Fisher Space Pen Goes Anywhere, Writes Everywhere

A career in exporting Christian books and literature to Nigeria may not seem the most obvious background for the owner of the largest ,at the time, independent writing instrument distributor in the UK, but that was just the leap that my father Reg Pickford  made more than 60 years ago.

He set up the GBA Pen Company back in the 1960’s and sadly passed away in 2007 at the ripe old age of 82, but the company carried on by myself and staff and with the help of my mother who up until her 90^th year was still seen to be coming into the office and doing the accounts on her PC. Amazing. She sadly passed away at the age of 98 .

For over 60 years my father had seen the coming and going of several top pen brands and accessories.

1946 He joined Diamine Inks of Liverpool and still had an interest in the company until he passed.

The first pen brand he acquired  in 1962 was a company called Senator from Germany which he brought over to the UK and built up to a very strong business gift brand. It is very much still going strong today but was taken away from him at it’s height as they saw the potential and decided to distribute it themselves taking with them our then sales manager.

1974  During a visit to Hamburg he had a meeting with the managing Director and General sales Manager of Mont Blanc and as a result of this meeting he secured the distribution rights for Mont Blanc in the UK. (at that time Mont Blanc had been off the UK market for approximately 4/5 years)

It was successfully re-introduced to Harrods, Selfridges and all leading pen shops and was making good headway as Mont Blanc were virtually unknown in the UK at that time.

I remember spending time being a rep for my father and him sending me down to Harrods to see the buyer who was quite a large man and I was terrified standing outside his office door who after waiting for half an hour then told me he didn’t have time to see me. It wasn’t actually my forte to be a sales rep but we did employ professional reps later thank goodness. We must have made a good impression somehow as look at it now.

1981 Dunhill of London acquired the majority interest in Mont Blanc and consequently as of December 1981 we lost the Mont Blanc agency as Dunhill obviously had their own distributing facilities.

So not wanting to be without a brand he acquired the agency for WATERMAN pens in September 1981 for a period of 2 years until they were able to re-establish and reorganise their UK company.

November 1983 my father saw a space in the market for another brand and acquired the German Elysee brand. This turned out to be the biggest revolution in pens retail and business gift and successfully got it into nearly every department store in the UK. It was just flying off the shelf so to speak.

1985 On a visit to Frankfurt Paperworld exhibition my father was introduced to Dr. Lamy who was looking for someone to distribute his pens in the UK.

As my father was always up for a challenge he took up the distribution and over 10 years built Lamy up into the brand it is today, not only in retail but again in business gift. We had three reps on the road all driving Mercedes cars so business was good!

In 1993 Elysee pens was bought out by Staedtler who was a company, and still is, that produces low end stationery items, but they had seen that we had done all the hard work with Elysee pens getting it recognised and they just took it from us. 

At the time we handed over 750 live accounts. Just terrible, we didn’t have a leg to stand on. How sad that since that happened and as they didn’t have any idea how to sell quality writing instruments, that they stopped production of Elysee pens totally and are not seen anywhere. Although having sold so many at the time I bet there are some still knocking around in dusty drawers. All that hard work!!

In fact devastating, as during this time my father suffered a heart attack and everybody thought he would retire so to cap it all off Lamy distribution was also taken away for direct dispatch from Germany. Without a single ‘thank you Reg’ . Two of our reps went to join Lamy so we lost them as well.

Well you can’t keep a good pen distributor down so at this stage in 1993 he was introduced to an Italian brand by author Richard Leigh who were looking to get into the UK market. Namely Montegrappa.

During all this time I hadn’t actually been working for my father as I had been setting up my retail shop selling Arts and Crafts and of course some of Dad’s pens. To be honest I wasn’t really interested in pens as that was something Dad did.

However with the emergence in the new idea of huge out of town retail shopping outlets the small independent retailers were visited less and less by the public who were drawn to the bright lights of the big shiny shopping centres.

With the rent increasing on my shop to heights where we eventually didn’t make any profit (sound familiar) we decided to close the shop. So in 1994 I joined my father in his company.

Every year he visited the Paperworld exhibition in Frankfurt to keep in touch with the industry and look for new lines so I thought I ought to go with him to find out what it was all about. Well I was so impressed that I suddenly realised that there must be something in this pen industry.

So starting out with the Italian Montegrappa brand we began to introduce it into the accounts who because of our relationships with all of the independent pen outlets they had no hesitation in ‘trying out’ Montegrappa.

Within 10 years we built the brand to be stocked in nearly all the pen shops and also had a lovely boutique in Harrods and counters in Selfridges.

Alas like everything that we made a success it always gets taken away and Montegrappa was bought out by the Richemont group (Montblanc, Cartier etc.)

During this time seeing a gap in the market for Italian pens we started to distribute Aurora and Omas with again great success.

Also along this time we introduced Faber Castell, Graf Von Faber to the UK and also had Pelikan for a while.

In 1995 we acquired the sole UK distribution of the Fisher Space Pen and after two years became the European distributors as well.

What a brilliant little ballpen this is and it’s all down to the pressurized refill which writes under water, on wet paper, and over grease. Writes at any angle even upside down!

Will never dry out and writes in temperatures from -30 degrees Fahrenheit to + 250 degrees Fahrenheit. It also writes for 3 miles, that’s 3 times longer that your regular ballpen refill and includes an adapter for pens using Parker style refills. Just so versatile for so many different occupations and everyday tasks . the ultimate in dependability .

And carries a Lifetime guarantee!

The famous Chrome Bullet style pen was designed 70 years ago and really is a design icon, exhibited as a permanent exhibit at the Kennedy Space Centre.

Mr Paul Fisher who invented the Fisher Space pen passed away at the age of 93 but his son and grandsons continue to build this famous brand. Luckily the space industry never goes out of fashion and they now are partners of many space related industries. www.fisherspacepen.co.uk

Having lost Montegrappa (a very sad time) we decided to distribute Delta pens who again being Italian had great designs and flair .

Having known the Aquila family (previous Montegrappa owners) who also made for the Lalex brand we decided to distribute these as well which over the years developed into the Aquila brands who acquired many licences namely Ducati ,Jaguar, Smart ,Bentley and Mercedes and Armani and Riva, all of which were the most exciting things in the pen industry to date.

We were good at building brands so in 2004  we acquired Visconti and Diplomat both of which became successful.

Also the PenAgain pens and pencils which are Ergonomically shaped to help children to write the proper way as well as adults with writing difficulties.

My father loved nothing more than to visit Paperworld exhibition in Frankfurt and chat to all his mates in the industry that he had known for many years. You may remember him tap dancing in the aisles!!

So as you can see pens brands come and go but we concentrated on the good ones.

Which brings me to the return of Montegrappa to the original Aquila family in June 2009 who bought back the brand from the Richemont group so therefore we again acquired the UK distribution . How happy was I but my father had passed away by this time but would have been very happy to see the brand back.

In the last 11 years Montegrappa have manufactured some really exciting amazing pieces with many, many licenses and collaborations. Harry Potter, Monopoly, Barbie, Quincy Jones, Batman, Mohammed Ali and James Bond to name but a few.

Unfortunately now there are very few ‘bricks and mortar ’specialist pen outlets and the internet online companies have taken over competing with each other and discounting .

My father would hate the industry today but we remember those good old days .

Fisher Space Pen however is much the same as it was 70 years ago with real family values sadly lost these days in this mad world of technology.

Frances Mollinghoff

Managing Director

GBA Pen Company LTD.

info@gbapen.co.uk