2 posts tagged “pen”

I downloaded from audible.com this book a month ago and finished "reading" it.  This really gave me another perspective to my work.  My assumption in the past 2 years was that since I have not enough time to work on small categories consisting of >40,000 products, as long as I work on the bigger picture (great thematic promotion, seasonal big purchase such as calendar/diary and Xmas cards/wrapping, back to school, etc) I could cover the minute imperfections happening in various small categories such as eraser, mechanical pencil, etc.  I gave myself this excuse not to manage "insignificant" stuffs.  Turned out there are a lot more potential to generate good results by pushing these small categories to their best potentials.  Several tests were made to push pen vendors such as Pilot, Uni, Lamy etc to make sure new arrival comes to our stores on monthly basis, even though some of the product ranges such as Japanese domestic version only, limited edition only for the summer in Europe, etc can make a huge difference in our overall result.  This book created a whole new project for me: maximize the potential of minute categories, each HKD $12 pen counts.

So Jerry introduced Aguila Brands to me and I walked through Jaguar, Ducati and Smart pen series, amazed by the fact that they are actually not that expensive and very good looking.  Jerry is actually a distributor of these pens, so from that moment onward I was chasing after him for the availability date.  Finally Jaguar will arrive all of our stores in a week's time, while Smart and Ducati will arrive in about 2 weeks from now.

Ducati pen is a little over done in design IMHO, Jaguar is a bit typical, but Smart pen is somewhere in between or you can say just right.  The design is young enough, price is around HKD480 - HKD660 so affordable.  They are hand-made in Italy with an ergonomic heavy metal design, in particular the long clip, which stands out from the crowd and your shirt pocket.  The end of the pen can also be used as a PDA stylus.  All 5 original smart car colors are used for these pens: "phat red", "jack black", "shine yellow", "bay grey" and "ice white".  I'm quite sure during promotion period, for every purchase of a Smart pen, you get one 1:87 toy car matching your pen.

I'm using a "bay grey" one, I like roller ball but the fountain pen is also cute, visit Smart Pens Flickr Set for more images