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Reading Summary

REFLECT

Make connections: The business of nostalgia.

After exploring Niche Market: Fountain Pen Hospital, consider the content and questions below. Then submit your response.

In the era of email, social media, and text messages, probably few people in your class have much experience with formal handwriting or calligraphy, especially with ink pens. However, most of us can identify with the nostalgia that appeals to so many of the Fountain Pen Hospital’s customers (nostalgia is the feeling of pleasure from remembering, or wistfulness for, a return to the past). As customer Doug Muller commented, “It makes me feel like I’m stepping into the ’30s, I guess, or the ’40s.” Nostalgia and craftsmanship have made the once-ordinary fountain pen a “luxury item.”

Think about other specialty items, attractions, or businesses that are made special because of nostalgia — or that are now “luxury items” but used to be ordinary objects. Your instructor may ask you to post your thoughts on a class discussion board or to discuss them with other students in class. Use these questions to get started:

What nostalgic aspects of the item, attraction, or business make people attracted to it? What kind of past does it remind people of and why?
In the interview, Terry Wiederlight comments that the fountain pen has “become a luxury item now. People want to go back to writing again.” The Wiederlight family once also sold office supplies but in the 1980s established themselves with a focus solely on fountain pens. Given this fact and the comments that Terry Wiederlight makes in the interview, what can you infer about the Wiederlight family? What are their values?

Question

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1. Reflect