BIC: The Company Behind the Pen

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23rd video of the Behind the Business Series.

BIC is a corporation based in France best known for making ballpoint pens. It was founded in 1945 by Baron Marcel Bich and has become known for making disposable consumer products such as lighters, razors, mechanical pencils, and printed paper products.

The Bic Cristal is an inexpensive disposable ballpoint pen mass-produced and sold by BIC. It was first launched in December 1950 and is by far the best selling pen in the world – the 100 billionth was sold in September 2006. It has become the archetypal ballpoint pen.

Writing lies at the foundation of modern society.

It is a technology that few of us think about,
and today, we will explore the company behind

the pen, BIC.

Before the advent of metal pens, the western
world’s writing instrument of choice was

the quill.

Finding bird feathers wasn’t very hard,
and ever since 600 AD that’s how most writing

was done.

Once the Industrial Revolution got underway,
improved metallurgy and mass production techniques

resulted in the dip pen.

It was essentially a metal nib mounted on
a handle; it could barely hold more ink than

a quill and it’s practical use was about
the same.

The first truly practical pens appeared at
the end of the 19th century.

They are what we call fountain pens, and the
innovation behind them was that they had a

reservoir of ink inside.

The first commercially successful fountain
pens were built in 1884 by this guy, Lewis

Waterman.

He was originally an insurance broker, but
one day when signing a very important contract,

the prototype fountain pen he had bought for
the occasion broke and leaked ink on the whole

document.

This accident eventually resulted in the deal
getting cancelled and Waterman losing his

job.

Making the best out of a bad situation, Waterman
decided to build a better fountain pen, and

it was his design that truly made fountain
pens the dominant writing instrument of the

next half century.

It wouldn’t be until the 1930s that fountain
pens would finally meet their match.

The man responsible for that was Laszlo Biro,
a Hungarian journalist.

He had noticed that the ink used in newspaper
printing dried quickly, leaving the paper

dry and smudge-free.

When he tried using the same ink in a fountain
pen, however, it wouldn’t flow into the

tip because it was too viscous.

After seven years of trial and error, Laszlo
developed a new tip for his pen consisting

of a ball that could freely rotate in a socket.

As the ball ran along the paper, it would
siphon ink from an internal cartridge and

spread it out evenly.

What Laszlo had created was the ballpoint
pen, but the timing of his invention was a

bit unlucky.

As Hungarian Jew, Laszlo was well aware of
what was happening in Germany, and so in 1938

he packed his bags and moved to Paris.

While there, he got the lucky chance of meeting
the president of Argentina, Agustín Pedro

Justo.

He was so impressed by the ballpoint pen that
he told Laszlo to emigrate to Argentina, which,

of course, he did, as he wanted to be as far
away from Germany as possible.

Once in Argentina, Laszlo set up a company
for his pens and by 1943 he was selling them

to His Majesty’s Royal Air Force in the
UK.

This first generation of ballpoint pens wasn’t
perfect, however; the metal case was prone

to leaking and the ink would often clog.

Most of Laszlo’s non-government clients
ended up returning their pens, which drove

his company to the brink of bankruptcy.

To keep the company afloat, Laszlo resorted
to selling the rights to his pen in Europe

and in the US.

The man who bought the European rights to
the ballpoint pen was a Frenchman, Baron Marcel

Bich.

He had entered the pen business in 1945, when
he had bought a damaged factory on the outskirts

of Paris and used it to start making fountain
pens.

Marcel fell in love with the ballpoint pen,
and in 1950 when he heard that Laszlo was

selling the patent, he threw $2 million at
Laszlo to get it.

With the patent in hand, Marcel used his considerable
resources to acquire plastic and precision

stainless steel technology from Switzerland.

Now, keep in mind, plastic was still a very
new invention in the early 1950s and it had

only been commercialized a few year prior.

The shaping machines Marcel bought were cutting
edge for their time, capable of shaping metal

down to 10 micrometers.

The design of Marcel’s pens was as simplistic
as it was brilliant:

The pen’s barrel was shaped similarly to
a pencil, making it very hard to roll off

a table, and since it was made of transparent
polystyrene, it was easy to see when you were

running out of ink.

What truly made Marcel’s endeavor successful,
however, was his understanding of economies

of scale.

You see, the pens that Laszlo sold were very
expensive, and although they were vastly superior

to fountain pens, it was very hard to justify
spending the equivalent of one week’s wage

for one pen.

Marcel, however, streamlined his production
and bought everything in bulk, allowing him

to sell his pens for a fraction of the cost:
only 50 centimes, the equivalent of 18 cents

in the US.

Marcel’s initial plan was to sell the pens
under his family name, but once people told

him how English speakers were pronouncing
it, he decided to drop the H.

Thus, in 1950 he established Societe BIC and
began flooding France with his trademark pen,

which he called the BIC Cristal.

Unsurprisingly, the pen was an instant hit,
surpassing everything on the market both in

terms of quality and price.

Within 3 years, Marcel was selling 40 million
pens annually.

He could barely keep up with the rising demand
and so he started opening subsidiaries left

and right:
by 1954 he was operating across Western Europe,

and just two years later his pens were also
sold in South America and Africa.

Marcel didn’t enter the US market until
1958, and he did so in a very interesting

fashion.

Remember our friend Lewis Waterman?

He was the insurance broker who started making
fountain pens in the late 1880s.

The company he had started was now the largest
manufacturer of fountain pens in the US, but

the ballpoint revolution had left them near
bankruptcy.

To gain a foothold in the States, Marcel offered
to buy Waterman and he did so for $1 million.

He repurposed most of Waterman’s factories
to make ballpoint pens, and he kept the fountain

pen division as a luxury brand, which is still
around to this day, although as a separate

entity.

In 1961 French artist Raymond Savignac created
the BIC Boy, which has remained a part of

the company’s logo ever since.

That year the company replaced their stainless
steel ballpoints with much harder tungsten

carbide, which they still use today.

By the end of the 1960s BIC pens were sold
on every inhabited continent, and Marcel was

looking for other products to add to his arsenal.

In line with his philosophy, he needed something
cheap and disposable that people would use

every day: a pocket lighter turned out to
be the perfect candidate.

Much like with the ballpoint pen, Marcel’s
affordable lighter outperformed all available

alternatives and was capable of producing
3,000 flames over its lifetime.

Its release in 1973 was met with universal
acclaim and today lighter sales make up over

35% of the company’s revenue.

Just two years later Marcel found another
market he could conquer.

In what was essentially a declaration of war
on Gillette, BIC released a disposable safety

razor in 1975.

They heavily undercut Gillette and have been
a thorn in their sides ever since.

Although BIC have had a hard time outcompeting
Gillette, razor sales are still a big chunk

of their business, making up almost 24% of
their sales today.

As a lifetime watersports enthusiast, Marcel
established BIC Sport in 1979, which made

windsurf equipment and sailboards.

Although BIC Sport is still around today,
it is a very minor part of the company and

it hasn’t been very successful.

Marcel’s future endeavors, however, would
fare even worse.

A few months after starting BIC Sport, Marcel
decided to enter the clothing market by purchasing

Guy Laroche from its founder for $10 million.

At first the deal seemed great, but with the
legendary fashion designer in failing health

and incapable of making new designs, the fashion
company soon became unprofitable.

When Guy himself died in 1989, things became
even worse after a series of failed successors.

Marcel was also getting pretty old at that
point and was starting to make mistakes, like

when he tried to enter the perfume market
in 1989 and failed so miserably, that he scrapped

the whole line of perfumes just two years
later.

Marcel died in 1994, and his son Bruno took
up the reigns to fix the company.

His first move was to strengthen BIC’s hold
on the pen business by buying Wite-Out and

Tipp-Ex, the two largest correction brands
in the world.

He sold the unprofitable Guy Laroche in 2001,
and it eventually ended up in the hands of

a Chinese company.

Since then BIC has tried to venture into the
realm of consumer electronics by selling mobile

phones, tablets and hydrogen fuel cells, but
the results have been lackluster at best.

Even today, their most successful products
are Marcel’s original trifecta: pens, razors

and lighters.

In fact, just in 2016 BIC sold 7 billion pens,
2.5 billion razors and 1.5 billion lighters.

If time has shown anything, it’s that the
company’s success lies in the simplicity

of their products and judging by their failure
to profit from anything more complex than

a ballpoint pen, they would do well to continue
honoring Marcel’s legacy.

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