Note: This color pencil drawing of a California Incense-cedar tree comes from the cover of one of our California Cedar Products Company brochures dating to the early 1960’s. The artist is unknown. This post is the first of a new series dealing with Incense-cedar, its historical and current use in the pencil industry; it’s conversion […]
My last post covered some of the competitive developments in our industry as a result of the large growth in the Chinese pencil industry. While I mentioned that about 52% of the world’s pencils are now produced in China, the reality is that the Chinese share has grown to this level from about 22% in […]
The third in a continuing series of posts on international trade issues affecting the pencil industry. My earlier posts focusing on pencil Anti-dumping duties provided first, a primer on the purpose and structure of such duties, and next an update on current developments on US anti-dumping duties against Chinese pencils. Anti-dumping duties in the world […]
Photo: courtesy of our friends at Sanford Faber Venezuela. With the buzz of pencil talk going about the blogosphere recently I have seen several comments on the Mongol brand. These reflect preferences for it’s functionality and the inability to find this brand here in the US. The Mongol is of course a very famous brand […]
Photo Credit: C book Back to the creative side for a day. We generally think of the use of pencils to generate art. However, it seems the pencil itself is continually viewed as a source of inspiration for artistic expression in several media. Here are links to a few interesting examples: Photography Sculpting “Pencil Pricks” […]
This post continues a series of Timberlines articles discussing the impact various world trade issues and practices have upon the Pencil Industry. In my previous Primer on Pencil Anti-Dumping duties I covered the basic aspects and issues involved with Anti-dumping duties here in the U.S. against Chinese pencils. As previously noted pencil imports to the […]
The following is the first of a series of Timberlines articles to be posted in the coming weeks discussing the impact various world trade issues and practices have upon the Pencil Industry. Import and export duties, value added taxes, export credits or export VAT rebates, fixed currency exchange rates are all examples of factors that […]
Given my family history in the in the pencil industry it’s not too surprising I tend to have a wide selection of pencils stashed in desks, drawers, closets and cabinets around my house, my office and even the car. A few years back when redecorating my home office I spent some time actually going through […]
Those of us in the pencil industry are all quite proud of the origins and traditions of our companies. Many of us like to tell our historical tale of product innovation and organizational development. A number of us even claim to have produced the world’s “___est” pencil. Pick your adjective. But where does one go […]
