Kolkata, India
info@penloverskolkata.com

Kaweco, Cult following and Kolkata – the Liliput from Germany readies to take on the giants!

Kaweco, Cult following and Kolkata – the Liliput from Germany readies to take on the giants!

Kaweco has survived in the fountain pen industry for more than 130+ years. Through all these years, the brand has infused modern technology in its gamut of writing instruments. Kaweco pens, no wonder, are loved for their unique size and colour availability by the FP fraternity.

Let’s hear about the classic brand from Abhishek Nair, the official and exclusive distributor for Kaweco pens in India.   

Penloverskolkata: How has the pandemic and the resultant lockdown affected fountain pen sales? 

Abhishek Nair, penspecials.com: The onset of the pandemic in March 2020 hugely impacted the fountain pen market and caused a major setback in our sales figures. Right from the middle of March till the month of September, the sales were extremely low compared to what it was before the pandemic. During this period, we had no choice but to make our customers wait till the lockdown was lifted to get their orders delivered. Slowly and steadily from the month of October, we are witnessing a slow rise in our sales, mainly through online sources. Our offline retailers, having suffered a major blow due to Covid-19, were not ready to place orders with us since they struggled to sell. Things started to get back to normal from the month of December, 2020 when the impact of the Covid could no longer stop customers from getting their hands on fountain pens.

Kaweco

Penloverskolkata: What is new with penspecials.com

Abhishek Nair, penspecials.com: Penspecials.com as a brand has come up with new handmade pens and notebooks from different countries and is keen to bring more unique brands from Taiwan that will create a fresh fountain pen market in India. The brands will be distinct from what we used to bring in earlier and we are pretty confident that the new products will be much more exciting for Indian pen lovers.

Penloverskolkata: How has your business as an e-commerce platform, dealing with major brands like Kaweco, Pilot, and TWSBI, evolved over the years? How does the future look from your end?

Abhishek Nair, penspecials.com: Penspecials.com was born in the year 2018 after we decided to add a variety of products apart from our parent distributorship of Kaweco. In the span of the last 4 years, we have brought numerous brands like TWSBI, Penlux and Rohrer & Klingner, Tomoe River, Grifos etc. and have been able to establish a decent market for our website www.penspecials.com. We bring in exceptional products from countries like Germany, Taiwan, Italy, Japan and Spain and distribute them all over India. Our products have been much liked by our customers and there is a huge demand to bring in more unique products from these countries.

Kaweco

Penloverskolkata: You represent some very niche brands like Leuchtturm, Three Oysters, and Rohrer and Klingner, among others. What are you doing to increase the visibility of these brands so as to make them popular with the local FP fraternity in India? 

Abhishek Nair, penspecials.com: We have seen a tremendous rise in the demand for fountain pens and notebooks in the last 4 years. Marketing of brands has become digitalised, people have started ordering products online and there is a prospect of tremendous growth in this segment. We advertise on a daily basis on Facebook and Instagram since people spend most of their day scrolling on these two online platforms. We are confident that advertising our products through social media will continue to attract more customers and emerge as the best way to grow our business.

Penloverskolkata: What are Kaweco’s immediate plans? 

Abhishek Nair, penspecials.com: Kaweco has been pushing the market very aggressively. It has been making innovative products every quarter of the year that are loved by customers. Especially in India, since in our country, people always prefer something new whenever anything is launched. We are pretty confident that Kaweco in the near future is going to become No. 1 in the fountain pen market. We, as the official distributors of Kaweco, are positive that people are inclined towards our products. Gradually, we are getting demand for a wide range of Kaweco products that we never used to sell before. We will, in a couple of months, add a new line of Kaweco products and ascertain their performance in the Indian market.

Kaweco

Penloverskolkata: Why hasn’t Kaweco got the kind of cult following that it deserves, especially in India?   

Abhishek Nair, penspecials.com: Kaweco is already on the verge of becoming one of the most popular brands in the fountain pen market in India. For the last 4 years, with the help of social media and other digital platforms, Kaweco has established itself as a leader in the industry. We have witnessed a 300% jump in our sales than what it was in early 2018. In India, we are witnessing a demand for higher-end premium Kaweco products during the last few months. This year, we will be launching a new collection, as discussed earlier. We expect to see even a higher demand for Kaweco products with the new variety. Kaweco, we find, is slowly but surely developing its own cult following in India.

Penloverskolkata: What are you doing to ensure that FPs, which offer the most sustainable writing option available today, are more widely used by youngsters? 

Abhishek Nair, penspecials.com: Once the pandemic situation gets back to normal, we will be getting into colleges and universities to notify the youngsters about the different kinds of fountain pens we offer, their benefits, and how they will improve their handwriting. Now, in the digital era, when youngsters are busy typing on a mobile screen, it is a challenge for businesses like us to educate them and pull them into the habit of writing with pens. For this reason, we have decided to start providing the young generation with fountain pens that are cheaper and easy to start with.

Kaweco

Penloverskolkata: Anything that you would like to add for our readers? 

Abhishek Nair, penspecials.com: To all the readers, whether it is Kaweco or Lamy or Sailor or any other fountain pen brand that we deal with or not, it is a request to start using Fountain Pens. It is an instrument through which you are able to communicate your exclusive thoughts, emotions, and feelings, in a unique manner on paper. The use of a fountain pen allows us to emote better on paper as a connection forms between your hand and brain to express yourself more clearly. Writing with pens always creates memories that are etched in your brain forever. FPs can be carried anywhere you wish to and stored for generations to come. Just imagine, 30 years from now, rummaging through your cupboard, and stumbling upon a letter that was penned in maybe, 2022, by your loved ones. Can your screens, laptop keys, or printed paper beat this feeling?

For More information: www.penspecials.com

 

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