Said an Eversharp bigwig: "Dealers are killing us, screaming and tearing us apart for more ball-point pens." That was just eleven months ago. Last week it looked as if Eversharp had gotten another kind of tearing-apart. Board Chairman Martin L. Straus reported that his company (which had had to borrow $3,000,000 to carry it through) had closed its fiscal year with a $3,416,985.23 deficit. The trouble: ball pens.
When it bought the Biro ball-point patents for $1,600,000 (TIME, Nov. 12, 1945) et seq. Eversharp hoped to capture the pen market. But many another company, notably Reynolds Pen, got there first...
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