The Pen Addict 47/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	47
Title:	Dan Bishop from Karas Kustoms
Release Date:	March 26th, 2013
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	Dan Bishop
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 47
Audio File:	Audio Episode 47
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 47
Length:	4343 min <br />0.717 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: Hello and welcome to episode 47 of The Pen Addict podcast, your weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, and the analogue tools that we love so dearly. My name is Myke Hurley, but I am joined, as always, by the dual pen-wielding badass, that is, Mr. Brad Dowdy. Hi, Rhett. Wow. Hello, Michael. How are you? I'm good. I felt like kicking it up a bit today.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, you did take it up a notch, and with good reason. We have a good guest on today that has definitely taken lots of things up a notch here recently. We have one Mr. Dan Bishop from Karis Customs on with us today. How's it going, Dan? Pretty good. Good, good. We're excited to have you, because both Myke and I are definitely fans of the pens you've been making on Kickstarter with Karis Customs. I talk about my favourites, the Render K, which I talk about all the time, and we'll get into the details of all this for everyone who is not familiar with it. But basically, what Dan has done is, in the machine shop he works for, he's come up with some great pen designs for things like the high-tech C barrel, and I mean the high-tech C refill, and other various refills like Parker refills and things like that. So, Dan, you've got to start us at the beginning. I know a lot about the background. Myke knows some about the background, but give me kind of a feeling of how this started, how you came to be part of Karis Customs, and kind of how this whole pen business came about for you guys.

Dan Bishop: All right. Well, I got my degree originally in product design and bounced around from job to job, and right about when the economy tanked, about 2008 or so, late 2008, I found myself available for employee, shall we say. And I met my current boss, Bill Karis, and he had a machine shop, and I had some product ideas that I wanted to develop, and through some couple conversations, I ended up working for him. But I was just a shop guy. I started shoveling out machines and learning a little bit about the business of how CNC's work, and eventually we're doing light maintenance, loading tools, and doing that kind of stuff. And when you're a machine operator, you put material in a machine, and you push start, and sometimes you have to wait five minutes or ten minutes or however long it takes for the cycle to run through. And I started having all these ideas, of course, because of my background, and I started throwing them at him, and one of them was an iPhone 4 case. I'll take that back. It was originally for the iPhone 3GS, the old plastic-backed phones. And we made a prototype, and never really got anywhere with it, but when the iPhone 4 came out, I pushed them pretty hard, and we made some. And there was an article on Cultimac about it, and we had a bunch of orders in one weekend, and from that point on, I was able to pitch ideas and have them take me seriously. So we rolled forward a little while, did some Kickstarters with a couple of pens, and here I am basically doing full-time design work instead of shoveling out machines.

Karis Customs

Brad Dowdy: So you've moved from the line and basically into more designing the projects and coming up with ideas for Karis Customs, right?

Dan Bishop: Yeah. I do some custom work, reverse engineering parts for hot rods and stuff, but a lot of my day is spent around our own stuff.

Brad Dowdy: So it's kind of nice. So that's what Bill started the company as was really just kind of a parts company. He was making parts for cars, parts for motorcycles, things like that. It wasn't – no one here got into the business to make pens, right?

Dan Bishop: No. No. In fact, he used what you would call a job shop. Say you were a small production company or you had something that you needed made, some widget you couldn't buy. You would come talk to us, and we would machine it, and that's how we made our living. But in fact, after the render K on Kickstarter, my boss, he was flabbergasted.

Brad Dowdy: I mean he was completely blown away. Yeah, so what I want to know when you brought that design, you said, hey, Bill, I think I want to make a pen. What was his response?

Dan Bishop: Let's see how I can put this.

Dan Bishop: Let's just say he was less than enthusiastic and his language was colorful.

Dan Bishop: He – because it all started about Kickstarter. You know, I found out about Kickstarter just through, I don't know, browsing the internet or something. I had a friend that did a project, and I saw another pen that was on there, the pen type A. And I saw it, and I said, whoa, you know, this is obviously very, fairly popular. And the high-tech C refill, you know, I know you love it, Brad. But industrial designers like it because the formulation of the ink doesn't bleed with design markers. So you can lay a sketch down, and then you can apply marker over the top of it, and it won't bleed. Whereas like a ballpoint or other formulations will bleed and get all muddy. So I knew about them from school, but I had no idea there was such a huge following for them. So I said, hey, I can make something better than what they made. And, you know, I designed something up, handed the blueprints to the shop, and they blueprinted them. And, you know, I storyboarded a video, had a friend help me shoot a video. I was in the video.

Dan Bishop: And that's a little awkward if you haven't, you know, you know, having your voice is one thing. But when you're standing in front of a camera, you're like, all these people are going to just stare at me. But it all, it went really well. And, you know, you can go to the project page, and you can see how much we made. And we try to be really transparent, and we show them the process of their pens being machined, which is kind of cool because people can go, hey, that might be my pen, you know, that's my pen getting born.

Brad Dowdy: So what was your expectation when you put this up on Kickstarter? It was like, you know, at the time that you did it, there weren't as many pen projects coming out as there are now. When the first Render K came out, like you said, there was a pen type A. There was probably PHX1 probably came out before that. And then probably the Render K, I'm not looking.

Dan Bishop: There was a carbon fiber pen.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, yeah. I know which one you're talking about. Yeah. X pen maybe, something like that. Yeah, there was a lot of Xs. Yeah, like a rolled carbon fiber barrel. Yeah. But then you guys came out. So what, I guess, let me back up a little bit. When you came up with the design for the Render K, how did you decide on that design? What was it? Why was that design important to you? Were there features that you wanted to see in a pen? How did this design come about, I guess, is what I'm trying to ask. Oh, okay. In its final form. Like, did you start out with a different style that you did some prototypes that didn't work and you kind of ended up on this final version? Why did the Render K work so well, I guess?

Industrial Design

Dan Bishop: Well, that's kind of funny because it'll touch a little bit about industrial design. Typically, like if I was to work for another company, say, you know, designing a consumer electronic or something, there's so much more ideation and sketching and versions and all this different stuff. But where I work now, most of the time, you know, it's like on demand. You know, we'll have customers that come and they want something and it's like I need to bang it out. Maybe we'll make a small revision, but then it's ready to go. So I drew some sketching, some sketches rather, of what I wanted. And because of my background and what I'm interested in and, of course, the way we were going to make the pens, we wanted it to have kind of a look where, say, you pulled open your grandpa's toolbox and he was a World War II airplane mechanic or something. And you pulled the pen out of there. We wanted it to not look out of place with his belongings or something that would also look good, you know, of somebody who's wearing a suit that pulls it out of their pocket. So I wanted something a little more refined but had some cool features like the knurling on the lid. You know, and we got a lot of heat for the hardware we used for the clip because everyone goes, oh, why are you using slotted screws? And, well, for that same reason, they were – people used slotted screws on a lot of stuff. I mean, even up to the 60s.

Myke Hurley: Mm-hmm.

Dan Bishop: So that was a conscious choice and we got a lot of heat for it.

Brad Dowdy: Clip design is a big deal. I mean, people freak out over that. Number one, because a lot of these – a lot of the Kickstarter-style pens and that, you know, you're retrofitting refills, one, a lot of them don't come with clips because it's kind of a hard thing to do. Right? And then, two, everyone's very particular about their clips. I mean, that causes – between clips and the cap posting on the barrel, that sends a lot of people over the edge.

Dan Bishop: I wanted something that would look cool but kind of be timeless in its design. Does that make sense?

Myke Hurley: It makes perfect sense. And that's what I really like about the way the RenderK looks is you're saying that, you know, I hadn't really noticed it until you said it, but it looks like it could be at home in the workshop or on the office desk. Like, it doesn't look like it's fit for one or the other place. Like, it looks like it could just be at home in any of those situations.

Dan Bishop: Right. And here's the funny thing. As you know, a lot of older pens – I mean, some older pens, but, you know, not all pens posted. You know, you couldn't – and that's a term I actually learned after I designed the pen, by the way, from you actually, from listening to you guys talking about pens. Because I wasn't a huge pen guy before. But they – we designed it to, you know, for the lid to come off and not post because we just – it made it a cleaner-looking closed pen. And that was something that we strode for at the very beginning, that when this thing is closed up, it almost looks like some piece of – I mean, not artillery. You know, you don't want it to look like a weapon or anything. But we didn't like the look of tactical pens because most machine pens are tactical pens, and they look like some kind of Geiger-esque, you know, aliens prop that is, you know, got undulations and all kinds of notches and sharp-looking points. And we just – that's not what we wanted to go for.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Yeah, visually, I mean, at a minimum, you would have had to change the end of the barrel design, have threading or, you know, with a metal barrel pen. With a metal barrel pen, it's a few extra steps and it's difficult. And it doesn't necessarily look as nice, like you say. So, you know, I think in the end it came out really well. So I kind of alluded to this earlier. So you came up with the design and you made some prototypes. And then you start on your Kickstarter page and then you say, okay, go, Kickstarter, go. And what happened on that – what happened on the first day? And, you know, how was your stomach? Did you sleep at night? Or what were your – what was your expectations once you hit go on the Render K?

Dan Bishop: Well, I was hoping that we would do well. Partly because – I mean, I knew we would to a certain point because we were trying to be the second one in the door and we got beat by a couple other companies that had the same idea as us, you know.

Dan Bishop: But – so I knew we would make some money. And we only – our goal was to be able to get the clips stamped because that's a different manufacturing process than we can do in-house. And there's – we have a house that we deal with that does stamping. So we said, you know, we only needed a few thousand dollars to have the dyes and stuff made. And that's what our goal was. My boss thought we were going to make like $3,000 or so. And I said, you know, easily, you know, we'll make $15,000, you know, no problem. And we met our original funding goal in less than 24 hours. And it just – we were pretty much – it was a 30-day project. It was just like a 45-degree line if you were just to plot it on a graph. It just – every day. It just skyrocketed. And my – it was very gratifying because not only was I right, which always makes somebody feel good, but just watching my boss's jaw drop. You know, he's like, these are pens. Like, these are pens. And the funny thing about it, he didn't care. Like, he used just the regular G2. He'd lose them like every five seconds. It's – when the original prototypes came out, we made a little jig and we bent the clips ourselves and did this little stuff. And I actually drilled out the lid and tapped it for the clip. And I was making one, you know, because I wanted one, obviously. And my boss said, hey, thanks. And he walks off with it. And he's like, Nick, now that you get to make yourself one. And he still has that pen. He still has it. And he thought that he lost it the other day and he looked like somebody, you know, who had lost his puppy or something because it was like the original prototype. And he still carries it every day.

Manufacturing Process

Brad Dowdy: Wow, that's cool. The thing that's fascinating to me about this conversation is, you know, being a fan of pens and never really thinking about the manufacturing side. It's like you've made this pen and you're like, yeah, I just go back to the shop and, you know, I drill this and I press this and I come out with the pen barrel. I'm like, damn, that's pretty cool. So it's nice to talk to a guy whose hands are directly on this product. I mean, it's just kind of neat. You know, they say, oh, I don't like this part. So I went back in the back and, you know, we made an adjustment and, you know, now it's looking like this. So I think that's pretty fascinating to me.

Dan Bishop: Yeah. I mean, that's the one thing that we, if you notice, we push it pretty heavy because we are a U.S. manufacturer. You know, we're small. We don't do any major numbers, but we design and make everything ourselves. And so one of the frustrations with some watching some of the other popular Kickstarter projects were they were always, you know, they were having a maid overseas or in another shop or something. And they were constantly, you know, people saying, where, you know, where's our pens? Where's our pens? Or what's wrong with this? And they were having to deal with somebody in a different, you know, country, different time zone and different language. And it just wasn't happening where I can just go, hey, this isn't right. Let's fix it. You know, we tweak it. Is this right? You know, does this look right? We test fit it. Hey, perfect. And just keep going. Takes 10 minutes.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Dan Bishop: And go ahead. No, it just it's it's it's it's funny because, you know, in my profession, it typically doesn't happen because a lot of times you design something. It's made of plastic. They have to make molds and you do all this stuff. And it's it's instant gratification. You know, once the once the process starts, you know, I can have a pen and, you know, a few hours.

Brad Dowdy: So, yeah, that's what that's what's pretty cool, I guess, is the timing of it. Right. I mean, it's a lot quicker adjustments or tweaking or turnaround. So, yeah, I thought that that was pretty interesting. So this so this render K project closes, you know, in it closed for about 69 years. And so it closes. And what does the shop look like, like the day after it closes?

Dan Bishop: We had a barbecue.

Dan Bishop: But, you know, most of it. I'm trying to remember. Did Bill pay? Oh, yeah. Yeah, of course. No, but he no. Bill's a very, very great guy to work for. But so we had a we had a barbecue and it was a celebration because, you know, it was it was kind of a good thing. You know, we get to make a product that a lot of people liked. And, you know, Kickstarter is great because you can you know exactly how money you need to make. You know. So it was it was awesome. We were because it was right. I'm trying to remember when it ended. Exactly. It's been, you know, over a year, I think. So but because it was right around Christmas time. And so we were all super excited. But then the reality sinks in. You're like, oh, man, I need to make it was like fourteen hundred and sixty seven pens total brass and aluminum. That's going to be like burned in my I use it as like my pin number on my on my my debit card someday. Watch. But not really. So nobody stole my debit card. But you have all the stuff and you roll forward. There's I'll tell a little secret. But we made a whole bunch of these pens and we sent them off to anodize. And when they anodize the aluminum, they dunk it in like an acid tube. It's called bright dipping. And it's part of the process. Anyway, the because the hole was so deep on the pen barrel just from, you know, surface tension, some of that stuff would stay inside. They'd shake it out or whatever. And they would think it was all out. And then they would put them in a bin. But what happened was a whole huge batch were ruined because they would the acid would leach out later and spoil the parts. So we're under a time crunch. And we had to remake. I think it was several hundred. Oh, wow. Ten. Ten bodies. And, you know, it's one of these things where I drive my boss nuts because he's, you know, if it meets the dimensions and everything else, everything's cool. And, you know, parts aren't banged up or anything. But I'm so he gets on me because I get so nitpicky about stuff. I said, oh, well, this, you know, you can't have this. So you can't have this. And so I'm always hovering around in the shop. And sometimes it gets a little aggravating. But I think in the end it makes a better product because, you know, it's got our name on it. It's got our face attached to it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, because, I mean, a pen, I mean, it's a utility product, but it's also a visual product, right? I mean, it's got a – if it doesn't look right or it looks, you know, something's funky, you know, with the finish or anything, you know, any kind of lines or crooked on it. I mean, it's – you know, people aren't going to use it. I mean, it's a very – pen people are very picky people.

Dan Bishop: Oh, yeah. And you have it – I mean, you're on a phone call. It's in your hand. You're constantly, you know, fumbling around with it. You're looking at it. I had an email from a gentleman who had – he basically started out the email saying, there's three things wrong with your pen.

Dan Bishop: And then he told me what he thought was wrong. And I said, well, you know, we made, you know, these choices because of this. And I don't know whether some people think we're a big company, people that haven't found us on Kickstarter. You know, we're very small. We have less than 10 employees. And anytime anything's done on Kickstarter, like if someone sends a message on Kickstarter or sends an email, it's pretty much me responding. So they can imagine me, you know, typing the email. So I try not to be too snarky or anything like that. But we had a guy – once again, the slotted screws we used for the clip on the render K, he was wondering why we couldn't make them line up. He wanted them to be like – I don't know if it was a vertical line or whatever. Sure. The way that – I know what you mean. I'm kidding. Well, I got lucky. I actually pulled my – the pen. The first one I grabbed to keep for me, I screwed the screws in and they lined up vertically. And that was the running joke in the shop is that we – that, you know, I had some magic to do that. But, no, it's just people – it amazes me how much people care about things that I, you know, being a picky designer type, you know, don't even obsess over. But it, you know, it's something that's very personal. I mean, it is a product. It's not super cheap. You know, it's not like a $7 pen. You know, our pens do retail for a little bit more than what most people will pay. But we want to give them something that they're happy with. So we try and some people, no matter what we do, don't – still don't like the end result. But we try to make everyone happy.

Brad Dowdy: Cool. Well, shoot. I think you did with the Render K. I know I'm still happy with mine. Should we? Yeah. It's an awesome pen and, yeah, it's really great. So, hey, let us take a quick break here real quick, Dan, and let us pay some bills real quick. Myke's a professional here. So I've got to let him do his thing for a minute.

Squarespace Sponsorship

Myke Hurley: Of course. So this episode is, of course, brought to you by those fine folks over at Squarespace.com who give you everything you need to make an amazing website. Squarespace provides you with all of the tools you need to build a beautiful website, blog, portfolio, or even a site for your business. It doesn't matter how experienced you are when it comes to building websites. You can put something online in minutes without having to worry about hosting, scaling, or integrating with social services like Twitter and Facebook. Squarespace have beautiful templates, and you can make your website one of their fantastic templates. They're very clean. They let your content do all of the talking. And they feature responsive web design, so it looks fantastic on any device. They have a great page building system called Layout Engine, which allows you to create custom layouts for each of your pages on your site in seconds. You just drag and drop blocks of content onto the page, and you can easily move them around, making your site look exactly the way that you want. They have built-in statistics so you can see who's coming to your site, and you can view these on the iOS and Android apps that they have, as well as allowing you to post to your site whilst on the go. They have award-winning 24-7 customer support. They respond in minutes, and they have live online workshops as well, so they can help walk you through step-by-step building your amazing site with them. And also recently, Squarespace have launched Squarespace Commerce, which is their newest set of features, that you can integrate a fully functioning store into any new or existing Squarespace site. They've integrated a payment service with Stripe. Then you can sell physical or digital goods. So if you want to sell pens like Dana has started doing, you could do that too if you really wanted to, if you make your own, because you can have inventory management. You can have processing customer orders. You can print packing slips and create customized emails for people all in one interface. And if you sell digital goods, maybe you sell music or audio books and stuff like that, or maybe an e-book or something like that, you can store all of these files with Squarespace. And then you can send out emails with download links that can be timed for expiries to the people buying your stuff. And it can be downloaded straight from Squarespace. So it's very, very impressive. You can find out more and sign up for a free trial by going to squarespace.com forward slash 70 decibels. Squarespace plans start at $10 a month for their standard plan. If you sign up for a year, you'll automatically get 20% off any of their plans because they have unlimited and they also have a business plan too. If you sign up for two years, you'll get 25% off. Use the code 70 decibels free, the number free, and you'll get an additional 10% off any of your first purchases over at squarespace.com. It'll give you everything you need to make an amazing website.

Brad Dowdy: I got a quick comment on Squarespace. Okay. The ease of use of creating a new page is going to be a real problem for me. I'm finding it easy to add these pages, like adding a link to a specific page for a specific problem I'm trying to solve on the sidebar. Like I just did the top five pins thing. It was actually too easy. Now I'm like, oh, I need like 10 more pages over here and it's going to start looking stupid. So anyway, it's been so easy to work with that creating something like the top five pins page, which people have been on my case for months about, was actually something I've been putting off that turned out to be really easy to implement. And it's just sitting there and I've got a lot more I want to do to the page and a lot more I want to edit on the page. And I can just go into that page, edit it on the fly, and it's all live. It's extraordinarily simple.

Myke Hurley: We'll talk about that next week, right?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, we'll do a whole episode on the top five pins list and things like that because I've gotten some good feedback on that. And one of the lists I'm going to add to it is my top five Kickstarter pins. I just haven't gotten to that one yet. So we'll see where the Render K lands, I'm wondering. I don't know. We'll see how the rest of this interview goes, Myke, and then we'll make a decision on that. There will be cash and envelopes heading both of your directions. So you could have stopped, right, with the Render K, but you didn't.

Dan Bishop: Nope, nope. There's something wrong with me, so I didn't.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, you didn't stop with that. So the next pin is called the Bolt, and I'll let you describe it. But I guess after the Render K, why the Bolt?

Dan Bishop: That's a good question.

Pen Complaints

Dan Bishop: Well, the number one complaint, it seems like a lot of things result from whining. But the number one complaint was people, they don't want to be responsible for the lid on their pen or the cap. You know, the Render K, people are like, oh, I love the pen, but what's going to happen to the lid? Like, oh, you set it on the desk or your pocket or something? I don't know. You know, people were like really disconcerted about the fact that the lid didn't post. So we got to talking about it, and I started looking at click pen mechanisms. And a lot of that stuff, it's very hidden, you know. So I started looking at different ways, you know, to, you know, I looked at designing a little pen set up for your desk that didn't have a cap. You know, maybe it rested in a little stand and looked fancy. But that wasn't very practical because, you know, nobody, I mean, how many people really sit at a desk, you know. Because, like, in my head, I picture something out of, like, an 80s Wall Street movie, you know, the big giant desk. And some guy's got an office and his pens on there, but that's not very practical.

Dan Bishop: So I saw some examples of some bolt-action pens. Like you said, there's some tactical ones out there. There's some guys, you know, making some in their garage and different things. And I said, hey, this is kind of cool, you know. So originally, I had drawn it up to where the side, you know, the bolt was like some of the other ones where there's a big knob on the side. And my boss just, he didn't like that very much. And after a while, you know, going back and forth and sketches and playing around, we came up with the idea for the, I don't know if you'd call it a knob plunger or whatever on the back. And so it functions the same as any other bolt-action pen, but we wanted it to look different. We wanted to distinguish it visually from the other bolt-action pens because all the other ones have a knob on the side and everything else. And so we, you know, my boss, little, he went into the shop. And because the CNC machines were all busy doing other work, he went to the manual lathe and made the prototypes by hand. You know, no, you know, no programming, no computers. I gave him blueprints. He went out and manually made them. And we liked them. So we decided to see if people on Kickstarter would. And people really, really either love that pen or abhor it completely, which I can understand. But it just was very successful the very first 24 hours on that pen, you know, just because we had a lot of repeat customers that liked our stuff. But it didn't do quite as well as the other one. And I think part of that is just because it's different. You know, it's not like most other pens, including other bolt-actions.

Brad Dowdy: So people just... Go ahead. I think it is different. And I do think that's why. I mean, it's... I guess maybe... I don't know if it's a more specific market visually for it or something. But I've never owned a bolt-action pen prior to this one because on, like, the traditional or a normal, what you would think of, a bolt-action. And you alluded to it where they had the kind of like the knob protruding from the side of the barrel. That always... I hated that. That always threw me off. So when it came out with something like this with just kind of the twist top and it stayed, you know, I guess the bolt mechanism stayed flush with the barrel. I thought that was... That was a bigger selling point to me because I thought it looked more normal and easy to use. I never liked... Like, I don't like something protruding out from the barrel aside from my clip. I already have the clip poking out. I don't need something else poking out the side of the barrel. You know, like, I carry a pocket knife. I don't like them... You know, I don't like them with the little stub lever to flip up a knife. You know, I like it, you know, cut out or, you know, something more flush. So, you know, I thought that part of the design was good. But I was also curious to see how it would do. And I thought it did... I mean, relatively speaking, I guess it did pretty well compared, you know, if you're having to compare it to the Render K, which isn't really fair. I thought it did pretty well. And I got to say, I'm probably a little bit surprised because it is different for most people. And it takes a different refill, right? So some people don't use, like, the high-tech C refill, like on the Render K. So they might be interested in the Bolt and vice versa. But, you know, what went into, you know, fitting the refills for this?

Dan Bishop: And that actually was a big problem. Problem.

Dan Bishop: Because the size of the mechanism is fairly large because it's mechanical. And the amount of room it takes up in the pen, if you hold it up to a capped Render K, I think it's just slightly longer than it. And we're using a fairly short refill, you know, a Parker Jotter compatible refill. On Kickstarter, there's something called stretch goals. And we had a stretch goal for a longer front barrel section that was compatible with the G2 refill. And we set it for $60,000. Only idea with the stretch goal being that if enough people generate enough buzz or get their friends to come pledge for pens, they will get that front barrel for free. Yeah. You know, that's the idea. It's a little bonus to get people to help generate buzz. But we obviously didn't reach $60,000. We got a little shy of it. But nobody seemed to be generating any kind of buzz. Like, it didn't seem like anybody really cared about it. So we were fine with that. You know, it was one less part we had to make. But there was a few people who were pretty angry that we didn't just give it to them, even though we got close.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, actually, you sent me the extended barrel. So on the bolt, you know, the barrel screws in the basically about the dead center of the pen. You screw it off and you put in your refill that way. And what Dan and Kara's Customs created was an extended bottom section to allow you to use a longer refill as opposed to the Jotter style, like you said, a G2 length refill. And I got to say, I don't like that. I don't use that part at all because I don't like it as much. It's too long. You know, I think with the mechanism, with the bolt, you know, it's already long enough pen. It's the exact right size, I think, with the short barrel. And then when you add in the long barrel, I just thought it became too long and cumbersome. So I don't think that's any great loss that you did. Just send out a bunch of those because I didn't really care for that part. I use it with the Jotter type. I use the Bullskin gel refills, which is my favorite Parker style refill. And that's what I keep loaded in my bolts. So I like that one a lot. And I just could never get used to the added length of the extra section there.

Dan Bishop: Yeah, it does make it quite a bit longer.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, that was what I thought of it as well when, Brad, you guys sent me one too. And that was sort of my – I really like it. It's great, but it just became too heavy.

Dan Bishop: You have the brass one. Yeah. Right. That thing's a monster when you put that other front end on there.

Myke Hurley: I was nearly falling over. Right.

Myke Hurley: It becomes very, very heavy at that point. And it's a little bit too long for me.

Dan Bishop: So it was a compromise to – because a lot of people – I mean, some people, they can't – they don't like any kind of ballpoint or gel refill. They really love a specific refill. So we're going to – we've made some more, and we're going to have them available on our site hopefully within the next week or so so people can purchase them. And the Kickstarter backers, they'll be able to get them at a cheaper price. And if they want a really – a longer front barrel so they can accommodate that, we're going to let them do that. So –

New Projects

Brad Dowdy: Okay. Well, cool. So you got two pin projects in the books, and I don't see a third one on Kickstarter. What's the holdup?

Brad Dowdy: Well, it's funny. You have anything else in the pipeline? You working on any pins? Yes. Or what else you got going on? You got – I'm sure you're – the gears are always turning.

Dan Bishop: Oh, that's my problem.

Dan Bishop: Yeah, we have a couple of other projects. We have something that's phone-related. But we do have two more pen projects that are – they're on the list. They're going to be probably prototyped in the next few weeks. But without going into too much detail, one's going to be a true retractable, like, click-type pen. Excellent. Styled much like the Render K. And then, as well, a compact fountain pen, one that's more sized like a Render K. Appearances will probably be fairly similar. But we found a nib and some other stuff that we're going to experiment with because, like you said, you make anything, and people come out of the woodwork asking you, what if, what if, what if, what if. And especially since we make it, you know, people are always asking us questions. And so, you know, besides my own curiosity and wanting to have a million different pens of different kinds, we're going to see what happens. But I'm pretty excited for them. And as soon as we have more information and get to that point, you know, we're definitely going to probably send you guys something to look at so we can get some opinions.

Myke Hurley: Yes. Fountain pens. Fountain pen is a great idea.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And I've always – and I was going to ask you. I didn't know what was upcoming or not. I had, you know, a question to – not necessarily to wrap it up with, but one question, just a more of a, you know, manufacturing theoretical question is why – Myke and I did a show, I guess it was probably back in December, where we talked about wish lists. Like what did we want to see? And one of my things was I want to see a good retractable barrel Kickstarter pen. Why is that so difficult to manufacture? Just in a traditional – what people think is traditionally a retractable style pen, you know, click, click, knock, spring loaded. I mean I know there's lots of mechanics going on in there. Why has no one been able to accomplish that really successfully? You know, at least there might have been some small ones out there that have attempted. But there's nothing that's been really successful that's been a retractable style.

Dan Bishop: Well, two reasons. One, if you're looking for something off the shelf, for example, if you want to purchase a mechanism, they don't really exist. There's a couple companies that make them, so you're kind of, you know, at their mercy. And the second is if you pull apart any pen, even the cheapest, you know, pen you get as a giveaway, you open that up and it's got this cam mechanism, it's injection molded. You know, the tooling costs alone would probably be, you know, $10,000, $15,000 just to have it made. That's after you engineer it and get it to work. So if you're trying to do a little project and you want to, you know, sell a couple thousand pens, you're not going to want to blow that much money on just molds for something. So that's why we originally didn't do a click pen because the bolt, like we wanted to make a click pen, but we just couldn't figure out a way to do it. And that's how the bolt was born.

Brad Dowdy: I got you. Yeah, I mean, that's good insight. That makes sense. I mean, I understand that there's a lot more going on in a retractable, but, you know, for someone with not having that type of background, I don't understand, you know, the costs involved in just engineering alone and then manufacturing all, you know, you're probably making three or four or five extra parts that you didn't have to, you know, make before or buy before, like you're saying. I guess it just kind of gets out of hand and the benefits aren't there for the cost you're having to put up to it, which is, I guess, why you don't see many people doing that.

Dan Bishop: Right. And it's one of those things where, you know, like I said, we're a pretty small business. And if we knew that, you know, the return would be there, we could invest in that, especially with Kickstarter because if you were able to somehow prototype those parts and then have a minimum goal of the amount it would take to have those parts made, then you'd be set. But that's just not for a lot of small companies. There was a pen project on Kickstarter called the Ultimate Click Pen or something, and he used a mechanism that we're looking at. So it's a German-made mechanism that's really nice. So we'll see what we come up with that.

Brad Dowdy: Well, cool. I know both Myke and I would be interested in seeing both retractable and fountain pen. Yeah, I'm really excited. Especially with the, you know, knowing the quality that you guys have put out before, we're definitely anxious to see what else is coming up in the Keras Customs Pipeline. And I know our readers and listeners are too, and I know the fans of your company are too. So we're really glad you came on with us today. And, you know, I think we'll wrap it up unless you got anything else, Myke?

Social Media

Myke Hurley: No. Dan, why don't you tell us where's a really good place to stay in touch with the things that you guys are doing?

Dan Bishop: That's, we mostly just post using normal social media, Facebook, Twitter. We have an Instagram feed. A lot of the stuff that goes through there is kind of interesting. You'll see kind of the culture. We have a YouTube channel, a Vimeo channel.

Dan Bishop: And it's just an interesting segment called Ask Leonard, which is my boss's dad who answers questions. And if you haven't seen it, you need to go watch. There's only two episodes up so far, but it's very entertaining.

Myke Hurley: So they can find all this at your website, karascustoms.com? Yep. Yeah, and that's with K. So that's K-A-R-A-S-K-U-S-T-O-M-S.

Dan Bishop: Yes, it's named after my boss, Bill Karas. Everyone asks us who Kara is, but his name is Bill Karas.

Myke Hurley: So people think it's Karas or Karas Customs, not Karas.

Dan Bishop: They're like, who's Kara? It's actually on our Frequently Asked Questions page. It was that often. But one thing I wanted to mention is a lot of people have been asking about colored versions of the Bolt. And we made a few extra bolts, and we're going to have colored, just like the Render Ks, we're going to have a few of those available on our website within a week or so. Awesome. That's nice.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, because my orange Render K is pretty much one of my favorite pins ever. I love that pin, so it's a great pin. Awesome. I'll look forward to seeing those. Well, we really appreciate you having you on, Dan. I mean, it was very enlightening. It was a great conversation, and we'll definitely have to have you on again sometime.

Dan Bishop: Oh, that would be my pleasure.

Project Development

Myke Hurley: Yeah. When the next project comes out, we'd love to hear how that's coming together. Because I think for me, it's interesting to just hear some of the manufacturing stuff and things I've never really thought of before.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's fascinating.

Myke Hurley: So, yes, you can keep up with me and Brad via the usual means. You can find out more about Brad and the stuff that he writes over at penaddict.com. And he is at dowdy, D-O-W-D-Y, and at .net. And dowdyism, so it's D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M, on Twitter. I am iMike, I-M-Y-K-E. Thank you very much for listening to this week's episode of The Pen Addict. And thank you to Dan for joining us. And until next time, bye-bye. Bye. Bye.