A Hungarian company enters the luxury pens market

In 2016, a Hungarian startup, Eteleburg, started developing custom pens. Today, their pens are ordered from almost all over the world and are unique on the market, due to their special use of materials and modular design. Since then, they have not stopped developing and have now produced a limited edition pen for the 125-year-old Tungsram. An interview with Gábor Megyeri and Péter Megyeri, the founders of Etelburg, and Ferenc Pongrácz, Tungsram's Innovation Director.

The interview on növekedés.hu was written by Ferenc Dániel Dajkó. Translation by Etelburg. The original article in Hungarian is available here.

It's always exciting when a large company and a start-up enter into a partnership.

Tungsram, a 125-year-old Hungarian company known for its light bulbs, has a presence in many countries around the world and has been developing its portfolio and opening up to innovation since its independence from GE.

Etelburg is a Hungarian luxury pen manufacturer. They are trying to succeed in a very specific market where they have to compete with international competitors such as Montblanc. So far, they have successfully overcome the obstacles and their unique pens have been sold almost all over the world.

Now, these two companies have entered into cooperation, which has resulted in a limited edition Etelburg series produced in Hajdúböszörmény. We talked to Gábor and Péter Megyeri, Etelburg's founders, and Ferenc Pongrácz, Tungsram's Innovation Director, about this cooperation, Etelburg pens, the expected development directions and the launch of the business.

How did the history of Etelburg pens and the Etelburg brand begin, and why did you start with unique and special pens?

Gábor Megyeri: I graduated as a designer at MOME, and in 2007 I did my thesis at Montblanc. Already then, I had the idea to create my own brand. However, after that it took me a long time and many internships, including years at Montegrappa, to found the Etelburg brand in 2016 with Péter and to start developing unique pens.

What makes an Etelburg pen special, and why is it unique?

Gábor Megyeri: We believe in being better than our foreign competitors.

This pen also shows that Hungarian engineers can do this and that Hungarian creativity is capable of that.

As for the product itself, it is worth knowing that it is not just a pen, but part of a range of products. It is a modular pen that can be converted quickly from a fountain pen to a rollerball pen and other writing and drawing instruments. You can use it with a short, everyday barrel and with a long studio barrel. The latter actually turns the pen into a tool with an adjustable centre of gravity. The range also includes an application.

This app allows users to take a colour sample of any photo, which can then be saved and shared.

For this, we already have a desktop device that takes just 45 seconds to mix and load the colour saved in the app into a cartridge, which can then be immediately loaded into the pen for writing, drawing or even painting. Yet, only a prototype of this machine has been completed, and we are now working with Tungsram to bring it to market and commercialise it.

The Etelburg desktop device can mix the color saved in the application and fill it into a cartridge in 45 seconds. The cartridge can then be immediately inserted into the pen for writing, drawing, or even painting.

Péter Megyeri: We started our business as a startup 6 years ago, hence,

Our aim was to create a unique product that was not on the market.

To get a modular pen from aircraft aluminium for the price of an expensive plastic pen is quite extraordinary. We had to break out with something and come up with a new brand, and new content. The goal was to produce 500 in the first series. Based on this experience, we worked with Tungsram to develop it further. Only 21 of these were produced.

In this industry, good is not enough, only excellence is acceptable, because only then can we keep up with the competition.

The second version of our new pen is also in production. 500 pieces will be manufactured - we want to show that this is not a mass-produced pen. The owners can be members of a smaller community. The product also has a place in the world market. In addition to several European countries, we have already shipped to Australia, India, North America and Asia.

Where did the brand name come from, why did you choose Etelburg?

Gábor Megyeri: The castle of Attila's people was mentioned as Etelburg in the Nibelung song in the 14th century. In addition, the word etel appears in Turkish, meaning water, which is similar to the name of Aquincum. So, in essence, our name refers to Buda - Budapest.

It is really important for us that, besides the fact that everyone knows that this is a Hungarian product to the core, we wanted to reflect that in our name.

We definitely encourage this, because we believe that handwriting is necessary for human development, not only in childhood, but also for adults.

We also work on a rollerball nib for our pen. We are also making this one to be modular. The pen I'm using right now has a fountain pen tip, but I can change that to a rollerball in a minute.

Are you considering creating a more widely available, higher volume model?

We are thinking about it, yes. The pen I have in my hand, for example, is worth €702 net. And the cheapest pen in our webshop currently costs €149. That narrows the range of people who can afford it. Even though people want to buy it because they want to take advantage of the experiences our pens offer, not everyone can do it.

If we were producing in larger quantities using other, less expensive materials, we could probably sell this pen for orders of magnitude less.

If this happens and we start mass production, we can reach tens or even hundreds of thousands of units and many more people will be able to enjoy the Etelburg experience.

There are also plans to develop another pen for children. With this tool, we will use a workbook to teach the youngest children how to mix colours, so that they can develop both their creativity and their fine motor skills.

Etelburg's latest limited edition pen is manufactured by Tungsram. How did the collaboration between the companies start?

Ferenc Pongrácz: This was a very interesting initiative by Tungsram and Etelburg. It was the first series that was made in Tungsram's Hungarian factory. Maybe few people know it, but we at Tungsram have quite serious quality capabilities. A good example of this is that we produce less than one defective car lamp for every million we make, so we can meet very high-quality standards. We have also recently obtained aerospace certifications, which can only be achieved through decades of quality management.

This product, made from aerospace aluminium, is also made in a factory capable of extremely high machining quality.

This one is a unique series, created for the 125th anniversary of Tungsram. The 21-piece set is a special Tungsram edition, the pens bear the 125th anniversary logo and have never been commercially released. No further copies will be made.

We believe that this is a fitting symbol of our belief in the future, and a proper expression of how important it is for us to continue working with Hungarian talents.

The limited edition Etelburg pen created for the 125th anniversary of Tungsram

As far as I know, Tungsram has not been involved in pens, why did they start this project?

Ferenc Pongrácz: Tungsram has gone through a lot and innovated a lot in its 125-year history.

In the 1920s, Lipót Aschner actually made the company great, and it was he who set up Europe's first industrial research institute in Hungary, modelled on Edison's research institute.

In addition to lighting, Tungsram was a pioneer in the manufacture of electron tubes, TV picture tubes, radio and many other fields. In 1936, for example, they broadcasted a UTE football match on a television set made by Tungsram employees. So it is not new in the history of the company to be involved in a lot of innovation. There was a period when GE bought Tungsram. It was one of the most significant privatisations in the whole region. At that time, GE, as a global company, turned Tungsram into a global conventional lighting production centre.

However, this is a declining market, with a continuous decrease in demand for traditional fluorescent tubes and light fixtures. Therefore, we need to return to our roots and compensate for these lost volumes with new products. This likely won't happen by suddenly achieving a monopoly in one huge area, as we did with lamps in the past.

We need to find ways to repurpose our available capabilities, such as our high-level engineering expertise, manufacturing capacity, and quality culture. This pen, for example, was made in our Hajdúböszörmény factory, which still preserves the knowledge that once enabled Tungsram to build entire factories, so the tradition of custom machinery manufacturing still exists today. In 2021, Tungsram received the Innovation Grand Prize, and two of the products that earned us this recognition are linked to our Hajdúság plant. We manufactured the region’s first vertical farm there, and we also produce tungsten wires with a special coating needed to operate one of the world's leading types of surgical robots. It’s important to note that tungsten is a material that stretches very little even at small cross-sections, but the tungsten wire required a very specialized medical-grade coating, which Tungsram developed. This represents a unique expertise on a global scale.

This also shows that we are focusing on areas where we can compete not through low costs but through high-level expertise and creativity.

Are there plans for further collaboration between Tungsram and Etelburg, possibly for the production of new series or even the start of mass production?

Ferenc Pongrácz: Discussions are still ongoing, but yes, further collaboration is indeed being considered.

The following video shows how the Etelburg mobile app works