Corporations: Blacker Ink at Scripto Inc.

In most companies, massive reorganization, a complete change of direction and a tough new boss at the top almost invariably mean that a lot of people lose their jobs. In the past year, At lanta’s Scripto Inc., the world’s third largest maker of writing instruments (1964 sales: $25 million), has under gone all three changes — without the firing of a single key executive. The man who did the trick is Scripto’s new president, Carl N. Singer, 48, a ruddy-faced Bostonian who has revitalized once ailing Scripto since he went South in 1964. Last week Scripto reported the results of Singer’s reforms: in 1965’s first nine months, sales rose 13%, profits 26%.

Repealing the Toll. Singer arrived at Scripto during a crisis year in which profits plummeted 49%. Sluggish capi tal spending, vacillating management and a reluctance to diversify were taking a heavy toll. Singer, who tried his hand briefly as a guard for a profession al basketball team after dropping out of William and Mary in 1936, had just completed four years as president of Chicago’s mattress-making Sealy Inc., where he boosted annual sales from $56 million to $81 million. As he saw it, Scripto’s problem was divided into two parts. First he concentrated on management, reshaped divisions, reshuffled executives, created several new high-level posts and took over personal responsibility for the company’s marketing programs. Next, he turned his attention to the company’s products.

Singer decided that the ballpoint pen had become so common that Scripto’s $1.98 model was overpriced, abolished it in favor of a wider-selling $1 pen.

To get in on the fast-growing market for fiber-tipped pens, now dominated by Japanese imports, Scripto has just introduced a Dacron-tipped version called Scriptip, which it hopes will out strip its competitors by providing a greater ink supply and a finer, longer-lasting nib at a lower price (39¢ v. 49¢ for most others).

New & Old. To bolster the company’s position in the cigarette-lighter market, Singer brought out a new butane lighter as a companion to Scripto’s popular see-through Vu-Lighter. He is considering dozens of other new products, among them a novel wide-view camera.

At the same time Scripto, one of the few manufacturers of writing instruments that make both their own ink and all the component parts for their pens, is profiting from the unexpected sales resurgence of an old company standby, the mechanical pencil.

Diversification is now a top item on Singer’s agenda. Earlier this year, Scripto acquired Modern Carpet Industries Inc., a Georgia-based rug manufacturer, thus expanding into a field that Carl Singer knows well: the booming $15 billion-a-year home-furnishings industry. Singer intends, after building up capital for about a year, to look around actively for other fields far beyond both writing instruments and cigarette lighters.