Editing The Pen Addict 672/transcript (section)

== Vacation and walking in Vegas ==

* While I was on vacation, Myke, I thought this might happen. I had it in the back of my head that we're going to have some downtown. We're going to have a lot of walking around. If you've ever been to Vegas, there's lots of walking, lots of things to see, lots of things to do and lots of shopping. Lots of shopping like out of my price range. If you've ever been to Vegas, you will know what I mean. A lot of boutiques. It's literally every, every high-end shop. But fortunately for me being the pen addict that I am, that includes the Mont Blanc shop. Um, so I made a visit to the Mont Blanc boutique in Las Vegas. Um, it's at the Grand Canal shops in the Venetian, I believe is the proper name of it. And it was great. I had, I didn't know what to expect. I've never been in anything but like the airport boutique. Like if I have a minute, you'll see some, you know, the little one unit size boutique. Well, they'll just have like some luggage and a few pens or things, but this had, this was all of it. Like this was a large store. The salesperson I was working with most of the time I was there, which ended up being like 30, 30 minutes at least, um, said this was the largest boutique. And she either said the US or North America. I can't remember. Um, so they had the full range of everything, right? Would you expect there to be a bigger store in Canada?
* Yeah. Well, I mean, Toronto, I mean, Toronto. Yeah. But like, would you expect a store bigger than the store in Vegas anywhere? Yes. Cause it honestly, it wasn't like that big. No, but like it was big, but yeah. But my point is it, however big a store could be. Yeah. Vegas is probably the place where it's biggest. Yes. Right. I mean, there's yes. They're like, if you, you can think of a fancy brand, they have a shop there, like, which is not it. It's like, yeah. Uh, London, Tokyo, New York, you know, those types of things. Milan, Paris. Yeah. Yeah. That's where you got to find the big ones. It was, it was, it was big, but I could tell it was big by like the inventory that they carried. Right. They had like every special edition ever they had. Like I'm talking about fountain pens. Like you in the store was at least 50% stationery, which surprised me. Right. Because they've, Mont Blanc's gone into some of the more lifestyle stuff. They're new watches now. Like watches were in the front of the store. They had like their one display case. And then they had, you know, their briefcases, leather goods, all that stuff was like in the front of the store. And then like the entire back half of the store was just stationery case after stationery case, pens everywhere. It was all pens. They didn't, I really didn't see any notebooks out and they didn't have any ink out, which was interesting. We'll get to the, get to that in a minute. But all the display cases with all the limited editions were out. And once the lady that I was working with, she was outstanding. Like we've traded information now, which I'll get to that in a minute. That was also funny. Once she realized I knew what I was talking about, like I could talk the talk. She was, she wanted to show me everything. And I was like, yes, this rules. This was awesome. Well, it's because she thought, yes, this rules. Yeah, exactly. I have a great sale on my hands. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. She didn't, but like she could have, like, I was definitely thinking about the coral baby, which we've talked about here on before. When we were talking about the Wes Anderson pin, which let me get into that. So I asked her, like they had a huge display, like a image, not like a, they had zero of any of it in stock. Right. That's a shame. That's a real shame. I bet you were hoping you'd see it. Right. I was hoping I could see. Yeah. Yeah. I was hoping I'd see like the full, the full setup unit. Right. With the briefcase or the tin storage box, whatever it's in. But they just had like some of like the wall, wall posters and like some of the marketing material out. So I asked her, I said, hey, how did the Wes, the Wes Anderson stuff go? She's like, oh, like we pre-sold our allocation, you know, basically to our clients, like whoever was interested, like we've never basically laid hands on the stuff. This is exactly what I said. Right. It was like I knew this because I've, I know of this in watches and like the way that watches work. And it reminded me of that, that like essentially I would imagine one or two things happened and maybe both customers contacted their reps or the reps contacted customers and were like, do you want this? Yes. At this type of store, you, you basically have a relationship with the sales, salespeople and they, they have a book, right? They're like, hey, my client is into this. I'm going to call them, let them know if they're interested. And then we'll just, they basically pre-sold every, whatever their allocation was. I didn't get the number of what their allocation was.
* But being the largest store in the world, you know, they probably had a lot. Oh, it's the world now. Sure. Why not? I mean, it's getting, it's getting more intense. Before you weren't sure if it was bigger than any store in Canada. And now you're like, it's the biggest store in the world. Definitely the biggest store in Las Vegas. We'll go with that. Yeah. Um, so the funny thing, which actually caught me off guard, caught me so off guard that I didn't do a follow-up question, which was bad journalism by me. She said, but if you're interested, we're going to have more in September.
* And I just kind of like, I did like the dog head nod. It's like, huh? I was like, I'm that just, that just makes all this much more confusing to wherever we've been at in the confused in the first place. So it was, um, yeah, that's pretty much what I did. Like I couldn't even, I was so confused. I couldn't even ask, ask a follow-up question. She says, but I could put you on the list and let you know. And I was like, huh? No, I, I don't, I don't get it. So, but anyway. Brad, I'm happy to let you know, uh, you can currently buy it online.