The much loved house hold name Tipp-ex may soon disappear from our shelves as drastic declines in sales means the company is losing too much money to continue. Experts have put the diminished profits of the white fluid down to the increasing use of the paperless office.

The Tipp-ex company was established in 1918 when a trader called Robert Black decided to sell small bottles of white paint with his typewriters. These small bottles of white paint, originally and unsuccessfully called “Black’s correction paint” only later to be abbreviated to Tipp-ex, soon became Mr. Black’s only trade until his death in 1941. Robert Blacks grandson Mathew now internationally runs the company.

DFTFC spoke to Matt Black about what had happened to Tipp-ex: “Tipp-ex, like many products, has always thrived on human error” explains Mr. Black. “It all started after the First World War when having to retype something on a typewriter was too costly so it was more effective to block out mistakes and type over them again. My grandfather was first to really home the recipe for this kind of correction fluid and that’s why we are the multi-national company we have become. However, in the last nine months there has been a real growth in the use of the paperless offices. With all these computers with grammar and spelling checkers it was getting difficult to find a good honest mistake to use Tipp-ex for and now even thats gone because of all this e-mail and Internet rubbish. Documents being stored on computers and then posted down phone lines, how ridiculous is that! Our profits have plummeted, we haven’t enough money to carry on, not that anyone is going to buy it anyway. We are going the way of the slide rule!”

Due to the loss of use of products like Tipp-ex as well as Pritt Stick, photocopiers and printers many offices are bereft of those distinctive office smells. Glades, producers of household air fresheners, are marketing their new range of fragrances at the paperless office. Once again the refreshing smell of solvents or hot toning fluid can fill your office. Clark Brynn describes the range: “It is well known and it has been proven by experts that the constant smell of solvents relaxes office workers and inevitably makes them work better. All Glade have done is to bottle that smell in a refreshing, long lasting form because people just can’t do without the whiff of hot ink or glue.” And we at DFTFC couldn’t agree more.