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Industrial Designer's "Everlasting Pencil" Lands $500K on Kickstarter

This has defied expectations

By Rain Noe - August 18, 2022

in Crowdfunding

The AEON is an "everlasting pencil" created by Stilform, a Hamburg-based design studio founded by industrial designer Christoph Bohrer and entrepreneur Martin Wagner.

The bodies are offered in your choice of aluminum, magnesium, brass or titanium, and feature two veneer strips of walnut, ebony or maple.

The company says the veneer-inlaid chamfers prevent the pencil from rolling away.

The business end features a neodymium magnet that accepts the swappable tips; one "eternal" tip and a graphite tip.

"This long-lasting metal writing tip is truly magical - The natural and non-toxic Eternal alloys join together to create pencil-like marks," Stilform writes. "This tip hardly wears itself down over time!"

"For a more conventional pencil experience, just switch to the graphite tip. Its strokes are darker but easily erased too."

I wondered how you sharpen the graphite tip. The answer is in the FAQ of the AEON's Kickstarter campaign: "The graphite tip can be sharpened with a piece of sandpaper or an exclusively designed sharpener available in the Backerkit Survey after the campaign."

Additionally, "all Backers enjoy a lifetime 15% OFF on tips in our web shop," the company says. The price of these tips is not listed.

The AEON starts at no less than $50, and I'd not have thought it would have done as well on Kickstarter as it has. Stilform was seeking $9,148 to get it off the ground—and at press time had landed $514,654 in funding, with four days left to pledge.

My takeaway from this is that in these crazy times, demand for "forever" objects is high, and people are looking past the fact that this will eventually require a replacement graphite tip. Also, I'd have thought the need to sharpen the graphite tip using sandpaper and a special sharpener would have put people off, but perhaps they look forward to the ritual and kit required, the way some enjoy sharpening scissors and cooking knives.

In short, I'd not have guessed the demand would be this high. But thousands of backers putting up $500k has proved me wrong.

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. JC

2 years ago

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Meanwhile Japan is already selling their metalcil made by sunstar for 990yen (around 10USD)
https://www.sun-star-st.jp/campaign/metacil/index.html
There's nothing "kick-starting" about this pencil.

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- Antonio Carratù
  
  . JC
  
  2 years ago
  
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  or on Amazon, you could get two for 10USD (https://www.amazon.com/Erasable-Metallic-Aluminum-Drafting-Supplies/dp/B095JS9NHH/ref=sr_1_4?crid=3L7TIRHJPIJT6&keywords=metal+pencil&qid=1661154055&sprefix=metal+pencil%2Caps%2C136&sr=8-4)
  
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Chuck Mack

2 years ago

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I'm thinking these guys needed to pay for that Red Dot, a pricey award that keeps on costing.

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