Editing The Pen Addict 239/transcript (section)

== Field Notes ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, so you remember last time I spoke about the fact that I had some field notes for sale on eBay right now. As we're recording this, there is two days left on that. So I'm gonna put a link in the show notes to the field notes that I currently have up on eBay. And if you're interested and you get in in time, you can go and put some bids down. There's one, there's a few of them that I still just don't understand. But there's quite, on some of the ones that I find the most perplexing as to the fact that the totals are low, they have the most watches. And Dina was saying to me, oh yeah, okay, what's gonna happen is this is gonna be a bunch of like crazy bidding in the last minute or two.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, a little sniping at the end. Bit of snipey. I'm happy to see the roastery edition going for a large amount. That is outside of the colors editions in the special edition realm. That's one of my favorites. It's certainly like a top three kind of special edition. It's a great one. It's orange dot grid on the inside in the LART 5x7 size. It's just fantastic.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I didn't know that it was orange inside. I've never, I have two of them. I never opened it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Yep. It's wonderful. Wonderful notebook. I filled one of those up before. So yeah. So a few more days on that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And remember, it all goes into my Nakaya fund.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It all goes into my Nakaya fund. We're gonna talk about that a little bit later. I happened to see a note for that. And wow, you're putting even more stuff in the show notes that I didn't even know about. I thought it helped. This one we knew about, and the timing was hilarious because last week we did our cold weather pen follow-up with all of Dave Ray's and Andrew. I want to give Andrew some props in the Slack chat. He was part of the math and sciencing that was going on. And they're figuring out the expansion and contraction of the ink in the barrels. And I think that same afternoon we released, the Goulet Pens had a blog post where one of their customers works in Antarctica. You know, does the trip, you know, a couple times a year to go work on the bases, various bases in there. I believe she's Australian. And, you know, it's part of her job. And Noodlers makes what they call a polar ink, which is supposed to be freeze-proof and all this. So that was kind of a perfect meshing, a perfect storm of a blog post where I believe it's Casey. Yeah, her name is Casey. She took the ink and a pen down to Antarctica and, like, taped them out, like, strung them up outside. And I think it got down to 40 below, something like that. And you'll just have to go to the link. We'll share this link in the show notes. But it was really, really cool results. I think, you know, they did some outside testing. They actually have some really, really strong freezers inside their facilities. They used those, too, so they tested ink and pens. And the results were really impressive with this ink. I mean, you'd have to get really extreme for this stuff to not work, it looks like.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's interesting to have a freezer in a polar facility. I feel like you don't need that. Like, you just put it outside.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Yes. The funniest takeaway is basically as long as the temperatures stay above negative 20, you should be in good shape. Yeah, I think below that, you've got more problems. Yeah. This is for the polar ink, by the way, not normal ink. This is Noodler's Polar. Oh, what do they call it? Do they call it polar ink? Yeah, polar ink. So, it has special properties. There you go. Freeze resistance.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The answer, if you're worried about cold temperatures for your ink, is just use Noodler's Polar. Yes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It was an awesome article. I got a huge grin out of it. I very, very much enjoyed it. On the opposite end of the positivity spectrum, this is interesting. My phone started getting various texts from various people on Monday saying, hey, it looks like Paradise Pins is shutting down. And, you know, I got that from multiple people, found some articles. And then yesterday, they had their website up with all the stores shut down there. It's a physical store in shopping malls, mostly, or retail areas. And then the website was up, so everyone wasn't sure. And then as of yesterday afternoon, they put the big splash page on their website. It says, with great sadness that we must tell you that Paradise Pins is closing its doors effective immediately. It has been an absolute pleasure serving the Pins community for the past 15 years. And we cannot say thank you enough to all of our loyal customers, employees, and vendors for their years of support and friendship. It's time to start writing the next chapter. Best regards, the Paradise Pins family. So, I've been talking a lot on this show. I talk about it more probably in the members newsletter that year over year stationary business growth rates are in the double digit percentages. And it's just positive article after positive article. Then you see this. So, we wonder, like, how do those two things, you know, how can we have both of those things happening at the same time? And I've always felt that Paradise Pins almost doesn't count in our community. They obviously do. It's a lot of people's only access to some of this stuff. But where they place themselves in the market is an area that is declining overall. Not just the pen business, but shopping mall business, right? They are brick and mortar and not even, like, standard normal brick and mortar, like, just in various business areas of cities. They are in high rent district malls. They pay extraordinary square footage rates for the locations that they're in. That requires them to be a full MSRP shop. What that means is you are paying absolute full price for every single thing in there. And, you know, a lot of our online retailers, you know, they have to do the same thing. And there's various commitments to vendors and manufacturers and things like that. But you can also get, you know, you're allowed to, these online shops are allowed to discount at certain rates. You know, you'll find pens 20% off, 40% off, things like that, that you rarely ever see at Paradise Pins. I think it's telling that I very rarely hear people asking me questions. Hey, I saw this at Paradise Pins. What do you think? I don't get those questions. You get it, you know, from a lot of the online shops or in person, like Fountain Pen Hospital or, you know, Anderson Pins and things like that. You also get, outside of the Paradise Pins locations, you get a more, I don't know, helpful feedback from people who do this full time. Not that the people at Paradise Pins don't.

'''Myke Hurley:''' A more tailored service, we'll call it. Yes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' There you go. There you go. It's, you know, the retail atmospheres, you know, can be interesting. I've heard, I have heard of people going in and, you know, not, you know, discussing something with someone who doesn't know what they're talking about and things like that. Just because, you know, an established like that has to fill up all the hours that they're required to be opened by malls and things like that. So they maybe don't have, like, the most experience in the things that we talk about. So I think it's kind of a double-edged sword. One, they're in a very high-rent district in all of their shops. So, I mean, we're talking, like, the premier malls in big cities. Like in Atlanta, the Paradise Pins was in Linux Mall, which is considered, like, the high-end mall. So, you know, they've had shops in Las Vegas and in just other, like, very, very high-rent district areas. Like, it's hard to compete with all of the online shopping that people do now or all of the specific retail establishments that have opened up across the country and have proven you can be successful in this market. So I don't see them as someone, like, affecting, like, the growth. Like, is it this, like, a marker or a red flag of, oh, the stationary community's turning? I don't think they count, essentially. I don't see that at all.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, there's a change in the community. There is a change in buying practices. But that doesn't mean a decline. It just means a change. Yeah. I mean, I did a little bit of Googling while you were talking, and it doesn't seem like the owners of the company are in trouble, per se. It seems like they're going to be focusing on other areas. It looks like they run a company called Paradise Baggage as well, which seems to be doing good based on this article that I found from, like, a week ago.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. And that's how a lot of the mall pin stores happen. There's a store called Mori Luggage, which is your luggage store. Well, then they'd have gift accessories in there, and you'd find Lamy in there, for example. So I wonder if that's how they got into the business originally. I don't know the Paradise pin story. But, yeah, it's kind of not a player in the realm that we're all in right now.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And they did not adjust to the changing market for pins, so I think that's what caused this more than anything. Not as a, I don't think it's any kind of red flag, like I was saying before, like, oh, the stationary market's going down. Look at all these Paradise pin stores. They don't even register, right? Mm-hmm.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't think I've ever heard of Paradise pins.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And they don't have, like, hundreds of stores. I think they may, does this site even say maybe 10, 15, 20 stores? I don't know.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's a big enough business, though. Like, you know, it's just a chunky-sized business.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And they've been, oh, yeah, and they've been closing down stores for years, but they actually just full swoop this time, everything else that was open earlier this week got shut. Like, they'd been closing them one off here, one off there, but it just got to the point where they just shut the whole thing down. So, it's sad. It sucks. I don't like it. Sometimes it's people's only access to discover, you know, maybe walk in and find something kind of amazing, and then you get into this hobby, then, you know, find out people like the pin addict and this whole community. And online shopping. So, it sucks from that perspective, but I can't say that it's actually surprising.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, there's that. What is surprising to me? I didn't know this existed until my good friends in the Slack room pointed this out. There's a new Akramon ink, and it's not just new colors. I was like, oh, cool, new colors, special series. You know, they introduced 12 new colors. That's kind of cool. Oh, wait a minute. These boxes, these bottles are gigantic. This is a double-size Akramon bottle, if you will. So, I think these are 120-milliliter bottles. Like, Akramon used to sell their large ink bottles before they made the small ones, which I want to say were 150-milliliter bottles. That's how you bought Akramon ink. It was in these gigantic bottles. Well, that wasn't, like, the thing. It's quite a commitment. Yeah, quite a commitment. And so, they made it into a 60-milliliter bottle, which, great, perfect. You know, a lot of ink bottles are 50, 60, right in that range. That's great. But the old Akramon bottles, just as a side note, they go for stupid money on eBay. Like, I saw Akramon number eight in the original bottle went for, like, $120. Like, it's insane. People really want the bottles as much as the ink because they're kind of fascinating.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They're, like, I can see how something like that could become a collector's item.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, totally is. Totally is. And these snuck up on me. I didn't know these were coming. They look like some neat colors, kind of an interesting addition to what they already have. You know, there's some more outlier shades that kind of mix into some of the things they already have. And I'm looking at these at Vaness Pens. I don't know where else carries them. We'll have a link in the show notes. But they're $38 for a 128-milliliter bottle. And, I mean, I'm completely passing. Like, I said I need to get less ink. I certainly don't need 120 milliliters worth of a single color of ink. So, but $38, they're not having a problem selling these out. So, I do like some of the colors, though. They look interesting. And they still have the marble, same bottle design. It looks like a smooth bottle, not like a kind of, what do you call it, faceted bottle. But they're pretty cool. I'm not going to lie. So, I guess I'll see these, if she has any left, I'll see these at the L.A. Pen Show coming up here in, gosh, just about a month or so.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, how many of these are you going to buy?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't think I need that much ink.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. That's a lot of ink.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's a lot of ink. That's a lot, a lot.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So, if I had very few bottles of ink and I was very committed to a color, I'd go for it. But I just don't need that size bottle right now. But, you know, I say that I'll end up coming home with one from L.A. You watch me once I see the colors. They might have a cool color. I was like, oh, yeah, that's pretty nice. Something I don't have in the other 50 bottles I have laying around, which is not true. So, anyway, I thought that was worth pointing out because the old Akramon bottles are still highly sought after. So, this is your chance to get an almost their size bottle from them, which is pretty cool.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. We have a whole host of other topics to get to today. But before we do, let me take a break and thank our friends over at Blue Apron for sponsoring this week's episode of The Pan Addict. Blue Apron is a new sponsor for the show. And let me tell you what they're all about. Blue Apron is all about giving you everything that you need to make incredible home cooking. They want to make it accessible to everyone, whilst also supporting and creating a more sustainable food system. Blue Apron sets the highest standards for ingredients, and they love to build this community of home chefs around what they're doing. For less than $10 a meal, Blue Apron delivers seasonal recipes along with fresh, high-quality ingredients to make delicious home-cooked food. Each of Blue Apron's meals comes with a step-by-step, easy-to-follow recipe card and pre-proportioned ingredients that can be prepared in 40 minutes or less. So what that means is they send you the card, which is all nicely presented. It has pictures, and it has all of the recipe instructions boiled down to be nice and simple. And they also, they only send you just the food that you need. So it's easy to follow along because, you know, say, like, chop the onion, and you know you only have to chop the onion that came in the bag for that food. You know, they're, like, dumping these spices, and you already have all the spices in a little pot for you. You don't end up with extra food, and you also have just what you need to make what you want to eat. You can customize your recipes with Blue Apron each week based on your dietary preferences and choose the delivery option that fits your needs. There's no weekly commitment. You only get the deliveries when you want them. And Blue Apron delivers to 99% of the continental U.S. So it's super easy to take a break if you're going to be away, or if you decide that you just want to get some Blue Apron meals, you know, once or twice a month, you get a week's worth of food just to kind of give you a bit of variety. It's totally up to you. Blue Apron knows that when you cook with fresh ingredients that support a more sustainable food system, you can make incredible meals at home. And this is why Blue Apron sets the highest quality standard for the community of artisanal suppliers, family-run farms, fisheries, and ranches. New recipes are created by Blue Apron's culinary team and are not repeated within a year, so you get tons of variety. You can cook recipes like spicy shrimp and Korean rice cakes with cabbage and furukake. You can maybe, if you are interested in mushrooms and chipotle pepper enchiladas with lime sour cream, you can get those delivered to you. Or what about mixed mushroom and potato pizza with fontina cheese, spinach, and garlic oil? Just listen to how good these ingredients are, and you will be not only getting this crazy variety, but also with super high quality food. And when you're doing this frequently, if you get Blue Apron delivered to you frequently, you're making it frequently, you will learn new skills to make you a better chef at home, and then you always have those recipe cards if you want to recook something yourself. Check out this week's menu and get three meals for free with free shipping by going to blueapron.com slash penaddict. So that is three meals with Blue Apron for free with no shipping cost. All you need to do is go to blueapron.com slash penaddict to try it out. Like, this is a no-brainer trial. It's free food.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's not how I thought this ad was going. That's pretty cool. I have mine on the way. They won't be here for another few days, but I've been excited to kind of try this for a long time now. So I'm glad they're on board, and I'll get to test this all out. It should be awesome.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You're going to love how good it feels and tastes to create incredible home-cooked meals with Blue Apron. So don't wait. Go to blueapron.com slash penaddict, and we want to thank Blue Apron for their support of this show and Relay FM. Blue Apron, a better way to cook.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Awesome. So things are going to be cooking at the Philly Pen Show this weekend, Myke. Are you going?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, I'm not. I'm not planning on it. You never know. You never know. I'm not planning on it.