Quality is also the promise that you as a European manufacturer give to your customers?

?a promise that we also deliver. We are ISO 9001 and 14001 certified, we buy only the best raw materials and the entire production process is carried out in-house. This includes rigid quality controls, for instance for our refills, for which we guarantee a writing capacity of 1,800 m.
Moreover, as far as we know we are the only producer of promotional pens worldwide who manufactures the die-casts for the injection moulding process itself. This not only gives us total control over the realisation of our designs, but it also enables us to react quickly, if any material defects come to light: If a mould doesn?t close properly anymore or is worn out, this influences the quality of the result ? i.e. the surface of the pen won?t be perfectly smooth. Our workers know our machines like the back of their hand and can eliminate mistakes immediately. We didn?t even communicate the fact that we make our own moulds at first, until one of our customers pointed out to us that this is a unique selling point. It is especially important that European manufacturers underline their advantages.


What other advantages do the distributors have who order goods from you instead of from importers?

We can deliver within four days, for small volumes but also for huge volumes: We not only stock large quantities of finished writing instruments in our warehouse, but also have generous stocks of raw materials available in all colours. So, we can also supply our customers with last-minute orders as well as batches of assorted colours, neither of which are easy when importing from China.


On the other hand companies who are merely looking for the cheapest models won?t find what they are looking for at Stilolinea. Are the customers prepared to pay for high quality and good service?

Fortunately, they are more and more ready to do just that! The people have learned what can happen, if they put too much pressure on the price. Furthermore, the regulations are becoming increasingly stricter. It is schizophrenic to keep drilling down on compliance and then order cheap goods from China. After all a European manufacturer definitely complies with the laws. And regarding the prices: they are also rising in China, as we observed last year. I feel that a certain amount of quality awareness is extremely important ? this is one reason why we no longer export to the USA, because their motto is still: The top priority is cheap. And we don?t want to play that game. In the meantime Europe is demonstrating more quality awareness and we should further develop this way of thinking.