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发表于 2009-11-23 19:22
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Orthos时代:
Orthos, Artus, the Beginnings of a Real Good Thing: 1930 through 1952.
In the mid to late 1920's, the United States-based Parker Pen Company was seriously looking into viable ways to expand it's production, distribution and sales numbers, especially in Europe. On a cold and blustery day in January of 1928, Kenneth Parker, B.M. Palmer and Parker Pen Company's local export and branch manager, Carl Josef Lamy travelled out to the Osmia Fountain Pen Company's factory in the small village of Dossenheim, just outside of Heidelberg, Germany where Parker's branch office was. The Parker Pen Company had become extremely interested in buying out Osmia, since Kenneth Parker had heard through a "paid" consultant that Osmia was really under-valued and also the number 2 fountain pen maker in all of Germany at that time. Osmia was also appealing because they often produced a Parker "look-a-like" fountain pen that directly competed against Parker's own Duofold.
All three men laughed and made jokes once they arrived at Osmia's factory and discovered that it consisted of pitiful, run-down sheds and a barn, with rough looking farmers/workers creating writing instruments with near stone-age, dilapidated, and antiquated machinery. Despite their humorous discovery, Parker went through with the purchase and was soon injecting huge sums of capital and modern equipment into the fledgling company in order to swiftly bring their new acquisition up-to-date and producing Parker-Osmia products. More than one-half million 1928 dollars was spent on advertising and promotional stuff alone, attempting to improve Osmia's overall condition.
Even with the huge influx of cash and modern technologies, Parker still struggled unsuccessfully for two years to make their arrangement with Osmia work out before finally calling it quits in 1930. To avoid further losses, Parker disolved all agreements, and sold-off all of its interests in Osmia due to unfullfilled expectations, poor sales figures, increasing costs, and possibly even their customers, less-than-satisfactory response to a newly redesigned, rigid nib they including in some of the European-made products.
There were a lot of really high-hopes riding on the success of this partnership. For Parker, it meant higher sales numbers and lower production costs along with a real piece of the German and even European markets. For Osmia, it was the continued financial support and of course, wider distribution of their product. Unfortunately, nearly all of those involved in this endeavor, including a lot of customers, were terribly disappointed that it didn't work out. A huge investment in time, resources, and especially money were irreparably lost. A discouraged and disheartened Parker, in order to stop throwing good money after bad, chose to remove itself completely from nearly all agreements and the partnership completely by just pulling-out and selling-off it's interests at one of the first opportunities that came along.
In all the shuffle caused by the so-called “pull-out,” Parker's local export and branch manager in Heidelberg, Germany, C. Josef Lamy, quickly found himself no longer needed and promptly released to pursue other gainful endeavors elsewhere. C. Josef was not forced into leaving Parker but the selling of Parker's interest in Osmia meant that he would have to relocate elsewhere in order to remain a Parker employee, a company that Mr. Lamy had grown quite fond of and loyal to... Another issue at the time that made this decision more difficult was the extremely slow economy and the fact that there were practically zero opportunities for a 31 year old middle manager with writing instrument experience. Most of the pen manufacturers in and around the Heidelberg area were all feeling the pinch of the badly performing economy and were looking at letting people go, not hiring more.
After weighing his options and the pro & cons of relocating his family, Mr. Lamy decided that he would have to create his own opportunities for himself. Using his knowledge of fine writing instruments, he figured was his best chance for supporting his family and truly making a name for himself. No longer would someone else be responsible for his destiny, he would make it himself, by creating and running his own writing instrument firm. He would work hard to build good, solid, dependable writing instruments for middle-aged men out there that were successful, image conscious but leaned towards understatement... somewhat like himself. It would turn out to be a real target audience, if there ever was one.
Even though some close to him disagreed with his decision, despite the then poorly performing economy, regardless that few were buying higher-end pens... C. Josef Lamy immediately set about creating his own line of durable, high-quality, reasonably-priced writing instruments and the Orthos Fullhalter-Fabrik Company was born. Just a few months later, C. Josef presented his first patent, a pen and pencil combination.
Beginning with a flat-top Parker Duofold look-alike, button-filing fountain pen, Orthos began right away making exceptional writing instruments. One of their immediate constraints was that they generally could only distribute them in and around Heidelberg and surrounding communities. These were superb writers, that practically sold themselves at times once potential customers either were able to try one out or heard about the extraordinary pen being made locally, from someone that already had one.
One of the issues that plagued Orthos during those early years was one of just getting the word out about the new company and it's exceptional products and really convincing distributors, vendors, and retailers outside of the Heidelberg area to purchase and really peddle the Orthos products to their customers. It was in that light that Josef worked hard to re-establish old ties, distribution lines and working relationships (from his time at Parker) but this time for his own fledgling writing instrument company. Many distributors and retailers were more than a little nervous about once again doing business with Mr. Lamy due to their continuing relationships with the ever popular and much bigger Parker Pen Company. The last thing they wanted to do was to have Parker be upset with them.
Orthos sales gradually grew as did Orthos, the company, all the while establishing its own sale and distribution channels, agreements and business arrangements. Josef continually worked hard building up the business, though he was still limited to local areas around Germany and other European countries nearby, where the products could be literally be distributed and even delivered by Orthos itself.
Leading up to the start of World War II, the still young, Heidelberg-based writing instrument maker began doing armaments work when their country called them to, and they continued in that role through-out the war years. Not long after the war ended in Europe, with the fall of Berlin, C. Josef Lamy and Orthos acquired the already established pen maker Artus-Fullhaltergesellschaft Kaufmann and Company, also located in Heidelberg, Germany.
C. Josef efforts quickly turned towards integrating the two companies by cutting back on redundancies, consolidating and expanding overall distribution of Company products, etc. With the inclusion of the Artus product lines, Orthos continued for a while to produce both companies products, adopting a numerical system to name and keep track of their many models and different product lines. It wasn't long before sales increased to the point that Orthos was producing in excess of 200,000 fountain pens per year and finally dropped making writing instruments under the Orthos brand and adding more newly engineered models to the Artus one.
In those years immediately following the World War, Mr. Lamy's company produced some of the very first molded synthetic plastic resin based pens under the Artus brand. C. Josef Lamy is still considered today, as a true pioneer in the use of molded synthetic (resins) materials in manufacturing processes.
A couple of years later, in 1948, Mr. Lamy switched his company's name from the Orthos version of nearly 20 years, to the C. Josef Lamy GmbH, the company's name that we know and love today. He did so in order to mark the start of a new era for the company and for a World that was still reeling and recovering from a devastating and catastrophic war. It was around this same time that various simplistic forms of advertising began in publications like newspapers and the like. This advertising was initially started as a means of promoting the company image and getting the word out about the Company's new products. Advertising usually consisted of commercial newspaper print... a style that did not change for many, many years and usually included written articles in their original size and almost always included a handwritten sentence of sorts.
Later, in 1952, just four years after the announcement of a new era in writing instruments, Lamy releases an innovative, streamlined, Osmium-tipped, high-grade, and absolutely incredible fountain pen, called the Lamy 27. The 27 was Lamy's first product to be released under the newly established Lamy brand. This model had a new revolutionary and patented system of inlaid micro-segments around the feed of the pen. This virtually made the ink flow insensitive to both air pressure and/or temperature changes. The “Tintomatik” system, the design of which is still being used today, more than 57 odd years later, was a monumental success since this allowed people to travel with their pens with little worry about them leaking ink all over.
The Lamy Model 27, with it's new, remarkable feed system, quickly became an extraordinary best-seller. It eventually would be produced in twelve different varieties from a fully plastic model (27e) to luxury versions (27n) adorned with gold-plated metal caps, etc... There were intermediate varieties, between the two mentioned above also. At the time of the Model 27's release, C. Josef Lamy was not well known around the world like Montblanc or Pelikan was, though the pricing was similar to Montblanc's and Pelikan's own models, not a cheap pen, especially for anunknown company at the time. (那时候,Lamy的产品价格和龙也是不相上下的哦。 ) This all swiftly started to change and the 27 was the vehicle of that change. They were greatly in demand until the 1966 (more on that a little later).
[ 本帖最后由 Edinburgh 于 2009-11-23 11:41 编辑 ] |
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