TI M E LE S S C RI S TA L

THE GLOBAL BALLPOINT

THOMAS SITTLER
NOVEMBER 2013
TLE S2

D I S P OS A B L E T I M E L E S N E S S

The ballpoint pen is an unassuming fixture of modern life. A reliable, instantaneous tool of free-form
expression and communication, inconsequential enough to be forgotten, and ubiquitous enough to
always be found, it still beats the smartphone for many of our writing needs, even in 2013. One pen
in particular embodies the attributes of the ballpoint and has come to be synonymous with it: the Bic
Cristal. The father of all ballpoints, this one has been around since December 1950, but has changed
little since. After a controversial foray into a market dominated by instruments 20 or 100 times its
price, the Cristal has spent five decades imposing itslef as a familiar object in our drawers, bags,
desktops, floors, pockets. The final frontier was conquered in 2002, when the Cristal entered the
hallowed walls of the MoMA, where it sits, among the 3M Post-ItTM , the collapsible salad basket and
M&Ms, and 122 other objects as part of the permanent Humble Masterpieces collection.

Manufacturer: Bic
Date: 1950
Medium: Polystyrene, polypropylene, and tungsten carbide
Dimensions: 5 7/8 x 1/2" (14.9 x 1.3 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of the manufacturer
MoMA Number: 1409.2001.1-2

ANNICKS 1 500 000 000

The Cristal is made of exactly seven parts.

Bic official documentation, 2005

The key to producing a ballpoint pen lies in the ball which controls the flow of ink. Writing produces
enormous pressures on the tip, which is why it is made out of tungsten carbide, a metal so hard it is
also used to make armor-piercing ammunition. The tungsten carbide is first compressed from
powder to small pellets measuring about 1mm across. These are far too rough to make a ballpoint, so
they are polished for 5 days using a rotating machine. After polishing, the balls are quality controlled
by a human with the aid of a computer. One employee at a Bic factory in Marne La Valle, Annick
Gickele, has been casting her eyes over the metal balls for 37 years, inspecting 50000 every day.
Thats about 1.5 Billion so far. She confides: Cest le coup doeil, cest lhabitude. Il faut se concentrer sur son
travail . After the balls are approved, they are joined to a socket section called a point. Enough ink
to write for two kilometers is injected into a cartridge. All that remains now is for all the elements to
be combined, the process for which is fully mechanized.

FRENCH JEWEL

Its Cristal with and i, not a y. The careful observer will have noticed this peculiar spelling and the
French origins it reveals. The brand bic, too, comes from the name of the French founder of Bic,
Inc., Marcel Bich.
Bichs story of the Bic begins in the second world war. The Hungarian Br brothers (who to this day
give their name to the British colloquialism for ballpoint), had developed the basic technology for a
writing instrument based upon viscous ink dispensed over the rolling action of a small metal ball.

Extract from US Pat. 2,390,636, filed on June 17, 1943 by the Br brothers

This design was licensed for production in the UK for the Royal Air Force, who found they were
superior to fountain pens at high altitude. After seeing a ballpoint during the war, Bich founded the
Socit Porte-plume, Porte-mines et Accessoires in Clichy, and began to develop the technology needed to
mass-produce the ballpoint cheaply. The Cristal finally hit the shelves in 1950, by which time Bich
had purchased a license from the Brs. Bic was an easy to remember shortened version of Marcels
name, designed to be globally adaptable. Bich believed in and aspired for worldwide expansion,
stating in a 1969 interview vous ne pouvez pas dfendre une affaire si vous tes uniquement sur le
march franais . The Cristal was introduced in Brazil in 1956 and two years later, it reached the
United States market, aided by extensive advertising combined with a low price. The Cristals arrival
in the US caused all pen manufacturers to compete heavily on price, eventually bringing a typical
ballpoint to a price of 19c, down from several tens of dollar for a fountain pen in the immediate
postwar period.

Some of the dates at which the Cristal was introduced. This is not an exhaustive list, as comprehensive information was
lacking.

G L OB A L R E A C H

Perhaps because writing on paper was already a multicultural and universal activity in the 20th
century, the Cristal was quite a precocious globalizer. It sold on four continents as early as 1957. It is
the scale of its global reach which expanded dramatically in the past few decades, making it an apt
reminder that Globalization, which has occurred for many centuries, is new only in quantitative
terms.
600 000 Bic Cristals are bought each day, so about 7 every second. These sales are of the same order
of magnitude as Coca-Cola, of which there are about 1.8 billion daily servings. By far the most widely
sold pen in the world, it can be found in 160 countries at 3.2M retail outlets (according to Bics
documentation). However, a mere ten factories produce not only all Bic Cristals, but all Bic
products. There are four factories in France, three in the United States, and Mexico, Brazil, and
South Africa each have one.

Production is almost entirely mechanized, which enables Bic to profitably manufacture most of its
products in developed countries, despite their occupying markets which are highly price-competitive.
No stage of the production is outsourced, giving Bic total control over the production and enabling it
to deliver identical goods worldwide. Providing this unified experience backed by strong quality
control is extremely important to Bics strategy. The Bic brand, positioned mainly through emphasis
on the pens reliable functionality and performance, is strong in many countries. Consumers unaided
brand awareness (the first brand that comes to mind when asked an unprompted question about a
category) of the Cristal is routinely above 80% in rich and developing countries alike, according to a
global study conducted in 2000.

Bic Cristal ads often feature a white

background with only Bic ink on it.
The minimalism of the message
mimics that of the actual product and
positions it as a no-nonsense and
effective tool.

writes 2 km

The Bic Cristal brand is

positioned mainly through
emphasis on the pens reliable
functionality and performance

This ad, which ran in Shanghai,

features an entire page full of
scribbles. It puts the pens single
feature front and center: its ability to
write a lot of text reliably.

These stills from a Spanish TV ad

follow the same model. Drawings
appear on a notebook-like background,
while a voice touts that a Bic Cristal can
write 700 reports or 5000 crosswords.
The ad states Bic gives you more than
the competition.

This Coca-Cola ad presents a good

point of comparison to Bics. Like
many consumer brands, Coca-Colas
message is emotional, promoting a
lifestyle or feeling associated with
the product, rather than its features.

FA C TO RY- M A D E S OC I A L I S M ?

The Cristal is an excellent example of economic globalizations power to change daily life, arguably
for the better. Pens used to be luxury goods not available to all, and furthermore an expensive
fountain pen embodied social status. The Cristals global reach helped change both of these things.
By leveraging global interactions, one innovative idea and a Clichy-based companys implementation
of it eventually enabled the whole world to enjoy a product that met their needs in a simple way.
Everyone is a Bic user, from the Kenyan farmer holding a ledger of his crop sales to the French
hedge fund manager writing a note. (In Kenya, the median person lives on the poverty line of 37.5$ a
month (PPP). Even someone at that level of poverty can buy two Cristals for only 1% of their
monthly income.) In addition, global illiteracy has dropped from 40% to 20% in the last 40 years.
The Cristal may be the main writing instrument of generations of low-income individuals who have
received primary education while their parents have not.
It is also remarkable that the Cristal is used by people for whom buying a pen many times as
expensive would make no difference at all. The Cristal transcends social barriers, which is precisely
why it drew frowns from purists in its early years. Journalist Anne Crignon recalls how the acadmicien
Jean Paulhan once drew from his pocket a Bic Cristal during deliberations for a literary prize,
attracting the irritated gazes of the most conservative members of the panel. The Cristal is an
inconsequential object, which is why, paradoxically, it is so noteworthy. Philosopher and writer
Umberto Eco said that The Bic Cristal it is the sole example of socialism in practice. It negates all
the rules of ownership and social distinction, in reference to peoples habit of leaving the pen for
others to use.
It would seem therefore that the Cristal did homogenize us in at least one indisputable way: today,
most everyone can afford to write with a convenience that was only available to the very elite 60
years ago.
C U LT U R A L M E A N I N G

The Cristals advertisements portray it as affordable and reliably performing a specific function.
Because of the simplicity of a ballpoint, which is particularly highlighted in the Cristals marketing, it
carries little metaphorical or cultural content. In fact, few people know it is a French brand. The
object itself, because it is so inconsequential, becomes secondary to the function it performs, and is
viewed solely as a tool. It does not affect a cultural practice directly, as a food or clothing item might.
Therefore, despite its widespread usage, it is difficult to argue that the Cristal has contributed to
cultural homogenization, much less hybridization. It is perhaps representative of a type of
globalization that does not involve the transmission of broad social values, but merely the sale of
goods which people worldwide find enjoyable or useful.
The conveniences of globalized consumerism itself, it may be argued, is the one value or attitude
which the Bic does carry with it, implicitly. The familiar presence of the Bic at a local store for a
cheap price, the fact that it is thrown out after use and serves a single purpose, embodies the
expectation of the consumerist that satisfaction can easily be had in a standardized, disposable, and
repeatable way.