With this commercial strategic move Parker also altered its traditional product warranty on its high end pens, changing the former lifetime guarantee to a two-year warranty limitation. While some of its former staple Jotter pens may be found in retailers such as Office Depot, the Parker line has been moved to upscale "luxury" retailers in an abandonment of its former business model of quality manufacture combined with mass market appeal and pricing. Subsequently, Parker has abandoned its traditional retail outlets in North America. The company press release stated: "This decision is a response to structural issues accelerated by market trends and is in no way a reflection on the highly valued work performed by our Janesville employees over the years." Newell Rubbermaid offered 'transitional employment services' along with severance pay in compensation to the dismissed workforce. announced that the factory in Janesville, Wisconsin, was also to close the remaining operation there producing Parker Pens (which eliminated a further 153 manufacturing jobs). The following month, Newell Rubbermaid Inc. in response announced that it had decided to close down the Parker production factory at Newhaven in England, with the dismissal of 180 employees from the facility, and relocate production to France.
With increasing commercial competition to the Parker Jotter's classic metal ink refill cartridge design from low cost generic copies produced in China, as Parker's unique design patent for the cartridge expired, Parker's sales began to be drastically adversely affected.
In 2000 Gillette sold its writing instruments division to the company Newell Rubbermaid, whose Sanford Stationery Division became the largest writing instrument manufacturers in the world at that time, simultaneously owning such brand names as Rotring, Sharpie, Reynolds as well as Parker, PaperMate, Waterman, and Liquid Paper. In 1993 Parker was purchased by the Gillette Company, which already owned the Paper Mate brand – the best-selling disposable ballpoint. Ī management buyout in 1986 moved the company's headquarters to Newhaven, East Sussex, England, which was the original location of the Valentine Pen Company previously acquired by Parker. A 1982 spinoff, Sintered Specialties, Inc., became SSI Technologies, a manufacturer of automotive sensors. In time Manpower provided more revenue than the pen business. In 1976 Parker acquired Manpower just as the temporary staffing market was surging. The company bought retailer and catalog company Norm Thompson in 1973, and then sold it in 1981.
To avoid a costly patent fight the companies agreed to share their formulas with each other. Unfortunately, the Scripto company had introduced a similar product called Fluidlead a few months previously. In 1955, the company introduced its Liquid Lead pencil which used liquid graphite to write like a pen. The Jotter would go on to sell over 750 million units during its history. In 1954 Parker released the Parker Jotter ballpoint pen with its original nylon body and inverted "V" clip.
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