencil color set in a tin. The set commemorates the Japan Railway System and each pencil is rectangular in shape with each of the four sides printed as if it was one side of the train. Each of the 15 pencils represents a different type of train in the system. As a part of a limited edition the set sells of about $200 at retail.

While relocating our corporate offices recently we have come up with a group of pencils that we plan to auction as part of our "Vintage & Collectables Series" at our eBay Pencil World Creativity Store. The first of these is a beautiful and unique collection of 1400 such Japanese Designer Pencils. Click here to visit this auction. These are pencils produced to the same quality of our Palomino graphite pencils with respect to the fine finish and smooth writing characteristics.

Theme pencils can represent a difficult and risky part of the pencil industry due to the "trendiness" of different designs. In Japan as well as here in the US many are tied to licenses of particular cartoon characters from television or the movies. Such pencils can involve license fees that along with art design costs and film set up costs increase the need for a larger minimum run sizes to amortize these costs. Themes that come and go over seasonal or holiday periods require careful inventory planning to assure no excess or obsolete inventory for the manufacturer that increase the working capital tied up. Even thematic designs that are acceptable one year may not be as saleable the next season.

As a collector, the challenge is to focus on those items that are more unique, are part of complete matched sets and are of good quality design and cosntruction. Also as with any collection selecting what you find personally interesting or attractive is also advisable even if it might not be so rare.

Transitions and Milestones

Well it's amazing how fast the past couple of months went by and how busy we've been here at CalCedar multitasking on an ever expanding list of activities. In that time I've failed to keep Timberlines readers up to date. So here's a quick summary of the main highlights and some of our comming attractions.

Our Pencil World Creativity Store on eBay experienced our biggest month of sales ever in July as a result of the Boing Boing post highlighting Ninth Waves Design's road test naming the Palomino pencil replacing the Blackwing 602. The post didn't even mention our store site, but many of you thankfully searched us out and we experienced two times the single largest prior month sales.

A key challenge responding to all this was that this development coincided with an important transition here in our offices. My assistant Jeanette had just decided to depart the company to pursue other interests. Fortunately one of our former employees Paula was available rejoin the company and is now handling customer service on our eCommerce ForestChoice and Pencil World sites in addition to taking on Jeanette's other duties. Fortunately, with some part time support from Jeanette through this transition we were able Paula was able get up to speed and continues to maintain our commitment to 100% positive feedback.

We're also currently in the midst of additional transitions here in our offices. After 18 years in our corporate headquarters buliding we'll be relocating at the end of the month back into CalCedar's original offices next to the old slat factory here in Stockton. Returning to our roots in a manner of speaking. Going through years of files and reducing everything to fit our downsized offices after moving operations off shore in the past few years is quite an effort. One benefit is that we're turning up some interesting things for future Vintage and Collectables auctions. Stay tuned.

A few significantly anniversaries of note were missed in the past few months that I'd like to mention.

July 20th - 1st Anniversary of Pencil Revolutions Blog - Like me conrad John has slowed down a bit with new posts. I know he moved this summer, but hope we haven't seen the last of his interesting pencil ephemera.

August 5th - 1st Anniversary of Timberlines Blog. A bit slow lately, but I do plan to continue my series of posts on industry issues to keep things interesting, not just promotional posts on our products.

September 16th - 1st Anniversary of launch of the Palomino on our Pencil World Creativity Store. Thanks to a inaugural review at Pencil Revolutions the Palominos were out to were let loose from the corral. Now a year later we're thankful to have a small but growing group of faithful riders and we're focused on expanding the number of stables housing Palominos through building our retail presence.

Unfortunately I missed being able to celebrate another milestone with my wife, my own wedding anniversary, during my August trip to Asia to visit our factories. During this trip we worked on finalizing some new items for the California Republic product line which will be making their debut in the comming months. The photo in this post shows a few of our new Spangle Jumbo learning pencil items for primary school students.

We have several new eBay listings & additional items in the works. We've just relisted our Spangle Halloween pencils at special pricing for the holidays and have coupled them also with a special promotion on our Palomino Wooden Box Color and Graphite pencil sets. Comming along soon we'll have trial listing on some bulk packed 36 and 72 count Palomino's on our Pencil World Store. Later in the year some special items for the holidays and as mentioned earlier our office move has turned up a whole range of items for a new series of Vintage & Collectable Pencil eBay Auctions.

I'll do my best to keep you posted on new developments for the company as well as some further industry related posts I'd like to get t0.

Boing Boing Does Pencils

It's nice to see the Palomino has reached Boing Boing's famous directory of Wonderful Things with this post and link to Ninth Wave Design's November post that anointed the Palomino Hb & 2B pencils as the successors to the famous Blackwing 602. It's started a whole new range of commenting there at Ninth Wave. I welcome those of you who found their way here to Timberlines as a result.

It's nice to see a growing group of new customers searching the Palomino out at Pencil World Creativity Store, Pencil Things and Ninth Wave Designs Online the current online sources for Palominos. I knew Boing Boing is big, but wow. We will be busy today & Monday packing up the orders. Thanks for trying us out. I hope y'all enjoy "the ride" and take a friend along with you.

If you like what you see and you'd like to see the Palomino get more established at retail please talk to your favorite art, gift, museum or small stationery shop proprietors. We have International Arrivals stocking some of our Palomino & Forest Choice items. They are set up to service these types of small independent retailers that typically want much smaller minimum order volumes.

Making Music with the Palomino

I received the attached photo and note from Matt Downey demonstrating how he's using our Palomino pencils for his musical efforts.

"Hey here is what is called a sketch, rough musical ideas on paper that will eventualy find their way into a peice. In this case the second movement of a string quartet. I love sketching with this Palomino pencil. The line is good and dark and the lead is nice and smooth. The wood has that smell (you know the one I mean) and it is all so conductive to the creative impulse in me. Sketching could be called material generation for the purpose of composing but I like to think of it as composing anyway even though it is so incomplete.-Matt

PS - I think you can spy a Mongol chilling in the backround. play an I SPY game with it."

Yeah, I see it there in the corner and am glad to spot a ForestChoice pencil as well. Thanks for sharing and keep on creating.

The Shape of Things to Come

California Republic has now introduced triangular shaped pencils in our Golden Bear and Prospector product ranges. These are the first of what we hope may become an expanded range of triangular pencils over time.

The Prospector Trianguler HB 40 count tube is available in our Prospector Green color. This pencil is tipped with our standard round white eraser as is the green Prospector pencil in our standard hexagonal shape. On future option under consideration is a natural finish version without eraser, although we have no definite time schedule to add any new triagualr versions at anytime soon.

The Golden Bear Triangular HB 40 count tube features our orange and blue color combination in an attractive end dip. No eraser at this point though we will consider the future addition of a blue triangular shaped eraser version for the down the road.

Sorry to say we have no immediate plans to offer a triangular version of the Palomino pencil.

We do have a few auction items with special savings chances on a few items right now including this, this & this.

We also have a Summer Color Splash pencil promotion going on as well as the extension of our Soccer Mania promotion. So if you haven't visited our Pencil World Creativity Store lately drop on by with any of these links.

Sharpen those Palominos

We have several long awaited new arrivals this week to expand our range of KUM sharpeners at Pencil World Creativity Store.

First, is our special edition Palomino Long Point Sharpener. This is a premium "Automatic" long point sharpener from KUM that features a two step process to acheiving a perfect point. The first step sharpens just the wood leaving the graphite core mostly untouched for step two; sharpening the graphite core to a fine even point. Prior to being exposed to this two step sharpener I was personally a devotee of the KUM metal wedge sharpeners, which I still enjoy for their simplicity, and clean short points when I'm using a Golden Bear or Prospector. However now I won't touch my Palominos with anything but the Long Point sharpener. This provides a fine, crisp point that lasts longer between sharpening than the wedge point. When I was first introduced to this sharpener back at the Paperworld fair in Frankfurt by KUM owner-President Fritz Luettgens I knew I had to pair this one up with our Palomino pencils. The group at KUM was great to work with creating a series of color variations until we got just what we wanted, a nice translucent orange with our gold California Republic Palomino imprint on one side. Each sharpener comes with two spare blades and a cardboard case with operating instructions on the two step sharpening process.

Three other new KUM sharpener listings have also been added. The Softie Grip Magnesium II takes the one hole Magnesium sharpener and adds the ergonimic cushioning of a spongy grip to two sides. This feature provides a unique comfortable feel during sharpening. For another new container sharpener we've added the "Oval-Office-Large SOFTIE®-LINES" in blue and orange. This larger container sharpening includes the Magnesium two hole sharpener which can be removed for replacement. The softie lines feature provides a non-slip grip for handling the sharpener, but not the same cushioning effect of the Softie Grip. Next is a unique new combination product ensemble from KUM, the Groovy Blister Card Set. The Groovy set comes in three fun design styles and each set includes a decorates large Oval Office style sharpener with an eraser, 17cm ruler (sorry only metric measurement was available) and a unique graphite pencil produced from wood which has been stained black throughout. These sets will make great party favors or simply a nice gifts particuylary for girls in the 7 to 12 year old age group.

In celebration of the Germany 2006 World Cup we've also added a limited time Soccer Mania Promotion. Buy 5 10-packs of Spangle Soccer pencils and recieve a free KUM soccer sharpener. We have a limited group of seven soccer sharpeners and one of these features the Germany 2006 design so it's first come first serve as to which sharpener you will receive. If you wish you can substitute any of our other Spangle 10 pack decorated pencil items if you don't want all soccer pencils, just be sure to buy at least 5 packs total in one purchase and we'll send the sharpener along.

Comming Soon: Two new listings for Golden Bear and Prospector triangular pencils.

"Catch" of a Lifetime

I recently added this 1954 Mirado Pencil magazine advertisement to my collection. I find some of these old pencil ads intriguing for both their design and copy content. Of particular interest to me is the contexts they provide as a historical reference and indicators of trends in promotional focus within our industry.

Given my own favorable predispositions towards both fly fishing and pencils (as covered in my prior post, WoodChuck on Fishing) I found this ad particularly interesting from both the graphic and copy standpoint. The use of the fishing scale to demonstrate that the strength of the Mirado lead “will take over five pounds of pressure… far more than you apply in daily use” is the first of several fishing references in pointing out features of the product. This theme continues with additional fishing analogies… “This yellow-bodied beauty with the bright red brand glides like greased lightening … smooth and fast. A Mirado reels off more than thirty-five miles of line, and you’ll agree that every inch is a joy and pleasure.”

So when you look at the Mirado performance features being promoted in this add it comes down to: the strength of the graphite core, smooth writing/gliding capability and it’s long lasting nature “35 miles of line”. It’s unclear if you’d have to sharpen down to an uncomfortably small nub to realize the claim of 35 miles of line. The ad also offers a free sample for writing into the Eagle Pencil Company.

Today there is much less print advertising done for particular pencil products like we saw in the first 50 to 60 years of the 20th century. Today newspaper circular insertions in support of given retailers mostly during the back to school sales period are the most common form of print advertising for pencils. These circulars generally cover pencils in addition to other writing instruments from a given manufacturer or brand range. The failure of these circulars in my view is that they communicate none of the performance features of product, just brand name and price point. Of course this is not the purpose of newspaper circular advertising which is designed around price promotion of known brand names to generate store traffic for the retailer, not to promote features and benefits of brands.

Where some manufacturers do seem to focus more marketing effort these days is on public relations activities focused on the wider corporate brand umbrella and not necessarily on specific pencil products themsleves. In the case of the Mirado pencil brand I am not aware of any advertising and promotional effort expended on this product by Sanford these days. Certainly their Sharpie marker range is quite heavily advertised and promoted along with their Waterman and Parker pens. I am sure there are also other less visible means of promotion of Prismacolor, Papermate, Uniball, etc. but the Mirado which is Sanford’s “flagship” high quality graphite writing pencil gets even less promotional support from what I’ve seen.

Also unclear at this point is whether today’s Mirado performance lives up to the billing of this Mirado ad from 50 years ago. Today’s cartons still make the claim of being “The World’s Smoothest Writing Pencil.” Some would say it does not offer the same performance as just 10 years ago following a series of cost reduction and brand repositioning steps. It has transitioned over the years from the Eagle corporate brand umbrella to the Berol Mirado, then in the past 12 years or so to the Sanford Mirado and is now currently the marketed as the Papermate Mirado pencil. I don’t know about you, but when I think of a high quality writing instrument that I would want to associate with my flagship graphite pencil brand, Papermate of all the brands under the Sanford umbrella is not the first one that springs to my mind. Over this time the Mirado has lost share in it’s primary market in the USA relative to Dixon’s Ticonderoga despite similar price points and market positioning for these two products. One thing that has changed is that the Mirado no longer fits the final claim from this 1954 advertisement that it is “The Largest Selling Pencil in the World”. Of course, I'm not certain that it did in 1954 either.

Sanford of course is not alone and I do not mean to pick on them in particular. The reduced advertising and promotional expenditures on branded wood-cased pencils in general these days is a partial consequence of trends that tend to “commoditize” all consumer goods. These trends include greater availability of lower priced foreign imports with improving quality, an increase in retailer concentration and control over access to distribution points along with their increasing use of Private Label. Another contributor is the reduced amount of product innovation in wood cased pencils, so there is less to talk about. When any product faces increased price pressure for products that are not well differentiated from other competitors this generally leads to reductions in marketing expenditure and excessive focus on cost and price reduction. This is to the detriment of other important aspects of a balanced marketing mix. Admittedly, this is a difficult challenge when every third sentence coming from buyers at Walmart, Staples and other large retailers is about the need to reduce prices.

Despite this I still believe that if the top pencil brands continue to advertise and promote their products and focus on keeping a quality advantage then their loyal consumers would continue to support the brand at reasonable pricing premiums and they would have “A Catch of a Lifetime”. More creativity is needed today in tying the fly and casting the rod to the right spot of the river than ever before. If the brands fail to do so then the fish will increasingly bite on other lures.

Office Supply Trader

The very industrious Kyle MacDonald started with one red paperclip on July 12, 2005 in his quest to trade his way up to a new house. After just 10 trades and 9 months time he has bartered his way up to one year's free rent for a 700 square foot house in Phoenix, AZ and is now looking for the next trade to reach towards his ultimate goal.

Quite an adventure in value added activity despite the added costs and time he's expended in travel expenses and locating trades that move him along his path. I guess there's no real PayPal equivalent in the trading community to build some trust that would reduce such transaction costs. Certainly Craigslist and similar sites offer a means of reducing the search costs, but they mainly work within local markets where individuals are able to go and see for themselves what their getting in exchange for their item. Bartering of course is a very old system of trade, predating monetary exchange. In fact, it was the inconvenineces of the barter system in part that lead to the development of money.

So does a bartering system for pencils and office supplies make sense today? Some consumer products manufactureres do trade obsolete inventories for things like advertising trade credits. But these are intercorporate trades and the strings attached to sue the trade credits generally reduce their value. Would consumers willinging and actively trade office supplies in a barter relationship if an efficient and trustworthy transaction system existed? How easy might it be in such a system to trade up from a pencil to a PDA through a series of trades? Would it be worth the effort?

Clearly Kyle benefits from the novelty of his quest, the increasing publicity and the fact that his trade partners are assigning value to the emotional benefit of participation in Kyle's adventure to be willing to trade something of higher value for the lesser value item Kyle is offering. Otherwise who could justify a trade of a red paper clip for a novelty fish pen of all things. In an office supply bartering system with efficient transaction costs as usage increases such a system would reduce the value added increase one might get from such trades since there would be more selection of like value available. Thus it seems the main benefit would be a better use and distribution of the excess inventories people may be holding. Certainly, eBay has provided a rather efficient outlet for alot of the old junk accumulating in peoples garages and drawers and has made strides in redistributing such excess inventories. However, eBay is designed around monetary exchange for these goods and is not a barter system.

So what will you trade me for a tube of Prospector Pencils?