If you own an orange-handled pair of scissors (and assuming it's not a cheap knockoff), etched along one of the blades is a word worthy of an IKEA catalog: FISKARS.

Those scissors represent more than 350 years of brand history.

With roots as a blast-furnace facility near Helsinki, Finland, in 1649, Fiskars is now a multinational holding company that manufactures products ranging from bladed instruments to hinges to aluminum boats, manages real estate holdings in and around its location of origin, and is the majority shareholder of Wärtsilä, a Finnish manufacturer of nautical engines and power plants.

Fiskars' largest entity, Fiskars Brands, headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin, manages the general Fiskars brand plus more than two dozen others—almost all of which involve products you can slice a finger on if you're careless—organized into four categories: school/office/craft (brands such as Gingher and Durasharp), garden tools and accessories (Sankey and Aquapore), outdoor recreation (Gerber knives and Superknife), and housewares (Kaimano and Raadvad).

The most famous Fiskars product, the scissors with the orange ergonomic handle, was developed in 1967. The prototypes were intended to be in black, red, and green, but a machinist created a batch that finished off the remaining orange material in his machine. The company actually liked the orange color best and launched a product that 30 years later is as recognizable as a Coke bottle or Toblerone bar.

In 2006, the scissors were involved in an uncommon instance of product placement—appearing in an ad for a different product. A series of television commercials for credit card Discover's What If campaign featured an army of computer-animated scissors (with the you-know-what-color handle) marching along city streets, cutting up (non-Discover) credit cards fed to them by consumers.

The ads generated a bit of unexpected controversy: some people were apparently creeped out by anthropomorphic shears, while a blog on the website of a communications firm debated whether Fiskars should be thrilled with the free publicity or repulsed (or at least compensated) by Discover's attempt to siphon Fiskars' brand integrity onto its credit card. (As far as Fiskars was concerned, if Discover wanted to "make an iconic scissor walk around, [the company was] thrilled to death that they look like our scissors.")

More interesting than strolling scissors is Fiskars' recent branding efforts targeting the growing scrapbooking hobby, which is now a US$ 3 billion industry. The identity firm Brains on Fire worked with Fiskars to cultivate "crafting ambassadors" who were granted unprecedented access to the Fiskars brand in order to properly communicate (and evangelize) Fiskars products to their peers. A clever website hosts a scrapbooking message board and blogs from the initial four "Fiskateers."

Fisars plans to add up to 50 more of these brand ambassadors to the Fiskateers crew. In doing so, Fiskars hopes its customers will feel that they have ownership in and can have a dialogue with the company—illustrating that while many brands less than half its age have become staid, stodgy, and conservative over time, Fiskars proves an old brand can still learn new tricks.

Anthony Zumpano, who is right-handed, never mastered those green-handled "lefty" scissors.