Dear Berol,
You make the single best flipchart marker in the world, and I should
know, I use it all the time. The Berol Colour Marker in Black beats
every other pen I have ever used. It is water-based so is perfect to use
in schools (with pupils who will get it all over them and be able to
wash it off, unlike spirit-based markers) and it doesn't soak through
the flipchart pages (again unlike spirit-based markers).
But I seem to be unable to buy them from you. Why?
Let me explain who I am. My name is Kev F Sutherland - hi - I write and
draw for comics such as The Beano, Marvel comics and Doctor Who
Adventures (see my work at
comicfestival.co.uk) and, most
relevantly, I go around schools teaching my respected and renowned Comic
Art Masterclasses. (See me
in action here, including a clip of me
using Berol Colour Marker Black pens on BBC 1's The One Show with Gyles
Brandreth).
Your pens are an invaluable part of my class, and my constant quest to
improve the visual and literacy skills of school pupils in England,
Ireland, Scotland and Wales (and even Abu Dhabi would you believe)
through my Comic Art Masterclasses. Their water-based black ink and
their chisel tip makes them the most impressive and expressive tool one
can use on a flipchart. You can see above some of the many flipchart
pages I have left behind at schools, all produced using your pens.
But now I am told I can no longer buy these pens in boxes of 12, despite
the fact that YOU STILL MAKE THEM! Yes, you may not realise this, but
your factories make these pens and then refuse to sell them. The only
way I can buy a Black Berol Marker is buy also buying a box containing
11 other colours that I don't need. This is crazy. If I want to buy an
HB pencil, I'm not also obliged to buy every other thickness. If I want
to buy a printer cartridge for my machine, I'm not also obliged to buy
cartridges for 11 other machines that I can't actually use. If I want to
buy a tin of beans, nobody forces me to buy 11 other assorted tinned
vegetables for whatever bizarre reason they might think that a good
idea. But if I want to buy a Berol Colour Marker in Black, I also have
to buy a blue, which might, I concede, be useful; a red, which I'm sure I
could find some use for if pushed; then a pale blue which no-one can
see from across the room and trust me I've tried, then a yellow - a
bloody yellow! Who the hell wants a yellow??? Ditto orange and all the
other joke colours you've thrown in.
I want a black, and as it happens I want quite a lot of them. So where
can I get them? You make them. They're sitting in your warehouse. So
just after they roll off the conveyor belt but just before someone
bundles them into the box with all the other unnecessary colours I don't
need, is there any conceivable way someone could pack some into boxes
of 12 and sell them, preferably to me?
Surely I can't be the only person to make this request. I hope it
reaches you safely and please help me give you money in exchange for the
excellent things you manufacture if you possibly can.
Yours, having to rely on Staples pens (and surely you don't want THAT???)
Kev F Sutherland
COMIC ART MASTERCLASSES
