The Pen Addict 180/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	180
Title:	It Does Notebook Things
Release Date:	November 9th, 2015
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	Adam Kornfield
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 180
Audio File:	Audio Episode 180
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 180
Length:	6161 min <br />1.017 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 180. Today's show is brought to you by Pen Chalet, Harry's, and Squarespace. My name is Myke Hurley, and I'm joined by Mr. Brad Dowdy.

Adam Kornfield: What's up, mate? How you doing, buddy? Good, good. We got a pretty awesome episode today for our, you know, 180th episode. That's just sick. That's crazy, isn't it?

Myke Hurley: It's a big number.

Pen Guests

Adam Kornfield: It's a big number. So we brought on some big guests for the big number, and I'm excited to welcome Adam Kornfield and Joey Caffone, better known as the guys behind Baron Fig. What's up, guys?

James: Hey, what's up, guys? Hey, what's going on, guys? How you doing?

Adam Kornfield: Good, good. I'm so excited to have you guys. This is actually, it's too long, too long for me to have reached out and get this done, but I'm excited to have you here finally, for sure.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah, thanks. I mean, I guess it makes sense, right? We're finally, you know, making a pen.

Adam Kornfield: Yeah, that's true. That's true. So that's going to be the big news today, and we're going to make our listeners, since we're professionals, we're going to tease that all the way to the end of the show. So they're going to have to listen to all the nonsense leading up to this really, really cool pen design that Myke and I have had a sneak preview for. So we will definitely get to that.

Brad Dowdy: Did I have to throw you a surprise immediately?

Adam Kornfield: Yeah, I know. No, I think it's good, because now they're just going to be ready and listening and waiting impatiently for that. They'll be yelling at me in the chat room the whole time, talk about the pen.

James: Talk about the pen, the pen.

Adam Kornfield: Well, good. So just to kind of lay the groundwork for the listeners here, we want to – a lot of our listeners, a lot of readers of the Pen Attic blog are very familiar with Baron Fig, especially, obviously, your paper goods. They love the notebooks y'all design, and then y'all are kind of dipping your toes in the water of digital goods and some posters, and we're going to talk about all that. But I want to start way back in the beginning when you guys decided, hey, let's create a notebook. How did that happen between Adam and you and Joey? How did that happen? And what makes these – you two guys get together and say, we should probably make a notebook, and you know what? Let's throw it up on Kickstarter and see what happens. How did this come about?

Notebook History

James: Wow. I mean – OK. So it goes way, way, way back. This actually goes back to the beginning of 2010, believe it or not. Yeah. So Joey and I, we met through kind of like strange circumstances. A friend was kind of organizing in New York and Manhattan, this kind of entrepreneur meetup, and I don't think I really knew what it meant, and I guess Joey didn't really know what it meant as well. But we got together every week and met up. People kind of – people talked about different projects they were working on. And Joey and I came from really different backgrounds. I was working in finance on Wall Street then, and Joey was a freshman in graphic design at SVA here in New York. And I don't know. Something about it, something about the way we worked together or our thoughts or just working compatibility was we had similar ideas. And Joey kind of had an observation about art school, and I'll let him explain.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So I was in art school at the time, way back, and I noticed something really interesting. My fellow students and myself included, we all used two tools, right? One was a laptop and one was a notebook. And so the observation was that all of the laptops were the same. They were MacBooks, and all of the notebooks were different, different brands, different sizes, different paper types. It was just like everybody was carrying something different. And when I realized this, I looked back on myself and I looked at my own bookshelf, and I realized that I had been getting all different types of books myself, right? The bookshelf didn't have just one type of book. It's not like I was loyal for something. It was like I was looking for something, and that was a big observation and also an opportunity. So me and Adam met at this entrepreneur group, and we ended up doing three or four projects, like startup-style company things before Baron Fig. So we had some things going on, and it took how many years?

James: It took quite a while. So, I mean, you would think, all right, so we had this idea of making a notebook. I mean, I was always into paper. I've been tactile my entire life. I worked at OfficeMax for a while, selling office supplies. I don't know, just something that I've always been fascinated by paper. And when Joey had this observation, I was like, wow, this is great. So we started on it right away, right?

James: Nope. We had three years. Did nothing on it. So in the interim, yeah, we worked on a couple projects, and it was finally beginning of 2013, and ironically enough, the thing that really made us do it was my frustration. My frustration that Joey, it was kind of his senior year of art school, and he had like one class each semester, however it worked out. And so we started his own design studio. And so we had this little closet of a room in the middle of Manhattan, and it barely had a window, and it was about 80 square feet or so that we shared. And so we started sitting in there with the IKEA desk, and on day one of his own freelance design studio, I think he made like about $0. By the end of the week, he made about enough to buy maybe some ramen and a footlong sub or something. But week by week, month by month, all of a sudden it was four or five months later, and Joey had more business than he could possibly handle. It was like he literally was working 40 hours a week and paid quite well for good-name clients. And so he was looking at doing – he's like, oh, who's the broker who got us the studio? How do we expand? I need bigger space. I want to hire. And personally, I thought it was the worst idea ever. I was like, Joey, this is stupid. Like, don't get me wrong. It's cool what you're doing.

Brad Dowdy: It's nice, but you're an idiot. Yeah, I was like, it's nice.

James: I was like, because you're just going to have to hire. You're going to have to hire more people, and then get bigger space. They need more clients. Then have more bills. And then you have more bills. You need more clients.

Brad Dowdy: It's like a monster that you have to keep feeding.

James: So I was like, Joey, we talked about Notebook years ago. Let's do this thing. Let's make it happen.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And so then we did. That was – when was that? That was like in February or something of that year?

James: Yeah, February, March 2013.

Brad Dowdy: So I immediately quit every job that I was doing. And I went from, I don't know, like five or six freelance gigs to zero. I told everyone I was done. Recommended everyone off to designers that I knew. And started focusing exclusively on designing this notebook. And then it took like five months of research. We emailed people all over the world. We called them thinkers, right? We didn't want to call them like visual artists, like designers. Because other people, you know, like entrepreneurs, musicians, they all use notebooks. And it's certainly not visual, right? It's the ideas are on the page. But it's not necessarily beautiful. So we emailed all these people all over the world and we asked them one question. And the question is, what do you like in a sketchbook or notebook? So all in all, we emailed over 500 people. And we ended up with an 80 – over 80% response rate from cold emails, which was out of this world. We were expecting something like maybe 10%. And the people who emailed us were giving us these gigantic responses. We were having huge dialogues, right? It wasn't just like a few sentences. People were sending back paragraphs of like, this is what I'd like in a notebook. I can't find this anywhere. Thank you so much for doing this. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help. And we went from there and we distilled all this feedback into our first product, the Confidant. And we put that on Kickstarter.

Brad Dowdy: It's about two years ago now.

James: Yeah, almost exactly two years ago. So yeah, it was a blast. That whole summer, recording videos, running around New York, doing all sorts of stuff to get the prototypes ready. I mean I think our first prototype was – Joey did quite a nice job. So we had a meeting on Tuesday night. Joey was like, I'm going to make a prototype. And I was like, OK.

Brad Dowdy: From scratch.

James: From scratch. So he shows up the next Tuesday with this pretty legit-looking prototype. I was like, wow. Where did you get this thing from?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so it turned out I went all over the city and I got materials. New York is amazing and we can pretty much – we have access to pretty much everything here. Paper stores, fabric stores. So I went around, selected something to get started. And then I sat in my underwear on a Saturday morning in front of YouTube. And I learned how to bind a book. And actually the prototype that I brought to them, the covers, the inside of the covers are a Cheerio box that I had because I forgot to buy cardboard. I brought it to Adam and he got excited. I got excited. We sort of captured momentum by making the idea physical. And we kept going from there, refining and refining until the book you see today.

James: Yeah. I think it's kind of interesting in the process of making things. Everyone thinks they watch these movies and it's like in one step, some blast of inspiration. Oh my god. It's some great moment and then the final product comes out. I don't know. Maybe we're different than how it works for other people. But it's amazing how many little kind of like imperceptible steps things have to go through from a Cheerios box on a Saturday morning to a final product that people can buy on your website. It's like a thousand little steps in the middle.

Adam Kornfield: Yeah, no, I think that's completely the case and I've definitely experienced that. The one thing from you talking about this, the one thing that stood out to me the most was, well, not only that Joey was stupid enough to quit his job and start to make a notebook. But that when you reached out to all these people, and this is in 2013, you sent out 500 emails, got like 80% response rate. It's not like at that time in the marketplace there's no notebooks out there. But it's the people who care about these type of things were not satisfied with what's available. And that's what I find like the most shocking. And that's what we always talk about on the pen addict, finding the right tools for the right job. And just what's out there, you know, publicly available, you know, if you walk into a Barnes and Noble or something, the people that want to use these products, they're not satisfied by them. And I find that to be to be pretty telling when you get that kind of response from people who have a notebook sitting on their table while they're responding to you saying this thing sucks, basically. Right. Oh, totally.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Adam Kornfield: Yeah. So so y'all moved into the Kickstarter. Yeah, it was September 3rd, 2013. And what did you expect when you when you when you press that button? Did you have any idea what to expect? No.

James: I mean, we knew our moms and grandmas would buy it. Right. So. Right.

Brad Dowdy: So we had about five hundred dollars accounted for.

Adam Kornfield: So it could go two ways, right? It's going to go straight in the ditch and no one's going to ever hear about it again. Or it's going to go berserk, which I think this pretty much did. I think this classifies as berserk, at least at least in our realm. It you had for over forty two hundred backers, over one hundred and sixty eight thousand dollars raised. When you when you say that kind of stuff out loud, looking back on it, what do you think?

Brad Dowdy: A lot has changed in two years. Right. With Kickstarter. The numbers two years ago were a lot lower on Kickstarter than they are now. So it's hard. It's hard to put that into context today where it's like, oh, people are doing a million, two million, ten million on Kickstarter.

Adam Kornfield: Right.

Brad Dowdy: Right. And, you know, we did one hundred and sixty eight thousand, which was phenomenal then.

Adam Kornfield: And it's a notebook, for God's sakes, right?

James: I mean, I will I will take the opposite approach of Joey on that one. I think it's pretty amazing. I'm blown away when I think about it's like, wow, like here we were a company that just had a little tiny mailing list and a Web space, Squarespace page that with kind of Joey's half fake design on it at that point in time. And it's like here we were able to sell over eight thousand notebooks in a month. Like, I don't know. I thought it was amazing. I was pretty impressed. Like, I was really amazed that we were able to get some nice press mention press mentions throughout it. And really, it's fun. It's a ton of fun. Strike on dialogue with all people from around the world. And, you know, we're just looking at the countries today, actually, where people bought it from. I made a list like two years ago of chart and like, I don't know, 17, 18 percent of our sales are from overseas. So like all around the world.

Brad Dowdy: Total 48 countries we ended up shipping to. It's pretty wild.

Adam Kornfield: Yeah, that is wild. And the thing about the amount raised, this is a on Kickstarter. It was a relatively small amount item. It's not like you're selling, you know, $150, $200 item. It's a $20 notebook. And at the time, it wasn't even named the confidant, right? I mean, you just this is the Baron Fig notebook, right?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, actually, I'm glad you brought that up. So there we had Baron Fig as the name. And I knew then that the name of the notebook was the confidant, right? Because the goal was if it succeeds, Baron Fig becomes the name of the company. But I also knew that to introduce too many names at once would be overly complex, right? So we kind of layered a couple surprises into the campaign if we succeeded. So two of them, one being the name, you'd get this thing and realize, wow, this thing's called the confidant. That's pretty cool. And two, that it came in a really well-designed, beautiful box that we did not show anywhere the entire time until it arrived at your door. Nice. Nice. Nice.

Adam Kornfield: Yeah, so I think that's great. And I want to explore kind of this when you launched the Kickstarter, what were the post-Kickstarter ideas you had in your head at the time. But I want to take a break real quick and talk about our first sponsor. It's our good friends at Pen Chalet.

Pen Chalet

Myke Hurley: You know the Pen Chalet. They sell authentic, amazing rollerballs, fountain pens, ballpoints, mechanical pencils, and so much more. And they have a great selection of some of your favorite brands like Pelican, Lamy, Pilot, Namiki, Sailor, Kaweco. They have all the great pens. And they're, of course, an authorized dealer of them as well. They're always adding new stuff all the time. And they have great discounts and closeout specials. Every few weeks, you're going to find new, amazing things, great deals over at Pen Chalet. They also sell pen carrying cases and refills and fountain pen converters and so much more. They have low prices on high-quality pens. You know this. You know this. You've seen their stuff before. And they offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Pen Chalet sell internationally. They have great shipping rates. And if you buy in the continental United States, you'll get free shipping on orders of over $50. Now, this week, we have something a little bit different. If you go to PenChalet.com and use the code PenAddict, you will save a special 15% on any order. Wow. So rather than our usual 10, you can get 15% off anything at the Pen Chalet. But if you do go to the microphone button, the podcast link right at the top, you enter the PenAddict password at the top. As well as getting your 15% off, you'll be able to see a ton of great offers from their Fountain Pen Day sale. There's still a bunch of stuff there available over at the Pen Chalet. So be sure to check them out. And if you're looking for something, this week, you'll get a special 15% off. And that deal doesn't come around very often. So go check that out. Thank you so much to Pen Chalet for sponsoring this week's show.

Adam Kornfield: All right. So you guys, you launched this Kickstarter, and you're seeing these numbers start to increment. Did you have a plan that said, okay, if we meet a certain amount of dollars after the Kickstarter fulfills, we're going to do this with the site? And then did it kind of get out of hand and get to like a really huge number and start freaking you out? Like, oh, what are we going to do?

Brad Dowdy: There was no plan.

Brad Dowdy: The plan was to launch the Kickstarter, sell some notebooks, and take it from there. We didn't expect, we really didn't expect to sell almost 9,000 notebooks. And we were sort of in shock. And we didn't have a lot of time to process it because there was so much work to be done. And it was just the two of us answering all the emails and tweets and kind of handling everything and making sure things went smoothly.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I don't even know what happened during that time. It's like a blur.

James: Yeah, it's a pretty chaotic time. There's a lot going on, that's for sure.

Adam Kornfield: So why do you think this became so successful? Why do you think just really, honestly, a very simple, clean design notebook resonated with so many people?

Brad Dowdy: I think for that reason exactly, right? It is an honest, it's a product that came from an honest desire to fill a hole or create something that has like a philosophy behind it, right? I think my favorite products that I use every day have meaning to me. And they're not just filling a need, they're something more, they have personality, a history, some kind of ethos. And so I threw as much of that into it in an honest way as I could in communicating it and in designing it and then put it out there.

Adam Kornfield: So how did fulfillment go for you guys afterwards? It seemed like it went pretty smoothly for a number that ended up being quite enormous.

James: Yeah, I mean, we were pretty lucky. We did a lot of work in advance. I mean, we didn't, it seems like a lot of other plant, maybe other Kickstarters kind of getting over their head. Fortunately, we did a lot of homework on making it, designing it, fulfilling it. And, you know, we got it out there on time. So we were really happy. And for the most part, most people got it right away, got their books right away with no problem. And, you know, a handful of people, we had to resend them wherever the case was. But overall, yeah, it was a very, very smooth process. We were quite happy with it.

Adam Kornfield: So, yeah, so I'll wrap that up. And did you, you had the website in place before Kickstarter was done? Or did that kind of come after when you started getting, getting everything going on baronfig.com?

Brad Dowdy: So we had a Squarespace site. I think that's one of your sponsors.

Adam Kornfield: Yeah, Squarespace. There we go. They are. They will be sponsoring later today's episodes. Be careful. Awesome. Nice.

Brad Dowdy: Squarespace is absolutely phenomenal. Like, you don't need to program or anything. And you can pretty much change up your web design in, like, 10 minutes. So as a designer, if I created a graphic, I could have it on the web live and usable in, like, a minute or two. And, like, redesign whole pages. So the site was constantly evolving forward at a fast pace back then when we were on Squarespace.

James: So we kind of went through, like, I'd say about two or three stages on the website. Like, before the Kickstarter is a very simple site just to get us going, Squarespace. Like Joey said, it was great, very quick. Like, then kind of as the Kickstarter happened, between then and the next few months, like, the design got upgraded. But the functionality didn't change a lot. And then things really changed in the beginning of March of 2014. That's when we launched, like, the full e-commerce store. So it's quite a transition going from, okay, we have an idea. It's awesome. Or, you know, we think it's awesome. Then we're going to launch Kickstarter. Then fulfilling all those Kickstarter orders like you touched on. And then finally, like, okay, now let's open the store for business. And that was, like, a big moment, March 4th, 2014.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, we actually crashed Squarespace.

Adam Kornfield: Way to go. I was wondering why I had problems on that day.

James: Yeah, so it's like we actually got to know, I forget how, a couple of the commerce engineers at Squarespace. And they came to our launch party the week before. So we had their, like, cell phone numbers. And so literally, we sent out the email. And we're looking at Google Analytics. I don't know how many people were on the site. You know, whatever it was.

Brad Dowdy: Hundreds.

James: Yeah, hundreds of people. And so the orders are streaming in. And Joey and I are looking at each other like, oh, this is great. And suddenly, they stop. There's just no work. Right? We're looking at each other like, oh, no. And so we're like, all right, I guess, you know, I guess we had our little first spurt. And that's it. And, you know, I don't know. So all of a sudden, we have a Baron Fig phone line that at that time got forwarded to Joey's cell phone. And it rang.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's right. We didn't know immediately. We didn't know immediately. We sort of had an inkling, right? You know, maybe you slow down for a minute. There were still hundreds of people on the site. And this woman calls. We still talk to her to this day. Every time a product releases, she emails us. And she's like, hey, I'm just on your site. And, you know, I can't buy anything. I thought you should know.

James: So we go on the site and we try to add something to the cart and check out. And it's like it blows up. There's a giant error message. And we're like, oh, my God. There's 200 people on the site or whatever. And none of them can buy anything. So we got on our phones and started calling the engineers. Like, sorry, man. Sorry to bother you. The guy's like, yeah. We're aware of it. Yeah, we're aware of it. We're worried. The site's down. We're like, okay.

Pocket Notebooks

Adam Kornfield: Oh, my God. Oh, that's amazing. Now, when y'all launched the site, was it just the Confidant or did the Apprentice launch, which is the pocket notebook? Did that launch at the same time or did that come after?

Brad Dowdy: No, it was just the Confidant. We had the Confidant and blank dot and ruled. And the Apprentice came like six months later.

Adam Kornfield: Okay. Wow. I didn't realize it was that far after. So what made you want to make a pocket notebook like that, like the Apprentice?

Brad Dowdy: I'm a big fan of field notes for the size and the utility, but not so much their design. I kind of like when the covers of things are blank so I can make them my own, whereas field notes, they're super grand. Awesome stuff they're doing. Just not my style to have, like, field notes on the cover of all the books. I want to decorate them myself. So we were like, all right, let's do something slightly different for a different audience. And out came the Apprentice.

Adam Kornfield: And, you know, right when that came out, what was that, mid-2014 or so, something like that? Yeah, so it came out. I think that did well for you. I certainly enjoyed the Apprentice. I like that format. And then, like, almost something changed, like, in Baron Fig. It's like you guys were kind of getting your feet wet. And then the Apprentice comes out. And then the next thing you know, it's like y'all are full on putting the pedal to the metal. With, like, all right, now I've got three-legged juggler. Now I've got time travel apprentice. Now I've got the maker. And so tell me, you know, you had this nice steady pace. You know, you're a growing company. You're trying to figure things out. And then all of a sudden, man, y'all floored it. So was that a conscious thing? I certainly noticed that, you know, as, you know, I've been following you guys since day one. And it was, like, hammer time for you guys. It was just, let's go. And we've got this. And, like, you could tell the confidence was there. And you knew you could nail these products. And you knew your fans were going to love them. So tell us, how did this transition happen? Because to me, it was noticeable as someone who follows you guys.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: We didn't have a plan, like I said. We had no idea. Like, we were so focused on delivering the confidants and making it work out well. And then setting up a site. When we finally did all that, we sat back and we were like, holy shit. What do we do now? So we had to, like, create some products and create a plan. And, like, going forward, figure out how that all worked. And that didn't take that long at all. But production takes long. And so it took three to five months to get all that in place. So then it all seemed like it just hit and kept going, I guess. Yeah.

James: Go ahead. No, I was going to say, it was a blast. Definitely the products kind of figuring out. Especially the limited edition stuff that, I mean, I and we certainly enjoy it. Because it's a little different what we're able to do with the brand and with the different designs and different offshoots. So it might be a product people are familiar with. But it just feels very different and infuses something different with it.

Adam Kornfield: Yeah, so that's what I was going to ask about, getting into the limited editions and kind of how that came about and how you kind of tweak the style a little bit with the three-legged juggler. Or like people notice, like y'all mentioned from the Kickstarter, like you kind of hid the boxes away until they landed in people's mailboxes. And they open them up and they see this great box that this notebook comes in. And then the three-legged juggler like blew all that away. I mean, it was like this is the coolest notebook set up ever. I mean, to this day, that's still my favorite release that y'all have done, the three-legged juggler. I don't know if it was because it was the first one or the colors or just the design on the box. How did all that come together as far as the way y'all are doing your limited editions? Because that continued on through some of your other products like the WorkPlay.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, well, as a designer, I like to experiment and kind of make original work. So specifically in comparison to Moleskine, right, we've all seen the Star Wars edition or the Simpsons edition on the shelf. And that's cool. But there's not a lot of original things out there to be had, right? So we kind of took the idea of a limited edition and said, hey, let's make in-house original things instead of using other people's IP.

Adam Kornfield: Right, right. And so did you work with some local artists to do some of these limited editions like the three-legged juggler and the WorkPlay?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah. We collaborate with all sorts of guys. The juggler was done with a design house down in South Carolina, I believe.

Adam Kornfield: Okay.

Brad Dowdy: Called the Half and Half. They're super skilled at what they do. Fantastic design. Fantastic silkscreen printing. And the WorkPlay was a collaboration with a girl named Jen Musari in Brooklyn. And we've got a lot of collaborations kind of brewing too now. And we've done, as you know, the poster project was 12 different artists around the world. So collaborating with people who are working now is a huge part of what we're trying to accomplish here.

Adam Kornfield: Yeah, and I want to talk about that next step. So you've got all this going. And you've kind of gone from the analog into the digital a little bit too. So I want to reach into that. But I need to talk about a sponsor that Joey really needs to listen to. So what do we have next, Myke?

Myke Hurley: So I want to talk about Harry's. But before we talk about what Harry's do, I want to talk a little bit about Movember. Brad, are you familiar with Movember?

Adam Kornfield: I'm very familiar with Movember.

Myke Hurley: For any of you that aren't, Movember is in the month of November every year where you will see a bunch of guys grow really crazy and awkward looking moustaches. And they do this in support of men's health issues. Like I remember when I worked in the bank and around this time every year, it was in a building with thousands of people in it. And you'd be in the lift and you'd see a guy with a handlebar moustache during the month of November. It's a real fun and great way to benefit a good cause by people who raise donations from family and friends. And it's all to benefit men's health issues. Harry's is the official raiser partner of the Movember Foundation. And they will be donating money and helping raise awareness throughout this campaign. So if you're looking to get involved in Movember, you're going to need a great razor. So you should check out Harry's. Harry's have great products. They have great looking razors. They have fantastic blades. It was started by a couple of guys. This is a familiar story who wanted a better product and stuff that they could find for themselves. Right. And they wanted to make sure that they could do this and not only get a great product, but also to deliver an amazing experience with a fantastic price and ship it directly to your door. This is what Harry's is all about. They have great razors. They have great shaving foams. They have great shaving creams and moisturizers and all of that great stuff. And they package it up in fantastic packaging and with an overall design aesthetic that will appeal to so many people listening to this show. They have a fantastic set that you can get started with. Their starter set is just $15. But with our code that I'll tell you about in a moment, you can get it for just $10. It includes a razor handle, three blade cartridges, and your choice for shaving cream or foaming shave gel delivered to your door with free shipping. And Harry's also give 1% of their sales and time back to the communities that they serve on top of stuff like the Movember Foundation. Over 1 million people have made the switch to Harry's. Their website is really easy to use. It takes less than 30 seconds to place an order. And Harry's really does believe in great customer service. And this shines through with everything that they do. So go to harrys.com right now. And there's a special offer for listeners of The Pen Addict. They will give you $5 off your first order with the code PENADDICT or one word at checkout. That's H-A-R-R-Y-S dot com. And use code PENADDICT to get $5 off your first order. Thank you so much to Harry's for their support of this show and Relay FM.

Adam Kornfield: So, Joey, how did a company that's cranking out awesome analog products decide to get into the digital mobile app arena?

Brad Dowdy: Oh, boy. Okay. So, digital and analog, in my mind, aren't really segregated. I'll start there. So, for me, it's not so much that they're a different category, but I like to choose the best tool for the job, right? So, with an analog notebook, I think the blank page is the best tool for the job when it comes to ideation, right? Because there's no limitations to, I don't know, pixels, no battery life you have to worry about. You just do whatever you want on a blank page. That's fantastic. That, I think, is the power of analog. But digital has its power, too, such as being able to search, being able to collaborate, being able to store a lot of things and access a lot of things really quickly. And I want to explore both of those equally. I don't have any sort of, like, sentimental preference towards analog, merely the tool for the job. Does that make sense?

Adam Kornfield: Yeah, I think that makes complete sense. And we talk about that all the time, actually, Myke and I myself. You know, we're obviously proselytizing for the analog, but we're not going to, you know, do it if it's not the best tool for the job. You know, I think that's kind of a thread that runs through all of our discussions that, you know, we want to use the best tool for the job. And everyone's needs are different for that. So talk about the two specific apps that y'all have created. So Mosaic is a note-taking app. And then you just recently released Spark, which is a, it's like an inspiration deck, right?

Brad Dowdy: Right, yeah. Mosaic is sort of like self-texting as note-taking. So we did the same thing we did with the confidant. We reached out to people and we said, you know, if you take notes on your phone, what do you like and dislike about it? And when we're doing product design, we always try to keep everything centered out around one question. So that was the question for that product. We got a lot of good responses.

Brad Dowdy: And we learned that Evernote being the leader in the market is actually kind of bloated. And people are not really sure, you know, why they're even subscribed to it. There's so many weird things you're getting now. Like you're paying monthly just to get an unlock thing, for example. It's sort of my analogy is that, my metaphor or whatever is that Evernote is to, I don't know, mosaic what Windows is to Apple. Like especially Windows back in the day being super bloated and full of a lot of stuff that you don't use. So we tried to really create a simple note-taking app. And we designed it around texting, which is an excellent interface. No one really complains about the texting interface. We do complain about getting texts, which can be a pain in the ass. But in terms of straight-up texting, it's super easy. Because you can send a lot of information, a little information, different media, such as like text, video, audio. It all works really well. So we designed mosaic around that. And Spark came out of the idea of I'm the only designer here. So sometimes it's hard to get, to shake things up, right? I mean, Adam, Jay, and James, they do a great job of giving me feedback. But sometimes it's difficult to just get a point of view that helps me think outside my norm. So Spark is simply two decks that you tap. And they give you inspirational prompts and ways of looking at what you're doing differently.

Inspiration

Adam Kornfield: And that kind of rolled in. The inspiration, I can tell, is a big deal for you, Joey, specifically. And that kind of rolled into the manifesto, right?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. I love positive messages. I was always like that guy who was like, everybody was cringing when they saw one of those inspirational posters. And I was like, I got to have it. It's awesome.

Adam Kornfield: Adam, does Joey ever bring you any ideas where you just like sending back to his corner and just like go sit over there and chill out for a minute?

James: Heck yeah. All the time. I mean, I think that's one of the things that Joey and I work well together at that. A lot of times we'll come up with different ideas. And one guy will look at the other guy and be like, man, no way. I'll say things to him sometimes like, Joe, I think we should be doing this. And he'll be like, no way, man. And I'll, you know, we'll keep talking about it. And then maybe over might be a week. It might be a day. It might be three months. We come to a conclusion one way or the other. Joey, the same thing. Some days we'll come in and be like, I think we should be doing this. And I'm like, sometimes I'm like, wow, that's a great idea. Let's do that. Other times I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, no, hey, we're not doing that. Go home.

Adam Kornfield: Yeah. Well, I'm sure there wasn't much of a fight, though, on this planner, though. The planner that came out looks really, really good. So you've done, for the first time, you have a planner ready for 2016. It's a special edition confidant. How did that come to be?

Brad Dowdy: That's a good story. Actually, I believe James was the inspiration to that. So we have two new guys here, James and Jay. James, do you want to come over here?

James: Are we allowed to bring our own special guest on real quick?

Adam Kornfield: Yeah, bring James. James is my email buddy.

Brad Dowdy: James does all of the social media, all of the emails. He's basically, if you're talking to Baron Fig, you're talking to James now. It used to be me. So James was getting a lot of emails, apparently, about the planners. Do you remember, James, how that went?

Joey Caffone: So like every day I'd get an email. You guys should do a planner. Or you should do a planner. Or when are you guys going to do a planner? We just got bombarded. It was pretty much the same thing, but it was just from multiple different people. So I was talking to Joey. And Joey said, OK, we need to do it. But we had a limited time frame from a production standpoint. So we needed to design it like in a day.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, we did the whole thing.

Joey Caffone: Was it a day? It was like a day to three. It was like three days. And Joey's like, I don't even know what's in a planner. So I had to go on a scavenger hunt and find planners. All right.

Brad Dowdy: I was like, all right, James, if you want to do a planner, like I've never personally used one. So go out and get as many planners as you can find. And we need to learn everything we can about planners in a day. A day. So we did. And I sat there quietly and just kind of broke down the design of, I don't know, a dozen planners and then pieced it back together into something I thought made sense into what you've got now on the site, the 2016 planner, which I'm super proud of, actually.

Adam Kornfield: So that this is really interesting because do you think back in the beginning, like from the Kickstarter time and the time you're launching the website, do you think you could iterate on a product that fast?

Brad Dowdy: Um, it, no, I think that, what is the phrase where, uh, intense times called for intense actions or whatever it is.

James: I mean, the planner, the planner was one of these strange ones where I think once James said it, like, Hey guys, we should do a planner. We all kind of looked at each other. It wasn't something we all kind of looked at. We're like, yeah, let's do a planner. And then we all looked at Joey. It's like, Joey, you ready to start doing some design? Yeah.

Adam Kornfield: Cause you, this is a time sensitive, uh, item for sure. Right.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. And we were just going into a production run and it was basically like we have four days to do it. Uh, otherwise we wouldn't be able to do it for another year. So we all sold. And that was the focus for those four days.

Adam Kornfield: That's amazing. That's yellow. This one's blowing my mind. And so I, I, I want to, I want to keep getting my mind blown and talk about this pin that y'all are making. But first we want to talk about our good friends and your good friends at Squarespace.

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Adam Kornfield: So you guys have the analog tools are on lockdown. Y'all are nailing all the paper goods. Your digital tools are going well. You got the note-taking tool, the inspiration tool. And now an input device has to be next on the ledger, right? I mean, you have to make a pen, right?

Brad Dowdy: Oh, yeah.

Adam Kornfield: So how did the Squire, so the name is the Squire. This is a pen y'all are going to be launching on Kickstarter on, what, November 10th. Tell us about how the pen design came about, how the name came about. Tell us everything about the pen. Everyone wants to know.

James: So, I mean, obviously we make notebooks, right? And in notebooks, you have to do something with it. You can look at it, but it's not as much fun. So tons of questions. What do we recommend? What's a great pen to pair with it? You know, fortunately, a lot of pens work pretty well with our paper, and we gave out a number of recommendations over time. But always in the back of our mind from day one, like Joey started saying, we knew we wanted to make a pen. And that was always part of our game plan of what to do. So, wow, we want to do everything at once. Things have to go step by step. So finally, how long ago did we start planning this pen?

Brad Dowdy: 14 months ago.

James: 14 months ago. So this has been under development for quite some time now.

Pens

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. From day one, people have been emailing us and saying, you should make a pen.

James: Really? No kidding.

Brad Dowdy: I totally agree from day one, but you have to kind of know when to spread yourself across new things and learn new things. So we shelved it for a little while, and then we started 14 months ago. And we just learned everything we could about pens. We bought dozens and dozens of pens and would use them in our notebooks extensively to try to educate ourselves even more than we did with notebooks.

Brad Dowdy: And it was a feat, for sure. A lot of dead ends, I would say. We start down a road, and then we find a roadblock that we just can't figure out. And we start again. And we kept doing it and doing it, and we didn't give up. And finally, man, we're proud to finally be able to put this out tomorrow. Tonight, it's like the night before a big game. We're even going to get steaks.

Adam Kornfield: So Myke and I have had the privilege to preview the Kickstarter, check out all the specs, watch the video. The video is killer, by the way.

Adam Kornfield: And so we have a picture in our heads of, you know, we know what it looks like and everything. But I want you to, can you guys explain, like, the look, the feel, the design for people who have not been able to see this Kickstarter launch yet? You know, a lot of people will get this podcast tomorrow. The design will be up, and they can check it out. But, like, right now, for our listeners live and our listeners who are going to download this tonight, paint them a picture of what the Squire is all about.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, totally. So you guys hopefully have seen our Confidant notebook right now. By now, it's gray or charcoal gray. It's completely featureless on the front. There's nothing on the cover. It's just a cloth-bound notebook with a beautiful yellow ribbon that opens flat. Right? It's extremely simple. When we put it on Kickstarter at first, we got a ton of messages where people were like, okay, it's a notebook, but what does it do? And it was like, it does notebook things. Like, it is paper. It is the same way with this pen. We're not going into some realm of, like, you know, dare I say gimmicks, but it is a very minimal, well-designed tool just like the Confidant. And our goal in kind of doing all this work and making it happen is we don't want to create a sidekick to the Confidant. The idea is to create a partner to the Confidant and equal. I don't want to just be a notebook company now. We're moving from that to we are tools for thinkers, and that's going to grow starting with this pen and starting with some other things coming along in the next few months. So there is a lot of weight to put on that. So to describe the pen visually, it comes in two colors, a light color and a dark color. We call it silver and charcoal, just like our notebooks. It is shorter than the average pen and longer than the average pocket pen, which it's great for actually sticking in your pocket. It doesn't feel very long, but it's long enough that you can use it all day, unlike a pocket pen, which tends to feel small. And it's made of a solid block of aluminum, anodized all around, engraved with our Squire logo, which is a sword. And the Squire, I'll tell you about in a second.

Brad Dowdy: And it's almost featureless, right? It's twist to open, and the area that you twist, thanks to Jay's excellent engineering, he's sitting across from us, the area that you twist is the same area that if you turn a little bit more, and it has resistance, so it's not going to fight you on this. But if you turn a little bit more, it's the same place that you put your refill in. So there's one moving part on this entire thing, and it's flush with the body of the pen. It's as simple as we could possibly make it, and it's pretty beautiful.

Adam Kornfield: Yeah, I'm pretty stoked on the design. It's neat and clean. I like how there's a slight taper in it, so it's a little bit wider on the grip area. Not too wide, very standard, but there's a slight taper up towards the twist mechanism. And that was one of the questions I had. There is some resistance in the twist, so there's a little bump, and then you go a little bit further to get the refill in and out of there.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, and you're not going to twist it too far by accident. It's perfectly tuned that you twist it to open and close, and you have to twist it. You have to put some effort into it to untwist it.

James: Yeah, so Joey also mentioned, so we spent a lot of time trying to get the weight in the pen just right. I mean, a lot of the pens we tried, especially a lot that were made of metal, had a lot of weight toward the top of the pen. And they look good. They look visually appealing. But when it came to actually holding it and using it, it felt top-heavy. So the bump at the bottom is meant to shift the weight down to make it really fit perfect right in your hand when writing. So a lot of work went into that, and a lot of 3D modeling to get the weighting just right.

Brad Dowdy: Right. And as you mentioned earlier, it goes from thin to wide-ish, a little bit wider at the bottom, which, when you're using it, it prevents your finger from slipping down, because it is a metal body. And it ends up being really comfortable to write with. And like Adam said, it's weighted in the center. And the center area is exactly where the pen rests on your fingers. If you hold a pen right now, you'll see there's a spot where it rests on your pointer. The weight sits right on that perfectly. And it feels almost invisible, despite having a nice heft being an aluminum pen.

Adam Kornfield: And so talk about the refill you guys chose to use with this pen.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, good question. So we use a Parker-style capless rollerball refill. That's 6 millimeters fine point. And it comes with one in every pen. It has Baron Fig on it, actually. If you pull the refill out, it's printed Baron Fig. And if you spin it around, it says, the pen is a mighty sword, which is kind of what we think of, as opposed to, that's where the name Squire comes from. Instead of, the pen is mightier than the sword, we think that the pen is the perfect metaphor for a powerful weapon or an object, right, to move the masses, to create ideas that really change the world. And so the pen is a mighty sword, for us, was the perfect way to describe that. And to call it the Squire.

Adam Kornfield: Yeah, and spying the refill on the preview, it actually looks like the Schmidt P8126, which is their six-millimeter refill that everyone loves, you know, the rollerball-type refill. It's a nice dark ink. It works perfect with your paper in all the different notebooks.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's fantastic. So, you know, you guys know where you'll be able to get it, or you can get it through us. Yep. Pen is a mighty sword, all that good stuff.

Myke Hurley: You made a very, very wise choice with that refill, guys. Very, very wise choice.

Adam Kornfield: Glad you guys approve. Y'all can't see the chat room, but there was actually someone entered. Please let it be this refill. And I just gave him a little smiley face, and it is. So, yeah, we're very happy about that refill selection. It's an excellent choice. Yeah, it really is excellent. So what's the... So since it's... You know, y'all are pre-gaming tonight for the big launch tomorrow, and I already know the answer to this, but what's the expectations?

James: Man, we don't know. I mean, we talked about this all earlier, but... No idea, right? No idea. I mean... We really don't. It's just like last time. I mean, beyond our couple best friends and, you know, moms and girlfriends, like other than that, that's it. We don't know. Are people going to buy or not buy? But, you know, we love the pen. We're really proud of it. This thing's... It's a really nice writing instrument. I mean, it's a lot of labor of love went to building this and design.

Adam Kornfield: So can I mention the price point?

Brad Dowdy: Oh, yeah. Go for it.

Adam Kornfield: So, it's priced at $50, which I think is spot on, nailed, like the range for like what y'all have done, what you've designed, the quality, the style, the materials, everything. I think this is going to kill. I think it's going to do really, really well for you guys on Kickstarter. And I mean, not only do you have just a huge fan base of Baron Fig, but you have built-in writers, you know, that love your products. You know what style and aesthetic your customers like because they wouldn't be your customers in the first place if they weren't into this type of thing. And the price point is just like right on the money. I think you're going to... I think it's going to do exceptionally well. And I don't think that would be a shock to y'all either. I think you're pretty... You should be confident on this one, I think.

Brad Dowdy: Thank you. Every time we do any launch or anything, we all take guesses. And I'm not going to read them out just because...

Myke Hurley: Yeah, that's fine. Don't tempt fate. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: But the guesses are very broad, like from low to high. We just have no idea what's going to happen. Gotcha. Gotcha.

Adam Kornfield: Well, I'm excited to see this launch. I have my email alert set since I, you know, we got to cheat and get the pre... The advanced link. I got the little button there that says email me when this project goes live. So 7 a.m. tomorrow, I expect an email so I can get on it. I will be up and ready to back the Squire. I can't wait.

Brad Dowdy: Great, great. So let me ask you a few questions. Sure. James reached out to you like a couple weeks ago, I guess, telling you about the pen, right?

Adam Kornfield: Right.

Brad Dowdy: What did you think when you first heard this?

Adam Kornfield: Well, I didn't get any information from James other than... The first one was, hey, we have something coming up, but I can't tell you. And I'm like, well, thanks, James. I appreciate it. You're doing a lot of good. You're doing me, buddy. And then he was like, well, hey, we need to get the guys on the podcast. And I'm like, yeah, I know. We absolutely do. I don't know what's taking us so long. It's ridiculous. We haven't done this yet. And we're going to be launching a pen. And that was pretty much it. And I emailed him back. I was like, a pen? That's all you're going to tell me? You're just releasing a pen? And then finally, I got a little email back from him with smiles and giggles. And it's like he was taunting me this whole time. Then he finally sent me, well, here's the preview link. And I'm like, oh, OK, thank you. It took me basically three emails to get any information about what y'all were doing. And then when he sent it, the first thing I saw was the shape of the pen. And I was like, OK, yeah. I don't really need anything else. Once I saw the shape of the pen and I was done right there. I was in at that point. You know, I know you guys.

Pen Aesthetics

Myke Hurley: I'm all about the shape because, I mean, it's aesthetically pleasing. But in looking at it and, you know, me and Brad knowing how this sort of stuff works, like that is a smart design. Because the taper will allow for a nice grip and also give for good weight distribution. You know, we can see that stuff and be like, we know you're serious, you know.

Adam Kornfield: And I'm excited about the length of the pen. I like that medium length pen where it's not too long, not too short. I do like to carry pens in my pocket. This one is clipless. It's going to be perfect for that. I think everything about it's spot on, to be perfectly honest. You know, once I pulled it out of James' cold, dead hands. And, you know, special shout out to James' Santa suit in the video. You guys will love that when you'll see that tomorrow. Yeah, it's a good one. Yeah, y'all did a really good job on the video. Do you have time for a couple more listener questions?

Brad Dowdy: Oh, for sure.

Adam Kornfield: We got a few.

Adam Kornfield: So, MT the Lasher. These are great names from our Slack channel. Any new colors planned for the apprentice or confidant?

Adam Kornfield: What's on the future planning? Can you give us any tidbits?

Brad Dowdy: That question always tickles me. So, we did just release the charcoal confidant. And I can say with certainty that there are more colors in the spectrum that we are aware of.

Adam Kornfield: So, let me ask it this way. You have a color palette you're known for, I would say, at this point. Are we ever going to see bright orange or turquoise? Or are we staying in the Baron Fig palette going forward? If that makes sense.

James: I think, so we have a Pantone swatch book over here. And I think all of the colors in there are a possible possibility at some point in time. All right. All right. Fair enough.

Brad Dowdy: There is going to be some magic happening. So, to answer the question directly, yes. As a designer, I am a huge fan of color. My bedroom at home is bright green. And there will certainly be more colors when it makes sense, conceptually. Gotcha. Gotcha.

Pencils and Pens

Adam Kornfield: Besides the Squire, what pens and pencils are you guys using?

Brad Dowdy: Oh, hell to the no, no, no. That's a good question. Okay.

Brad Dowdy: All right. So, we actually, a buddy of ours, Andy Wellfleet, you guys know him, right? Sure, sure, sure.

Adam Kornfield: Yeah. Wood Clenched and the Erasable Podcast.

Brad Dowdy: He is awesome. We see him, like, every six months or so, I think. You know, we go to the West Coast last. He comes here. And he introduced us to, what's it called? The Black... No, no, no. The Pallet and the Blackwing.

Adam Kornfield: Oh, the Pallet. Yeah, that's great.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Okay. And now that's pretty much the only pencil I use. Like, it's been a beautiful design, all that.

Adam Kornfield: So, for this, for my show prep, I use the WorkPlay Confidant with the Blackwing Palomino 602 to get all the notes. It's a wonderful pencil notebook. The paper receives the pencil very well.

James: Yeah. We're huge fans of the Blackwing. Also, down, another shout-out to our friend Caroline Weaver down at CW Pencils. Yes. It's kind of, it's right near where I live, so I stop by sometimes. So, a few months ago, I stopped down there. I was like, Caroline, just give me a smattering of stuff we want to try. Yeah. So, she gave me a whole sample pack of all sorts of different things. And, yeah, Palomino was the way to go. It definitely worked really well with our books. We were quite happy with it.

Adam Kornfield: So, now, one comment I know you get on the books from day one, because it was in the original Kickstarter, that the paper is not necessarily perfect for every pen. And we have tons of fountain pen users that want a more fountain pen-friendly paper in the Baron Fig products. Like, I think it's a very good fountain pen notebook, but it's obviously not perfect. There's so much variation in nibs, inks, things like that. So, do you ever see any type of variation in the paper found on the inside of the products that you're all using? Or are you pretty set with kind of the formula you've got so far?

Brad Dowdy: That's a good question. Definitely something we get asked a lot. At this point, the thesis statement, right, the mission of our company is to champion thinkers in their journey to create and inspire the world, right? And what that means in, like, layman's terms is we want you to brainstorm in our book. And the goal for that is to optimize your ability to get ideas onto the paper. And I think part of that is to have a lot of pages in your book while still keeping the book at a small size, right? Not too thick. So, in order to do that, there's a certain thickness you get where it optimizes. You know, we have 192 pages in our book. And if we were to go and optimize for the thicker nibs, we would have less pages in our book, which would make it seem like then the space that you do have is even more precious. And I don't want that feeling because then that kind of goes against brainstorming. So, for now, this is the paper we use. And it works well with a lot of fountain pens, especially a lot of thinner ones. We use the Lamy Safari here all the time. But, of course, you know, ideally, Baron figures around for a very long time. And there will certainly be more things to come in that realm.

Adam Kornfield: So, I think the best thing people can take away from that, and that's something we all struggle with, and something I personally struggle with, and something our listeners struggle with, and the readers of The Pen Addict struggle with, is use the damn notebook. It's not made to sit there and look pretty on your shelf. Get out your pen. Get out your pencil. Get out whatever you want to do. Let your ideas just go into these notebooks. And, you know, a company like Baron Fig is, like, the perfect capturing device for all these ideas. You know, get out there. Use the stuff that you're buying. And fill them up with silly pictures of Joey. You know, Adam running around yelling at everybody. You know, just James wearing Santa suits. Just fill them up. Fill them up, right? I mean, I think that's what we all want to – that's the end goal here, right?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, to get it out of your head and onto paper. Magic happens. It really does when you do that.

Adam Kornfield: Awesome. Well, you guys are great. Anything else, anything I missed that you want to touch on before I let you all go and get those stakes down before not sleeping at all tonight?

Brad Dowdy: Just if you want to grab the pen or check it out, you can go to baronfig.com and click the homepage banner starting tomorrow morning or by the time you're listening to this. And you'll be redirected right to our campaign.

James: Yeah, and I appreciate you guys having us. It was a great time. And yeah, hopefully back at some point.

Adam Kornfield: Yeah, it was way too long in the making and it will not be near as long the next time we get you guys back on it. It was awesome. I really appreciate you all taking the time to do this.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, thank you for asking.

Adam Kornfield: All right.

Myke Hurley: If you want to find links to the things we discussed today, including a link to baronfig.com, you can, of course, go to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 180 or just take a look in the show notes of your podcast app of choice and you'll find all of the lovely links in there. If you want to follow Brad online, he is at dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M on Twitter. I am at iMike, I-M-Y-K-E. And of course, you can always go to penaddict.com. Thanks again to our sponsors for this week for helping make this episode possible. Pen Chalet, Harry's and Squarespace. And of course, thanks to the guys, the great guys over at Baronfig. Go check out their products. Go support what they're doing because they're doing some awesome stuff. Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Brad.

Adam Kornfield: Goodbye, Brad.