"Crayola" Makes 3 Billon Crayons A Year

CNN Money did THIS 2 minute profile of Crayola, including an interview with their CEO. Like a lot of things on CNN in recent years, they managed to make this 'fun' topic bland to the point of boring.  But I was surprised when the CEO said that Crayola makes 3 billion crayons a year, and that they're still made in America.

Three billion seems like a lot to me.  Crayola LLC a private company, so its financial information is not publicly available. But if the crayons are still made in America, presumably they're mostly sold here as well. (Could they realistically compete on price in, say, China with knock-off products manufactured there.)  According to ChildStats.gov HERE, there were 24.3 million children ages 0-5 in America in 2010 and a further 24.6 million aged 6-11.  Can 49 million American kids really be consuming the majority of 3 billion crayons a year?  If they bought a collective 2 billion a year, that would mean each and every kid in America ages 0-11 was getting 41 new crayons a year.

I also thought it was interesting how relatively 'low tech' the manufacturing process still was.  (Though on reflection I'm not sure what else I was expecting, given the nature of the product.)