Editing The Pen Addict 225/transcript (section)

== London Pen Show ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' All right, so I went to the London Pen Show. I mentioned on last week's episode that I was going to go, and I did, or as it should be more accurately named, the London Writing Equipment Show.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Should we change the name of our podcast to The Writing Equipment Show?

'''Myke Hurley:''' The Writing Equipment Addict.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. That's what we're going to go with. Okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So how was The Writing Equipment Show? You went on Sunday? You went on Sunday. It was one day. Okay, okay.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So it's Sunday. Okay. I was, as I mentioned on the show last week, not expecting a lot, and I think this was based on my previous experience of going a couple of years ago. But I think a couple of things are different. One of the things is that I hadn't been to a pen show, I don't think, at that point, so I didn't really know what to expect at all. And also just my general knowledge of all of this stuff was lower at that point. One of the things I found interesting walking around the show is I could teach Adina what everything was. Yeah. Oh, this is a Parker 51, and this is a, you know, there's going to be 100,000 million of them in this room, you know? They're going to be on every single table everywhere. And, you know, here is a Visconti Wall Street, and I just knew a little, like, a lot more than I did when I went last time.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The actual kind of setup of the show was very similar to what I expected. Lots of vintage stuff, lots of individuals selling stuff in, you know, leather cases, basically, that had been opened up. There were a couple of companies. The Bureau Direct was there. Okay, cool. And, you know, there are a couple of other companies that were kind of online sellers that a couple that I hadn't heard of before, but could see that they were, you know, they're pretty legit. And then there were a couple of people selling stuff that they made themselves. But one of the big things that jumped out to me compared to Atlanta and some of the other shows that I know is there was basically, like, one table that had any acrylic pens.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Gotcha. Like, someone making pens from acrylic blanks, essentially. Either in small scale or large scale. Like, Edison would be a large scale and, you know, some smaller scale individual pen makers, say, Sean Newton, you know, things like Brooks, things like that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Exactly. So, that was one of the big things to me. It was like, oh, this is still very much rooted in the old school of this type of stuff. Like, there weren't any, you know, there was, like, a couple of, like, independent people there that were making and selling their own stuff. Not even just, like, the acrylics. Like, you know, companies that make the stuff out of aluminum and they sell them, right? There was like, it was like that. It had a very, very different feel. So, and maybe I'm spoiled a little bit because the Atlanta show I know has changed a lot from being that to what it is now. Right. With a little bit more young activity in, like, young companies and stuff like that. But, yeah, it would be interesting to me to see what a London pen show could be. Conant were there, which was surprising. Oh, nice. I took a look at some of their stuff. Their stuff is nice. Very crazy things. It was difficult to, even, I got there, like, two hours before it closed, but it was difficult to get to look at the Conant stuff. There were people, like, around that table constantly.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Did they bring that orange one that they've been teasing that they made?

'''Myke Hurley:''' No.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Everything was black. They didn't actually have a lot of stuff. I don't know if it was actual Conant or it was, like, a company that had been given the ability to dress their table as if they were such.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, I mean, they're in Belgium, so.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It wouldn't be surprising if it was them, but, you know, it was just, it wasn't really clear and they didn't have a lot of product, which I found peculiar. But, again, that might have all been sold.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Sure. And they generally, you know, when you purchase a pen from them, it's usually not straight from inventory. There's a wait, right? Oh, right, yeah. So, I think they just have a constant, I don't think they have necessarily a huge stock waiting there. So, I'm sure they have plenty, but, you know, it's not like, you know, just.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It would be strange, though, to come to a pen show and not have stuff to sell. Like, even if that is your bag, it's like making. I don't know. I feel like it would be nice to give stuff for people to walk away with.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, it's a marketing expense, too, right? I mean, Conant was there, so now we get to talk about Conant, right? Because they make cool stuff. And, oh, I saw this cool thing from Conant. And, you know, maybe it's not, you know, a profitable venture from physical sales, but, you know, I'm sure they enjoyed being there and exposure and all that stuff.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right, but do you want to know the real reason that I enjoy myself? Yeah. I didn't even make it through the door before two people came up to talk to me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It was the shirt, I'm telling you. It wasn't you.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, I was, everybody was saying they heard me by voice and they would, like, just turn around and be like, hey, I was wearing my Knock Co t-shirt. Yeah. Because I figured it would just indicate to people without, like, overselling it. Like, if I would have worn one of my Pen Addict t-shirts, I feel like I would have, it would have been too much. You know, it's like a billboard.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, a little hey, look at me. Yeah. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But I thought I'll wear my Knock t-shirt because if somebody hears me, what I wanted to do is if, this is my thinking, on the random chance that there is a Pen Addict listener at the London Pen Show at two o'clock in the afternoon when it closes at four. Right? This is my thinking. I will wear my Knock shirt so that if they hear me and they think it's me but they're embarrassed to come up to me because they might get it wrong, they'll see the Knock shirt and they'll instantly know. So, I hadn't even made it through the door. So, it's like a little hallway which has a couple of vendors and then the door to the big room. Before I met Jenny from Final Point, which was awesome. I'm so happy that I met Jenny. She's cool. And we were chatting for a bit. And then a listener by the name of Jane. I believe her name was Jane. And her daughter was there too, which was awesome because her daughter basically knew as much as I did about pens. It was incredible. She must have been maybe like 11 or 12, this girl, maybe a little bit younger than that. And she was like, she super knew what she liked. Like, she didn't like any of the training found in pens. She liked like real stuff. She was like reeling off all her favorite inks. It was amazing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That is cool.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Then a listener by the name of Jonathan, who's studying in England now. I think he said he was from Hong Kong. And he's studying in England. And he came up to say hi. And there's a picture of us that I'll put in the show notes, which he took of me, him, and Adina, which was awesome. And he showed me, he owned and showed me, he has the Star Wars Darth Vader fountain pen, the cross one.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Ooh, like the big daddy one.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. And I took a look at it. And it's really good looking. But we were laughing about it a lot. Because he was like, I'm even kind of embarrassed to show you.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, I think they're cool.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, but because we were bagging on it. Not really. Real bad. We were. That's the prices of them.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, the prices, yeah, a little egregious. But I mean, I still think they're pretty cool. I don't want.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This was what we were talking about. And he remembered it. Like, you know, we were. We thought they looked really good because it had like the little red jewel in it and stuff. But they were super expensive, like way more expensive than they should be for what they are. But it was really cool to see it and to kind of to handle it. And he had a great collection. He had all his stuff in a knot case. I'll let you know. Oh, nice. It was in a brass town.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Thanks, Jonathan.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So he rolled out his brass town. And then I got the name right. Yeah. The brass town. The rolling one. Yeah. See, that's embedded in me from Atlanta now.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You've been trained.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, yeah, he had a real cool collection with him there, which was nice to see. Then I bumped into a couple of listeners by the name of Daniel and Knack. And we were chatting for a bit. And they were showing off the stuff that they bought from the show as well. I was on a bit of a high there, I've got to say.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, like you didn't even need to do any shopping. You just had your ego stroked for a while.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Mm-hmm. That's pretty good. And I wasn't planning on buying any pens, right? And then I saw this new Visconti.