First of all I want to express my personal appreciation to all of you who have shown interest in the new Palomino Blackwing thus far and are now supporting us with your orders on our first day of this new product sales on Pencils.com. We also received a nice bit of publicity today from the […]
There is an interesting story today in the Wall Street Journal about the “pencil wars” between two historic German companys in our industry. Who’s the oldest? Who’s the best? Who’s the most innovative? Interviews of Count Anton (Toni) Faber-Castel and Axel Marx current MD from Staedtler. I wrote a related post a few years ago […]
Rather than continuing on schedule with previously planned posts about our design and development process I thought I’d respond to all the inquiries we’re getting about when we’ll actually begin taking orders for the new Palomino Blackwing. As previously announced, last week we received the expedited air shipment of the first part of our initial […]
Photo Courtesy: The Blackwing Pages Honestly, there was indeed a debate about whether to include this phrase long associated with the Blackwing on our new pencil. Many Blackwing fans seem to feel quite strongly that this slogan should have been used and do associate this slogan directly with the pencils smooth writing performance. One person […]
Ultimately, as we all now understand the story, the breakdown of the specialized ferrule production equipment and the costs to repair or replace the machine factored in the decision by Newell Rubbermaid (Sanford) to discontinue the Blackwing. The economic return did not seem to cover the cost of restarting production given the limited sales for […]
This feature set was considered the fourth most important across our six features ranked by our test groups. Here there is a clear allegiance among traditional Blackwing fans to the historic charcoal or graphite gray gloss finish and imprinting information on the pencil to more closely match that of the original product. Many participants readily […]
Overall, in our Palomino Blackwing bench test graphite smoothness and graphite wear came out as the first and third most important features of the six specific product features our survey groups were asked to prioritize. The second most important item was considered to be the overall performance of the pencil as a whole. We did […]
Welcome back. I hope that you’re enjoying this series of posts as we explore our company’s journey to revive the Blackwing. (To catch up if you’re new see Post One and Post Two) As promised today is the day I’ll begin focusing on our growing understanding of the traditional “Blackwing” fan and their concerns and […]
In Part One of this Series, I introduced our current process of gathering initial consumer response to our new Palomino Blackwing pencil. While we’re completing our evaluation of responses today I answer the question “Why is CalCedar reviving the Blackwing?”.Photo Courtesy: The Blackwing PagesPure and simple. Blackwing is a great and iconic name among serious […]
