The “Great Pen Wars Have begun!”.  As of todays date we are in at least 400 of the 500 Wal-Mart stores. The goal is to sell thru 85% of the inventory in about 4 weeks. In some regions it is doing very well in others the jury is still out. We are glad to report that Mt. View, CA sold out in less then 10 days (hard to use as a benchmark though because the Bay Area is Penagain country.)  We have been pushing as hard as possible to bring awareness that our little Penagain is in the midst of the biggest test of its life-cycle. Its make or break time.

Since the story broke in the Wall Street Journal last week we have had some interesting inquiries. The best of all probably was the guy that called asking if we were in need of any “fractional private jet ownership”. Hmmm..did he not read the part about “One month to make it”. We told him we are still in the trenches trying to simply make it to the next level of roll-out. We had fun for about 30 seconds day-dreaming of a plush private jet with PENAGAIN penned on the side.

The amount of sales calls we got from money managers, executive recruiters, copier salesman, commercial real estate agents, packaging salesman, shipping companies and lastly nice little old ladies that want to know if we sell blue or red ink was staggering. We answered them all as kindly as we could. Note to self..don’t forward your office phone to your cell phone when a big story might break. I did also take some interesting calls from other inventors trying to get their ideas off the ground.  Gotta love the passion these inventors have, which by the way I have learned is probably the single most important ingredient an inventor can have.

The Pictures above show a “side-kick” display of Penagain’s the day it was put up then one in a different store 10 days later.

We are supposed to be in the stationery aisle but that is not always the case. The display might be a few aisles down or in a completely random spot. Frankly at this stage we are glad when we are simply put up and in the stream of store traffic. Our next big worry is the launch into all OfficeDepot stores timed for tomorrow June 13th. We hope we did everything right and did not mix up any labels, barcodes or make any major rookie moves that could seriously cause us pain. Cross your fingers. We will report more as it comes at us.