Editing The Pen Addict 322/transcript (section)

== Lamy Inks Discussion ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' On the immortal front, we're gonna pick right up where we've left off the last 50 shows with Lamy Inks, except we're gonna talk about The Crystal again, which we broke down last week. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I'm talking about the new Lamy Inks, reflecting on the fact that they didn't have an orange. They released 10 new ink colors, didn't have an orange. And the only question that was left in our minds at the time, talking about those inks, was what the price is gonna be, and it looks like they're gonna be legitimately good. Like, it looks like, this is the case. Lamy did a good thing. So, they're already up on Cult Pen's site. I think they're $9.50 with the VAT, and without the VAT, they're like 8-something pounds. Um, so, that's around $10, 10, between $10 and $11 for the 30 milliliter bottle of inks, and you know what? Good job by Lamy. That was, you know, that's a good result, I think, for an area where they could have stuck it to the man, if you will, and really gone off the board on a pricing, um, you know, on a pricing bender. Like a lot of companies do when they introduce special lineups, right? A lot of it is to, you know, increase the bottom line, and you can never, I'll never argue with a company for that, but there's also, all consumers have a breaking point where they'll choose to, you know, continue to support or not support the certain product based on the price. So, good job by Lamy on this one. Um, so, yeah, now we'll just wait and see how the inks work, and I bet they'll probably work pretty well. So, do you have any of these coming? Are you gonna order some?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I want to, and I might just go for it, actually, because it, I mean, they're so cheap, comparative to some of the stuff that I buy, like I was thinking, oh, I'm not sure which one I'm gonna want. I think I'm actually just gonna order a couple of the colors, um, and go for it, because they're under a tenner each, right? Right. It's really not a lot of money. I know it's not a lot of ink, either, but that was, you know, it's just kind of just like it's, ten pounds, it's fine, right? And I think I'm gonna go for a couple of them. I was interested in the brighter color, so I might go for a road night and azurite, so like a pink and a purple, because I like those colors. So, right. Oh, you can't, you can't pre-order them, they just, an email went in stock on Cold Pens right now. So, they're coming in September. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. So, I'll enter my email, and when they, uh, when they let me know, I'll go for it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Gotcha. So, they're not even available. I don't know. I haven't looked at all the sites in the U.S. Like, I don't even know if any pre-orders pages are up. I'm not that interested to pre-order, but I'll end up with something somewhere, somehow. You do not need to pre-order these.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right, like, if somewhere has a pre-order, you do not need to do that, right? Like, this is a standard line, and they're gonna make a lot of them.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep, yep. And they're inexpensive. They're not gonna, they're not gonna be flying off the shelves. No, no. Um, I mean, they'll sell well. Don't get me wrong. Sure. But, um, back to your ink quantity. So, uh, I think 30 milliliters is actually the sweet spot for all inks. I wish they all came in 30 milliliters, but the problem that we're having is...

'''Myke Hurley:''' Can you let me know, for comparison, what, what, are there any other inks that come in 30 milliliters?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Uh, the new Sailor. So, this is a new, a newer thing. Ah, okay. So, but the problem I was gonna say is, the problem is the 30 milliliters and the increased price. So, you know, it's never the, the actual size of the bottle to me. Someone who uses lots of inks, not like one ink that I need, you know, a hundred milliliters of, or a gallon of, because I'm just gonna use that one ink. I use lots of inks, so I'm good with smaller bottles of inks, just not at two or three times the cost of what your regular inks are. So, that was all I was gonna say. I actually prefer the 30 milliliter bottles. Yeah. So, there you go. Um, so I didn't pick any of those up, but I did pick up one of the new Tactile Turn pencils. So, I like what Will Hudges does with the Tactile Turn brand. I like the pens that he's made. I like the bolt action pens that he's done. And he offered up a pencil, which, you know, I'm a pencil fan, especially mechanical pencils. So, I picked mine up this, just this morning, actually. I keep getting the emails and seeing the articles. You know, I saw Ed Jellie's pictures of them, which he always does such a good job with these pictures. And Will, um, he always has such great anodization colors. Whoever the company he uses for the anodization does really, really good. And I picked one up this morning. I don't know what color I'm gonna get. Probably not orange. Um, the bright blue or pink, I'm thinking. I, I backed the, um, gosh, what was the name of the minimal Kickstarter? Modern Fuel. So, I just got my Modern Fuel. I got a stainless steel .9 millimeter pencil from that Kickstarter campaign. So, I just got that in. So, I've got my silver pencil. So, now, I'll probably get, like, pink this time, uh, just out of the aluminum. But there's brass and copper and titanium. I, I skipped all that. I'm going for the, for probably one of the bright colors, hot pink or purple. Um, we, we reviewed the purple, uh, pen he did recently. And that color looks so good. So, anyway, I wanted to point these out for those of you that are tactile turn fans. And if you like a mechanical pencil, I like the mechanism on the side. How does it work? That he's designed. So, it's just a Schmidt mechanism. So, what these companies use is, you know, our good buddies at Schmidt make really good internals. Right? So, um, it has an internal mechanism where you can just build this apparatus either to come down from the top of the pin or come down from the side of the pin to click on the top of the mechanism to deploy the lead. So, yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But he's made it look like a bolt, which is, which is clever because that's kind of like the, the thing. Right? Yep. Tactile turn, you expect something like that. Um, so I think that is a nice, I think, I just think it looks interesting, you know? Like it's.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It looks like a tactile turn pen. It does. Like he's, he's on brand with that type of mechanism.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Which, you know, if you would have said to me, oh, look at these pens, he's going to make a mechanical pencil. I wouldn't have been able to fathom how he would do that if it was going to be bolt in style. Right? Because the mover and shaker, they were using the Schmidt, like the silver. The squishy mech.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Although he, um, he redid that for the latest run. He made his own. So the originals were.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Very, very cool.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The Schmidt, the Schmidt squish is what I call it, which I don't mind it. A lot of people mind it, but, uh, it is, it's a weird feel, but I don't, I don't mind it. But yeah, how do you call it the Schmidt squish?

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's a good way to describe it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So yeah, it's, uh, it's cool. I like Will's work. He, uh, he always does good stuff. Now yesterday, Michael, you might've noticed I streamed a little bit and we'll, we'll talk about that later. But during that stream, I got a link for a product I had not seen yet. So our good friends at G Herban now have the Jacques Herban by G Herban lineup. Have you heard of this before I put this in the show notes?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Cause I had absolutely not. No.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Do you know why we haven't heard of this, Michael?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I do now. So why don't you tell our listeners?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Because it is only in three retailers worldwide. So the Jacques Herban lineup is G Herban's ultra premium lineup limited so far based on this, this link on the Milligram Australia page, um, which I'll, uh, we'll have the link in the show notes for y'all to check it out or their Instagram posts. And then the actual product pages on their site. This is a luxury collection featuring vibrant inks, exquisite paper, leather accessories, and oh, so smooth writing instruments. So this is like your full leather writing ultra premium kind of setup. And.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. Like, I'm not jumping through my screen at this. The prices are expensive. Like the ink bottles are 50 Australian dollars, which I think is 36, 37 us dollars for these 50 milliliter bottles. I don't even have to look. G Herban has lots of different bottles. Yes. There are 50 milliliter bottles, 50 Australian dollars, which I think converts to about 36. So that's definitely on the high end. Um, the colors seem nice, but you're paying a premium for nice, not off the charts. The orange actually looks pretty good. It's a very bright and yellowy. The paper and notebooks are all fine. They're all a premium. The pens are where they lose me here. So like the basic fountain pen just looks like a black acrylic barrel with a steel nib. And it's 299 Australian, which is like 220 us dollars. And that doesn't line up to me. Like this is a premium product. It doesn't look like it. And they are sure as heck charging a premium. So I don't know. Maybe it feels kind of amazing in the hand. I obviously hadn't tried one of these, um, but it doesn't move the needle. And I wonder what G Herban is going to do here long-term. Is this the trial run with these three stores? And then we're going to see the premium products roll out to everywhere. I'm guessing they'll probably do pretty well. Um, just cause G Herban has fans and, um, you know, you know, like a lot of us, you know, we're willing to play, pay the premium for things we're super fans of. And G Herban certainly probably has that. So I'd be interested to know if you even have, if you do have any thoughts on this, what are your thoughts on this? Or, you know, just another day and new product land.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't really have any complex thoughts on this at all. Like I'm looking at these products and I'm like, okay, like these are not for me. Like these are like exact executive line, right? Like, right. That's kind of what it looks like. I think that the fountain pens are really uninspiring. Um, I have no idea why they're making like a glass, um, uh, they call it a glass pen, but what is it? Like a dip pen?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. They've done, they have an entry level glass dip pen that they've done for a while.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay. This thing's a hundred dollars, which is interesting. It's interesting, but it seems like it just, all of it seems a little weird. Like it's, but it's because it's not, this isn't aimed at me and you. And that's, it's not really aimed at anyone really specifically, which is why they're probably only running out in three places in the world. They're just trying to create a super limited exclusive brand for people that need to buy gifts for other people. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I guess my overall thing is when I was, I was surprised by it one, and then I was taken back at how plain it is for a premium lineup. Like lots of companies do lots of premium stuff. And this is just kind of like regular stuff to me at a premium price. Like sometimes that's all that you need though.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like, sure. And if I was sitting in the J Herban office, you know, this, I could see something that like I could come up with this plan, you know, to make these products. And I think they'll probably do well to be perfectly honest. And we'll probably see them everywhere else. I'm just, it's not compelling to me, if you will, from a personal standpoint to start, you know, picking up some of these things. So I thought it was interesting and it was interesting to point out, I'll be watching to see how this does at, you know, these, that the other stores. We'll, we'll see what the other stores are. If there's only three in the world, one of them's Milligram, who is a really good shop in Australia, I've definitely communicated with them in the past. They seem to be real nice, real well run store. So I'll be interested to know what the other two stores are.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. It's like, you know, the way I feel about this is like, I don't like cross either. Sure. Right. I mean, that doesn't do it for me, but it's, it's doing it for someone. And it's Anna, right? In the chat room, she's sent a link about the, their Instagram. Mm-hmm. The Jacques, the Jacques Bourbon. It's like very luxury looking.