About Us

Pen Boutique

About Pen Boutique

With an eye for quality and outstanding customer service, Leena Shrestha-Menon founded The Pen Boutique to "listen to customers and fulfill their wishes." From humble beginnings in a small store in Columbia, Maryland, we've  grown during the last decade into a world leader in retailing fine writing instruments and personalized gifts.

Pen Boutique has been given the great honor of having been chosen by Montblanc for its Shop-in-Shop and Signature Display experience at its Columbia, MD location. We are also proud to feature the Graf von Faber-Castell, Cross, Visconti, Waterman, Lamy and Parker Shop-in-Shop experiences. This is the only location in the United States to house all of these prestigious Shop-in-Shop displays under one roof.

What is Pen Boutique and what do we stand for?

Pens Online

Back in 2004, it was a concept that I started when I was jobless and a mother of a kid. I love fine pens, the way fountain pens write and glide on the paper. Many people do well in the field they love because it helps to do something you can look forward to every day, and I wanted to do something very similar. Every time I tried to come up with something I could do passionately, I kept coming back to the fine pens, the customers I dealt with, and the joy of explaining the finer points of different writing instruments. And so The Pen Boutique was born. It was not as easy as I thought. Distributors were skeptical, mall management was not swayed by beautiful pens, and financiers thought I was out of my mind. After being turned down by 8 banks, we came across a fantastic financier who loved fine pens and believed in the business plan. We got a loan and off we went! From the start, the emphasis has been on customer service and becoming part of the pen community. I believe that if you provide better customer service people remember and become repeat customers. That is the mantra we had it then and have it now also.  Over the years, at Pen Boutique we are fortunate to have fantastic customers and  wonderful team.  We love selling fine writing instruments and even love more in educating it to the younger generation the importance of fountain pens and writing on paper at early age.  Over the year some good things has happened:

  • We were awarded by Howard County Chamber of Commerce as " Emerging success award".
  • Stella Services did an anonymous customer satisfaction rating and we passed with excellent!
  • For 10 straight years we were awarded "Best of the Columbia" in Boutique category. 
  • We were interviewed by newspapers several times. 
  • Howard County had our store in the Woman-owned business success story. 
  • We were recognized by US Retailers association as the Best of Columbia from 2007 - 2019 consecutively. 
  • Our stores are Montblanc shop-in-shop, Graf von Faber-Castell shop in shop, Lamy Shop-in-shop, Cross premium products shop-in-shop. 
  • We perform charity as part of our business and in association with  Howard County Library promote writing and fountain pens among kids.
  • We support early detection of Breast Cancer in collaboration with ABCF ( American Breast Cancer Foundation). 50% of the proceeds from Parker Pink Jotter Pen "I am a SURVIVOR" goes to ABCF.  

I hope you will  be part of our journey.  Are we going to make mistakes?  Yes. But do give us a chance to fix it.  Our error margin is less.  We are human and I would like it to be that way so that we have that personal touch on orders.  I am not that technology savvy but do have some awesome technology people helping me.   What we like is educating and selling fine pens. And we hope that you will be our customer  for a long time to come :-)

Thank you,

sincerely,

Leena Shrestha-Menon

If you have any questions, call us at:(410) 992-3272. We are open for customer service Monday-Friday 9:00am - 5:00pm. We are closed on Sunday and most major holidays.