Hello, Goodbye: The Final Day of the Pear Tree Pen Company

The message I’ve been putting off writing can wait no longer. Tonight at midnight, The Pear Tree Pen Company as we know it will no longer exist. I apologize in advance for waxing nostalgic. I had promised myself I wouldn’t go down that road, and that I would remain upbeat. Yet, today I have an unavoidable sense of melancholy, so I hope you will permit me this one final indulgence. These past 6 years have been a wonderful experience – often exhilarating, sometimes frustrating, yet always rewarding. Many of you are not just my customers – I’m proud that I’ve gotten to know a good deal of you well enough that I consider you friends. Whether we’ve spoken on the telephone, exchanged emails or even shared a drink somewhere along the way, it has been a privilege to get to know you. I think it was this sense of community and friendship that set the Pear Tree Pen Company apart from many of the other, often impersonal, online retailers out there. We always striven to deliver personal service, whether you were a Michigan or Iowa neighbor, or from a strange, far-off and distant land (like New Jersey). We may not have always met our very high standards, but I think we hit the mark far more often than we missed it. And I have plenty of hand-written cards, letters and personal drawings from thoughtful customers across the globe that bear witness to the relationships we tried to foster. I will treasure those always. Anyway, as I said, today is the last day the Pear Tree Pen Company will be open for business on the Internet (for pen sales, at least – I still have a couple of watches I’d like to sell). I wanted to remind everyone of clearance sale. I’ve slashed prices on just about everything and removed the “buy 3” restriction. So today’s deal is take 15% off of the lowest marked price on anything in the “Special Deals” section of the website. Yesterday, we found a whole bunch of Pilot Iroshizuku ink, and we posted that on the site, but I don’t expect it last very long. There are a lots of other deals to be had, too: we’ve got R & K ink for under $10 a bottle, Waterman bottled ink for only $7.95, Rhodia pads for under $2 and even have some Sailor pens for less than a buck! And that's before the automatic coupon kicks in!
Of course, there’s more. Visit the Special Deals page of our site to check it out. But you have to be fast – the stuff is going quickly and the sale ends tonight at Midnight central time. Once again, thanks you to everyone who has written, phoned, posted on Facebook, Twitter, Fountain Pen Network, PenTrace, or any of the several pen fora I have visited over the years. Your words of encouragement have been universally supportive of the decision I’ve made and I am very grateful to you for that. I may no longer be in business, but I will be a member of this community forever.

Kindest regards,

James Partridge