Editing The Pen Addict 80/transcript (section)

== Counterfeiting ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Loads of little stuff. And it's actually a bunch of stuff that right after our episode ended last week, I feel like I've been hanging on to a lot of these topics towards the end of last week. But they're still pertinent today, of course. It was just lots of things I wanted to talk about. And I don't know, it may not even be like a normal episode for us, but I guess it kind of is. We just talk about anything that comes across our screens. And unfortunately, we'll start it out with the, I won't say bad news, but a little questionable topic that we've covered here before, the Visionaire pin on Kickstarter. Myke, just for, I didn't check with you beforehand. Were you still a backer of this project?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, yeah, I'm all in on it. Just simply because of, as I mentioned before, for people that have, I'll throw into the show notes maybe some of the episodes where we gave a little backstory on this.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, yeah. So definitely check those out. And I was going to mention that in the, I don't have the episodes in front of me, but they're actually in the, we talk about it like a couple weeks in a row and just talk about, I had a lot of concerns about the origins of the pen design, feeling that it was, you know, probably a very inexpensively made Chinese pen that you could get for just a few dollars. And it blew up on Kickstarter. I think he's selling them for $37 each. There would, I felt that there wasn't anything original in the design that it was just pulled pretty much off the shelf of a Chinese manufacturer. And absolutely nothing inherently wrong with that, except that you're overpaying by about $30 for this pen. That was my, that's pretty much the complaint in a nutshell.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, you know, we address those things. We talked about a lot of those things and, you know, we discussed how the pen you're going to get is probably going to be just fine. It's just that the, it's kind of, I felt that it went against, you know, the spirit of Kickstarter and that it's really not any type of new design. And it's basically just a reseller of an existing, you know, mass market Chinese fountain pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So we left it at that, you know, a couple months ago. Well, now it's come out that on Alibaba.com, which is, it's a huge website. You can find anything on there that the Visionaire, I mean, it's not called the Visionaire, but the exact Visionaire pen is showing up on there for purchase from different Chinese manufacturers. And you can get them for as cheap as a dollar. So that was brought up to Morgan, who is the founder of the Visionaire Kickstarter project, the creator. And as Morgan is wanting to do in my dealings with him in the past and his public answers, he talks a lot without answering any questions. And I thought it was pretty telling this time that there were a couple points, you know, I wanted to point out that he, in his response, number one, he didn't deny that that was the Visionaire pen at all. I thought that was very telling, that he never said, that's not this pen, here's why. You know, he said, his answer was, and which was the obvious answer, and the answer that I knew was going to come was, well, they knocked me off. They took my design, and now they're selling it, you know. This Chinese manufacturer is selling it, and they stole my design.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And is he saying this in the comments? Is that where?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah, he's got a comment. I think I'll link to that specific comment.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So basically, he was saying how he can't, you know, prevent other people from counterfeiting his design, blah, blah, blah, and he can't afford to, you know, to go after him and things like that, which, that's the obvious answer, right? I mean, that's the answer that I expected. Of course, that's what happened, Morgan. They stole your design, and now they're selling it as a $1 pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What, $1? Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, actually, $0.85 if you get, you know, the right quantity.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, what's going on? So. How, like, convinced are you, though?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That it's the same pen? Yeah. 99%.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Hmm.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I want you to look. I put in a new link. So, okay, so what happened was this came out, and everyone was linking to this page on Alibaba showing this pen, and this manufacturer offering up this pen, the exact pen, you know, in black and the chrome and everything like that. Well, yesterday, that link went down, which is interesting.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What does that say? Huh?

'''Myke Hurley:''' What does that say?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What does what say?

'''Myke Hurley:''' The fact that the link went down. Like, on what side is that?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It was the link that everyone was passing around that was involved in the project saying, hey, this is the, this is the Visionaire, this is the Visionaire. Well, now that link's gone. So, yeah, I think it's, I don't think it was a fluke, put it that way.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But if, if he, if it is the same pen, and Morgan doesn't have the rights to own it, then how, like, how could he have it taken down? Like, what I'm trying to say is.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Dealing with the manufacturer, he's like, look, you guys are looking bad. You guys are making me look bad. He could pay them, he could pay them so much more money to take that down. Like, one of the things that bothers me about his Kickstarter project is he keeps finding all this extra money to do these other special things like packaging and a different converter and new ink cartridges.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Have you, I mean, this sounds so bad. Maybe I shouldn't say this, but I'm going to anyway. Have you seen what they look like, these extra things that he's doing? Yeah, no, yeah. You look, I mean, none of the, all the design is, is terrible.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, no, I mean, well, part of it is, number one, he's saying, look, I'm putting all this money back in to the project. Well, that's because he has about a dollar per pen in there and he's made, you know, like, that leaves him lots of extra money. And the extra add-ons, like, someone made a comment in the comment saying, oh, he's upgraded the packaging and he's given us extra ink cartridges. And he redid the converter. Like, if you added up the cost for all three things, all three of those things, it's probably less than a dollar to get those and mass produced total.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay, so, but the Alibaba page has been pulled down, so I can't see it. So, that was pulled down.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, now people have found it. You know, I took screenshots of it the other day because I anticipated that would happen. So, I linked to the screenshots of it I took. But you don't even have to anymore because there's a – I couldn't find the cash copy of it. Someone's found that. And now someone says if you just go over to Alibaba and search LY120, it just – it's everywhere.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, that link I put in, I want you to look at that link.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay, it's in Italian, which is interesting.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Well, not even that link. Skip that one.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, skip the cash one.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, because it's a lot huger page and shows lots of extra things. Go to the one I put in as LY120, and you tell me what you think of that pen and compare it to the Visionaire.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So.