Where is bic manufactured

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Please select the account to use below. Switch Account. Your Products. Your Details. And consider quitting smoking, or at least using a refillable lighter in the future.

The BiC company is based in France for crying out loud. The same lighter made in two different countries is going to last the same amount of time.

After obtaining the patent rights to a ball pen created by Hungarian inventor, Marcel BICH introduced his own ball pen in December Touting his product as a reliable pen at an affordable price, he called it " BIC " a shortened and easy to remember version of his own last name.

Full sized Bic lighters are supposed to burn for an hour, though not continuously. Mini Bic lighters contain less fuel and generally burn for around twenty minutes. However, if you light it and keep it lit, your lighter has around ten minutes before the top starts to deform from the heat. It is the best-selling ballpoint pen it the world.

United States produces 2 billion pens in a year. The Business Identifier Code BIC consists of 8 or 11 alphanumeric characters, comprising a Business party prefix previous institution code , country code , business party suffix and branch identifier.

In , Cricket was the first disposable lighter brand in the world. The birth of the maxi lighter was in The brand named Cricket in , Swedish Match acquired the brand name Cricket from Gillette, Cricket has since become the global lighter brand for Swedish Match lighter products.

It uniquely identifies the name and country, and sometimes the branch of the bank involved. Where is the Bic factory? At one time Waterman Pen was the world's leading maker of fountain pens. In the s, however, with the growing popularity of ballpoint pens, the company had begun to falter. When the true financial condition of the company became known, Bich was able to acquire the remaining 40 percent for nothing. The leading brand in the "over-a-dollar" pen market was made by the PaperMate pen company, purchased in by The Gillette Company.

Bich's U. He reportedly told his advisers, "Waterman is percent mine. You are going to do what you are told. In another effort to establish a market in the United States, Waterman-BIC distributed its pens for sale in grocery stores and small shops near schools where students congregated, rather than in the department stores that carried more expensive pens.

By the company was turning out nearly million pens annually, accounting for nearly 60 percent of the U. In Time reported, "Baron Bich has done for ballpoints what Henry Ford did for cars: he has produced a cheap but serviceable model.

Where his competitors were turning out junk, Bich made a reliable pen that could command a premium, but still cheap price. By the time his competitors figured out how to build an equally good pen for the price, Bich had a lock on the market. That name soon became outdated, however, as the company embarked on its first diversification.

In Gillette purchased the S. Dupont Company, a prestigious French manufacturer whose principal product was luxury cigarette lighters that sold for hundreds of dollars. During this time Dupont explored the possibilities of marketing a disposable lighter, developing an inexpensive disposable lighter called Cricket, which it introduced in the United States in Later that year Time reported that BIC was test marketing a disposable lighter that could provide 3, lights before wearing out.

BIC introduced this lighter in To compete with Gillette, which was solidly entrenched as the market leader, BIC again turned to creative television advertising. A series of commercials soon showed sensuous women urging cigarette smokers to "Flick my BIC," a phrase perceived as having sexual connotations, that soon became a part of the national lexicon. They can find sex in a garage mechanic talking about shock absorbers.

But let somebody say, 'Flick my BIC,'--this is beautifully obscene--everyone nods their heads and lets that go, because BIC also slashed the wholesale price of its lighters so they sold at retail for less than one dollar. This action set off a fierce price war with Gillette. It pulled Cricket from the market and later sold the brand to Swedish Match Corporation, which licensed the lighter for distribution in the United States. At the time BIC controlled about 65 percent of the market for disposable lighters.

During the time that BIC and Gillette were battling over disposable lighters, the companies were also going head-to-head for a new segment of Gillette's traditional business, disposable shavers. King C. Gillette had invented the safety razor in , and the company he founded dominated the market for the next 70 years.

Gillette seriously underestimated the demand for disposable razors, however. Furthermore, it was not eager to see customers switch from its reusable razor systems to its disposables, since Good News! Therefore, Gillette spent very little on advertising. BIC, however, advertised heavily, again relying on catchy television commercials. In one series of commercials, people were blindfolded and shaved by professional barbers, using either the BIC Shaver or Gillette's nondisposable Trac II razor.

According to the ads, 58 percent of the participants claimed that there was no difference between the BIC shave and the Gillette shave. Gillette leaders were incensed by the ads and asked the three major television networks not to run the commercials unless BIC could document its claims. By the end of Gillette and BIC each controlled about 50 percent of the market for disposables, which had grown to represent 20 percent of the total market for wet-shave razors.

Disposables were especially popular among teenagers, and women appreciated the BIC Lady Shaver, the first razor specially designed and marketed with them in mind.