From Show Biz to the Pen Biz : CEO of Pilot Pen Taps His Career as a Comic for Ideas

NEW HAVEN, Conn. —  Ronald G. Shaw isn’t doing comedy anymore, but he has kept his stage name and reputation as a stand-up kind of guy.

Shaw switched from show business to the pen business more than 35 years ago, but his experience as the opener for entertainers including Dean Martin and Alan King has proved more valuable than a Harvard MBA in his current job, as president and CEO of Pilot Pen Corp., the U.S. subsidiary of Japan’s oldest and largest pen maker.

The 57-year-old credits his upbringing in the entertainment industry for building the moxie and salesmanship needed to climb the corporate ladder.

“All these things are intertwined, and keep going back to my days as a performer,” he said. “I think some of the attributes of show business, some of the things that I learned that made me a polished performer, have aided my business career more than anything else I can describe to you.”

Dressed sharply in a camel-colored sports coat and a printed designer tie, Shaw arrived at the Connecticut Tennis Center recently looking very much the high-powered executive. He drove from nearby Trumbull, where he oversees hundreds of workers at Pilot’s American headquarters, to watch a tennis tournament that bears his company’s name.

His shoes are polished, slacks creased. There is not a hair out of place. And even after he changes into more casual attire, he is still the picture of meticulousness.

“I always found him to be a very astute and pragmatic businessman,” said Hillel Auerbach, an attorney who represents Shaw and Pilot Pen. “I certainly attribute his poise and confidence, and his ability to speak to a group, to his earlier training. It has served him very well.”

When Shaw came on board in 1975 as national sales manager, the fledging company of nine employees had just recorded a $500,000 loss. Pilot now has a staff of more than 200, and sales this year are projected to reach $135 million.

Shaw has borrowed from his former career to keep Pilot thriving.

Humorous themes have been incorporated into the company’s marketing strategy. One campaign featured a woman asking her psychiatrist, “Is it sick to love a pen?” The answer: Not if it’s a Pilot pen.

Sales doubled in the year after the ad was released, and almost tripled a year later. The same ad was reworked into another successful campaign--”If it’s sick to love a pen, then the whole world must be crazy.”

Other campaigns have used comedian Rodney Dangerfield as a spokesman in both print and network radio spots. More recently, after some convincing, Shaw has agreed to appear in commercials.

“Once you’re a performer, you never want to lose the link. You never really get it out of your blood,” said Shaw, who remains a member of two show business unions.

Born Ronald G. Schurowitz in Philadelphia, Shaw was raised in a blue-collar family. His father, Herb, drove a laundry truck. His mother, Babe, was a nurse. He got his start in show business after his parents moved him and his younger sister to Florida, assuming the stage name Shaw on the recommendation of his uncle Sam.

Shaw first worked for a syndicated radio variety show as a teenage pianist. The program spun off into a US0-type act that traveled to military bases.

Shaw’s foray into comedy was by accident, when he was asked one night to fill in for the stand-up comic who didn’t show up. Only 14 at the time, he was hesitant and scared, but finally convinced by the manager to go through the same routine he had been hearing on their tour.

“At first I froze. Tell jokes? Onstage? It’s not possible,” Shaw said. “And he said, ‘You’ve been on the show long enough, tell his jokes.’ So I go out and tell these jokes, and the audience gets hysterical. I thought I was good. I started to believe I actually had talent.”

Shaw eventually crafted his own routine, but initially relied on other comics’ jokes to get yuks.

He toured mostly on the East Coast, performing some nights in small-time clubs and others as the opener at posh hotels for the likes of Liberace, Connie Francis and Rosemary Clooney.

Shaw was able to put himself through the University of Miami on the money he made telling jokes. Then he began dating Phyllis, the woman he “didn’t want to let get away.” Heeding the advice of one of his idols, George Jessel, Shaw decided after he got married and had his first child that he needed a more stable career.

“Jessel was married four or five times,” he said. “Backstage one night, he gave me a little unasked-for advice. He told me, ‘If you fall in love before you make it big, get out of the business.’ For whatever reason, those words never did leave me.”

Shaw started in the pen business with Pilot’s rival, joining Bic as a salesman in 1961 at the age of 22. He moved up quickly, becoming national sales manager by age 30. He held that position for six years before joining Pilot.

Shaw became president of Pilot in 1986, but was basically given free rein to run the company the day he walked in the door. As one of the few Americans running a Japanese company’s U.S. operations, he has introduced several ideas.

He eliminated the Japanese “ring” form of management, in which groups of managers meet to discuss problems and make decisions--sometimes taking hours to deal with an issue an American manager might decide in minutes.

Signing on as the sponsor of the Pilot Pen International was another move Shaw engineered. The company is in the first year of a five-year contract with the tennis tournament, formerly known as the Volvo International.

“We’re always trying to do something a little unusual, a little different, to keep our name out there,” he said.

The reserved businessman is not the same man as the father known to Steve Shaw, 35, the oldest of Shaw’s three children. He says there was hardly a dull moment growing up, but one standing rule could not be broken.

“No one was allowed to mess up Dad’s hair. We used to joke that he was the only one who could jump in a pool and come out with his hair parted,” Steve Shaw said.

Grandpa Shaw engages his granddaughter in vaudeville routines. And grandson Bryan, 4, has been granted exclusive permission to break the hair rule.

“Now that he has grandchildren, he’s become downright silly,” Steve Shaw said.