Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
Even as a kid, Barry Rubin liked to use unusual writing instruments. “When everyone was using a No. 2 pencil I was using a fountain pen,” he says. “I’ve always thought there was a romance to pens.”
After 28 years as a certified public accountant, about seven years running a variety of businesses, and a few years starting and selling Ardea Beverage Co. in Hopkins, Rubin has opened a pen store.
“I’m selling pens. Isn’t that surprising?” he says. Called Ink, it’s on the 45th floor of the IDS tower in downtown Minneapolis, open by appointment.
The store has two sections. One features collectible pens, which he describes as “modern-day limited editions,” which are numbered by the artists who created them. They sell in a market like other works of art, going for as much as $48,000.
“I have a gigantic collection of pens” that he’s collected in earnest over the last 10 years.
The other part of the store is for regular retail pens. “I sell decent pens starting at $14, very cool pens for $50,” and on up. He groups the pens by price point. “There are pens that will blow you away,” he says.
Rubin says he decided on an office floor of the IDS after looking at retail locations in the Galleria, Southdale and the downtown skyways. He didn’t want to have to be open as many hours as those locations required, because then he’d have many valuable pens exposed to the general public, and he’d have to add and train staff.
“I wanted to make this like an old-time personal service business, where somebody really knows what they’re talking about,” Rubin says. People make appointments by the half-hour, and they might walk in if they’re in the building and he’s there.
Rubin had a grand opening of the store in November, and since then has spent time urging people to think about the pens they use. “People would dress nicely and have a 29-cent Bic pen. They’re signing multimillion-dollar deals. It didn’t look right to me.”
Or he’s impressing upon customers that a pen makes a great gift, because you’re not “giving a bottle of wine to someone who just got out of Hazelden.”
Finally, there’s the health aspect: When he sees a waitress with a pen in her hair or in her , mouth, he thinks it’s obvious why he prefers to use his own.
He remains chairman of the board for Ardea Beverage, which sold to PepsiAmericas in late 2006. He says retail is fun but hard work, too: “I’ve never been more tired in my life than over the holidays, even more than as a CPA during tax season.”
Barry Rubin, Ink: 612.455.2600; pe******@***il.com; www.penstore.biz
