The Pen Addict 417/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	417
Title:	Barely Cut Hay
Release Date:	July 1st, 2020
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 417
Audio File:	Audio Episode 417
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 417
Length:	6767 min <br />1.117 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 417. Welcome to July. Today's show is brought to you by Pen Chalet and Harry's. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: Why do you do that to me? Hello Myke Hurley. You're mentioning July? Well no, make me giggle before I have to say, hey Myke, how's it going? It's like all I could do to hold my breath while you finish the intro because you made me giggle, so thanks for that. Getting us off to a roaring start of what should be a roaring episode.

Myke Hurley: We've got some really, basically, if you would have said to me last week, plan out next week's episode, just guess what could happen. The four topics we have to talk about today, well three, the three main topics we have to talk about today, I never could have guessed them. I could have just kept going and going and going and I never would have landed on Jéoban candles, a new Lamy dialogue, and Sailor potentially being sold. So that is what's coming up on today's episode. It's a rip-roaring good time here on The Pen Addict.

Brad Dowdy: Well let's light these candles, Myke, and set the mood. How many of these Jacques Herbin candles are you going to be ordering?

Myke Hurley: Jacques Herbin.

Candles

Brad Dowdy: Because I'm not going to lie, Myke, I am in. I am totally in.

Myke Hurley: What? Okay. What the heck is going on here? What are they doing? What is this? Can you explain

Brad Dowdy: this to me? No, I cannot explain it to you. That's why we're discussing it, because Jéoban has made, I guess, ink-scented candles, even though it's not ink-scented candles, but they're to match inks, right?

Myke Hurley: Let me just, just again, I can't mention that. Right, so Jéoban, the ink company, pen company, mostly known as an ink company, I think. They have a fancy line called the Jacques Herbin line. You know, we've seen this before, like Graf von Faber-Castell, it's basically creating a prestige line, where they use the full names of the people that started the companies. So they have created four inks that have matching candles. You can buy the ink and candle sets together, or you can buy the candles on their own, and I don't understand this unless the ink smells the same. Otherwise, I don't know how you are pairing a color and a smell.

Brad Dowdy: So let me try to do this correctly, Myke, and let Jacques Herbin explain to you why this is a good idea.

Myke Hurley: We've got Jacques on the show today.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, Jacques is going to come on. We're going to get so many emails about pronunciation on this one, but I don't even care. So this is from the Bleu Plentitude set, okay? This is the ink and candle set. This is the description. Bleu Plentitude evokes scents with a musky dominance of green herbs, orange blossom, and barely cut hay. This aroma invites us to relax. Wait. Wait. Hold on a minute. You have a problem with barely cut hay, Myke?

Myke Hurley: What is the smell of barely cut hay? How does it differ to non-cut hay and completely cut hay?

Brad Dowdy: It's the same as a freshly mown lawn, Michael.

Myke Hurley: Well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Right. Okay. So I'll understand that. But we're saying barely cut. Why not cut? That's my issue, right?

Brad Dowdy: There is no such thing as barely cut hay. It should be freshly cut. Well, you either cut hay, all of it, or none of it. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. We're in agreement here, right? You either cut it or you don't

Myke Hurley: cut it. Like, did I just like get halfway? Like, oh, stop. That's a different smell now.

Brad Dowdy: That's how you get to Bleu Plentitude, Myke.

Myke Hurley: Sometimes people try too hard with marketing messages.

Brad Dowdy: Well, let me continue. Let me continue. This aroma invites us to relax and meditate at the twilight of the day when the sky is adorned with dark reflections.

Marketing Messages

Myke Hurley: Everything else in this I'm fine with because it's like, I know what you're trying to paint the picture of buy this candle. It'll make you feel better. But like, barely cut hay. Like, while? I don't know what you'd, I mean, I guess, you know, these are interesting. I guess you could say it's like a journaling set, wherein like you have the ink and the candle and you light the candle and write your journal, right? Like, I get that.

Brad Dowdy: Okay, here's a good one for you. Noir Inspiration takes us on a nocturnal sensory walk with woody scents smoked with round tobacco and a subtle union of moss and vetiver. This aroma calls us to escape and daydream as the night gets darker and deeper.

Myke Hurley: Okay, so round tobacco, Googling, is nothing. So round tobacco is nothing. I'm now keen if every single one of these has one of these. Yeah. So we have delicate lime tree scents in the ombra insuances. Only delicate lime trees. No harsh, no bold lime trees here. Smoked honeyed tea. In the next one. Smoked honeyed tea. Sublimated by neroli and vetiver. So every single one of these. This is someone's job to write this stuff. Yeah, see, they followed a pattern where the, the, the one of the items has to be described. Like they have to put some kind of, is it adjective? It's Mad Libs. I can never remember the difference between adjectives, nouns, verbs, and I'm terrible with that. These are adjectives. They're using an unnecessary adjective in this. Look, this is a great holiday gift, which is like surprising to me to see it be in the summer. But like this kind of thing is like awesome. You know that you've got someone in your life who likes journaling? Look how thoughtful I am. Here's a bottle of ink and a matching candle for the journaling. Like you think I'm making fun here. I am being deadly serious. Like I think I want one. I'm getting one. Super interesting, but I really want to know how the ink and the smell tie together because at the moment, the only thing that's tying them together is they print the label on the candle in the same color as the ink.

Brad Dowdy: Exactly. Exactly. So, and the ink doesn't look like it's scented. Um, and yeah, I guess these are new colors of ink as well. I don't think these are the proper lineup unless they've been in the Jacques Herbin lineup. They have not been in the J. Herbin lineup before. So, I don't know. I'm just fascinated by this whole thing. I appreciate our friend Sarah Bijoual sending me this link because it kind of blew my mind when I saw this.

Myke Hurley: Look, companies are going to company, right? Like that's just, you know, they're going to do their thing. And so, I think the product itself, like the idea of putting these in a nice box and selling it, I get that. Selling the candles on their own seems peculiar, even more peculiar to me, right? Like buying scented candles from the pen company. Like I don't know who's doing that, but like as a set, it's, it makes sense to me. But sometimes people just gotta, you don't have to tone down the marketing. That's not why I'm asking, right? But base it in reality. That's, that's what I like. So, everything except like giving these weird adjectives, which, which like round tobacco. I'm really keen for someone to try and tell me what that means because Google just gives me results for round tobacco tins.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And these are not translated, right? This is written in English. We're not translating

Myke Hurley: the site like the Google Translator. That is possibly the harshest burn you could have given.

Myke Hurley: Whoops. You know when we speak nonsense because they've been terribly translated. No, it's not that. It's not that. I want to move straight on though, because I watched a YouTube video this morning that I can, a set of YouTube videos that I am really intrigued about and cannot get my head around. And it is, I would say two and a half Lamy products. They have two new products and one older product that they've just, it's just got the limited edition version for the year, right? Yeah. So, we have the Dialog CC, which is a, what looks like a completely new version of an existing pen. Mm-hmm. Which is the Dialog was Lamy's vanishing point. Correct. Right? It is Lamy's retractable nib fountain pen. And they have recreated it in a selection of colors. I think it's blue and white, but they have different metal accents. I think, actually, I think they both have rose gold accents, right? It looks like whether white or blue, which by the way, the blue and rose gold, oh my God. Yeah. And so, they have created a twist retractable fountain pen, which has-

Brad Dowdy: Which is what the Dialog has always been.

Myke Hurley: Yep. But they've, but they've reached, they've changed the design. They've put like a roll stop on it. They've refined a lot of the design. I think I'm spotting in these selection of pens, a new Lamy design language. Okay. I wonder if you agree with me, which is these like imperfect circles that- Okay. Right? You see like on the edge of the pen, there's like a circle, like the very, sorry, the very, like the butt end of the pen has like a circle, but it's not flat.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It's like a, the best description, I, from the side, it's kind of wavy, even though that's not the-

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: The term I'm looking for, but it's, it's kind of got that motion to it, right?

Myke Hurley: All of these links should be in the show notes. You kind of have to watch these YouTube videos to have any idea what we're talking about. But the, the upper pen, the Idios, the body of the pen is circular, except it has a squared corner, right? Yes. Like a rounded square corner. Now, these are two new products that have these kinds of motifs to them. This seems like someone is doing something new with product design at Lamy, right?

Brad Dowdy: I feel like it's a continuation. I'm not seeing any, any separation or any change in direction, which is why I wanted to lump all these things together. I see what you're-

Myke Hurley: I think, Ian, you disagree on this one.

Brad Dowdy: Maybe, because I, I agree with you on the dialogue, Cece. Now, I watched that video with the, with the Twitch chat last week, probably 10 times. I couldn't stop watching that video. It's a fascinating video. And, you know, it's like every time you pick up something new and you're trying to figure out what is actually happening with the design of this pen in relation to the previous dialogue, which is called the dialogue three.

Brad Dowdy: It's pretty different. I'm guessing the internal mechanisms are the same, but we'll have to wait and see when I get that, which means the diameter is probably about the same, which has always been kind of the biggest gotcha with the dialogue. It's a very wide barrel pen. And it looks like they want to slim down the idea of the dialogue, maybe make it not so large and imposing. It's a, it's a big imposing pen. And then by the time you extend the nib, it just gets even, even bigger. And I'm, I think they're trying to streamline that a little bit in the design of the end of the pen, I think is something different than what they've done in the past. Like that I'm, I'm buying what you're selling me there.

Myke Hurley: I think that the idios for me, it does not look like a Lamy pen.

Brad Dowdy: Like, see, that's, that's where we have a big disagreement. I think it is traditionally bad Lamy. Try too hard design. Oh, I don't like the design.

Lamy Pens

Myke Hurley: Let me just say that. But I think, I don't think it looks like Lamy's other pens. It may, but I think we can agree on this is when they miss the mark.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. The, the idios should not exist in my version of Lamy because they've tried and failed this version many, many times.

Myke Hurley: It's just like a, another try at the studio, which I don't think sells very well for them anyway.

Brad Dowdy: Well, the studio, I will disagree on that. I think the studio is a good pen. Like, so we put in a link to the studio limited edition. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: I mean, I'm not saying it's bad. It's a very pretty color. I just think in the lineup of Lamy pens, I don't think the studio gets the attention that Lamy would like it to get.

Brad Dowdy: Because they don't lean into it enough while trying to do things like the Lamy Ion or the Lamy Idios or every other Lamy. I forgot about that. That's Ion. That's in the, like the 75 to $125 price range fights against the studio when they're never going to beat the studio. The studio is the best pen there that they do. And it's not close in my opinion. Like I like the Ion fine. I would recommend the studio every time over the Ion. You know, the Idios is just another one of those shots that they take where, okay, we're going to tweak our traditional Lamy metal pen design and introduce the new one. And it just continues to be uninspired, I think. So I don't find the Idios to fall into any new design language. I actually find it to fall in line with everything that they've tried to make happen in the past that has not lasted.

Myke Hurley: I think about the industrial design of the dialogue and the Idios, which to me look different to other Lamy pens. But I am agreeing with you that this pen falls into the same spot in the lineup that Lamy have tried and failed at multiple times to make something work. But I just think that there is a visual design to both the dialogue and the Idios, which I can see some links between, which to me do not look like other Lamy pens.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I mean, you have to look at the Lamy Scala and the Lamy, oh gosh, I just went blank on the name, Imperium as their high-end version of the Idios. It's the Idios with the gold nib pens, and they just haven't really hit a home run with any of these. Like, they're all fine pens. They're all perfectly fine pens. But I'm waiting for that Lamy knockout blow that's not the 2000 or the Safaris, you know. And, you know, I'm including the All-Stars in there, too. You know, the molded grip pens. Like, they have the ability to create that amazing pen between, like, $75 and $200 besides the 2000. And they just keep making the Lamy Idios every time. You know? It's the same thing every year. Now, the dialogue CC, I do grant that the CC is interesting, and I will try to pick one of those up. I think they're coming out in September.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I'm very, very intrigued about this, but I will say I wonder if the Roll Stop is going to give me the exact same problem that every other retractable pen has. Why do they need to put them on the nib end?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, we discussed that. And if that's the design they're going for, they don't. And I don't understand why they did that. And I also am not sure that it's going to work as a Roll Stopper being on the front end of the pen as opposed to the center as well. As if it were more centered towards the middle of the pen. It's almost like you're asking for trouble setting it there. And I'm a little bit concerned just technically how that's going to work before you even grip it and it gets in your way.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, and I think it probably would. So, I will not buy one of these, but I desperately want to try one. It looks like they have a new nib design, which I think is quite attractive.

Brad Dowdy: On the dialogue? Yeah. I'll have to pull it back up. I can't pull up the video while we're streaming.

Myke Hurley: It at least has a strip of the rose gold color on it. But in the video, it kind of looked like a different shape to the typical London.

Brad Dowdy: I'll have to look. The Dialogue 3 has that kind of racing stripe. Right, it might be the same thing. So, yeah, it looked kind of the same.

Myke Hurley: What it really reminded me of, that nib, was the Mont Blanc M. Mm-hmm. That was very reminiscent. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Brad Dowdy: Exactly. So, I don't know. And the other thing that caught me was how Lamy makes really good product videos, I think. They're fun, at least. The Idios video was a real outlier compared to the dialogue in the studio. It's quite aggressive. They, like, really went for it with that video. I was like, what is happening here? And, oh, I see why, because I really don't want this pen. Right. So, show me all the flashbang than the actual pen. So, it's going to be interesting. The Dialogue, I'm sure, is going to run in that $300 price range. That's another kicker for that model of pen. The Dialogue 3s were, like, in that $280, $325 range. And I think these are going to be in that same ballpark. So, it's a tough sell. Like, I at least like that they're trying with the Dialogue. I just, I will never understand the Idios or Idios, however you want to say it, on why they keep doing that. They keep making that thing. And, like, I'll probably get one and review one and say it's, like, completely fine. But I just don't understand why it has to exist as opposed to, like, trying something really, really different and really pushing, you know, the Lamy brand. Other than just adding in another pen that a year from now we'll have to say, and we line it up with all these other pens. Like, what was the name of this one again? That's exactly where this one's going to fall, in my opinion. So, you got your weird Twisby Go syringe, huh? I had to bring this up. So, I got it. Shout out to Claire who helped me order this from, I don't know, wherever we ordered, AliExpress. And I'm pretty impressed with the build quality of this thing. It was, like, $10. It took us about two months to get it.

Brad Dowdy: Can you hear that? I hate it.

Brad Dowdy: That's the plunger is this spring-loaded plunger. And we talked about this on a previous episode of the show. It's basically the Twisby Go syringe. And for $10, if this thing works, Myke, I'm all in. Like, I'll have to get another one because I'll worry about breaking this one. It's a one-is-none theory. But I think this is pretty cool. People will be asking me about it. So, I wanted to put another link in the show notes as I drop it on the floor.

Brad Dowdy: Because they're going to see it and I want to be able to link to it. And I think if this works, I should get you one, too. I think you might like this. It's like a little contraption that I think you might dig.

Myke Hurley: To fill the cartridges I don't want to fill.

Myke Hurley: Right? I mean, yeah. I mean, it looks like a fun little thing. But I don't know what my personal use case would be for it. But maybe to fill up an eyedropper or something at some point could be cool.

Brad Dowdy: See, I think this is everyone's personal use case. Just like a nasal aspirator is. You don't think you need one. But it makes your experience better.

Myke Hurley: I do own one and have used it many times. So, I will see you right on that one.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. So, I think it's pretty cool. Especially for the price. So, they're actually pretty hard to find. Like, I was just Googling the name. I had to go back into our show doc to find the original link where we linked to it. To find anything on the internet that I could link to again. It's hard to search. So, that's why I wanted to put it in there. Say that I got it. And I'll be testing it out. And I'll let y'all know how it is. You may want to see what I think about it before you go ordering. And I'm waiting two months for it. But I'll test it out this week and let everyone know.

Myke Hurley: All right. Today's show is brought to you by our friends over at Pen Chalet. They're the company that have your favorite brands. Like Pelican and Lamy. Sailor, Kaweco, Pilot. And many, many more. They're an authorized dealer. And they bring you the products you're looking for. Whether you want a new rollerball or a new fountain pen. Maybe you want a new mechanical pencil. Maybe you're looking for some ink. Some converters. Maybe you want a pen carrying case or some storage stuff. No matter what it is that you're looking for, Pen Chalet have got it. They back it up with very fast and reliable customer service. They run special discounts twice a month. Including close out specials every two weeks. And they have free shipping on orders of over $50 in the United States. And they sell internationally as well. With very reasonable shipping rates. Pen Chalet has low prices on high quality pens. And offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee. So go to PenChalet.com and click the podcast link at the top of the website. Enter the password PenAddict for this week's special offer. And to get the code that you need to save 10% on anything at any time at Pen Chalet. So Brad, what's caught your eye at this time?

Brad Dowdy: Ron has two very expensive pens on here. That are two of my favorite pens that I've reviewed. In the Montegrappa Mia 450 and the Aurora Optima. Those are, you know, traditionally, you know, quite expensive pens. You like, make no qualms about it. That are at prices. Especially the Mia. I don't own one. I got one on loan because it was so expensive to review it. And I kind of fell in love with it. But I had to send it back because I didn't want to pay for it. Because it's very expensive. And this is like half price of what it would normally go for. And we'll have to link my review in the show notes. I did the orange one. There was three different. There were several different colors. It might have been like five total colors. Ron still has like the black. The red and the yellow left. And the neat thing about these is they have sterling silver trim. Which I was concerned about the price of this pen. Like you'll see all throughout the review I did of the Mia. I was like, how are they justifying this price of this pen? And then I realized everything that went into it. And what all the parts are made of. And what all the hardware is made of. And I was like, oh, okay. I get it. It's like, I can't. I don't want to spend the money on this now. And looking at this price has me. At least doing a double take. And same for the Optima. Which I think is one of the best all around good writing pens. Like that's your big time upgrade pen. You know, if you're making a step up from, you know, like the Lamy 2000. Like we talk about. And the Aurora Optima is like the step up from there. It's a piston filler. It's great celluloids. It's really, really pretty. And it just feels and functions exceptionally well. Very, very high quality pen. And that I love very much. So, yeah. Really good stuff.

Myke Hurley: So, once again, go to penshalet.com. P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com. Click the podcast link at the top of the website. Use the password penaddict to get your hands on these special deals. Or the 10% code on anything at Penshalet. Our thanks to Penshalet for their support of this show. And Relay FM.

Brad Dowdy: Hoo boy. You ready for this?

Tokyo Inklings Podcast

Myke Hurley: Straight up. We are not going to do as good a job discussing this as the guys over at the Tokyo Inklings podcast did. Which is where we're not only getting this information, but taking all of their information and talking about it ourselves. So, I actually really, really thoroughly recommend that people go and listen to emergency episode number one, Sailor Plus. Is the name. And I'll put a link in the show notes.

Brad Dowdy: So, we're obviously going to talk about the possibility of a new ownership group for Sailor Penco out of Japan. And as Myke said, our good friends CY and Jacob over at Tokyo Inklings, CY started texting me. When he started messaging me when they were about to release this show. And he's like, hey, did you see all this? We got an episode coming out. And I was like, no, I hadn't heard of that. So, he really hooked me up with some links and stuff to read more about it. And I implore you, like, you can, if you want to know more about what Myke and I are about to discuss, stop right now. Go listen to their show. It's about 20, low 20 minutes, 22 minutes long. Where they just take this topic and being in the Japanese market and able to read all of Sailor's press releases. And all of the goings on of all the financial implications. Which Jacob did a fantastic job breaking down. Like, he has a financial background. I think works in finance. So, he was able to break some of this down. Listen to them. And then we'll kind of talk about it in our own way. And how we feel about what is happening here. So, the short version. And then we can elaborate on all the ins and outs of this, Myke. Is that a company called Plus out of Japan.

Brad Dowdy: Was already a 14% shareholder. Of Sailor.

Myke Hurley: Plus is a big stationery and office supply company. Yeah. So, they remind. I don't think has a massive foothold outside of Japan. Or at least is not a, like, a name brand that I was familiar with. They do have an outside of Japan presence. But I don't think that we're really that familiar. You know, honestly, you could have bought stuff from them if you've bought from the, like, quote unquote, Japanese stationery aisle. Or, like, the Japanese stationery on JetPens, for example. Maybe this. I don't know. But maybe Plus do some supply for that kind of stuff. But it's those kinds of ideas, right? The nice little gadgets. The cute little paper clips. That kind of idea.

Brad Dowdy: But their main business, which is kind of like when we talked about Kukuyo buying Pentel, is really the office as a whole, right? They're an office supply company, not an office supplies company, right? And that's big business. So, plus, their annual sales in 2019 was 186.6 billion yen. That translates to 1.7 billion US dollars. So, that was Plus as a company. Saylor's 2019 annual sales was 5.3 billion yen, or $49 million. So, you can see the size difference. And Plus owned a 14% stake of Saylor previous to this.

Myke Hurley: And they did the Cherry Blossom Pro Gear that we spoke about a number of weeks ago. That was a Plus limited edition with Saylor.

Brad Dowdy: Exactly. Exactly. So, what Saylor did, and Saylor's had other financial troubles in the past. It was a few years ago. I want to say 2016, 2017. I couldn't find my article links that I saved. But they were close to having to sell back in several years ago or do something drastic to continue the company going. So, this is not a new thing for Saylor as far as, you know, kind of being on the edge of sustainability. So, what they did was issued convertible bonds. And as Jacob explained, what these convertible bonds do are a way to pay down some of their debt by issuing these bonds and having another party purchase these bonds, which is what Plus did. And these bonds are able to be converted into stock of the Saylor company. If Plus, the amount of bonds that Plus purchased, if executed, would give them a 57% ownership stake in Saylor, which would give them control of the company. So, that's what's interesting about this whole thing is Saylor could essentially have a new owner if these convertible bonds get executed. So, almost certainly, this is going to happen, I would think. Plus, already has a stake in the company.

Brad Dowdy: Plus, invested more in Saylor to buy out some of their debt with an option to have a bigger ownership stake. And they already have an agreement with Saylor in place before this.

Brad Dowdy: To use Plus's new sales subsidiary, which is called Chorus, for all of Saylor's sales work in Japan. So, all of the, I don't know, sales, promotion, distribution, logistics in Japan for Saylor company will now be going through one of Plus's subsidiaries. So, Plus is essentially kind of like a conglomerate. They have 17 different subsidiaries. One of them is a stationary company that makes Apica notebooks. You know, the Apica notebooks that I love. It's called Nippon Notebook Corporation.

Brad Dowdy: You know, and they have, Plus also has, like you mentioned a second ago, they have offices all over the world, right? They have a presence in the U.S. They have a presence in Europe. You know, they're in Germany. They're in Portland, Beaverton, Oregon, home of Nike. So, they're here in the U.S. They're all over the world. They're highly invested in a lot of different manufacturing, distribution, and logistics areas. So, why do they want to buy Saylor? I think that's the biggest question. Or why do they want to take ownership control of Saylor? Or do you have any thoughts on this before I kind of give my thoughts?

Myke Hurley: I want to underscore a point and make it super clear. So, at the moment, they've just bought a higher percentage of the company, right? They've invested to acquire, like, a higher percentage of the company in these bonds. But they have the ability and the way that Jacob kind of explained it, and I'm going to try and explain his explanation, which I'm sure won't go well for anybody, is effectively, like, the way that they can convert these bonds into an ownership. So, they pump them with money, and then they can just say, like, oh, now we want to turn it into our ownership percentage. And if they then do that, they own the majority share, which effectively means they control the company. This is, like, a friendly takeover rather than a hostile takeover. Like a hostile takeover, right? You just buy as much of the company until you own enough of it that you can make the rules, right?

Brad Dowdy: And usually in a secondary way, this being a direct way.

Myke Hurley: But this is, like, a similar idea where it's, like, they are not, quote, unquote, acquiring the company, right? Which is where you say to a company, how much, right? Like, they would effectively just be buying some, or, like, they have put in enough money, which they can choose to switch over to, like, they can convert these bonds into ownership shares. And they will, if they do that, which is, I wouldn't understand why they wouldn't do that, as Jacob explained, like, the way that the bonds are written, it is written to do this. Like, to not do this would be a very peculiar move, right? Like, to put the money into this type of convertible bonds without converting them would be almost like a waste of the money in the first place. Right, right. If you do this, you would do this to take it to the full step, but maybe they just can't, or want to slow it down, or whatever. There's a reason that they would do it this way. But by that point, if you own 57% of the company, you can effectively control the company, because you get to approve or deny any vote.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, your votes now outweigh any other ownership group.

Myke Hurley: So it's not an acquisition of Sailor. It is a takeover of Sailor, effectively. But as I say, not in a hostile way, as these things tend to go. Like, if another company's muscling in and buying up, like, a large percentage of a company, usually they're doing it against the will of the, or very frequently doing it against the will of the originating company. But that doesn't seem to be what's happening here at all.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that was the Kukuyo-Pintel relationship. It was a hostile takeover. Like, Kukuyo was just trying to suck up as many shares to meet the voting percentage that they needed to take over the company.

Myke Hurley: And, like, let's be real, right? Like, I would expect that most hostile takeovers start with a conversation like this one, which relates in what's happened here, where a company's like, we would like to buy enough shares in you to own you. Company A says, we will not allow you to do that. So, company B says, okay. Right? And then just starts... We'll find another way. Yeah. Like, well, now we're going to overpay, so you will be stupid to say no, or we're going to, like, just buy these up from people that are willing to sell them, et cetera, et cetera. But I've tried to give my layman's understanding and explanation of what is going on here, because I just think it's important to set the stage of, like, this seems to be all parties want this to occur for some reason. Right. So...

Brad Dowdy: And Plus was already the number... the top investor ownership of Sailor. They had 14% of Sailor stock. That was most of any ownership group. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: They were, like, majority shareholder, but did not own the majority of the shares, but they were the single largest shareholder.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm. So, I was looking at this on why Plus would want to do this, and it seems to just kind of fit their portfolio in the grand scheme of things. They really... It's mostly office furniture type of a situation more than office supplies type of a situation. Like, one of their main products, if you look at the U.S. subsidiaries, are those security stamps. You know what I'm talking about, where you have, like, the roll stamp that, like, marks out documents and things like that. And they have the APICA subsidiary, you know, that I mentioned before, but they don't really have any stationary subsidiary. And CY brought up a good point in the podcast that Sailor is kind of getting middled by Pilot and Platinum as, you know, one of the Japanese big three, where Pilot is a behemoth in the non-fountain pin category, right, with the Pilot G2 and every other, you know, stationary aisle pin that they make, where Sailor has very, very little of that. They have a few things here and there. And then Platinum is so small that they can just kind of do whatever they want. You know, they make all these special edition pins and just do kind of fun stuff and are able to sustain it that way, where Sailor's kind of in the middle. Now, one of the things that Sailor has in its favor that I think Plus is probably seeing is Sailor has a robotics division, which I had heard of in the past, but never looked into it. I didn't know it existed. Yeah, so they make, their robotics division makes medical devices and food equipment, but they also just recently designed, you'll start seeing some of this pop up, a new style of ink cartridge for their pins, right? They made the machine that makes these, makes the fountain pen ink cartridges and things like that. And their robotics division is profitable, where their fountain pen division has not been profitable over the past several years. So, you know.

Myke Hurley: And you may think to yourself, how, right?

Brad Dowdy: How did I get here?

Myke Hurley: Well, like, nice. But like, we talk about Sailor pens every single episode, there's always a new Sailor pen, right? And everyone's buying them and they're always selling out. Something that I had not considered, which was fascinating to me, was CY, CY made a bunch of interesting points. There's one that I want to come back to about the Rialo production. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. But saying about how the small run that they do, like all these limited editions, whilst it makes them seem cool and people love it, it cannot be a cost-efficient way of doing business. Because they make bespoke 200, 300 versions of a pen for ABC, Pen Store, Japan Co., right? Right. There is no... The margins on those can't be enough. And they also mentioned the idea of like having... You know, having suppliers in other countries, right? Like they don't get the good margins there either because Sailor do not have their own subsidiary in America that is their supplier. So when they sell outside of Japan, they don't make as much money as they could if they had like Sailor of America, which they did have, right? But they don't anymore. So they have to lose to the supplier that they work with or change the pricing structure. So like there are a couple of things going on for them that whilst on the outside, like these limited editions, like seem cool because they always sell out, but that's not... So you mentioned like Platinum's special editions. Platinum's special editions are typically for general sale, which means they likely make way more of them. And we do see, right, like you get like the Sailor North American edition, right? Right. Like we, you know, the... Yeah, those are different. ...which are the West. They're going to make a large order of those. They're all going to sell out and that's going to be great for them. But where they are probably losing money is on these really small batch plans that they do for like Bung Box.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I think that's marketing, right? Yes. Those limited edition projects fall under the category of marketing in my mind because there's no way that they're impactful to Sailor's bottom line. And maybe Sailor's gone too far in setting expectations for the market on what they will do for these smaller companies when the margin was never there to begin with. It was really just more of a marketing say, hey, you know, we're Sailor, we're cool, we're getting out, here's all the cool stuff we can do, buy our regular products. And everyone's like, no, we'll just wait for the next limited one. You know? So maybe that's one of the reasons why that group hasn't been profitable. Who knows? Like I generally don't know, but I agree with you that I look at those types of products that we love so much and talk about constantly as pure marketing expense as opposed to anything that's profitable for Sailor. And I definitely agree with the distribution conversation. Like I think that's really where this is headed in the long term. The only thing I don't know if that is how this is going to go and they use Plus's, you know, extensive worldwide operations to distribute pins differently. How does that affect us as a consumer? That's the part I haven't been able to solidify in my head. Does it help us? Does it hurt us? I don't know. I really don't know. Part number one

Myke Hurley: is I want this company to exist. Yes. So if this helps them do that, awesome. If it means they stop making as many limited editions, I'm fine with that too. I have lots of them. I always want more of them, but I really, I just want them to keep making some pens, you know, like and they will continue to do limited editions, but not small batch, I would expect, or they will significantly scale back the small batch. You know, like again, they were saying on the show about like a lot of these pens are just made because like an executive is friends with another executive or is friends with a store owner. So they make them a pen. Traditional Japanese business. Yeah. So they make a pen as a favor. But these large companies like Plus typically don't work in these traditional Japanese ways anymore. Where like you get to a certain point where you keep a lot of the respect and stuff like that, but that you maybe lose some of this like doing some favors for a friend because the company has just become too large to continue to scale that effort, you know? Yeah. But I would thoroughly expect to see them change that. or maybe the other problem that they have is like they could keep doing all of these but maybe they fix the Rialo problem and that is the kind of idea that fixes things. So apparently Sailor's manufacturing is not that good and for every Rialo that they make they throw one away. That's astonishing to me. Because, which is a 50% yield? Stop making the pens! Right. Stop it! Like, you know, I would assume they don't have these problems across all of their lines but if they have a pen line where they have a 50% yield on it like, after having made it for many years,

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: you should probably stop doing that.

Brad Dowdy: That's beyond unsustainable. Like, I look back at some of the the Nock stuff that we've done when we switched manufacturers and we let them on their own with our designs and they made a bunch of products and we had like 20% waste. That was so outrageous. Jeff and I got on a plane and went to the factory until we could get it down to like 1% or 2% waste.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Because nobody builds 50% waste into their margins because no one would buy your products if you did that, right? Yeah. So, potentially there is a manufacturing issue across the entire lines. Who knows?

Brad Dowdy: Who knows? Yeah. So, up next for Sailor, like in the beginning of August and this is through like their PR pages on their site and I did a bunch of Google translating trying to figure out some of this stuff. So, their chorus relationship begins on August 3rd in Japan. So, I don't know if we'll see anything impacting like some of the stores in Japan around that time. I don't know. Something to just kind of keep in the back of your head. But, they wrote that they're going to move their entire sales operation in Japan under the chorus umbrella which is under plus to strengthen sales, expand sales channels, improve efficiency, integrate logistics, anticipate growth and that's going to be their move going forward and I guess they're going to see how it goes from there.

Myke Hurley: This sounds like an end to previous supplier relationships, right? Right. That's what that sounds like to me. Like, they are no longer going to be using whatever sales logistics partners that they had and they will just be carried in the catalog that plus gives to its stores that it works with.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, so the chorus catalog will contain all of plus's subsidiaries so it'll be Sailor alongside Apica alongside whatever they call these, you know, security rollers.

Myke Hurley: So if you want to sell Sailor products you need to be a plus supplier or store

Brad Dowdy: or whatever.

Myke Hurley: You have to have a relationship with them now. In Japan.

Brad Dowdy: In Japan, yes, this is only in Japan right now. So it's certainly interesting to talk about. Like, it's not really what our show's about and, you know, figuring all this stuff out, but we're such Sailor fans and, you know, it doesn't affect us directly. If Sailor went away tomorrow, like, I would hate it and I don't think it is by any stretch of the imagination. But I at least do wonder, like, the business sides of things is always interesting to me.

Myke Hurley: This is why I was going to put out a call on this episode for the Tokyo Inklings podcast to continue doing stuff like this because I do have a genuine personal interest in the machinations of big companies. Like, I've always enjoyed that. It's one of the things that I love about covering technology is it's just what do big companies do. I find that stuff fascinating and I would love a consistent source of what are the Japanese pen companies up to, right? So, like, you have my vote to continue making content like that because I thoroughly enjoyed it. Like, I wanted twice the content that that episode was. Like, I just wanted them to keep going.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so CY was funny and Jacob at the end they were like, go leave us a message but I want you to leave it on the website. And I was halfway through writing a tweet to CY and I deleted it and I was like, fine, I'll go post a message on their message board. I heard that too, but my thinking was,

Myke Hurley: it's got to be more useful for me to say it on the Pen Addict podcast than to put it on their website is my thinking here. I did both, Myke, I did both,

Brad Dowdy: come on.

Myke Hurley: Well, you're a nicer guy tonight, Brad, that's why.

Brad Dowdy: That's true, that is true. So, yes, keep doing what you're doing. Keep, the interesting thing to me over all these years doing this is how many giant conglomerate type stationary companies there are that we have no idea what their business is, right? I see Kukuyo as a notebook maker when they're actually probably one of the bigger companies in Japan, right? It's like, those things don't really add up to what we see.

Car Companies Ownership

Myke Hurley: Reminds me of the car companies, right? That like, Ferrari is owned by Fiat, which doesn't make sense, right? Like, if you don't know enough about cars, you're like, well, but Ferrari are supercars and Fiat's are these little cars. how is this possible, right? Because like, you know, or like, is Volkswagen to own Bugatti, right? And it's just like, how is this possible, right? But it's just, it's making the nice expensive stuff doesn't necessarily mean that you make a lot of money, right? Like, there are margins and, you know, just because sailor appear to be a very well respected, reasonably priced to a very expensive price fountain pen company doesn't mean that they are more profitable than your office supply company be that you've never heard of.

Brad Dowdy: Totally agree. Totally agree. All right, last point before we move on with the rest of the show. Can you think of anything in our world that would cause us to do an emergency podcast like they did?

Myke Hurley: No. Agreed. We would always wait for the next episode. Yeah. Right? Like, we would always wait. Well,

Brad Dowdy: it's not that. I just don't know that, like, number one, we can't run a topic like they ran a topic for this particular thing, right? Like, that wouldn't, like, Sailor Pilot and Platinum in Japan don't have, like, we don't have the view into them necessarily being in England and being in the US. Like, what companies are, that we follow, it doesn't have to be, you know, obviously a regional company, it could be worldwide, but is there anything?

Myke Hurley: provide an element of follow-up real quick? Fiat used to own Ferrari, but I think it's been spun out as its own independent company now of which Fiat owns a large portion. But my point still stands, but I just wanted to try and save the follow-up. Yeah. So, yes, I'm completely in agreement

Brad Dowdy: with you. Yeah, I was thinking emergency podcast is like, you know, I mean, we were sad about Retro 51, but like, that is the closest,

Myke Hurley: that's the closest, but we just waited.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, but that's not, like, I feel like that's even a, that's such a smaller brand compared to something like Sailor that has a worldwide foot. Right,

Myke Hurley: but I mean, it's not about the size, it's like that our personal relationship with Retro 51 made it of high importance, but no, I don't think that there's anything that would warrant an emergency episode of The Pan Addict.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah, so good job, Jacob and CY, keep doing it, and we want to hear more. Definitely, please,

Myke Hurley: even if you've listened to us discuss all this to this point, go and listen to that episode, because there's more detail in there, and they do a better job of explaining it than us two numbskulls probably did.

Brad Dowdy: Totally, totally agree

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Brad Dowdy: All right, Myke, let's hit a few ass TPAs before we get out of here today, and I'm going to read this first question because I want you to answer it because you know the answer and you know why it's the answer. So this is from AJ Gaming. What ink best matches the purple Pilot Metropolitan?

Myke Hurley: Oh, Pilot's Purple Ink. Pilot's Purple.

Brad Dowdy: Yep.

Myke Hurley: And why? It's beautiful.

Brad Dowdy: And it's in cartridges, which I think is key for the Metropolitan. So I'm assuming that AJ Gaming, since they mentioned the purple Pilot Metropolitan, that they're wanting a purple ink. Is that how you would take this? I mean, I don't have to want it, but that's what I would recommend. Yeah, Pilot's Purple Ink is great. If you want another purple, Cross Violet is a very good purple. Make sure you have a converter for that. And if you want something besides purple, tweet at me and I'll help you pick out a new ink. All right, I'll let you take it from here.

Myke Hurley: These are the cartridges that I use and have used for a long, long, long, long time in my M90. matte.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, and it's a good solid middle of the range, bright, but not overly so purple.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I really love it. It's a great color. I've been a big fan of it for years, so big thumbs up here. All right, so next up, question comes from JS Carp, who asks, is there a way to remove a hair that is stuck between the tines of a fountain pen without removing all of the ink from the pen and flushing it, otherwise making an inky mess? A fountain pen slash cat owner is curious to know. Curious? Are you curious or do you have an immediate issue that you need resolved?

Brad Dowdy: I felt immediate, so I replied on Twitter already, but I wanted to leave this in here. For people to order a brass shim the next time they place an order from a pen retailer, many of them who carry repair type of goods or just like fountain pen maintenance type of goods, carry these little brass sheets, and I keep one on my desk for this exact reason, not because of necessarily the hair, but the paper fibers get stuck sometimes in the nib of your pen, and you can spread the tines out on your fingernail and get it out that way or do something, but the brass shim is very thin and it slides, you put it in the little keyhole of the nib and slide it towards the tip and it cleans it out and then you're good to go. so that's exactly what you need to do. I bet you could get a

Myke Hurley: wicked paper cut on one of those.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, like, so, yeah, you have to be a little bit careful and, you know, you, as you use them, you, like, trim up the edges to keep them sharp and things like that, so, yeah, it sits away from my hands and, but I don't know, they're so soft and flexible, it's not, it's not as, it's very flimsy, I mean, I've gotten

Myke Hurley: like bad paper cuts on tin foil, so, yeah, I wouldn't trust myself with one of those. Well, I was gonna, you have a much better suggestion, because mine was gonna be like, you want to get one of those loops, you know, like, is it called a loop, the little magnifying thing, and a set of tweezers and, like, I mean, really go at it, but that's a terrible idea compared to yours, but just be careful, I guess.

Brad Dowdy: And to be perfectly honest, with your pen inked up and you have something stuck in the nib, go stick it under the faucet and just kind of spread the tines, flush it out, and then stick your nib in a paper towel, let the ink run back normal again, run the water out again, I mean, it's a tiny bit wasteful and a tiny bit annoying, but I wouldn't hesitate if I was still interested in using the pen and the ink to stick the current nib under the water, flush it out, and then just keep writing with it until the water dries out of it, I don't think that's a big deal at all.

Myke Hurley: That is a good, that's a very good call, like it's not going to harm it. No, you're just going to have

Brad Dowdy: water in the flow, but you just stick a paper towel on the nib and let it suck through some more of the ink to flush the water out and you're back to writing in no time.

Myke Hurley: That was, there's something kind of funny in that for me, which is like the Incy Wincy Spider, you know, you know that one? Yeah. Like when you just said like, and like flush the water out, it's just, I don't know, there's something about it to me. I will not sing that for

Brad Dowdy: you because I will mess it up, but yes, there is, there is something there.

Myke Hurley: E Castillo 33 asks, which pen refills can be used in spoke pens? And I will add an addendum to like, what do you think are the best ones? Because I know there's lots that could fit, but what would you recommend as the best ones?

Brad Dowdy: There's really not lots that could fit, which is the reason why we built it, right? We built it for the Uniball Signo DX refill, which is the UMR-1 and the 05 size, which is 05 UMR-1 And obviously you think

Myke Hurley: that's the best because that's what you built the pen around.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, and we did that because there's not a lot of other pens that fit that refill naturally, right? It's a particularly sized and designed refill. That said, through our testing, we did find a couple of other ones that would fit in there. So two of the three other ones are the UMR-8 series, which is for the Signo 207-307s, which you find on the store shelves a lot, the Uniball SX-R, which are the long Jetstream ballpoint refills, not the SX-R 600 series, but the SX-R like 707, I think, is like the 7mm. The one non-uniball refill that fits is the Pentel LR series, which are the Energel RTX refills. So we purposefully designed this pen to use with the Signo DX refill. It just so happens that a couple other ones do, but I would be perfectly happy if you never used another refill with this because this is what it is designed for.

Myke Hurley: Via Martin, I have a couple of questions. Please explain the differences between the terms shimmer, sheen, and shading when it comes to ink.

Brad Dowdy: All right. I can do

Myke Hurley: one of them, maybe two of them.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Shimmer would be, I guess, if there's some kind of element inside of the ink which creates a glittery effect, right?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. A physical particle will be in a shimmer ink. Think of a gold dust, like you have a red ink with a gold shimmer. It means there is a literal particle in there that when you write on the page will then show up in that ink color.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, and these are typically canned B, the more dangerous two pens because, again, depends what you're buying for, depends what pen you're using. It's gotten a lot better in recent times.

Brad Dowdy: You have to, as I always say, I don't think they're more dangerous. You have to be more considerate of what you're doing.

Myke Hurley: I think that's two ways of saying the same thing, but yes, sure. You have to be more considerate because it's exactly the same, sure. Sheen is when they're, say you have a blue ink, when it dries, it also could carry a different color inside of it. So, you may have heard us mention the ink, the Robert Oster fire and ice in the past because it is a blue ink that when it dries, has a little red in it. We call it a sheen because it looks like it lifts off the page and creates an interesting effect. If you were looking at metal that carried a different color in it, so a sheen could be like a secondary color that appears when the ink dries, which is super cool.

Brad Dowdy: And I think the key with sheen is it's generally on top of the ink, right? It's the top level of the ink when it dries on a page. Not all inks have sheen. Some inks have extreme sheen. So you could be writing your letters, say like with Myke saying with a blue ink, and if you have an ink that has a little bit of sheen, the edge of the line might show up red. Where if you get a sheening ink that is marketed as such, when you write your line, the entire line when it dries will practically be coated in this sheen. You know, I call it like 90% coverage sometimes when I'm reviewing these sheen inks. Like you lose some of the blue underneath because it has this red that you can see at different angles on the ink line.

Myke Hurley: And shading is just a similar-ish kind of result but in the same color. So you may have like an orange ink that maybe around the edges of the line gets a little darker when it dries. Is that fair to say?

Brad Dowdy: So yeah, shading you see within the ink color when it dries as opposed to like on top. So the best way to kind of explain shading is that like the Huff Gordier Groen, the green ink that we like from Ackermann so much, number 28, it's a yellowish-green ink. And when you use a nib, shading is very nib particular and paper particular sometimes. A lot of these things are. And when you're writing with it, when you're writing with any fountain pen nibs, they take a steel nib, it's spreading the ink on the page, right? So when you start a line, you're actually dragging the ink downwards. So the line where you started has less ink than where you stopped because that's where you drug the ink to. So the shading is the difference in color between the top portions of that line and the bottom portions of that line. Usually, so the top portion of that line will be lighter and the bottom portion will be darker. I think shading is my favorite feature. It's the prettiest on a page when you get a really good shading ink and a shading pen nib. It's pretty cool.

Myke Hurley: I think we did a good job answering those. And then a secondary question.

Brad Dowdy: We're not going to do a good job on this one.

Myke Hurley: Awesome. Please explain the differences in paper. Weights, GSM, coated, non-coated, acid-free, and their relationships to absorbance and which might work best in planners and calendars. All right, so I want to say one thing. Weights and GSM, my understanding is it's exactly the same. Like, they're interchangeable terms, right? The GSM is the actual size, like the you get like 100 GSM. That is a paper weight. That is a weight of paper, which is a thickness of the paper.

Brad Dowdy: Is that fair? Right. It's fair and people just translate them differently. It's the same term. So yeah, it's generally the same term, but I don't know if it's like a US uses pounds like weight, you know, like you see 60 pound paper where that GSM is, you can convert that into like 80 GSM paper. So GSM, I believe, is grams per square meter, which is a density. It's a density measurement, right? So the higher the grams per square meter, the thicker the paper is, the more dense the paper is. And without context, you can't really tell anything about the paper. If you just have the GSM, you can say, oh, it's thick, but how is it going to work with pens? Well, that's when you need all of this other stuff that you mentioned, is the paper coated. How is it finished? Acid-free, we don't really get into these days. Most notebooks are made acid-free. You just have to research and see if that's a good thing for how you want to write. But coated and non-coated, let's take those because those are what we run into the most in our world related to the previous ink conversation that we had. so a coated paper, it feels smoother on the top, almost like it's glossy, but you can't really see it. You can just kind of feel it. So what that does is allows the ink to sit up on the page and not soak into the fibers as much. That could be a good thing or it could be a bad thing. If you need the paper to dry quickly, like Myke being left-handed and doesn't want to drag his hand on ink that hasn't dried yet, a coated paper like Rhodia, Rhodia is the most popular example of a coated type paper, the dry time for the same pen and ink on that page is going to be longer than on a non-coated page. The example I always use for that is Leuchtturm.

Brad Dowdy: That's one pros and cons. The other pros and cons is since the ink does sit up on a coated paper more, you're going to see more of the sheen and probably more of the shading because the ink doesn't go straight into the page fibers like it would on a non-coated page. You get a fast dry time with non-coated page, but if I use the same Huff Guardia Groen that I was talking about for shading, it's going to look different on a coated page. It's going to be lighter colored and more shaded, where on the non-coated paper, it's going to be less shading and darker because it soaks into the page more. That's not a bad thing either because it's marginal. These are tiny, tiny differences. I always use the term because it handles that well. The ink does not get into the fibers and you have these little fiber runners of ink or it does not bleed through to the next page. Non-coated can be good. That's kind of the main thing. As far as what works best in planners' calendars, that's up to you. I would say best.

Myke Hurley: As a person who needs to make these decisions like you, in my products that I would make, I would go non-coated because a coated paper can give you a better result depending on what you're looking for. We talk about Tomoe River paper which is an incredible paper but it's a coated paper. Even though one of the most popular journal products is made out of Tomoe River paper, the Hobonichi journals, I think that it is not a good choice to make in most instances because you are making things more difficult for people in certain ways, I feel, right? When you've got to consider dry time and smudging, which is why I, in the product that I have made so far, went with a non-coated paper and will plan to continue to do so because the theme system journal, I'm selling that to a wider audience than the pen addict listeners. So I would want to be able to give them a paper with properties that I think most people would look for. But at the same time, I do all my testing with fountain pens. So if the ink is getting into the fibers and spidering, I'm not going to use that. So I find what I think is a happy medium between the two.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, and to elaborate on that, I think a lot of the Japanese brands hit that happy medium. That's why I tend to use Apica, Kukuyo, Moromon, Midori, Life. They're kind of all the best of both worlds as far as ink characteristics and dry time and quality, right? So that's kind of what Myke's alluding to there. So you can kind of get that good middle ground, but it's going to really depend on your writing, the type of pens you use. Like so many little tiny things matter about when you're using paper that it's an entire show. And I think we've done entire shows on paper before. So yeah, it's great questions. These are questions we need to explore from time to time because it's hard to learn how all these little decisions make a huge difference in your writing.

Myke Hurley: All right, should we stop there for today?

Brad Dowdy: Let's wrap

Myke Hurley: it up. All right, if you want to find our show notes for this episode, you can go to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 417. I want to thank Pen Chalet and Harry's for their support of this week's episode. And of course, thank you for listening. If you want to find Brad online, go to penaddict.com and knock.co. Brad is at dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M on Twitter and penaddict on Instagram. And you can hang out with Brad on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10 a.m. Eastern over on Twitch at twitch.tv slash penaddict. You can find me online. I am iMike, I-M-Y-K-E. The Pen Addict is a part of Relay.fm. Go to relay.fm slash shows where you can maybe find another new podcast to add to your rotation. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of The Pen Addict and we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Goodbye, Brad.