- Business - Janesville Sesquicentennial
-
- [Photograph; caption reads: Five-story PARKER Pen
Co. building was constructed in 1919 to house headquarters.]
-
- Parker helped to write history
- In the last couple of years, some observers of business in
Wisconsin have said that The PARKER
- Pen Co.'s name actually is a misnomer because the company
now realizes most of its revenues and profits from Manpower Inc.,
the world's leading provider of temporary services.
- The writing instrument side of PARKER Pen's business
has been hurting for several years, and
- selling the Writing Instrument Group reportedly is one of
the alternatives the company is considering as it weighs possible
cures for the ills of slumping profits.
- Furthermore, the current president and chief executive officer
of PARKER Pen, Mitchell
- FROMSTEIN, came to the company as president of Manpower,
which had been newly acquired in 1976.
- But the history of the pen company and its many, innovative
products has been entwined with
- Janesville's for almost 100 of the city's 150 years. And
the company remains the leading producer of "quality writing
instruments" in most of its many markets worldwide.
- In 1888, George S. PARKER taught telegraphy in Janesville
and sold John Holland pens to his
- students as a sideline. He felt obligated to repair faulty
pens. "This necessitated my purchasing some simple tools,
including a small scroll saw, a lathe, cutter, etc.," he
wrote several years before his death in 1937.
- PARKER became dismayed with the unreliability of the
pens he sold. "With my scroll saw, file
- and other tools, I made up a feeder, eventually fitted it
into a holder, and lo and behold, it worked. What's more it worked
well," PARKER wrote.
- Thus was born the first PARKER pen, and a new chapter
in Janesville history started to be
- written.
- The next year, he took out his first pen patent and became
a manufacturer. He had no sales force
- and lacked working capital, but PARKER took advantage
of Janesville's being a center for regional travels. One of the
city's many hotels was a gathering place for traveling salesmen,
and PARKER persuaded them to carry his pens as a sideline.
- It was in 1892 that a local insurance man tried to convince
PARKER to cover himself and his
- business, but PARKER begged off, saying he couldn't
afford the policies. But the insurance man, W. F. PALMER,
took an interest in the business, which badly needed capital.
- "Not a lot of capital was necessary in the early days
of the company," PARKER wrote. "I sold
- half an interest in my patents and the little business for
$1,000 to Mr. PALMER, but he made the check out to The
PARKER Pen Co. And so, this $1,000 was used in the development
of the business instead of for me personally."
- They incorporated the company in 1892. PARKER handled
sales and advertising; PALMER
- looked after finances and helped manage the company.
- For a few years, the business was located in small quarters
in what was known as the Opera House
- Block, but in 1898, it bought a four-story double building
on South Main Street and used the upper three floors to make
fountain pens and inks. In 1908, it was reported the largest
pen factory in the world, making $250,000 worth of pens annually.
- In 1894, PARKER patented the "Lucky Curve,"
which gave the young company a straight route
- to leadership in the pen business and made Janesville known
across the country as its home. The pen drained the ink back
into its reservoir when carried upright in the user's pocket.
It was the company's principal product up until the 1920s.
- A 1908 history of Rock County reads in part: "The success
of the PARKER Pen Company has
- naturally caused other manufacturers of fountain pens to
locate in Janesville, the next largest being the WILLIAMSON
Pen Company, who have a factory in the Corn Exchange block; and
besides this there are the Century Pen Company, H. B. SMITH
Pen Company, the BURDICK Pen Company and the SCRITCHFIELD
Pen Company."
- In 1903, the company established the first of what would
become more than 100 overseas
- distributors. The first was in Scandinavia.
- During World War I, the company introduced the "Trench
Pen" for use on European battlefields.
- A soldier would make the ink in the pen's cap by mixing a
pill with water.
- In 1918, the company's sales reached $1 million for the first
time. Last fiscal year, writing instru-
- ment sales topped $142 million, and revenue from Manpower
added more than $700 million to the company's balance sheet.
- The next year, PARKER Pen began constructing a five-story
building at [the] corner of Court
- Street and what became PARKER Drive to house manufacturing
and administrative functions. Later a three-story clubhouse for
employees was built.
- The company renovated and expanded the bigger building in
1981-83 to house its worldwide
- headquarters. It demolished the smaller building after an
offer to sell it for $1 to anyone who would move it found no
takers.
- The company moved manufacturing to its modern Arrow Park
facility in 1953, and in 1983-84 it
- renovated that plant with state-of-the-art automation and
computers. Arrow Park provides jobs for more than 400 people
on three shifts.
- In 1923, PARKER Pen opened its first foreign manufacturing
plant in Toronto, Canada, and the
- next year it established a subsidiary in England. As part
of the company's restructuring of the past few years, many of
the foreign plants were closed. New Haven, England, and Arrow
Park remain as the company's two main manufacturing and distribution
facilities.
- At a facility in Meru, France, craftsmen manufacture by hand
the pens in PARKER's Premier
- Collection, which sell from $95 to $2,500.
- But the most popular pen the company ever made remains the
Jotter, which was its entry into the
- ballpoint pen market in 1954. More than 400 million Jotters
have been sold throughout the world.
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