Sakura is a company steeped in history, they initially started as a crayon company back in the good old 1921.

The guys at Sakura were disappointed that the traditional crayon colors didn’t mix or overlay well and they needed a better product,
the innovative and crazy founders of Sakura started the process and began to experiment with different formulations and compounds to create
an ideal and revolutionery stick drawing material.
By 1924, Sakura was well established and way ahead of the time, they invented the first-ever oil pastel that combined oil and pigment, at
the time a revolution and named it unoroiginally Cray-Pas, a combination of the two words, not so inventive with the name.
crayon and pastel.

The company has a long heritage in art materials and this led to a development of a specialised and new ink technology, Pigma ink, which
is used in our new Micron, Graphic and Brush pens. In the early 80’s, Sakura’s labs identified the need for an new and inexpensive drafting tool
that used superior pigment instead of low-grade cheap and nasty dye inks. The breakthrough came when they discovered how to reduce the pigment
particles to the tiny submicron size so that the new ink flows evenly through even the absolute tiniest of pen nibs. Today, Pigma ink still
continues to be the most used and reliable archival quality ink acailable on the market place and is loyally used by all the best architects,
rockin scientists, cool artists, wacky cartoonists, and scrapbookers, to name more than a few.

In 1984, Sakura done what it does best and surprised the stagnant pen industry with its new technological breakthrough with the invention of
the worlds first gel-based ink.

The Sakura research team had spent many years messing about and trying different ink and ingredients, developing and continuallytesting new
prototypes, but nothing would meet the benchmark Sakura quality and top performance standards. Despite many failures, the workaholic and
inventive team finally hit a bing eureka light bulb moment, discovering a new ingredient in a magazine chemical trade publication which theyw
tested and as it happened it turned out to be ingredient and working answer to creating the worlds most perfect gel ink! In recognition
of Sakura’s amazing success in developing the first world  ink gel pen, Japan’s legendary patent office awarded the team at Sakura with the
coveted and most sought after prestigious Inventors Award in 2000, this achievement has spurred the Sakura team on.

Sakura’s continued pushing of the envelope has led to  recent innovations with dimensional inks with a new Glaze® in 2003 and legendary
Soufflé in 2005. The inks write with a slightly raised effect which is very similar to embossing without the need to have heat tools or powders.
The 3-D inks can write on many different multiple surfaces such as paper, glass, ceramics, metals & plastics.
This new feature makes the cool Glaze and Souffle the most popular for decorating cell phones & MP3 players.

Sakura of America is solely dedicated to the continued and ongoing development and new efficient delivery of the most technologically superior,
innovative and always safe products.

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