Click - The festival offering from Click is here !

The Festival Offering from Click is here – the Click Renaissance Clear Demonstrator with a Jowo nib.

I don’t think that a better pen could have been offered to mark the festival of lights. It is a clear demonstrator, which points the clear conscience with which one should reach out to God. It comes with a golden nib and gold jewelry which signifies that these festivals are about light, about prosperity about us praying to God for universal well-being. I call the pen Victory, because the transparent pen represents the eternal triumph of good over evil – that is ultimately what Diwali and after that Christmas, is all about. Perhaps on another level, the victory of Click over its competitors as it steadily moves up the value chain, emerging as a global player in the fountain pen space.

I will not comment on the make and built of the pen as, Click pens are exceptionally well made, value for the buck, and sheer delight to write with because of their ergonomic built qualities. The weight, size, feel and balance of the pen, is as near perfect as it gets. The high point of this pen is the Jowo nib, which has been fitted to address a long-term demand of some Click aficionados. Now, there is no point is talking about Jowo nibs either, as they are not only well known, but are acknowledged for their consistent quality and performance. However, the point that needs to be stressed here is that this “collaborative” insertion of the Jowo nib, underscores the fact that the pen is as much a Click with a Jowo nib as it is a Jowo nib that has selected a Click body to manifest itself. It is a fine case of co-branding, if one were to look at things from that point of view. And yes, being a transparent pen, with its innards visible to the world, Click is also making a statement – telling the world that it has nothing to hide. That it is open to be compared with offerings from anywhere in the world that are in the segments, the price points, in which it offers its pens.

Fact is, this pen which is now being offered in the Indian market to sweeten the festivities, is actually created by Click with the overseas markets – especially in the US and in Europe. This, we must accept with a dollop of pride is a kind of watershed moment for Indian pen manufacturing as this is perhaps the first time in the near past, when a major Indian manufacturer, a mass producer of fountain pens has created something primarily of the overseas markets. I am not considering the boutique pen makers who make one-off creations for export, or even for pen show exhibitions, but am talking about major manufacturers who are capable of addressing bulk orders on a regular basis – that too, not as OEM’s but as brands capable of holding on to their own, of curving out a niche for themselves.

Click, for the uninitiated has been in the business of fountain pens for more than five decades now, is a family business which is now run by Harsh Gagwani who represents the third generation in the business, and therefore exemplifies a body of knowledge in the domain of fountain pens that is hard to match. The Click brand is not only extremely well known, with a huge top of the mind recall, but is also hugely well loved by fountain pen users in India. In some segments of the local fountain pen market, they are by far the most dominating players with a kind of supremacy that cannot be matched. Little wonder, their tagline say “a million smiles and counting”.

It should also be mentioned in the same breath that Click has long been working as an Original Equipment manufacturer (OEM) for a number of global brands whose names cannot be mentioned here for obvious reasons. Suffice to say, as an OEM, Click is well versed with the extracting quality norms that these brands insist on, and as Click has built up its production facilities over time to address these needs, it is well placed to create fountain pens that are comparable to internally available branded products and market them in its own name. This festival offering from Click is a move in that direction, the right direction, if I may add.

The pen writes beautifully. Even straight out of the box and inked for the first time, this cartridge, converter, 3-in1 pen writes admirably with a wet, juicy, demeanor without even a hint of a skip in the upward strokes or scratchiness for that matter. And to cap it up, it is visually a stunner. What else can we fountain pen fanatics want? That too from our favourite Indian brand?