Editing The Pen Addict 93/transcript (section)

== Shipping Updates ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So, we got a good episode today. My kind of episode where we just kind of go over everything. Everything is fair game. And since we had a quick turnaround from last week's episode and I didn't have time to fully formulate a new topic for today, we got all kinds of Twitter questions, which our Twitter followers are just, I don't know, off the charts awesome. So, we got all kinds of good stuff to touch on for topics later in this episode. But I got a couple updates I want to give, if that's good by you. Yeah. Go for it. Yeah. So, it's been a while since I've given a Nock co-update on the podcast. And I've just put out a backer update yesterday. Or was that this morning? I lose track.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think it was this morning.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' About where we're at as far as manufacturing and shipping goes. And we're getting there. I mean, the stock room is loaded to the hilt with cases. So, I'm going to ship out. I put a link in the show notes for anyone who hasn't seen the update yet because some people do miss them. You can go over there and see kind of where we're at on shipping. I've got several different levels I'm going to try to get out this week. Weather depending. It looks like the weather's turning for the worst. So, hopefully, I can get them out by the end of the week. But if not, it'll be shortly thereafter. And then, you know, the manufacturing side of it, it's going good. So, we're just going to keep plugging away. And hopefully, we'll get all this done this month and shipped out either by the end of the month or, I don't know, maybe right in the beginning of March. But it's looking pretty good. We have lots of cases just sitting here ready for the rest of the orders to be made. So, you know, like all the cases level and the mass storage level, you know, I might have three or four of each person's order ready to go. I just got to wait for the rest. So, that's where we're at on that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Where's mine?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, it's funny. I was working. Jeff and I were working this weekend. And I was up in Atlanta helping out. And he said, he gave me a couple extra ones that were just kind of one-off. And he goes, what cases does Myke have for his order? I was like, I don't know. I haven't looked specifically. He goes, we should get his together and go ahead and send them to him. I was like, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to play any favorites.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, see, I wonder if people think, I have not received a case. Not one.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' If I send Myke's case, who backed all the cases level, who's, you know, those are the people that have paid the most and are going to have to wait the longest. And we're like the hugest supporters and everyone's getting theirs last.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I can see why. I can see why Jeffrey said it. And I'm, you know, I'm thankful that he's thinking of me. But I agree with you. I would have told you not to do that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I was like, man, I'll get killed if I make a special package and send his up early.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It would be so unfair to everybody else. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. But like out of all the stock that I have, you know, I could probably put, I could probably piece together a handful of the all my cases orders. But, you know, it's just, it's hard until you get like every single case done to actually go in and package all of those orders because they're so random in what every color of every style that everyone picked. Right. It's not, it's not consistent across everything. So it's hard to, it's hard to manage. And so that's, that's unfortunately going to be one of the last things to ship just because, you know, like I say, like in my, in my update, like I've got the orange, you know, I've got the mandarin mango sassafras is ready in the midnight foliage high towers. Well, I don't just have those ready for those shipments. I have all of those ready for the people who ordered those for the, all the cases level. So, you know, I'll ship out 50 of them and then I have another 200 of them sitting here waiting to be compiled into all the case, the, all the cases order. So that's kind of how it works.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, um, it's an interesting kind of, uh, I'm going to use the word dichotomy, but I don't know if it's the correct word, but I like the sound of it in this sentence. Um, the, the people that gave you the most money are waiting the longest. Like it's just an interesting sort of like predicament to find yourself in. Did you anticipate this? Did this thought cross your mind? Um, when you were, when you were doing it, when you were putting it up?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It did not cross our mind.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And that's one of our, that's one of the learns, I guess, that you've had.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. That's a huge learn. That's, I don't want to say regret. It's not a regret, but it's definitely not how we plan things in the beginning. Definitely not. It's not how we saw things playing out, put it that way. And so it's kind of put us in a weird spot for that to where I feel like super guilty about that. That's, that's like been my biggest regret so far that we've had to push off our biggest supporters to the very end. So we've, Jeff and I have already talked about it. We're going to do, I mean, we've been, you know, we try to be as open as possible throughout this whole experience. And it's been a massive learning experience and there's definitely been some mistakes along the way. And we're, we're talking about, we're definitely going to have a, a big post dissecting what we've learned, um, that we can hopefully help out, you know, other people looking to, to do, um, you know, a Kickstarter project like this and just kind of lay out the nuts and bolts of the, you know, the things that we did wrong and the things that we did right and the things we do differently. So yeah, it's, it's been a massive learning experience. And fortunately, you know, everyone, our, our backers have been awesome and understanding about, you know, the delays and, and things like that. So, I mean, fortunately, I mean, we're in this predicament because it was very successful, right? So, you know, we're just, we're just trying to, uh, learn from that and, you know, continue to do a good job making these cases and, and get these all out to everybody and, um, you know, and take what we've learned and, and move it forward into the, um, into the other products and, and everything else that we're going to be doing in the future. So it's, it's, it's been a challenge, but it's been, it's been really good, um, from a, from a learning perspective. So it's, and there's definitely some things we would have done differently.

'''Myke Hurley:''' When's this, when's the general store opening?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It should be in March. I don't have an exact date, probably tour. It's, it's not going to open obviously until we get everyone shipped. Right. And I mean, that would just be suicide pretty much. Um, so we're looking at March, probably in the middle to late March. Um, and it's, I mean, it's essentially ready to roll. We haven't been working on it too much. We've been working on other things, but you know, we've kind of got, um, we, we've worked on the site on and off and ready to turn it on. Um, whenever we just don't know what the inventory is going to be like when we are, when we do go live with it, but it'll be in March. Um, because we will be, we should be fully done with all the Kickstarter stuff. Um, everything shipped out. Um, obviously the earlier, the better, but, um, I don't see any reason why it won't be in March to get that turned up. So everyone's been asking about that too, because we're going to have some, um, you know, not just the cases that were available in Kickstarter, but we've got some new products we're going to work on, um, some new colorways for the cases, case designs we've already made and, um, some completely, completely new products. Um, one of which we, we, uh, we dropped a sneak peek of, um, this week. You happen to catch that?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Sure did.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So what do you think?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm very interested.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So what we did, so back in, so our Kickstarter ended like October 30th, I think. So pretty much all of November, we're just sitting around waiting for all the Kickstarter machinations in the background to, to finish up, right? You got to wait weeks to get the money transferred and we got to wait weeks to, you know, order products and I mean, order our materials and then get in, get in. So we had, we had several weeks or almost a month of downtime after the Kickstarter ended before we really started hardcore manufacturing. So we came up with a few ideas that we worked on during that time. And this is kind of the, uh, culmination of a couple ideas we had. Um, we wanted to carry some other things besides, um, pen cases. So we came up with an index card design that we really liked. Um, I'm a huge index card fan. Uh, Jeff uses them at work constantly. Um, I know a lot of people are index cards fans and it's always been hard to find a good quality index card. I felt that worked with a lot of, a lot of different pens. Um, so we wanted to make, if you kind of go at it from the perspective of making a fountain pen friendly index card, it's going to work with pretty much all pens. And, um, you know, we worked with a printer and, and found the right paper and the route, the right, uh, printing ink, um, to make our dot dash index cards. And, um, we're going to be excited to, to release those on the world in March. And since we, uh, we didn't want to just stop there with the index cards. We worked with our friend, uh, Myke Dudek of, uh, the Clicky Post. So the dude and, and Jeff and I brainstormed some ideas to hold these index cards. And, um, we have a link to the picture in the show notes. I posted it on the NotCo Instagram. It's called the, uh, Idea Doc. And what it is, it's basically a note card holder, an index card holder. It holds, uh, like up to a pack of 50 and kind of a back slot on the, on the, um, on the wooden block. And then it has a slot in the front for like your current active card, if you will. I know a lot of people keep to-do lists and, and daily notes and checklists on index cards. And this gives them a slot to, uh, put that card kind of front and center. And then behind that card, there's like a little groove cut out for a pen to lay across. So it's a nice little, um, desk accessory that works good for, uh, index cards. And we're really, really happy with how this turned out from, uh, Mr. Dudek.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And who's making the index cards?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Um, a local printer to us here in Atlanta.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Good stuff. So you've, you've had a hand in the paper selection and things like that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, yeah. I mean, we, we tried all kinds of the samples, different kinds of printing ink, um, you know, all kinds of stuff. So, yeah, well, we had, we handled the whole process with the, with the printer. We picked out everything and, and did the design ourselves and the, and the, um, you know, the cover design and, and things like that. So you have the design and paper and everything. It's everything we've been fully, fully engaged with, with getting these made. And, uh, I'm really, really happy with how they turned out. They, um, they work really, really well.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Looks exciting. God, you guys are so busy.