The Pen Addict 606/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	606
Title:	It's Orange Obviously
Release Date:	March 13th, 2024
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	Wes Kwok
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 606
Audio File:	Audio Episode 606
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 606
Length:	5858 min <br />0.967 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 606. Today's show is brought to you by Pen Chalet. My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi Brad.

Brad Dowdy: What's up, Myke? What time is it, boy?

Myke Hurley: This is only a way that I could check. We will talk about that later on in today's episode.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, also seriously, what time is it? Because we're in that no man's land of time zones.

Myke Hurley: Well, it's fine for you. It's fine for you. But this is the good one for me. So you had daylight saving time? Sure. Is it?

Brad Dowdy: I don't even know.

Myke Hurley: Are you in daylight savings time now?

Brad Dowdy: I'm on America time, Myke. That's all you need to know.

Myke Hurley: Well, whatever it is, the time changed. But the time doesn't change for me for another three weeks. Mm-hmm. But that means I get three weeks of all of my shows being an hour earlier, by and large, with one exception, which is good. Generally good, yeah. Because then I get to go home earlier.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. Yeah. So that's the good stuff. So this is like three weeks. We're off for like two or three weeks off kilter.

Myke Hurley: I feel like it didn't used to be three weeks, but I don't feel like it was that long. I think it used to be two weeks. Or maybe this is one of these things where it just surprises me every time. I don't know. This used to be the bad one. When I had an actual job, like a nine-to-five, this was rough because I had to rush home every day. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But now it's great.

Email newsletter "Refill" and its updates

Brad Dowdy: Well, we have other good surprises. I have another big surprise this show, and I think it's the first topic we're going to hit here. I think it really caught you off guard.

Myke Hurley: Yes, I refer our listeners to Brad's wonderful email newsletter, Refill, which is available for members of penaddict.com. And Brad was doing a hot or not of different things. And this one caught my eye specifically. Hot, unique paper sizes. So talking about things like plotter, travelers, field notes. Theme system. The theme system. You didn't put that, though, in your refill, did you? Just note that for the record. Also, Sidekick notepad is its own paper size. And Brad says they all skirt the standards and lean into their own thing. We are better for it, apparently. And not paper standards. While I appreciate a solid commitment to standards, it's no longer a deal breaker when thinking about paper. Oh, so what's happened here, then?

Brad Dowdy: I've changed my tune over the last, I don't know, 12 months or so. I've mentioned that I've softened my stance on standards only or GTFO, right? And I just think that the preponderance of new paper makers or even some older, more established thinking of travelers notebooks have leaned into their own thing for their own reasons. And I'm glad they do because they're taking these changes. They're experimenting. They're planting their flag in the ground saying, this is what we believe in and who am I to say that they're doing it wrong? And I'm willing to change my stance on these things, right?

Myke Hurley: I mean, I agree, obviously. Because I think that non-standard paper sizes allow for creativity in product design.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I do. I do, too. And so one of my old standard stances was actually a very American issue. When we were manufacturing notebooks for Nock, you used to, it cost more to make a standard size because, again, these are international standards and not really seen in the U.S. Because, well, I was adamant that we were going to make an A5 notebook and we'd go to our printer and they were like, well, this is going to cost more because we can only get the paper in this other size. I don't even know what other size it would be. But it wouldn't be like an A1 palette of paper, right, where they could just, you know, efficiently cut it down to size. They were like, there's going to be a lot more waste and we're going to have to cut it. And I'm like, yes, that's what we're going to do because it has to be A5. And in retrospect, I'm completely happy with that decision at the time and I wouldn't change a thing. But the more I look at the things I'm using today, that was, you know, six, seven, eight years ago that we made that notebook. As I sit here at my desk and use things, I'm not using, I'm using one A5 notebook and everything else that's sitting around is kind of, you know, just a different size, like a non-standard size. And I really enjoy these products. So, you know, what's the harm in making your own size?

Myke Hurley: I think standards are a good guide, right? I think you can kind of work towards the standard, but you should be able to be flexible on it if it's in service of making the product better.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. One of my core stances in the past was, well, what about accessories, right? And it's just, you know, whatever. It's like you can't, you know, if you're buying into like an A5 notebook system and you're buying a cover and you're buying these different things that fit that system. And then, you know, you find another notebook you like and you can't, you know, you have to rebuy accessories if that's your thing.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, but standards don't solve that problem because you can use varying thicknesses of notebook, right? So if you have a notebook cover that takes a 200-page notebook, but you've now bought a 400-page notebook, it's not going to fit anymore, even though they're both A5.

Brad Dowdy: Exactly. So, yeah, I am very much pro the experimentation and the discussion and the design of all these notebooks.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I'm proud of your growth.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. Like I said, I think we're better off for the experimentation, which I think is probably, in general, a good way to think about it instead of being forced down one path, if you will.

Myke Hurley: All right.

Uniball pin bracket and voting process

Brad Dowdy: So, yeah, that's good. I am about to force a path, though, Myke, and that is with the Uniball pin bracket. It is bracket season, of course, with March Madness taking place in the U.S. Every company has to do a bracket. Last year, we covered Lamy's bracket and told them how wrong they were in many of their choices. So this year, we're going to talk about Uniball's bracket and tell them how wrong they are in their bracket choices. So what I want to do, Myke, is I'm going to go through, I'm going to give my entire bracket here. So what Uniball has done, they've released this on their Instagram. You vote on their Instagram stories, which is, you know, whatever. It seems like a challenge.

Myke Hurley: It's a way to take votes, you know?

Brad Dowdy: It is. It's a way to take votes. It's fine. And the good thing that I like about this bracket, it's only 16 pins, right? So we have eight pins on one side of the bracket, eight pins on the other. You know, we'll go through all the entrants here. They have already done the first vote, which I have not looked at the results yet. So we're going to do that in a minute. I have not pulled that up to look at. But we're going to take their initial bracket, which we'll put a link in the show notes, to Instagram. You will have to embiggen this in any way that you can. And it is not very legible in the standard size. So we're going to start on the top left of the bracket, Myke. And this is Uniball, obviously, with Uniball products. And it should come as the shock to no one that I have a lot to say about this bracket. So we're going to go first. The first one, they went easy on me. So they did a good job of doing comparable products in the first round matchup. So we have the Uniball Vision in other parts of the world, like in the UK, where you are, Myke. This is the Uniball Eye, E-Y-E. And it's going up against the Vision Elite. This is a no contest walkover Vision Elite win. Even though I think the Vision is a very popular pin, it's one of the worst pins that Uniball makes because the ink, the rollerball ink, and I've been on my rollerball kick here recently. This is the one rollerball pin I do not like because it is just a straight up flood of ink on the page. For some people, that's a pro, right? Like artists really like the Vision because the amount of ink it puts on the page, right? I do not like it from a writing perspective because it's just a flood. The Vision Elite, for some reason, is a completely different flow of ink. It's very much more metered. It's a lot nicer to use. And I think the Vision Elite is a great pin. So that's easy. The second one going down the left side of the bracket here is the Uniball Onyx, which is their classic rollerball office pin, right? This is a pin you would buy by the dozen, throw them in the office supply cabinet, and that is going against the Uniball Deluxe, which is kind of the same type of refill but in a more premium barrel. So the regular workers would get the Onyx and then the C-Suite gets the Deluxe. Like that's kind of how it operates, right? Because they're fancier people. I like both of these pins. The Deluxe is a pin I used a bunch like back in the 90s over the Onyx, even though I use the Onyx similarly. So I'm going to have to pick the Deluxe here. So we have the Vision Elite moving on and then the Deluxe moving on. So the next category, they start to lose me a little bit. So the next matchup is the Jetstream versus the Jetstream 101. Now there's a million different versions of Jetstream. So the Jetstream in this scenario is the classic capped Jetstream pin, one of the original styles. And then the Jetstream 101 is kind of the stick pin version, more like the Onyx version of the Jetstream, right? It's just supposed to be streamlined, much less expensive. And, you know, even though it's got the same refill, same refill, same ink type, this was not an easy one because both of these pins suck. I just want to be clear. So we're going to take the classic Jetstream on this one and hope it gets knocked out here pretty soon in a future bracket.

Brad Dowdy: Because the bottom of the left side of the bracket is the Jetstream RT, which is the follow-up to the regular Jetstream in the previous bracket, but just the click version, against the Jetstream BLX, which is also a click version, but has the BLX ink, which is, in this case, I'm going to assume it's blue-black. That's what the picture looks like. But there's actually some other really cool colors in here. And I'm going to take the BLX because of the ink color options. So we have the Elite versus the Deluxe in the final eight. And then we have the Jetstream versus the Jetstream BLX. So let's switch over to the other side of the bracket here. Myke, is this as thrilling for you as it is for me?

Myke Hurley: I'm on the edge of my seat, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, good, good, good, good. So we flip it over to the other side and we get quite a range of pins. The first, like the first matchup on the other side, on the left side of the bracket, the right side of the bracket is the Gel Impact versus the Signo DX. Again, this is a walkover. That's the DX all day long and twice on Sundays. I don't even know what that means. But the Gel Impact is basically your wider barrel Signo refills, like your 0.7s and your 1.0 millimeters. And the DX just has way more variety. And it's just a flat out better pin. One of my favorite pins of all time. So the DX goes. Next up, Myke, we have two pins. I literally had to Google search, which is astonishing to me. And I figured out what they are. So they're calling this. I wonder if this is like an introduction of this new naming convention here. So we have the Elements versus the Spectrum. I have never heard of either of these pins. But what the Elements is, is the classic Jetstream Sport. And that's my favorite Jetstream of all time. And I don't know why it's called the Elements now. But if you look at it, it's literally what the Jetstream Sport is and used to be. Maybe this is just its new name. The Spectrum is similar. I've never heard of the Spectrum. And if you look at the picture, it's the Signo RT1, which is another awesome pin. These are two great pins. I've just literally never heard them called these names. So maybe they're just switching up the marketing a little bit on these. This was a top tier selection here. Both of these were very, very difficult to pick from. They're both two of my favorite pins. And we're going to take the Spectrum, which is the Signo RT1 model, just because there's more ink color variety in the Spectrum. And it's a really good pin. And it's one I highly recommend. Next up, we head into the pencil bracket. We head into the oddities bracket here, except for one standout, which you'll see in a second. The Chroma mechanical pencil, which I've never used, versus the Kuro Togo. Again, the Uni Kuro Togo, easy and a walkover. That is not even close. Not even a fair fight here. I would be shocked if the Chroma won, unless there was a BTS uprising in the votes to pull the Chroma through for some reason.

Myke Hurley: Do you think that the BTS fans are lined around the Chroma?

Brad Dowdy: We're going to find out here in a minute. We're going to find out. We're going to find out. And then the last one is the Emote. And it looks like they're using the Emote marker for this, because the Emote also comes in a mechanical pencil version, a colored pencil version. We're going to go with the Emote marker versus the Uni Pen Fineliner. This is a tough decision, and I think I have to go with the Pen, which is the standard Fineliner. Even though the Emotes are really, really good, and they have a lot of cool colors, I think the Fineliner is the way to go. All right. So before I continue the bracket, and we have the Elite Eight left, I'm going to go over to Uniball's feed, and I'm going to look at who has won this round, their first round here, because I'm pretty sure it's on there. Let's see here. So, yeah, we're on to round two. Let's see here. Okay. So the Vision Elite, whoops, won that bracket.

Myke Hurley: I feel like there's a pen missing, Brad. That, like, that, like, and I'm trying to Google it, and I can't find the name of it. Like, the very standard Uniball pen. Like, the Click one.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So we're going to get to it. I actually have a note. Okay, good. There's two that are missing.

Myke Hurley: Okay, good. Because I feel like I'm losing my mind here. I'm like, where is the pen that I think should win this? Hold on that.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, hold on that. Because there's actually a perfect matchup that would have been better in one of these categories. Probably, like, over the emote and fineliner that we didn't get. All right. So the Vision Elite and the Deluxe, which is what I picked. Then we have the Jetstream, which is what I picked, and the Jetstream BLX. So I was 100% right on the first one. So I was thinking what I would pick, not what the fans would pick. But we are exactly lined up on the left side of the bracket. The Gel Impact beat the Signo DX.

Myke Hurley: That's a travesty.

Brad Dowdy: It is a travesty. But I get it, because the DX is only recently, like in the past five to seven years, been a store shelf pen, right? This was not a worldwide release, like the Gel Impact. So less people are familiar with the DX than the Gel Impact. So I'm picking the DX every time. I'm not surprised at the Gel Impact. One, just from an awareness perspective, right? From a shelf space perspective, the Gel Impact has more shelf awareness than the DX. So I get that. The next up, I had no idea what would win here. They picked the Elements over the Spectrum, which the Elements is the Jetstream Sport, and the Spectrum is the Signo RT1. I'm not surprised that that won there. I love the Elements too. That was kind of like an unfair matchup, pretty much, because both of them are very, very good. And then the Kuretoga versus the Chroma. The Kuretoga won, and then the Fineliner won against the Emote. So I matched up with the Vote, except for the Gel Impact beating the DX and the Elements beating the Spectrum. So to your point,

Brad Dowdy: there are, before I finish out the bracket here, which now we're pretty much in the easy part, to your point, what is missing? And instead of the Emote and Fineliner matchup, we should have had a Uni Signo 207 versus a Uni 1R. And I don't understand why either of those pens, even one of those pens, should have made this bracket somewhere. The Signo 207 instead of the Gel Impact, this, the, I don't know, either of them over the Emote and the Fineliner. The 207 and 307 has to be one of their best sellers around the world. And I don't know why that's not in the bracket. And then the 1R, and the, or I should just say the 1, the Uni 1, should have been in here because that's their most popular current pin. So I'm guessing you were thinking of the Signo 207, which is the classic. I think so. That's the G2 competitor.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, this is what, yes. That is, this is exactly what I'm thinking of. Yes.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So I had a note that the 207 and the Uni 1 should have been a matchup instead of the Emote instead of the, and Fineliner. That would have been a better competition because those pens are super popular. I don't understand why they're not in here. Or even the, the one of the Jetstream, like on the left side of the bracket where there's four Jetstreams, like two of those could have been removed. Like the BLX doesn't need to be here, even though it won. The BLX and the 101 don't need to be there, right? You can just have a Jetstream versus the Jetstream RT.

Myke Hurley: Obviously, I love it, but it doesn't make sense to me to have the Kuru Toga in this bracket. Like I don't, I don't get it.

Brad Dowdy: Spoiler alert, Kuru Toga is going to win the whole thing. Yeah, I know. I'm picking the Kuru Toga. I believe the Kuru Toga will win the whole thing.

Myke Hurley: But that's why it doesn't make any sense. It's like, it's a different thing. Right. Why not put a notebook in it too?

Brad Dowdy: They, well, and then they put it, they seeded it correctly to where it's going to have no competition through the whole, through the whole thing, which is why it's going to win. So real quick, my final four would be the Vision Elite and then the Jetstream BLX.

Brad Dowdy: With the Vision Elite making the final, right? That's a whole, that's a pretty weak left side of the bracket. If the Vision Elite, which is a pin that I love, makes it all the way through. And then the other side, I had the DX versus the Kuru Toga in the final four with the Kuru Toga getting through. And then the Kuru Toga, it's a walkover in the final against literally every other pin on the left side of the bracket. Right? Like it's, the Kuru Toga has to beat the Fineliner right now. And then the Kuru Toga has to beat the Gel Impact or the Elements, which it's going to do. And then against any other pin that's going to make it through on the left-hand side, the Kuru Toga is going to win very easily. I think so. We'll see how the bracket shakes out, but it's always fun to have a little bracket season and see how these companies do it. But like you, I'm just curious, more curious about the 207 and 1 Omission, given that those are the two, two of the most popular pins that they sell. So interesting stuff. Good times, bracket season.

Myke Hurley: Bracket season, indeed. If you decide that you want to buy up a bunch of pens of your own and make your own bracket, I have a great place for you to go. And that's Pen Chalet. Let's go. Thanks to Pen Chalet for the support of this episode. They sell authentic, amazing rollerballs, fountain pens, ballpoints, mechanical pencils, and so much more. They have your favorite brands and they believe in giving you the best products they can at the best prices possible. Pen Chalet have faster, reliable customer service. They add new pens every single month and every two weeks you'll be able to find new deals over at Pen Chalet as well as the incredible deals that you get for being a listener of this show, which you can get to by going to penchalet.com that's P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com and click the podcast link at the top of the website. Enter the password PENADDICT for this week's special offers and to get the code you need to save 10% on anything at any time at Pen Chalet. What's catching your eye this week, Brad?

Monteverde Ritma Gala Convertible Pocket Neck Fountain Pen

Brad Dowdy: So the first thing that caught my eye was the second pen listed which is the Monteverde Ritma Gala Convertible Pocket Neck Fountain Pen. Big name here. But you look at the picture. Easy for you to say. Yeah. But basically what caught my eye was the picture, right? I'm not familiar with this pen but it's basically a necklace pen. Like it's a classic design from like the early 1900s. You saw a lot of these necklace type pens. But the strap immediately reminded me of like, oh, that's kind of like a Y Studio thing in a larger fashion and then you scroll down and there's actually the Y Studio Brassing Portable Ballpoint Pens which is a really fun, really great pen. You usually don't see them on sale which that's a really neat pen to consider if you like a ballpoint and a unique barrel. It's like, it's a heavy brass barrel pen, faceted, I think six-sided pen and really neat. I'm pretty sure I've reviewed that on the blog and of course being the Y Studio fanboy that I am, I really enjoyed it. Then there's two Viscontis that caught my eye because they kind of shouldn't be in here. The Visconti Woodstock, the material that they have here is really, really nice and I've seen a bunch of pictures of these and they look spectacular and the price is ridiculous for what it is and then completely unfair to me, the Visconti Kaleido Fountain Pen and Fire Opal is now very discounted and that's, they have the nib size that I like and it's going to be problematic so just something to think about out there at penchalet.com some really neat stuff.

Myke Hurley: Some, just a couple of things that caught my eye, a couple of models of the stipulated Caplus, DaVinci Caplus pens at some bananas prices so if that was like a mechanism you were interested in trying out there's some really good prices in those pens as well.

Brad Dowdy: Interesting,

Myke Hurley: I'm looking at them now. Wow. Yeah, that's very cool. Really great prices in those. So that is P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com click the podcast link at the top of the website and enter the password Pen Addict. With Pen Chalet you'll get free shipping on orders of over $75 in the US and they sell internationally as well with very reasonable shipping rates. Pen Chalet has low prices and high quality pens and offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee. A thanks to Pen Chalet for the support of this show and Relay FM.

Brad Dowdy: Alright Myke, we have our shout out of the week. Shout out of the week. I need a pen store. Myke, what a good name. Have you heard about Pen Chalet? Have you heard about our friends at Pen Chalet? But no, this is, so Frank at Fontaplumo put up basically like a travel guide for if you're in, you know, you're traveling and you want to find out if there's a pen store around you, you can check out I Need a Pen Store. So, that's a really cool kind of one-stop place we'll certainly reference. We always get a traveling question, hey, is there a map of stationery stores? And this is a place, this is a website where you can, you know, search by shop name, you can search by location you're in, you can search by manufacturer to see what shops might carry a manufacturer. So, yeah, it's a really neat setup and tool for all of us who are looking for pen shops if we're traveling on the road. Maybe see something we haven't been familiar with before and I just wanted to give Frank a shout out for putting this out there. It's really neat.

Myke Hurley: Excellent.

Brad Dowdy: Excellent. All right, Myke, when you're traveling the world, you might need to keep track of the time and the various time zones you're in. So, what if I told you that there was a watch that could help you with that and it was stationery adjacent in that it was a collaboration with the pen addict and our friends over at Notice created a watch very cool called the Sector Dive GMT pen addict edition. So, this might come as a surprise to a lot of people. It is a little bit out of left field. Out of left field but we have been working on this for months behind the scenes and by we I mean my friend Michael Harris who along with the pen addict slack watches board worked with Notice to make a pen addict you don't want to say branded but like themed themed styled yeah inspired it's orange and stainless and it looks awesome and it's got

Myke Hurley: the pen addict logo on the back as well

Brad Dowdy: on the back side yeah so we kept that subtly on the back I mean it's large on the back but it's not something you see right but that's the place you're more of a watch person than me that's the place where you get like the little extra details addition details you know whatever particulars you get on the back and things like that so the notice sector dive GMT yeah came about from the watches channel and I got involved through Michael wanting to basically wanting my approval it's like I don't know anything about this y'all do this and one of my approval I'm like heck yeah he like gave me some mock ups and and and showed it to me so yeah it looks super good one of my goals with this was the charity portion so fifty dollars of every sale is going to our friends at st. jude to help children cancer research so like I'm making zero dollars on this right this is a not-for-profit product if you will like I like I get zero dollars out of this I'm actually buying mine at full price right like and then fifty dollars of that is going to st. Jude so this is a really cool thing and what I did and what Michael had such a great experience working with notice and one of the co-founders Wesley Kwok I had the opportunity to sit with Wesley learn more about notice learn how this watch came about and kind of pick his brain on the brand and how their business works and so for the first time ever Myke and I are going to step away while I interview Wesley in the podcast so we're going to cut in this interview and then we'll be back once it's done all right everyone we're doing something a little different today I am being joined online by Wes Kwok from notice watches how's it going today Wes it's

Wes Kwok: going thanks for having me

Brad Dowdy: yeah absolutely so this is very interesting to me I usually pride myself on being like a top tier interviewer and getting all the good questions in and I realized it's because I'm always interviewing stationery people so this time I get to interview a watch person and I am not super dialed into the watch scene so it's going to be fun talking to you about the project that you have helped myself Michael from the stationery world himself and the slack watches channel which we'll talk about in a second so thank you for doing this and I guess I want to get

Wes Kwok: it was a big time gap in our memory but it's been seven years now since we started doing this still feels like we're the new guys and so our specialty and focus over the past seven years has really been sport watches for a very specific reason which I'll get into in a little bit but personally we've been me and my co-founder Cullen who's not on this podcast but you're eventually going to meet him he and I had met when we were 13 12 or 13 years old so we're childhood friends I like to say that we actually started becoming business partners way back then because I was the only other guitar player in our grade and he was the only other guitar player in the grade so we were like well I guess we're going to start a band and like literally the day that we met I rolled up to his house and he showed up wearing a purple Megadeth sweater and I was like alright we're going to be friends and since then we started working together playing music writing music we actually ended up the first thing that we actually put together ourselves was a guitar we built a guitar in I think it was 10th grade 9th or 10th grade and that's when I realized I at the same time but not coordinated we both got into watches and it wasn't until we met up a couple years later and we noticed that the other guy was wearing a watch when we were like hey I guess we've got more than music in common ended up talking about nothing but watches just became obsessed with watches and then fast forward to 2017 actually 2016 is when the conversation started but fast forward a few years and we were like hey we don't have a mortgage yet we don't have a wife no kids that we know of so this is the time if we're going to do something risky something that we have full ownership of this is the time to do it so we just designed a watch that we would want to wear I guess the initial idea we had was let's design a watch and make one for each of us and after that we'll go off and get a real job but we learned very quickly as I'm sure that you know from the pen world it becomes extremely expensive if you make one or two but if you make hundreds in our case it was 500 it brings the cost down becomes a little bit more reasonable so logically the

Wes Kwok: it did not work out that perfectly I think we ended up selling like 200 or something like that because the quality was just terrible we didn't know anything about making a watch or designing a watch but we got to keep our two watches each and it did well enough where we were like all right I guess people have you know they're interested in what we have to say and the work that we were doing so we did another watch and just kept it going

Brad Dowdy: did you have a particular style that you wanted to create for yourselves like between you and Colin did you have like a certain aesthetic that you were trying to land on were you trying to be like very classic or experimental or what was the thought process like around like the first watch

Wes Kwok: yeah at the time and

Wes Kwok: all the rage was vintage inspired design so straight lines not a lot of chamfurs not very complex case design you know like it wasn't it basically was made in the style of watches from 50s and 60s that was the big thing back then which is cool looks good but it wasn't really our style we wanted to do something a little bit more modern with sharper lines maybe a little bit more complex cases and so we started going down that path through that first project we found out that there are actually quite a lot of limitations not so much based on what physically possible to do but more so what type of machinery we can get access to how much we're willing to pay for these things and so we started running a lot of experiments with our factories and we flew out to our

Wes Kwok: shaking hands is important to get to know them but we wanted to show them that the American way of doing things is to innovate and push the envelope a little bit and if we want a long term relationship they would have to be willing to do some crazy experiments for us with the expectation that it's going to fail and it's not going to end up in a commercially viable spot and

Wes Kwok: we love doing it because as watch enthusiasts we love seeing new things we love innovating before notice we loved seeing innovative design innovative mechanisms things like that and we wanted to do what we could to try to push that forward for the American industry

Brad Dowdy: at what point did you or you and Cullen together realize that you had something was it in that first batch of watches that made you want to push forward or was this several watches down the line and a lot of debt accumulation I think we got it now

Wes Kwok: I know specifically which watch it was it was our fourth release it's called the Avalon and we actually still have it in our store we still make it we gone through a few versions of it we did a bronze version and now we're on the redesign of the platform but

Wes Kwok: most painful year in my entire life but definitely in notice's life and it was Thanksgiving day when we launched it in preparation for the following day Black Friday and I threw a party which is a terrible day to do a launch because you have to make the turkey and entertain all your guests so that morning woke up early put the turkey in the oven and then I went straight upstairs to the office and all my friends from childhood were coming over and they were drinking downstairs and I was upstairs with Cullen taking pictures getting the site ready pretty much the entire day we finally launched the watch at 930 at night on Thanksgiving day and then we rejoined the party and got the shots out and everything but I remember that day when we hit live it was one of those

Wes Kwok: in our business where we closed the computer we looked at each other and we were like if this does well we go all in this is the make it or break it moment in our business and if tomorrow we don't hit our goal tomorrow let's make the watch deliver it and start to wind down and pack it up and so had that conversation went down got way too drunk !

Wes Kwok: So at that point we were like people do what we're doing let's go all in at this point

Creative platform for watchmaking and Notice's journey

Brad Dowdy: fast forward that to today what's your favorite thing about having notice and being able to have this creative platform for watch making because I've listened to a little bit of an interview I just caught with you and you talk about a lot of music in your background and I think it's very interesting to have this kind of artistic background in what's a very technical creative process in watches so what is it like for you and notice now in the current day and time what are you enjoying the most about this brand and making watches well

Wes Kwok: it's both right like you have obviously there's a technical side the technical engineering side where you need to have a certain if you have a to achieve X water resistance so that's the technical side but on the fun side and really where all of our designs start is when we take all of those technical limitations or requirements away and just try to make what we envision make what we want to make and when I say we I don't mean just me and Cullen like sometimes like in the case of this collaboration that we're doing with a pen addict this was more like we had a group that we're working with that had requirements and we try to figure out a way to make it work right that to me is equally as fun right even though that's kind of like the more technical side you know like so one example one specific example with this project is the bezel is bicolored and it's made of aluminum and having different colors on aluminum is something we've never done before to get the transitions to be sharp because I've seen it before but the transition in the color ends up looking a little murky or foggy and we needed it to be super sharp and so we ran a bunch of tests and did a bunch of experimentation and made a whole bunch of prototypes to make it work like that

Wes Kwok: compressor diver let's see where we can take this like both sides are I just love it

Brad Dowdy: yeah how is it I want you you you you've segued me perfectly into talking about this other one into what I have you on here for today but you mentioned something about Cullen early on and I wrote this I wrote this note down as someone who's who's also had business partners how important

Brad Dowdy: together he could solder these things right he could do certain things and you could do certain things how important was it to have this collaborative aspect where there's not this 100% overlap in the design and creative process but Wes has his part and Cullen has his parts and these things make the whole better how is it a !

Wes Kwok: a bit blurrier right like we had to do everything together and get

Wes Kwok: as we grew as our sales volume increased as the number of team members on our team grew we had to be a little bit more clear about where our lane is and what exactly our role is in the entire machine and so the way I like to put it though is Cullen is definitely the product guy he's the one that has the product ideas and he figures out what's needed for notice

Wes Kwok: things that the pen addict needs or whoever our collaborator is so he's definitely that I guess in tech terms it would be like CTO I guess

Brad Dowdy: and

Wes Kwok: my role again there's a very little bit of overlap in that right but my role is more so talking to people getting their ideas translated into a language that Cullen can understand right there there's that I mean everyone knows parts of a watch but to get it across the finish line we have to be able to translate it into watch terms then translate it into the actual language that our factories speak and so I'm kind of the liaison on the client side whereas Cullen's the liaison on the supply side and it works well I think I said in that interview that you were alluding to that this whole notice was basically us getting the band back together right we kind of already developed that creative synergy when we were kids and figured out what he's good at what I'm good at and we're just continuing to develop that relationship as we get older

Brad Dowdy: very cool yeah I love hearing that about the partnerships and how the different tasks and responsibilities go so let's get into this watch what did you think when you got an email I'm guessing you got an email from Michael Harris who is a good friend and a long time stationery lover that the pen addict slack would like to make a watch and they would like notice to make it what did you think when you got this email

Wes Kwok: yeah so I actually remember exactly when that happened too we had just released another collaboration and what it is so there are three main pillars of our business one is nodex which is our research and design platform we test new things we have an R&D budget that we try out a bunch of different experiments the second one is intersect ! which is a show it's not really a show it's more like a cocktail party if you actually go there and attend it you know what I mean the last one is design lab and that's our collaborative platform and

Wes Kwok: they specifically don't want to start a watch company because that's a whole different headache in itself where can they go to do that and we wanted to be that place and it's not like I mean collaborations are very common in the watch industry but most of the time what it is they change a color or they add a logo on the dial or something like that we wanted our platform to be a bit more flexible where we could actually do pretty much anything that our collaborators want within reason obviously so in the past we've done stuff as deep as creating an entirely new platform that was for our last collaboration I think that was the one that Michael reached out because of but I was excited I already knew that there was a lot of crossover between the watch and the pen world I actually was just dipping my toe into the pen world I got myself a bronze tactile turn nice which I'm a big fan of I still yeah I still use it and so I was dipping my toe into that world I was also getting into the denim world I got into the sneaker world I'm a big knife guy so I already know that there's all this overlap between the EDC community but we never had direct exposure to the pen world before so I wanted to see what it was like to work with someone that was primarily in the pen world like yourself and Michael so I was super excited by that by the idea of being exposed to something new

Brad Dowdy: yeah and it's new for me too I like to joke with Michael and all the watch channel so the

Brad Dowdy: I was looking the other day and we've had like I forget what year I started it but it's had over 6 million messages in the slack and I would like to joke that 5.9 million of them come from the watches channel so that's the big joke in the slack channel that's by far the most active passionate board in the slack so I'm not surprised that they wanted to come up with something like this and when they hit me with it I was like yeah sure they just wanted my sign off to use the name maybe use colors you know orange I think looks great in watches traditionally so I was like yeah and looking at notice I was like oh this could turn out pretty cool and what y'all created looks spectacular can you tell us what the watch is about why or

Wes Kwok: the platform was the well actually to be fair there was no pre-existing platform before this okay right so the sector platform is kind of what we built it on but there was no sector dive GMT there was a sector dive and a sector GMT one obviously was a dive watch one was a GMT and so Michael's idea was I mean it was brilliant because we for some reason had never thought of it even though it's kind of like let's just put it together dive GMT so it literally is the two put together and really he did all the legwork in figuring out what does the pen addict community want in a watch everything from colors but also to functionality so one of the big changes that we made after smashing the GMT and dive together one of the big changes was instead of doing the dive bezel as like a standard dive bezel we did a countdown bezel so the utility is a little bit different and I mean I'll put on the website soon I'll send you the link to describe the differences but

Brad Dowdy: yeah and Michael actually shot a video explaining that I was like okay yes I see this yeah

Wes Kwok: so the utility is a little bit different and then I guess you guys did a limited edition poker chip for the group as well and that that's where that idea came from from the bezel design to just model it after that poker chip yeah yeah and then new color so yeah it was one of those things where Michael really did all the legwork figured out what what the group wants and you know it sounds pretty straightforward but really kudos to him because when you find yourself in a design by committee situation you're going to tear your hair out you know and Michael did a really good job of filtering it and you know maybe he has a future in watch design someday

Brad Dowdy: that was actually I kind of had like a side question I was like I was not even going to get into it but do you prefer the design by committee aspect or do you prefer to just like hey here's the concept you go and it's like there's no right answer there's no wrong answer each project is individual so I'm glad that this design by committee seemed to work out very well and you know I'm just getting all the updates and Michael explaining all this and I'm really just nodded my head I'm like yes it

Brad Dowdy: to see what everyone thinks about this watch and I I'm just stunned and shocked and pleased with how it turned out

Wes Kwok: yeah thank you thank you and I would say arguably the most important part of this project is where the funds go we want to do as much as we can for charity especially like no one really needs a fancy watch so at the very least if we're going to sell

Charitable projects and their impact

Wes Kwok: so last year we did two charitable projects one was with a local Atlanta charity and one was with a Navy veteran charity so this is one of those projects that's going to help us fill our quota of charity work for the year

Brad Dowdy: 100% and that's something I believe in Michael actually pretty much led with that for me and I was like yes I'm in like it was a simple aspect so we'll be donating $50 for every watch sold to St. Jude's Children's Hospital which is a big charitable group that we support every year with some big things through our podcast network so I really appreciate you helping and participating in that so yeah it's super cool super cool so I think that's it on the pen attic watch side but I know that's not anywhere near it for notice why don't you tell me what's the future looking like for notice what is what is on your drawing board what is coming soon tell tell our listeners what's going on with you

Wes Kwok: sure so so earlier I alluded to the three kind of pillars of our business so I think the at least the one that's taken up most my time right now is intersect which is the kind of watch event that we host around the country eventually around the world but again I definitely underestimated how difficult event planning is you know of all the years of running notice I think planning events is the single hardest thing I've probably ever done in my life I'm shaking my head vigorously you will not be seeing the video but so in two weeks we're expanding to Atlanta so we have Atlanta planned for March 23rd last year we did Dallas and LA so I think three events for this year feels about right we had Seattle planned but we literally had a conversation this morning about how stressful Atlanta is and let's just table Seattle to let's debut

Wes Kwok: so yeah we have Atlanta coming up March 23rd we have LA in the summer in September and then we're moving Dallas down to Austin it's just a bit more central bit of a larger community that'll be end of the year to close out the year so that's that's one aspect we're working on a lot more so under the nodex department that's kind of our R&D side we're working on a bunch of different things right now so the first product that we launched under nodex was an extendable clasp you'll be getting that on the yeah I saw

Brad Dowdy: that on the video it looks cool

Wes Kwok: but we're refining it and we're also making it different sizes working on licensing it to more brands we just picked up a UK brand and a couple US brands in the past couple months so we're onboarding them but we have a bunch of ideas about a new bezel mechanism a new crown mechanism I'm sure your listeners don't even know or care about what any of this means yet until they feel the watch and they're like oh okay I get it that's right

Brad Dowdy: that's right I think a lot of them will it's like yeah I think there's definitely some some secret watch lovers yeah for sure

Wes Kwok: so a lot of just like kind of for now we're keeping it quiet because we don't know if any of these things are going to work and then on the design lab side we have some pretty massive collabs coming up so after the pen addict we have a collab well we're going to continue our relationship with Matt Farah so we're working on a dive watch with him as well he actually introduced us to a couple of his his buddies from the YouTube world so we're going to be working with them all in the kind of like the YouTube car space we have a project coming up with a bourbon enthusiast who's also a pretty well known and always looking for more collaborations more cool ideas I think we're probably going to do another military veteran project this year at some point oh well other than the pen addict the other collab I'm excited for that's launching around the same time is our collaboration with Raven Watches which I'm sure Michael knows about they're based in Kansas City so collaborations is really obviously a big part of our business now

Brad Dowdy: yeah I love seeing that and I love seeing all the different people you're working with and spreading you know the watch awareness around and getting a lot of people involved and I think it's really cool and I'm really excited to be part of this project and get to meet you and get to learn about Notice so thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today share your story tell us about the watch I'm sure I'll be picking your brain in the future so thank you so much Wes

Wes Kwok: yeah yeah thank you so much

Myke Hurley: so this is an incredible project I loved hearing Wes's story too I mean it's not too dissimilar to the stories that we've both had as well right of like finding the thing that you love and then trying to make it work so it was great to hear for people that are interested in checking out the watch can you give some of the particulars because it isn't super straightforward right like there is some stuff that people would want to know about how to buy the product could you explain a little bit about that obviously there'll be links in the show notes for people to go get it

Brad Dowdy: yep yep so this is essentially a pre-order right so Notice has built the prototype Michael's been wearing the prototype we've settled on the final design and details and price of the watch so we'll have the link into the notice page for the watch so the watch the total price of the watch is $475 you will pay 50% deposit today so this is a limited time window for this to be open so I think this will close on like March 27th so like two weeks from today so you have two weeks to put it down a deposit for this watch and then when the watch ships in like the July time frame of this year when it's ready to ship Notice will then collect the remaining balance so the 50% balance so this is based around one of Notice dive watches which Wesley discussed like some of those details in here and it has basically all the features that the Slack watches channel wanted to see right it had the dive aspects of the watch you know it's got the steel bracelet you know 100 meters water resistance it has a GMT also comes

Myke Hurley: with a leather bracelet though so that is on link bracelet

Brad Dowdy: so shout out to Wes for this he sprung that on us at the last minute so like with these types of watches right the bracelet is swappable I know Michael's been testing out the regular stainless bracelet and then the like the NATO strap you know nylon bracelets and then unbeknownst to Michael and myself Wesley is adding in a pecan brown horween leather strap so you have a second strap option for this that comes with the watch right so that was really neat and I really like the GMT aspect of it so now I can keep track of you whenever I need it I've never seen a watch that's done this before but apparently this is a thing I have a

GMT watches and their functionality

Myke Hurley: GMT watch I really like GMT watches basically it's an extra hand that you can set to another time zone so you can see the hours in two different places it's very good for travel because you can set your home and your current location

Brad Dowdy: and then I like the countdown bezel as opposed to a count up bezel which is what a traditional diver dive watch would have right so this you can set more as a timer style bezel to count down from say 30 minutes to zero as opposed to counting up which is what traditional diver style bezels would do so yeah it's spectacular it's orange it's completely awesome yeah like I don't know what else to say other than like every step of the way like my jaw just dropped like Michael would email me and I'd be like you're kidding right and you're kidding right and just on and on and on and like they did all of this this has been months in the making I think since probably last fall we started working on this and Michael and Wes would kind of loop me in as we were going through and it's it's just been a pleasure to to work with these guys in building this product and I'm really excited

Myke Hurley: so yeah there'll be links in the show notes you should go check it out for yourself obviously it's a beautiful watch and we're proceeds going to charity too I mean that's a two for one right there we'll talk about it again I think next week too right as a reminder for people yeah we'll

Brad Dowdy: let everyone know yeah and then there is a blog post that just went up as you're listening to this you can go to pinac.com we'll have a link to the exact post in the show notes but Michael's write-up of the watch and he's been using it for probably like the final version the final prototype for probably like a good month so he has a write-up on that plus some of the pictures action shots and video of how it all works so yeah go check it out I think a lot of y'all will be pleasantly surprised in how this turned out and it's it's quite a cool crossover between our communities here and I'm super happy to be a part of it

Myke Hurley: all right if you want to go and check all of that out for yourself you can find the links in your podcast app of choice but you can go to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 606 thank you to pen chalet for their support of this episode thank you to us for joining us it was super cool and I'm really excited about this Brad I think this is super great I love that you've done this what a weird and wonderful thing to do if you want to find Brad online go to penaddict.com that's where you also find the blog post talking about the watch you can find Brad on social he's at penaddict p-e-n-a-d-d-i-c-t you should know that though and go to twitch.tv slash penaddict where Brad streams three times a week you can find me I'm iMike i-m-y-k-e and you can find my products over at cortexbrand.com we'll be back next week until then say goodbye Brad goodbye Brad