There are four parts to longevity in business. One part is ingenuity, and the other three are just plain, old-fashioned, boring stick-to-itiveness. Those four parts working in perfect synchronicity, seller of pens, a whopping number of them fountain pens, Gem & Co has continued at the same address on NSC Bose Road in George Town for no less than 99 years. As it is poised to complete 100 years of existence in February 2027, there are no signs it could be running out of ink.M. Pratap Kumar, representing the third-generation at the reins of Gem & Co after grandfather M.C. Cunnan and father M. Prabhat Kumar, has had greater need for those three parts because of the times in which he is holding those reins. Pratap is penning Gem & Co’s brand story challenging the digital onslaught as seen by the writing pad being increasingly replaced by the keyboard.And then there are the mundane hiccups, the gremlins that play a nasty trick on you when you do not even suspect their existence. Having seen 64 summers, Pratap has had a share of these niggles, finding some of those summers tough, and some winters too, the latter indicated by the shop’s increased height.“We had to increase the height of the shop because of the water coming in during every rain as a result of the road level going up over the decades, and we had to pump out the water or manually push it out,” explains Pratap.