Cleo writing instruments
| Cleo Writing Instruments GmbH | |
|---|---|
| legal form | Company with limited liability |
| founding | 1945 |
| Seat | Bad Wilsnack , Germany |
| management |
|
| Number of employees | 55 (1970s) |
| Branch | Writing instrument manufacture |
| Website | https://www.cleo-skribent.de/home.html |
The Cleo writing instruments GmbH is a pen manufacturer from Bad Wilsnack , the house brand Cleo scribbler markets.
The finishing of the fountain pen nibs is one of the special manufacturing techniques. Gold nibs are coated with rhodium . In the meantime, hand-painted fountain pen nibs have become Cleo's trademark. The Bad Wilsnacker company is the only one in the world that practices this finishing technique.
Another special feature is the use of ebonite in series production. At the beginning of the 20th century, ebonite was used as the standard material in the manufacture of high-quality writing implements. However, processing is so complex that almost all manufacturers said goodbye to ebonite when new processing options opened up through the development and use of plastics.
history
The company was founded in 1945 by Herbert Wurach and initially acted as a supplier of metal parts for the manufacture of writing implements. The initial conditions were characterized by a post-war shortage both in the investment area and in the procurement of materials. Since the employees are said to have compared themselves ironically with “the ancient Egyptians” at the time, this is said to have been the reason for the name of the first in-house writing instrument collection “Cleopatra”, from which CLEO emerged a short time later.
The company expanded rapidly, was nationalized in 1956 and firmly integrated into the socialist planned economy as a production facility. As a result, production increased rapidly and by the early 1960s, more than 600,000 writing implements were being manufactured in Bad Wilsnack each year. The international breakthrough came in 1964 with the ink drawing devices from the SKRIBENT series, which were sold in all the former Eastern Bloc countries and became an important tool for technical draftsmen. In the 1970s, almost 1,000,000 scribes left the Bad Wilsnack plant, which employed 55 people.
With the turnaround, the sales structure collapsed, material suppliers stopped their activities overnight and consumer behavior changed suddenly. Again the employees faced challenges: opening up new markets, privatization and the development of new products were the most important. Immediately after reunification, Cleo acted mainly as a supplier of components for established writing instrument manufacturers in the old federal states. In the mid-1990s, the international breakthrough came in the refinement of fountain pens.
Since the end of the 1990s, writing implements have been offered again under the Cleo Skribent brand, which are characterized above all by elaborate handcrafting, shape transitions and hand-painted fountain pen nibs.