ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Tuesday, April 30, 1996                TAG: 9604300058
SECTION: BUSINESS                 PAGE: B-6  EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MEGAN SCHNABEL STAFF WRITER

HOBBYIST'S PEN COMPANY TURNING OUT WRITEFUL PROFIT

THE COMPANY REALLY didn't need exposure on a cable television sales program, Harlan Thomas said. The family business gets about all the orders it needs already. He can't even stockpile enough wares to last through the Olde Salem Days festival.

Sometimes, national exposure on a cable television station just isn't what a small business needs.

Especially - as the people at Roanoke County's H & R Enterprises could tell you - when it's a family business, its headquarters is in a garage, and it manufactures products by hand.

H & R makes pens and pencils out of scrap countertop materials. It didn't make the cut when cable television retailer QVC auditioned local products for its made-in-Virginia programs last week. But that's just fine with father-daughter team Harlan Thomas and Rella Janney, who say such advertising might have done them more harm than good.

"I'm kind of glad they didn't pick us," Janney said. The cable retailer required vendors to have $15,000 worth of inventory ready to sell, a big investment for a company that Thomas still considers a hobby. He works full time as a project manager at Thor Inc., a Roanoke general contractor and engineering firm, and isn't quite ready to turn his after-hours craft into real work.

Thomas - with his son, Greg Thomas, his daughter and his son-in-law, Randy Janney - makes the pens, in styles comparable to the $50 and $60 writing instruments sold in jewelry stores. He forms the barrels from scraps of solid-surface countertop materials that he gets free from manufacturers including giants DuPont Co. and International Paper Co. It's usually cheaper for these companies to send H & R their leftovers than to pay hefty landfill disposal fees.

The pens and pencils all are made and packed by hand in Thomas' garage. On a machinist's lathe, he and his crew turn rectangular blocks of material into smooth tubes, then fit the pieces with pen and pencil mechanisms they buy in bulk. Even Thomas' grandkids help out; they polish the pens and pack them in boxes.

The only materials H & R usually has to pay for are the mechanisms, pocket clips and boxes. Thomas figures it costs him $5 to make a pen and pencil set, which he sells for less than $20.

The company gets just about all the business it can handle through word-of-mouth recommendations. Thomas has even quit selling the pens at the annual Olde Salem Days because he can't stockpile enough wares to last through the festival.

Despite that, Thomas' biggest customers are the multibillion-dollar companies that provide his raw materials. DuPont and International Paper give the pens and pencils as promotional gifts; the waste-product pens are especially popular in today's recycle-conscious environment, Rella Janney said.

And that's another reason Thomas was just as glad not to appear on QVC. The company might have been stuck with unsold leftovers - a potential liability for a business that relies primarily on custom orders.

"You can't make anything ahead," Thomas said. If DuPont orders 200 pens made from its gray Corian, it doesn't want the 200 pens made out of International Paper's comparable gray Nevamar that H & R already has in stock.

Last year, H & R sold $30,000 worth of pens. Not bad for a hobby that Thomas started six years ago, when he wanted to make his wife a pen for Christmas.

"It's gone beyond hobby," Thomas acknowledged. "I suspect I've made between five and 10 thousand pens. I see pens in my sleep."

LENGTH: Medium:   77 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  WAYNE DEEL/Staff. 1. Harlan Thomas measures a pen barrel
          made out of solid countertop material such as the red piece on the 
          counter. 2. In the photo below, he polishes one of his pens. Thomas'
          company sold $30,000 worth of pens last year. Not bad for a hobby he
          started six years ago, when he wanted to make his wife a pen for 
          Christmas. color. 3. Rella Janney inspects and boxes pen and pencil 
          sets for shipment from H & R Enterprises.