Not So Sharp

Said an Eversharp bigwig: "Dealers are killing us, screaming and tearing us apart for more ball-point pens." That was just eleven months ago. Last week it looked as if Eversharp had gotten another kind of tearing-apart. Board Chairman Martin L. Straus reported that his company (which had had to borrow $3,000,000 to carry it through) had closed its fiscal year with a $3,416,985.23 deficit. The trouble: ball pens.

When it bought the Biro ball-point patents for $1,600,000 (TIME, Nov. 12, 1945) et seq. Eversharp hoped to capture the pen market. But many another company, notably Reynolds Pen, got there first and skimmed the cream off. When Eversharp did get its pen out, it ran into the same trouble that plagued the other ball-point penmen: the pen did not write well.

Eversharp brought out new models, improved the Biro system, and lost money replacing the insides of its pens free of charge. Furthermore, it spent heavily on plants to meet the demand that ballooned during the ball-point fad. It fell hard when the balloon burst.

But Board Chairman Straus thought that Eversharp had learned its lesson. It had "expended so great a portion of its time and attention in solving the problems of the ball-point pen that certain developments in its conventional . . . business were, perhaps, under-emphasized." From now on, Eversharp was going to concentrate on its conventional business. The trade thought this meant that Eversharp was going to get rid of some of its plants, plug its mechanical pencils, standard pens and Schick razors.

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