Deal at the Blackstone Hotel
Copyright Ken Crutchfield 2024
In 1920 the Republicans had a problem as they entered their convention in Chicago to nominate a candidate for president. There was no clear favorite for the nomination and over a dozen candidates were in contention. At the convention, Leonard Wood, a doctor and war hero who rose to the rank of Major General led the voting for the four ballots on the first day. Leonard was second in command to former President Theodore Roosevelt when he served in the “Rough Riders” during the Spanish-American War. He garnered support from Roosevelt loyalists. The problem was that Wood never captured more than a third of the 984 delegates voting and wasn’t going to capture the majority needed. Later that evening, party big wigs including Henry Cabot Lodge, George Harvey, and party chairman Will Hays entered a hotel suite on the 9th floor of the Blackstone Hotel near the lake Michigan waterfront. For six hours into the evening they debated in a smoke filled room and developed a plan to bring the party together around the junior Ohio Senator Warren Harding. Harding was nominated the next day on the 10th ballot. United Press journalist Raymond Clapper used the term smoke-filled room to describe their meeting and this popularized the term as a colorful expression of how power brokers work behind the scenes to cut deals.
The Blackstone Hotel
The iconic Blackstone Hotel was built in 1910 by the Drake hotel family at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Balbo at the edge of Chicago’s theatre district. At 23 stories it was one of the tallest buildings in Chicago at the time. Its opulent French Beaux Arts exterior, marble columns in the lobby, and view of Lake Michigan in the ornate 4th floor grand ballroom demonstrated the superior design that provided a luxury experience for its high class guests. Over the years, the Blackstone was a place of arts and culture with legends like Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole performing there. But at its core, the hotel’s reputation was anchored in its ability to attract the powerful, the rich, and the famous of Chicago and the world. The President’s room on the 10th floor featured a private exit behind the fireplace for guests to discreetly escape down a stairwell. Theodore Roosevelt was the first of twelve presidents to stay at the hotel. Industry titans and celebrities alike chose the Blackstone. Even the notorious frequented the Blackstone. Al Capone had his hair cut at the hotel and was said to hold meetings in the windowless barbershop. Crime Boss Lucky Luciano hosted a crime convention there with the intent of establishing a board for his organization.
The Blackstone was a central gathering point for movers and shakers of all persuasions to meet, work, play, and get things done. It is in that backdrop that a national school supply business was formed out of seven companies in 1927. That company, Western Tablet, would be known as Westab and ultimately Mead Products.
The Creation of a Market Leader
On February 9th, 1927 the merger of seven companies into Western Tablet was announced. The seven companies were:
· Miami Tablet Company of West Carrollton, Ohio
· Western Tablet & Stationery Company of St. Joseph, Missouri
· Kalamazoo Stationery Company of Kalamazoo, Michigan
· Hopper Paper Company of Richmond, Virginia
· American Tablet Company of Green Bay, Wisconsin
· Smith Tablet Company of Holyoke, Massachusetts
· Northwestern Tablet of Minneapolis, Minnesota
Revenue of the combined businesses was nearly $10 Million in 1927 with about 40% contributed from the original Western Tablet & Stationery company. The St. Joseph business contributed its name and was the largest operation of its kind in the US with between 800 and 1000 employees. The Kalamazoo operation contributed about 25% of the business and the remainder was from the other operations. Newspapers reported the new company as the largest tablet company in the world.
The Architects of the Deal
There were three primary architects to the deal. William Albrecht was the owner of the Western Tablet & Stationery Company in St. Joseph and Wilford (WW) Sunderland was the owner of the Miami Tablet Company outside of Dayton. The third was Bertrand (Bert) Hopper, Senior of the Kalamazoo Stationery Company.
William Albrecht
William Albrecht founded Western Tablet and Stationery in Quincy, Illinois in 1906 with Henry F. Dayton. Mr. Dayton had extensive experience in the paper industry. (Henry had no affiliation with the city of Dayton.) The business expanded into St. Joseph and had its ups and downs. A volatile economy, a fire that destroyed the original Quincy location, flooding in St. Joseph and other travails tested the business. Around 1920, Albrecht took over as president. Albrecht was of German descent and may have been a first generation immigrant. Like other German people of his time, he may have downplayed where he was from given the wars in Europe. Albrecht was a family man and was active in the St. Joseph business community. Both of his family homes in St. Joseph are now art museums today. He had a strong work ethic and was dedicated to his work to the point that work was considered his primary hobby. When the companies merged, he was offered the presidency but declined so he could stay in St. Joseph.
Wilford (WW) Sunderland
WW Sunderland was born and lived most of his life in and around Dayton, Ohio. He began his career in the paper industry with Kinnard Manufacturing as treasurer in 1891. By 1903 his career was progressing and he worked for several other local paper industry businesses and held diverse roles including sales manager. In 1908 he became president of the Miami Paper company and eventually the owner of the Miami Tablet Company in West Carrollton. Sunderland was an active and avid golfer. He belonged to a local golf club, was active in his church and with the Dayton YMCA. Sunderland spent most of his years in Dayton, he traveled much during his business career. In retirement, he and his wife had a summer place in Lake Placid, New York, and wintered in Arizona and California.
Bertrand (Bert) Hopper
Bert was the more colorful character of the three and had a more public persona. He was born into a paper company family in the affluent New York City suburb of Ridgewood, New Jersey. His father’s Hopper Paper Company had offices on Fifth Avenue in New York. Bert was invested in numerous paper ventures throughout his career spanning from Brooklyn, NY to Washington state. He depended upon people to manage his affairs and was very much about relationships and loyalty. One might have considered him a godfather of the paper business.
Relationships were a critical part of his business success, but his relationships were messy at times. Bert moved with his wife Magretta from New Jersey to Benton Harbor, Michigan around 1896 where the Hopper Morgan paper plant had an operation. The couple began to travel in the area social circles. But Bert ended up in a relationship with a married woman named Alta Conger Schaefer who was employed at the plant. Her husband was also employed at the plant and proceeded to sue Mr. Hopper for $10,000 for breaking up his home. At the beginning of the 20th century, divorces tended to favor husbands over wives. Divorces also tended to be in the news providing salacious details and gossip material about wealthy socialites. Bert’s wife Magretta filed for and was granted a divorce for extreme cruelty in a very public divorce decree. Extreme cruelty sounds very harsh and could be truly harsh. But extreme cruelty was a legal term in Michigan that established one of the grounds for divorce. Violence, verbal abuse, and promiscuous behaviors fell into this category. But a wife refusing to cook or withholding sex also fell in this category.
Mr. Hopper was ordered to pay alimony to Magretta of $150/month for life and to take out insurance policies on himself and Magretta for their children. Magretta was granted absolute custody of their four children and moved back to Ridgewood, New Jersey in a home that Mr. Hopper was ordered to provide and maintain at his expense. Bert was granted limited visitation and his children were allowed to make decisions about where they lived when they turned fourteen. Bert married Alta a few months after his divorce was finalized in 1906. He and Alta had two children together and remained married until Bert’s death.
Bert’s business dealings were sprawling with operations and investments in multiple states at any given time. Like many of the day, some were successful, others had a limited lifespan, and others resulted in failure. Such was the boom and bust of the American economy at the time. In 1912, Hopper’s Western Blank Book venture in Benton Harbor failed. Mr. Hopper personally refunded the losses of friends and family in the area that had trusted him with their investment in the preferred stock of the business. In 1919, Hopper discovered an accounting irregularity in the Kalamazoo Paper Company’s books. Hopper told his brother, Irving Hopper, who was general manager. Irving fled the next day and was arrested in Alburquerque, New Mexico with $13,000 in cash and over $22,000 in negotiable securities. He was assumed to be headed across the border into Mexico. Two others were charged with the issue of accounting irregularities.
Hopper started two tablet ventures with William Albrecht’s co-founder, Mr. Dayton, prior to Western Tablet’s founding. One venture was started in 1904 in Indiana and the other in Brooklyn, New York in 1905.
Like Sunderland, Bert was also an avid golfer and a very good one at that. He had been the top golfer in the state of Michigan in the early 1920s. He helped found the Michigan Seniors Golf Association in 1923 and won back-to-back senior titles in the state. He participated in a delegation of golfers to London representing the United States. Bert had a vacation home in Wisconsin and another in Florida where he wintered. He was also a sportsman who enjoyed fishing. Around the time of the merger, he caught a 122 pound Tarpon in a national fishing tournament in Venice, Florida. Bert was enjoying life. Leading up to the merger, Hopper was 56 years old and was behaving more like a retiree enjoying his fortune and leisure.
The Merger
So how do three principals manage to merge seven companies together all at once? Like many industries, the paper business was full of close and somewhat incestuous relationships. There was a network of people that knew each other. Businesses were often family concerns and children, cousins, and in-laws were involved in some capacity. Nepotism was the norm and business partners needed to be like family too.
There was an industry group called the Tablet Manufacturers Association of the United States. In 1920 Albrecht, Sunderland, and Hopper were all in attendance at the annual meeting at the Engineers’ Club in Dayton, Ohio.
Albrecht, Sunderland, and Hopper had all known each other for perhaps two decades. Albrecht and Hopper had common ties through Henry Dayton. Albrecht and Sunderland had invested together in the American Tablet Company of Green Bay, Wisconsin and Bert also had a financial interest in that operation too. Albrecht had been a vice president in Sunderland’s Miami Paper Company. Hopper owned the Kalamazoo Stationery Company, and Bert also controlled the other three businesses involved in the merger – the Smith Tablet Company, Northwestern Tablet and the Hopper Paper Company of Richmond, Virginia.
All of these companies were considered paper converters. They were not cutting down trees or making paper or pulp out of timber. They were taking paper or pulp and converting it into a finished product. In this case, tablets of paper and boxed stationery. There were other kinds of paper converter businesses that made products like brown paper bags, cardboard boxes, or packaging.
The idea of a merger was advocated by Bert and was his brainchild. He proposed the merger as early as 1924 and again to bankers in Chicago and New York in 1925 and 1926. He suggested on several occasions his intent was to retire a few years after the deal was completed. The bankers involved included Chase Bank out of New York and Central Republic Bank & Trust Company out of Chicago. The deal started in earnest in the second half of 1926 with meetings in NY and Chicago. There were many moving parts. Bert owned a paper company in Taylorville, Illinois that took timber and turned it into pulp and paper. The Taylorville mill supplied a significant amount of pulp and paper to the Kalamazoo operation, but despite Bert’s desire, the Taylorville mill was not included in the scope of the merger.
The Taylorville mill was a real sticking point with serious issues. It had older equipment and was not as competitive as newer pulp and paper mills. Bert had personally loaned $200,000 to keep the business afloat in the mid-1920s. Shareholders had to pitch in too. He also used the Kalamazoo operation to subsidize Taylorville, co-mingling the financials of the two operations and providing credit for Taylorville. The financial issues were cleaned up by the time of the merger in 1927, but Taylorville was vulnerable unless there was a guaranteed stream of business. There was discussion of the Taylorville mill supplying pulp and paper to the new Western Tablet, but no formal long term agreement was finalized.
Taylorville also had a tablet line at one time and still manufactured ruled paper used in schools. Because of this, a non-compete agreement was drawn up for Bert. The agreement acknowledged the Taylorville operation and allowed Taylorville to continue to produce ruled paper, but Bert was not allowed to compete directly or indirectly in the tablet business for a period of ten years. Another facility in Combined Locks, Wisconsin was considered as part of the original deal, but was taken off the table. Bert was to have control of the company if Combined Locks was in scope. Hopper tried to back out of the non-compete agreement when Combined Locks was taken off the table. He approached the bankers in the hopes they would persuade Albrecht and Sunderland, but to no avail. The deal was consummated in Chicago at the Blackstone and the new company was introduced to the world on February 9th, 1927. With the strokes of a few pens, a market leader emerged in what was to become the school supplies industry.
Sunderland became the president and the headquarters were to be in Dayton. Albrecht became a vice president, a member of the Board, and continued to manage the St. Joseph operation. Bert became the head of sales with a principal role in selling chain stores like Kresge and Woolworths as he had relationships through the Kalamazoo operation.
Two years later on July 1st, 1929, the J. C. Blair company of Huntingdon, Pennsylvania was acquired by Western Tablet, making the business even more powerful. The acquisition of Blair expanded operations and doubled capacity.
Trouble Brewing
The acquisition of Blair made Western Tablet stronger, but in just a few short months the stock market would crash ushering in the Great Depression. Financial pressures would mount and 1930 would be a year where revenues would retreat slightly. The operations in West Carrollton were consolidated into Kalamazoo and the Holyoke operations were consolidated into the Blair operation in Pennsylvania. Equipment was moved as part of the consolidation to preserve capacity and create efficiencies. (The Green Bay and Minneapolis operations had already been consolidated to St. Joseph and Kalamazoo in 1928.)
The depression also created price pressures in the market. Suppliers still needed to cover overhead and overall customer demand across the economy was naturally lower given unemployment and lower economic activity. Taylorville had been supplying pulp and paper to Kalamazoo and was also supplying some pulp and paper to other operations. But Bert now wanted Western Tablet to agree to guarantee purchases of a significant part of the output of the mill at prices he was dictating. It was not a negotiation. It was a demand and he made threats if his demands weren’t agreed upon. He also continued to push the option of an outright purchase of the Taylorville mill by Western Tablet.
In addition to trying to persuade Western Tablet to purchase Taylorville, he also lobbied investors and the bankers. He made threats to hurt Western Tablet and investors. He also suggested that he’d direct chain stores to do business elsewhere.
Bert’s threats increased and by 1930 they came to a head. Bert resigned from his sales position in March of 1930 and sold his common stock indicating his intention to retire. Bert’s son, Robert Hopper, ran the Richmond operation and was to replace his father managing chain store sales as he had familiarity and knew some of the key contacts.
The economy was forcing some serious decisions for businesses including Western Tablet. The board decided to ramp down purchases of pulp and paper from Taylorville given Bert’s demands. Kalamazoo lost a couple of key employees including Al Westrick who was leading the day-to-day operations. Despite the challenges Western Tablet was operating leaner and more efficiently. While net income and earnings were down for 1930, they were still relatively strong and profitable in the backdrop of the deepening depression. But as 1930 progressed, orders from chain stores were in decline. In total a $1 Million shortfall emerged.
Chain stores were a big part of Bert’s Kalamazoo operation and represented much of the $2.4 Million of business at the time of the merger. Woolworths, Kresge, Kress, United Drug, and others had arrangements with Kalamazoo so that local stores could order product for their shelves. Chain stores were a growing market segment and the valuation of the Kalamazoo operation in the merger was based largely on the customer base rather than the efficiency of the operation. Prior to Bert’s resignation, Woolworths complained about quality of product. Bert had convinced the buyer at Woolworths to demand that paper for Woolworths Fifth Avenue stationery line be produced on Taylorville paper. Western Tablet had demonstrated to the satisfaction of the buyer at Woolworths that they could produce quality product with other paper. The seeds of doubt had been sown and business was moving elsewhere. But where?
A new competitor called the Sangamon company was on the horizon and Sangamon was the benefactor of the lost chain store sales. It just so happened that Sangamon was operating out of Taylorville and with Al Westrick as president. Bert was setting up shop to make good on his threats and was beginning to redirect the chain store business to Sangamon.
Bert knew Western Tablet would be vulnerable and felt he had leverage. He had a calculated plan with trusted people in key positions across Western Tablet and elsewhere. Bert’s son, Mortimer Hopper was working in St. Joseph for William Albrecht. His son Robert was heading the Richmond operation, and he had his son Bertrand Jr from his second marriage working in Taylorville. Bert did not believe that Western Tablet could afford an expensive law suit on top of its other challenges. With chain store sales disappearing and the effects of the broader economy, Bert suggested in correspondence that Western Tablet might not be able to cover its common stock dividend. If that happened, his preferred shares would become votable. Perhaps he was looking to force the purchase of his Taylorville mill or oust management through his preferred shares and gain control of the operation.
Mis-steps
Right after his resignation in March of 1930, there was another meeting in the Blackstone hotel. Sunderland and Bert were to map out plans to transition his responsibilities with chain stores. Bert’s son Robert came to the meeting, but stopped in Dayton on the way from Richmond. He and Sunderland discussed the Woolworths account and plans for Robert to take over the chain store relationships. When Bert saw his son with Sunderland in the lobby of the Blackstone, it through a wrench in his plans. He asked Sunderland if he could meet with his son privately and the two went upstairs to Bert’s hotel room.
Robert was six years old when his parents divorced and he moved from Michigan back to New Jersey with his mother. Robert started high school in New Jersey but decided to move to Kalamazoo to be close to his father. He finished high school in Kalamazoo and was a football star there. He went to the University of Pennsylvania and was a team captain in 1920 on their Ivy League football team under first year coach and legend, John Heisman. And then he joined his father’s business in Richmond, Virginia.
During their conversation in Bert’s hotel room, he gave his son an ultimatum, "You will have to make your choice between the Western Tablet and myself." Robert said, “…I don't want to be put in a position like that because I don't think we (Western Tablet) should break up."
Bert said the decision “…rests entirely on you and you will have to make your choice". Bert also instructed his son, "You will have to make it this morning before we go downstairs and meet.”
A test of loyalty like that can’t be easy.
Robert chose Western Tablet.
Bert told his son, “I will fight you as though you were not my son." and "I will ask no quarter and I will give no quarter."
Bert, had gifted $100,000 of Western Tablet preferred stock to Robert shortly after the merger but with strings attached. Bert continued to physically possess the shares and had asked his son to sign the shares just in case they were ever needed for voting purposes. Robert had been receiving dividends on the stock, but after being disowned, he did not receive another dividend check. Robert ultimately sued his own father claiming $125,000 in damages.
Bert also mis-calculated the resolve of the bankers and shareholders. Western Tablet and the other businesses were no longer private, family owned business. Western Tablet was a publicly traded business that submitted annual reports and had greater fiduciary obligations. Carroll Gray was the principal investment banker at Chicago Republic Bank & Trust. When Bert threatened to compete and hurt Western Tablet, and by inference its shareholders, Gray stated if he tried to hurt the business or compete, the bankers and shareholders “would go to any ends to stop him”. Bankers don’t take lightly to threats that impact their pocketbook or their reputation with clients who trust their advice.
Bert was used to getting his way. But he did not count on bankers and shareholders strongly endorsing a law suit. In April of 1931, Western Tablet sued Bert for violation of his non-compete and damages in Federal District court in Michigan. The law suit was led by Sunderland. Several bankers and Bert’s son Robert testified against Hopper. The court found in favor of Western Tablet and Bert was blocked from competing. Hopper appealed and in June 1933 the appellate court affirmed and clarified the ruling stating that Sangamon could continue its operation and compete with Western Tablet, but Bert himself was bound by the terms of the non-compete. He ultimately admitted to being "exceedingly careful to avoid placing" himself where he "could be attacked if the agreement were legal.” He genuinely believed that Western Tablet could not "afford the luxury of a law suit."
At the time of the appellate court ruling, Bert had been experiencing health issues. Bert and Robert settled their matter out of court a few months later in September of 1933. He and Alta then left for their Florida home due to his ill health. Bertrand Hopper passed away in Florida in March of 1934.
Foundation for the Future
From its founding in 1927 until its acquisition by the Mead corporation in 1965, Western Tablet was profitable and paid dividends every year. Despite the economic conditions of the Great Depression and a conflict with one of its founders, the company rose above its challenges and found itself on sound footing.
School enrollment and graduation rates grew significantly through the Great Depression. The demand for school supplies increased dramatically throughout the 1930s and didn’t peak until after GenX began to graduate in the 1980s.
The growth in demand enabled Western Tablet (or Westab as it was later known) to expand well beyond paper tablets and stationery. By the 1950’s the business had over 5,000 SKUs in it’s product line. As the dust was settling on the Hopper law suit, a new and innovative notebook was awaiting its introduction to the market.
In 1933, the Spiral® notebook was introduced.
This American Life
Last month, This American Life featured an episode on fathers and their legacy. Ira Glass, the show’s host introduces the show with recollections of his father and how his father taught him to shave. He then introduces the first story which is about Jon Wyant and his involvement in the development of the Trapper Keeper. I knew that Jon was involved in the development. And my father had mentioned him when he was originally interviewed by Mental Floss back in 2013 about the development and launch of the Trapper Keeper. For anyone stumbling upon this site, here is the link to the This American Life podcast:
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/815/how-i-learned-to-shave/act-one-2
And here is a link to the current version of the original Mental Floss article:
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/52726/history-trapper-keeper
Please feel free to share your honest reactions and questions to the podcast and the Mental Floss article.
I am writing a book on the subject of the innovation that led up to the Trapper Keeper. The story starts decades earlier and there will be an occasional blog post highlight excerpts. Please check in our join the mailing list on the contact page.
If you have a particular memory of the Trapper Keeper, please share it! And if you worked at Westab or Mead Products and have information to add to the story, please please reach out!
Taking on Crayola?
Plasti-color crayons from Westab made in the early 1970s.
Note: This is an excerpt from a manuscript under development about innovation and the development of the Trapper Keeper. (Copyright: Ken Crutchfield 2023)
For a kid growing up in the United States, Crayola® was likely a part of childhood. Crayola and crayons are as synonymous as Kleenex® and tissues. Who doesn’t remember drawing a picture with crayons? Sure, there are other crayons on the market, but Crayola has been the market leader for as long as one can remember. Two cousins, Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith started manufacturing crayons in 1903. Back then a box of crayons from Binney & Smith cost 5 cents and contained 8 crayons. By the 1960s, Crayola was an acquisition target for Westab, and for Mead after Mead acquired Westab. Mead was never able to convince the privately held Binney & Smith to sell.
So what did they do? They tried to build a better crayon. In 1968, Mead received a US patent for an erasable and sharpen-able crayon made out of polyethylene. The technology was originally developed in France and the inventor, Jean Ferdinand Gros, had applied for a patent in France in 1964. He assigned the rights to the US patent over to Mead as part of a US filing in 1965.
The thought process was simple. If Mead couldn’t acquire Crayola, then perhaps they could build a better product and leverage their national reach to pressure Binney & Smith to sell. Or perhaps beat them head to head in the market. Westab’s Sargent Arts division had a series of products in the market. They included construction paper, watercolor paints, art supplies, and a wax crayon competitor to Crayola. The Plasti-color crayon as it was named, was an attempt at extending Westab’s Sargent Arts product line to create a better crayon.
As the name suggests, Plasti-color crayons were not made out of wax. They were made out of plastic and were much harder than a traditional crayon. The crayons had several benefits that differentiated them from wax crayons. First, wax crayons melt when exposed to heat. How many mothers experienced the frustration of opening the dryer to find all the clothing in the dryer covered with melted crayon? How many parents of small kids have tried to remove melted crayons from automobile upholstery? For those that have experienced this first hand, you scrape as much of the crayon as possible off the upholstery. Icing the area helps. And then a solvent must be applied with a towel and matted to undo most of the damage. Plasti-color crayons solved that problem as they wouldn’t melt under the same conditions. Plasti-color crayons were harder and would last “twice as long” as traditional crayons according to Crutch (my father). For parents, there would certainly be appeal.
For kids, there were a couple of advantages. First, you could sharpen the pencil in a pencil sharpener which was kind of cool. That was interesting all by itself. And brand new wax crayons start sharp, but they quickly dull into a fat point that makes it hard to color with precision. Maybe that doesn’t matter for kids just trying to color between the lines of a coloring book. But the more detailed, artistic kid may notice. Another finer point was that crayons don’t “mix” well. Plasti-color crayons blended better than wax crayons. So an aspiring artist use a couple of crayons could create the perfect color.
So with what appeared to be a better product, Westab began to test market Plasti-color crayons in Arkansas in 1969. The results were strong with Plasti-color gaining a 24% market share according to Crutch. The results were strong enough to extend the test market locally in Dayton, Ohio in 1971. Eventually, the decision was made to take the product national. Sales reps were equipped with a pitch to get the product into retail stores around the country. Part of the pitch was coverage from national advertising. A “space age” commercial was developed for the national roll out. Sales were strong. According to Bill White, the former president of Mead Products, the decision was made to double or triple the manufacturing capacity in their Hazelton, Pennsylvania plant for the following year. (Hazelton was less than 80 miles from the Binney & Smith headquarters in Easton, Pennsylvania.)
Initial sales were strong, but something happened. The re-order sales weren’t there. Mr. White speculated that because the crayons lasted longer, perhaps they were too good and lasted more than one school year. There may have been more simple answers though. A student who found themselves as the only kid in class with Plasti-color crayons may have felt left out because their crayons weren’t Crayola. Even kindergartners want to fit-in and belong. Being one of the only kids in class with “different” crayons might be a turn off.
And teachers who had specific lesson plans may have struggled with the surprise of “plastic crayons” that didn’t match their expectations. One salesperson for Westab at the time recalls salespeople were asked to visit schools to help with awareness.
There may have been other issues. Imagine the maintenance person at the school opening up the pencil sharpener in a class room and there were plastic shavings. While it may not have damaged a pencil sharpener, pencil sharpeners were designed to sharpen wooden pencils with lead, not plastic crayons.
Plasti-color crayons may have been a better product. But it takes more than a “better product” to displace a market leader like Crayola crayons. Some might think of this as a very bold idea and other might think of it as a fool’s errand. Westab did test the idea and had good results for a time. As a tactic supporting a broader strategy of getting Binney & Smith to consider acquisition talks, perhaps the Plasti-color initiative served its purpose and outperformed expectations. But Mead never acquired Binney & Smith. In 1984, Hallmark, the greeting card company, announced the acquisition of Binney & Smith and the Crayola business.
The market failure of a better crayon likely provided important learnings that contributed to the eventual successful launch of the Trapper Keeper. A product needs to meet the needs of all stakeholders including teachers and school administrators. And a consumer product, even if it has better features, also needs to have commercial appeal. Appealing to emotional needs and “cool” factor matter. The Trapper Keeper also didn’t need to displace the “Crayola of the binder market”. To the extent that the Trapper Keeper displaced products, it was competing against the broad array in the Mead Products (Westab) product line.