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Marco Promos Blog
Top 10 Facts about Pens – the #1 Advertising Specialty Product
Feb 28, 2023
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Pens are a great way to get the word out about your business. In fact, “pens” was the #1 Ranked search term for a full year on ASI’s ESP database of promotional products.
Here are a few other noteworthy facts about pens – one of our favorite promo products:
Fun Facts About Pens You Never Knew
- The first patent for a ballpoint pen was issued in the United States in 1888 to John J Loud, however the design was useful only for writing on very coarse materials like wood or leather and was never made commercially.
- 50 year later, in 1938, Hungarian brothers Laszlo and Gyorgy Biro were issued a European patent application 1938 for the successful ballpoint pen concept used to this day.
- The world’s largest functioning ballpoint pen concept. It is their concept that is used to this day.
- The first ballpoint pens sold in the U.S. were sold at Gimbel’s department store in New York City beginning on October 29th, 1945 and cost $12.59 a piece at the time (approximately $210 in 2023 dollars). They were widely popular, with Gimbel’s selling through 30,000 pieces of their initial 50,000 piece order in their first week.
- An average of 125 ballpoint pens are sold around the world every second.
- An average ballpoint pen will write approximately 2 kilometers, equivalent to 50,000 words – or about 100 pages of text.
- The iconic Bic Cristal pen was launched in 1950 and has gone on to sell 57 pens per second, hitting 100 billion pens sold in September of 2005. It is included in the permanent collection at the New York Museum of Modern Art. Today, Bic still produces a wide range of pens, including some especially for the promotional products industry.
- Modern ballpoint pens have an average shelf life of two years.
- 89% of Americans own promotional writing instruments.
- Despite being 135 years old, ballpoint pen technology continues to advance as manufacturers push to develop new ink formulas, like hybrid and low viscosity inks to dry quickly and avoid smearing, and eco-friendly pens to minimize the effect on our environment.
MARCO Promos offers more than 700 different kinds of pens to help promote your business. Contact your Account Executive today to find the one that is right for your program.
SOURCES:
Top 10 ESP Searches: Events Drive Product Shifts in Q4, ASI
History of Pencils, László Bíró
Wikipedia, John J. Loud
Indian Man Wins Guinness World Record for Building World’s Largest Ball Pen, WIO News
Days to Remember, JD Mitchell Designs
10 Interesting Facts About Ball Point Pens
13 Facts You Never Knew About Pens
Bic Over the Moon as Sales Top 100bn, The Guardian
How Ballpoint Pens Work, Melissa Russel-Ausley
Global Ad Impressions Study, 2020 Edition, ASI
Marco Marketing Team
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