Parker

PARKER inditening human being-wide strategy Ankita Jain Hrishikesh V Nilotpal Sinha Abhinav Sharma bragging(a) Lakes Institute of Management November 18, 2011 Caesar had perished from the existence of men, had non his sword been rescued by a create ver louty. Abstract In this study, we look at deuce strategies adoptive by Parker save. The ? rst is a eminently successful strategy of carrefour di? erentiation by dint of technological variety. The bet on is an unfulfilled execution of globalisation strategy. 1 A brief archives of Parker relieve The Parker frame Company was born in 1888 when George Sta? rd Parker essay to repair some barrage publishs that were leaking and in the mastercess began to manufacture his own composes. 6 long quantify later in 1894, Parker publish won the patent of the Lucky curl feed, which was claimed to draw excess sign hindquarters into the drop a line body when the write was non in use. This technology re of imported the di? erentiating factor for Parker pens until the comer of the Duofold in the 1930s. 1 2 The twoscore long time plosive ranging from 1920s to the 1960s, in the pre b everypen pen era, was the golden period of Parker spells reign when it systematically ranked either design whizz or matter two in solid groundwide committal to writing performer sales.In 1931 Parker Pen created 1 2 Key linguistic communication and phrases. Parker Pen, fountain pen, oaf-point pen. This study was conducted for completion of the sort out professionalject for Strategy Execution. 1 the Quink (quick drying ink) which eliminated the indispens commensurateness for blotting and led to the stand upment of the most widely used pen in history Parker 51 which generated over $400 cardinal in sales. A Parker pen stood for select, prestige, tradition, staunchness and strength lavishlylighted by the fact that Parker pens were the pen of choice to sign important catalogues in history such as the pi ece War II armistices.Parker Pen spread out its business and by eighties the ships social club had ext finished up to 154 countries. The family adopted globalization strategy to establish merchandise bearing. However the execution of this strategy was thwarted the managers failed to create proper food merchandiseplaceing strategies that would defecate made them compete in supranational marts with inexpensive wares from other grammatical constituents of the world. In 1993 Parker Pen was acquired by the Gillette Company, which already owned the rootMate imperfection, adept of the beat out- exchange useable ballpoint pen pens.In 2000, Gillette change the writing instruments division to Ne tumescespring Rubbermaid, whose own letter paper Division, Sanford, became the largest in the world owning such scrape name calling as Rotring, Sharpie, Reynolds as well as Parker, PaperMate, Waterman and Liquid Paper. In recent years, Parker Pen has abandoned two the entry l evel market as well as the traditional retail outlets in North America and go into up-scale luxury retailers. 2 Innovation as a di? erentiation strategy Throughout its history, Parker Pen has used technological innovation as a strategy to di? erentiate itself from the competition.The community has been a pioneer in research on writing instruments and introduced several revolutionary returns . In this section, we look at some of the iconic products from Parker Pens which have driven both the company as well as the pen market. (The current portfolio of Parker Pens products foundation be found in Ref. 1) 2. 1 Duofold 1921 In 1921 the company introduced the Parker Duofold (Ref. 2) fountain pen. It was a state of the art pen for its metre and Parker Pen positioned the Duofold in the premier constituent and priced it expensively $7. 00, equivalent to about $85 in 2011.In 1926 the Duofold became the ? rst pen in the world to have a guaranteed life of ever. It was an instant succe ss. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used one to write the exploits of Sherlock Holmes. widely distributed Douglas MacArthur signed the document ending World War II in the 2 Paci? c with his 20 year old Duofold (Ref. 3). By the too soon 1930s the Duofolds design had grown go out in the regular army but it remained popular in europium until the 1960s. In 1988, Parker emited the Duofold centenary series of pens. The modern Duofold is a diagnose part of Parker Pens product portfolio. . 2 Quink 1928 In 1928, later on threesome years of research and an investment of $68,000, Parker Pen came up with Quink (a blending word from quick and ink excessively known as Double Quink and Parker 51 sign) that would eliminate the need for blotting. The success of Quink rank in the fact that it had a number of useful features it resisted water, it did not clog, it had the desired quality of ink ? ow, it resisted moulding, it was non-corrosive, it did not leave deposits, it did not fade, and, most importantly, it was quick-drying.However, the new ink was powerfully alka pains and contained isopropyl alcohol, a solvent not previously used in inks, which lots damaged the pen barrels of that prison term which were manufactured using pyralin. This problem at long closing curtain led to the development of the worlds most successful pen, the Parker 51 in 1941. In 1941, when the Parker 51 was launched, Double Quink was renamed and repackaged as Parker 51 ink as a marketing initiative. Parker Pens ink sales became the key to maintaining the companys pro? tability.This revenue generation impersonate is used by the modern daytime computer printer companies, whose main kickoff of revenue comes from the sale of printer cartridges. pull ahead enhancements were made to Parker Pen inks with its revolutionary ace Chrome ink. This ink was marketed in 1947 after a research period that lasted 17 years and cost over $200,000. This was the ? rst staple fiber ink improvement in the last three centuries. Today, more(prenominal) than seventy years later, Quink is still the worlds biggest selling pen ink. 2. 3 Vacumatic 1933 The Parker Vacumatic (Ref. 4) fountain pen was introduced in 1933, as a replacing the Duofold as Parkers top-of-the-line product. The Vacumatic featured a new ? lling mechanism which boasted a much(prenominal) higher ink capacity than the Duofold. The pen remained Parkers top-of-the-line product until the launch of the Parker 51 in 1941. The US production continued through 1948, and until 1953 in Canada. 3 2. 4 Parker 51 1941 In 1941 Parker Pen introduced the Parker 51 (Ref. 5) which arguably is the best pen of all time both in terms of popularity and sales. General Eisenhower signed the victory in Europe in 1944.The futuristic design of the Parker 51 heralded as Ten long time Ahead of its time, a revolutionary pen, with its hooded, tube-shaped nib and multi-? nned collector, all designed to clear in conjunction with the pens proprietary ink, al low- imbibeing the nib to stay wet and lay down an even line with either the ultra-fast drying ink or more traditional inks. It was advertised as the The Worlds intimately Wanted Pen which created huge gather up which took Parker several years to ful? l. By 1970, the Parker 51 generated over $400 million in sales, higher than that generated by any oneness pen ever. 2. 5Jotter 1954 In the 1940, the world had empathisen a ? erce battle for market share fought between the traditional fountain pens and the new ballpoint pens. Despite some initial success, ballpoint pens died a consumer death and by 1951, the fountain pen became the pen of choice of the world. In 1954, Parker Pens introduced its ? rst ballpoint pen, the Jotter which wrote ? ve times longer than the best ballpoint pens available in the market, the Eversharp and the Reynolds ballpoint pens. It was the introduction of Jotter that bring round the ballpoint pen market. Parker sell 3. 5 million Jotters at $2. 5 t o $8. 75 in little than one year. In 1957, Parker Pen introduced the T-ball Jotter with tungsten carbide textured ball bearing which to this take a leak remains an industry standard. The famed styling of the Parker Duofold was revived in 1972 as a ball pen and deep down the next decade, ballpoint pens overtook fountain pen as the number choice of pen in the world. 3 Rise of competition 1980s by and by about a century of dictatorial the ? ne writing instrument market, Parker Pen entered into a period of crisis in the 1980s and the reason for this was that the company was driven by the wrong strategy.Parker was facing competition from three fronts. First, the japanese were mass marketing cheaper and disposable pens and had captured a large portion of the low end market in USA and Europe and were gradually eating into Parker Pens market share. Second, like the Japanese, American denounces such as Paper Mate, Bic, Pilot, and Pentel had created signi? cance presence in the low e nd segment and gradually eroding and were pulling outdoor(a) parker Pens customer. Third, in the high 4 end segment which had been Parker Pens main target segment, competition had become ? ercer with reputed German brands such as Montblanc and A.T. Cross do progress in the European markets. 4 Globalization strategy 1982 Parker Pen approach two contrasting challenges. On one side the weakened dollar generated high foreign revenue since about 80% of the companys sales were abroad, the pro? ts derived from those sales represented even big pro? ts when translated to local currency. But on the other side, this over dependency on foreign sales exposed the company to foreign competitors, especially the inexpensive brands from Japan which used low pricing as a strategy to compete in the international market.Parker Pen realized that a competitive strategy based on product di? erentiation through technological innovation was not su? cient to thwart the challenge from competitors. In 1982, James R. Peterson became the CEO of Parker Pen,having joined it from Reynolds. He was given the responsibility of reinventing the brand. Peterson decided to launch a global marketing drive to target all market segments. A consequence of the decision to adopt globalization was standardization. Everything including products as well as marketing campaign was to be standardized for all the markets across the world. Issues in executing globalization strategy When Peterson took over Parker, he was met by a highly proud, mismanaged company that soakd itself on its extensive decentralisation. The atmosphere re? ected the founders pride in the fact that they had a peculiar pen for every place in the world. They were a federation of autonomous geographic units. It became flat clear to Peterson that huge changes were on the anvil. The immediate problems were twofold. The ? rst was the products positioning. Having positioned itself at the higher end of the market for a signi? ant part of the previous century, it had now began to face problems with come across to its image. It was clear that a complete pellucidness of its brand positioning and image was essential. The second issue that confronted Peterson was its complete ine? ciency in managing its product portfolio. When Peterson entered Parker, it didnt even have a proper idea of the range of products that it was manufacturing. It was a home of complete chaos 5 with more than 500 products in simultaneous existence. Its decentralised structure had completely turned against its pro? ability, resulting in every distant subsidiary company and distributor involved developing a customized product for that particular market. While the company was proud of its decentralized multinational structure, it was suffer on account of an obvious deficiency of economies of scale and a uni? ed dictation and strategy. The company clearly lacked a common driving force across markets. However, this decentralization had its posit ive aspects as well, most notably in the area of advertising. Pens meant and mean di? erent things to di? erent people.While the Europeans tended to get hold of a pen based on its style and feel, people in less-developed countries tended to see a pen as slide fastener more than a badge of literacy. inside Europe itself for instance, tastes tended to vary from one hoidenish to another. While the French showed a de? nite adherence to the fountain pen, the Scandinavians favoured the ballpoint pen. The company justi? ed the existence of legion(predicate) advertising agencies in its employ feeling that while it bred a certain amount of ine? ciency, it paid o? from a sales standpoint. Many mortal advertising ? ms were able to develop excellent customized messages for their audience that successfully enamored a responsive chord within them. For instance, the Lowe Howard-Spink agency in London was able to grow the UK division of Parker the most pro? table division during its tenure. Its creative one is clearly visible in the publicizing that it created showing a dead plumber with a giant Parker pen project from his heart. The situation seemed bleak to Peterson. He immediately implemented a strategy by which Parker would position itself in the entry-level segment.He felt that in the face of the trends at that time, this would be the precedent positioning that would succeed in bend around the company. He as well dissociated Parker from the numerous advertising ? rms that it was associated with, retaining only one, Ogilvy and Mather, to oversee a worldwide common strategy in terms of communication and advertising. However, this strategy failed miserably on two counts. It failed to provide a customized communication strategy to each market and thus failed to account for the cultLural di? erences across geographies.It also failed to leverage the premium positioning of the brand and reduced it to an entry-level brand. 5. 1 Two speci? c cases of execution failu res The following examples show two speci? c cases of execution failure by Parker Pen. 6 (a) At a collective level, Parker Pen targeted almost all market segments. However at the business level, attention failed to introduce products which would cover the market segments with nerve and lower income levels. This allowed competitors with inexpensive products to take up the market. (b) Some of the marketing campaign failed to rectify to the local environment.For example, when Parker Pen ? rst expanded their market to Latin America, they wanted their advertisement to say, It wont leak in your sackful and embarrass you. The company did not realize that the Spanish word embarazar has two meanings it operator to embarrass, and it also means to impregnate. So, to some trustful people, the ad read It wont leak in your pocket and make you pregnant. (Ref. 6) 6 Acquisition of Parker by Gillette and beyond In May 1993, Gillette announced its acquisition of Parker Pen Holdings Ltd (Re f. 7). (See Exhibit X).This made Gillette the world leader in the pen market. Gillette took an after-tax dissipate of $164 million for a reorganization of its abroad operations, including the integration of the Parker Pen facilities into the Gillette structure. Nearly 2000 jobs were disoriented as a result of this restructuring process. Gillette sold the writing instruments division to Newell Rubbermaid, whose own letter paper division, Sanford became the largest in the world with brand names such as Rotring, Sharpie, Reynolds as well as Parker, PaperMate, Waterman and Liquid Paper under its umbrella.The next few years were one of a complete lay off of Parker, marked by job goinges across the board. In July 2009, the 180 workers at the Parker headquarters of Newhaven, UK were given notice that the mill was going to be shut down on account of the production abject to France. On August 18, 2009, Newell Rubbermaid announced that Janesville Wisconsin would unaired the remaining operations of Parker. This resulted in the loss of 153 jobs. According to the company, This decision is a result to structural issues accelerated by market trends and is in no way a re? ction on the highly cherished work performed by our Janesville employees over the years. Newell Rubbermaid verbalize an o? er of transitional job services and severance bene? ts. What remained of the Parker brand was go to the upscale segment of the writing instrument market and was sold via luxury retailers. tralatitious retail outlets were abandoned. This completely removed the brand from the entry level segment of the market. 7 In 2011, Parker Pen announced the ? dwell innovation in the history of writing, Parker fifth Technology which o? ers a bona fide ? th way of writing. Until then the world knew only four forms of ? ne writing fountain pen, ball point, roller ball and the mechanical pencil. ground-breaking innovation has rea? rmed placed Parker as leaders in terms of both innovatio n and market share. 7 7. 1 Exhibits Financial statement 8 7. 2 Product display Duofold Lucky 8 Limited Edition Ingenuity Parker 51 9 7. 3 Current product portfolio TABLE I T ype Ink Quink Fountain Pen Duofold, Premier, Son displace, Vector, IM Ballpoint pen 7. 4 M odel Facet, Executive, Esprit, Frontier, Urban, I. M. , Vector JotterAcquisition of Parker by Gillette References 1 http//parkerpens. net/catalogue/parker catalogue 2009. pdf 2 http//www. parkerpen. com/en/discovery/range/iconic/duofold 3 http//www. patricktaylor. com/parker-duofold 4 http//www. vintagepens. com/Parker Vacumatics. shypertext markup language 5 http//www. pentrace. net/penbase/Data Returns/full article. asp? id=468 6 http//parkerpens. blogspot. com/2007/09/advertizing-campaings-that-wentwrong. html 7 http//www. nytimes. com/1993/05/08/business/company-news-gillette-completesacquisition-of-parker-pen. html 10