Even though parker had experienced many problems before peterson arrived,the company was still very proud of its tradition as a leading producer of "quality writing instruments."
Of course, this pride was sometime translated into overblown statements such as,
"Parker is the world's No.1 pen company."
This indeed was the party line at Parker even though it was paid little more than lip service .
When Manville Smith arrived in1982, he commissioned a study to see just how important Parker was.
His findings shocked him: Parker had only a 6 percent share of the global pen market and it didn't even attempt to participate in a segment that was responsible for 65 percent of all sales of pen in the world - that is, pens that sold for less than $3.
The new management team wanted to make Parker more than just a fictitious number-one company .
In order to recapture market share, Parker would have to participate in the lower end of the market-the same area that George Parker himself had so hastily abandoned in the late 1960s.
A new $15 million state-of-the-art plant would be built whose main function would be to manufacture the Vector, a roller-ball pen selling for $2.98.
The Vector was Manville Smith's pet project.
Using a new automated line at Parker's new plant, Smith calculated that the Vector could be produced for 27 cents per unit and therefore generate huge profits for the company.
After the Vector, Smith planned to plunge even deeper into the low -price market with the Itala,an even cheaper model that would be Parker's first dusposable pen.