Focus on R&D: Obooc Crafts Premium Domestic Gel Pens with Ingenuity

For older generations back in their school days, fountain pens filled with blue ink and blue ballpoint pens were standard desk supplies; black pens were rare, and red pens were reserved exclusively for teachers to mark homework. In just a few decades, black gel pens have become the staple in students’ pencil cases, while blue writing pens have gradually faded out of campuses — a shift reflecting the successive upgrade of writing instruments.

In the 1970s and 1980s, fountain pens dominated classrooms. Affordable and smooth-flowing, blue ink rarely clogged pen nibs and was a top pick among students. Still, it smudged when exposed to water and faded over time. Black ink produced long-lasting writing ideal for file archiving yet contained excessive impurities that frequently jammed pens, so few students opted for it.

Ballpoint pens gained popularity at schools in the 1990s. Restricted by ink formulas, most available refills were blue; high-density black ink tended to cause ball jams and intermittent ink flow.

In the early years, the precision machining of pen tip holders posed enormous technical challenges, as qualified steel for production could not be manufactured domestically. Imported pen refills were extremely costly, equivalent to over a hundred yuan apiece by today’s currency value, and students often got reprimanded for losing a single pen. It was not until 2016 that Taiyuan Iron & Steel cracked the technical bottleneck of pen tip steel wire, breaking foreign monopolies in China’s pen-making industry.

Gel pens were introduced from overseas in the late 1990s, featuring ink with properties midway between water-based and oil-based formulas. Boasting comfortable writing experience and stable markings, black gel pens completely phased out blue alternatives after optical scanning became standard for middle school and college entrance exams, thanks to their crisp scan effect and excellent durability for permanent documentation.

Riding the wave of domestic stationery technological advancement, Obooc has long committed to independent R&D of gel pens instead of copying foreign formulas. Its R&D team has spent years refining carbon ink and tweaking pigment ratios to develop ink resistant to water smudging and long-term fading, perfectly suited for exam answer sheets.

Obooc’s gel pen ink is formulated with imported pigments and additives. Ideal for note-taking, journaling, signature writing, drawing and daily handwriting, the refined ink prevents nib clogging and stays stable without layer separation at room temperature even after prolonged uncapping. It delivers consistently smooth, uninterrupted writing with extended writing mileage, vivid hues, firmly set marks that resist bleeding and fading. Available in large-capacity bulk packages, the ink offers great cost performance.