So this has been an exciting year and our big birthday has finally arrived.  Today, December 14th, 2017 marks the official Centennial Date of California Cedar Products Company, celebrated on the 100th anniversary of the first shares issued to three founding shareholders.  The Berolzheimer family and I are thankful to have so many consumers, dealers, distributors, pencil manufacturing customers for our slats, employees, suppliers, family members and many others through the years who have contributed to our success and longevity.  We are proud to have also contributed to the success stories of these partners, friends and customers whether in our business relations or through end user’s happy use of our pencil brands and those of our many pencil manufacturing customers who use our company’s wooden slats.

While we had a great celebration this past summer with many of these slat customers visiting us here in California, today we are closing out this celebratory year with a very special event.  Our annual Christmas Party for employees, directors and shareholders and families has been expanded to include an Arts Community Appreciation Concert, hosted by the Blackwing Foundation and including local arts and music teachers from around our Central Valley region.  The Blackwing Foundation is dedicated to strengthening and broadening arts and music education in our nations K-12 schools and is proud to work with some great partners on a national, regional and local basis.  This outreach event builds awareness of our programs in our community and serves as a big thank you for all our local arts and music teachers.

The concert features world renowned Violinist Mark O’Connor and Grammy Award winning O’Connor Band currently on their annual Appalachian Christmas Tour.  Blackwing Foundation is proud to kick off its newest music education initiative supporting Mark’s New American School of Strings and the O’Connor Method which focuses on teaching students our American musical heritage with strong emphasis on developing improvisational technique, in a way that is helping to transform music education in a number of positive ways.  You can lean more about this partnership, here.

Finally, in case you missed it elsewhere Pencils.com is having a special sale with 100 unique giveaway gifts that range from sweet Blackwing swag, to rarities from my personal pencil archive. Here’s a full breakdown of what we’re giving away.

Anyway it’s been a wonderful year and an amazing 100 year journey for our company and we thank you all for being a part of it.

Charles Berolzheimer II, Chairman and CEO, California Cedar Products Company