Marcel Bich Case Study
Even his most bitter business rivals have been forced to acknowledge Marcel Bich’s genius for anticipating consumer
trends. An early prophet of the “throwaway culture,” the astute Frenchman has built a $700 million company since 1953
by catering to the worldwide demand for inexpensive – but reliable – disposable products, first with ball-point pens and
then with cigarette lighters and razors.
Born in Turin, Italy, to French parents (his father was a civil engineer), Bich began his career at eighteen selling flashlights
door-to-door in Pairs. A few years later he went to work for a large ink manufacturer and was eventually made
production manager, before he was called up by the French air force at the outbreak of World War II.
Following the war, Bich and a friend, Edouard Buffard, raised $1,000 and bought a leaky shed in the rundown Paris
suburb of Clichy, where they manufactured ink refills for the ball-point pens that were just beginning to appear in
France.
At the time, the French pen market was dominated by the traditional “inkwell” models. Ball-point pens (mostly
American imports) were regarded as novelties, their popularity limited by their relatively high price tags and unreliable
performance. Marcel Bich was very familiar with the ball-point’s shortcomings through his ink business, but he became
convinced that the new pen could claim a bigger share of the market if its price were brought down and its quality
improved.
Working in his small factory-shed, the ink maker began to experiment with different ball-point designs in 1949. Unlike
the ball-points then on the market, virtually all of which were refillable, the prototypes that Bich developed were
intended to be used only until their ink ran out and then thrown away. The farsighted businessman believed that this
disposable feature would increase his pen’s appeal to the convenience-oriented consumer of the post-World War II era.
After four years of research and development, Bich finally came up with a pen that met all his requirements. The simple
stick-shaped writing instrument was rugged and dependable; and because it consisted only of a thin plastic ink tube, a
tiny metal ball-pint, and a rigid plastic outer tube, it could be made and sold very inexpensively. Bich christened his new
disposable pen by slashing a letter of his name to create the catchy “Bic.”
As its inventor had expected, the Bic pen was an immediate hit with the French public. Three years after introducing the
pen in 1953, Marcel Bich was selling a quarter of a million disposable ball-pints a day in his native land and was
beginning to market his product in other European countries. The spectacular success of the unpretentious Bic (it
sometimes sold for less than 5¢) startled the entire pen industry, which had traditionally been controlled by high-priced,
high-status products.
In December 1958 the stocky, balding pen maker entered the U.S. market by acquiring the Waterman Pen Company.
Disposable ball-points were all but unheard of here at the time, but the handy Bic fit comfortably into the American lifestyle, and within a decade of its introduction the French product was accounting for half of all retail pen sales in the
nation. To measure this achievement another way, Bich was selling 330 million ball-points a year, more than one and a
half pens for every American.
Encouraged by the success of his pen, Bich test-marketed a disposable cigarette lighter in Sweden in 1971. A year later,
he introduced the lighter to America, where it challenged he already established leader, the Cricket Lighter, made by
Gillette. The two companies had done battle once before when the surprising Bic ball-point had catapulted past
Gillette’s line of Papermate pens to become the king of the U.S. retail pen market.
This time, however, Gillette was determined to put up a better fight. Both companies invested heavily in television
advertising, Gillette depending on its singing Cricket cartoon character to counter Bic’s “Flick My Bic” slogan. They also
engaged in some fierce price competition, shaving 60¢ or more off lighter that originally were supposed to retail for
$1.49. When the dust finally settled, Bic emerged the winner once again. Its lighter passed Cricket in 1977 and has
remained well ahead of the Gillette entry in sales ever since.
History seemed about to repeat itself in 1976, when Bich brought yet another of this throwaways to America – the Bic
razor. Gillette responded to his assault on the very product the company had started with by introducing its own
disposable razor, Good News. Backed by Gillette’s reputation and expertise in shavers, Good News outsold its French
competitor from the beginning, relegating Bic to a less than 20 percent share of the U.S. disposable razor market by
1981.
Bich’s failure to top Gillette in the razor market was one of the rare setbacks that he has experienced in his successstudded career of more than three decades. The competitive Frenchman (who was once described by Time magazine as
a “stubborn, opinionated entrepreneur”) hasn’t been as lucky in his favorite avocation, however. A dedicated
yachtsman, Bich has tried and failed on several occasions to win the America’s Cup race. In 1970 he spent $3 million and
worked fourteen hours a day preparing for the event, only to lose ignominiously when his sloop France got lost in the
fog off Newport.
Bich’s yachting activities have provided the public with its few chances to see the pen millionaire. A very private person,
he shuns interviews and forbids photographs in a manner reminiscent of the late Howard Hughes. When not on his
yacht, Bich’s leisure time is usually spent with his family, which includes his wife and ten children. Outside counsel is
very seldom sought or appreciated by the wealthy businessman, who once attributed his impressive success to his
refusal to listen to anyone’s advice but his own.