Visited the Cross Pens HQ / Company Store

I grew up just down the street from the AT Cross pen factory, which is located in Lincoln, Rhode Island.  Growing up, the influence of the factory was always felt, as they were a pretty large employer for such a small state.  I can remember in grammar school, there were classmates parents who worked there, and they kept their kids stocked with slightly irregular outcast pens that they would give to other kids - it always seemed like a nice Cross pen was always nearby.  They really were part of the fabric of living in Northern Rhode Island, a common nice gift, and a true local favorite.  The factory itself was located on a pretty busy thoroughfare in Lincoln, and I have probably driven past it many hundreds of times in my lifetime.

Wikipedia page for A.T. Cross Co.

Official History

My father, who's office was located just up the street from them, had a nice gold Cross pen set when I was growing up and I remember at various times he would receive them as gifts, and I distinctly remember black and silver colored "traditional" Cross pens being in the house, which were always ballpoints and pencils with a very thin body and the classic Cross pen look of the unique rounded black top and thin clip...like these:

Over the past few years, AT Cross, like many other US manufacturers, moved their manufacturing overseas, first to Ireland, then to China.  This obviously vastly minimized the operations at the Lincoln headquarters, and this becomes very obvious when you visit the company store, which has huge parking lots all around the building which are empty.  Interestingly, just last month, AT Cross was acquired by Clarion Capital Partners, and I guess only time will tell what that means for the company.

That said, I still feel an affinity for the brand and while my first Cross pens were long ago lost from when I was a kid, when I received this Cross pen after entering into a corporate partnership with IBM around 10 years ago, I was pleased that it still exhibited that familiar solid quality and wrote really well, and I used it constantly.


Recently, I have started getting into fountain pens and have purchased a few inexpensive ones, and naturally, I became curious about Cross' fountain pens.  They seem to be targeted at the mid-to-"low part of the high end" scale, and they have some $300-$400 models along with more moderately priced ones as well.  I was looking at a FP catalog lately, and this quartz blue Townsend with two-toned gold nib really caught my eye:

A colleague of mine at work mentioned that Cross Pens still had a company store at its old headquarters and that they had some good deals on pens occasionally, ink (they re-brand Pelikan ink) and all kinds of other stuff.  The company store has a facebook page where it appears they do a pretty good job of advertising when they have sales or influxes of "new" stock.   I put that into my mental to-do list for when I found myself in the area with a little time to kill.  Well, that time came last week.















The store itself was surprisingly large, well-lit and well laid out.  As you enter, on the left hand side was a shelf-lined wall filled with all kinds of pens, pen sets, notebooks, and other miscellaneous goodies.  No fountain pens on that wall that I could see, but I checked out some of the ballpoints, rollerballs and sets and there were what appeared to be pretty good deals on nice pens, and also some interesting bins filled with oddball stuff like corporate-branded pens that must have been either left over from a production run or perhaps slightly irregular.  I got the sense that this was where they had mostly discontinued type items, as everything was marked down - there was a LOT of quantity, more than I expected.  Towards the back of the store was a series of free-standing shelves that had more notebooks, paper, folios and the like, along with a display of bags and other leather-type items.  There, I found a small folio imprinted with the Union Pacific railway logo and 150 year anniversary on it, and I grabbed one for my father, who is into trains...nice soft leather, and not bad at $5!  Then on the right hand side of the store were shelves of new stuff - it seemed to be priced rather like retail (generally) but there was a good selection of pens to try out, although none of the fountain pens were inked up, however the clerk did let me dip one that I asked about so that was cool.  It was nice to be able to heft the different pens and look at them closely - they had the full Cross line it appeared - most everything I have seen online was displayed.  No really smoking good deals here, though.

Moving on to the front of the room just to the right of the entrance was a wall of mechanical pencils which I looked at briefly, but I am not super interested in those.  In the middle of the floor were several "islands" which had all kinds of different pens displayed on their storage boxes.  This, I found, was where the tasty deals were at.

Bags of AT Cross-y goodness:

Two pens immediately caught my eye, a chrome "staccato" patterned Apogee, featuring a medium 18k gold nib, and a cool looking blue that is almost purple-y colored ATX - a bit more modern looking and kitted out with a fine point steel nib.  The Apogee in particular called out to me - I liked the pattern on it and the all-chrome finish.  One thing in particular I noticed about these pens was just how small the nibs seemed.

Apogee:

ATX:

They were priced right, at $65 and $15 respectively, so I grabbed 'em up.  I was able to dip the Apogee and try it out, and I was immediately struck by how smooth the 18k gold nib felt - but more on that later.

Apogee 18k gold medium nib:

The Apogee included a screw-in converter and two black ink cartridges in the case:

ATX with fine nib in steel:

First impressions are...well...mixed.  The ATX, right out of the box, after I installed another converter I bought at the store and inked up with Cross black, was a really nice writer, good solid fine point, and it put down a wet line.  It did, however, as do pretty much all the fine nibs I have ever used, exhibit some feedback/slight scratchiness, but generally it was a solid writer, and I liked the way it felt.  I did notice, however, that it has a bit of a "slow start" issue; after it sits for many minutes, the nib seemingly dries up and I needed to tap it on the page, and mess with it to get started again.  Strangely, it felt shorter in the hand than the Apogee (I use my pens unposted) which is odd as they are the same length.

I am not a huge fan of super heavy pens, and these two were a nice combination of having metal bodies, but not exhibiting excessive weight.  In fact the ATX came in just a hair under 1oz with installed converter and inked up, and the Apogee was right at 1.52oz, incidentally the same exact weight as my Rotring Initial.

The Apogee, upon my first try, was really really nice.  The first thought that came to me was "Oh, so this is why people like 18k gold nibs!" - it was so smooth and only required a super light touch to put down a nice line.  For some reason I couldn't get the converter as full as I could on the ATX (same screw-in converter) it just didn't seem to vacuum up the ink as well.  I messed around with the pen last night, writing with it, asked my wife to write with it, and all was right with the world.  Then this morning, when I was checking it out again, there was a strange thing that happened, as I was writing, the pen felt like it changed in mid-stroke and all of a sudden was putting down a much wetter line on the page - which seemed like a good thing, but it was just...odd.  It also seemed like the line was a bit thicker than it had been the previous evening.  I compared the writing samples that I was doing with the pen, and there is indeed a marked difference.  Hmmm.  

I took a few pages of notes while on a conference call today, using the Apogee - and I liked it, but after a couple of paragraphs it began to skip a bit, but then immediately start writing again.  Hmmm.  Going to spend some more time with this thing and see how it progresses.  

Full pen reviews for both of these to follow after spending some more time with them.

Try and ignore my crappy handwriting:

While I was there I picked up some ink, Cross ink is re-branded Pelikan, which has a decent reputation out there, and at $8 for each 2oz bottle, it seemed worth it to try out the black and blue.

I fell for the impulse buy next to the cash register of a two pen soft leather pen pouch - I figured at $3 it was worth it...!

All in all, it was a cool visit, and I know I will go back there again - will be interesting to see what it is like when they have a big sale or when new stuff comes in.  If nothing else, it is a cool place to get some unique gifts for people, and next time I might grab a couple of rollerballs or ballpoints to check out.  

Who am I kidding, I will probably just get more fountain pens...