Editing The Pen Addict 461/transcript (section)

== King of Pen Pricing Discussion ==


'''Myke:''' Okay.

'''Brad:''' This is... The king of pen pricing is actually what threw me off on this. Because I was like, oh, that's not the new king of pen price. So I went and looked at the pricing on these. Sailor, I don't even look at the price anymore, right? I know kind of the ballpark. We've gone over how they had like a 25% plus increase this year, which is fine. But these are listed lower than the new MSRPs that they came out with in 2021. But higher than previous versions, if that makes sense, right? So this is a non-existent price point release. So the standards... Let's just talk about the standards. That's the easiest one to... That's the main... Probably the main line pen, right? It's the middle price pen. So the MSRP on those is $450, which makes them what? $93.70? Is that right? So like 20% off of that. $360. $360. Sorry. I'm looking at the numbers here.

'''Myke:''' I can't do math on the flyers.

'''Brad:''' I was. I wasn't looking at the numbers, even though I have a link in the doc. So that makes them sell for $360, where all the... Like the North American Lemon Editions that came out, the Habanero, the red sparkly one with the 2021 edition, the MSRP on those is $490. And that was the big price increase push that they had, right? So those would be more like $380, right? $390 for those. And I'm just confused now. Like I don't care either way, but they raised the price, said, here's our new price across our product line for 2021. And then introduce a new edition at a lesser price point. It's like midway, right?

'''Myke:''' Between the old prices and the new prices. Mm-hmm.

'''Brad:''' Mm-hmm. Yeah.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. Okay.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. I mean, I don't have any commentary on that. I don't want to be like price point guy, but now I'm just confused. Like I don't like to be confused when I'm like talking about products because now there's three active price points. Yeah. For just say like a Sailor Pro Gear standard. There are currently three price points because retailers aren't sold out of the previous editions at the previous price point. They have new limited editions that got hit with the full price increase. And then now this is a third price point for theoretically the same pen model. Now there could be like a quantity volume thing, but normally if you're going to do like a across the board price increase, it just is, right? There's not like a modification. Well, we're making, you know, 10,000 of these instead of 2,000 of these.

'''Myke:''' Maybe there's something, an argument that can be made to like materials, like depending on the materials used in the pen. Like Sailor don't have to have just one price for all of their products. Yeah. Right. Like if they use, I'm not saying that is what's happened here, but like, you know, if they use a different, if they use like a metal finial or whatever, it's going to cost more than if it's acrylic or whatever.

'''Brad:''' Right. And that's what I'm saying. You know, this one is a World Ride release. So they've, maybe they got, you know, some economy of scale with the pricing on this. I'm just saying it adds confusion to the consumer. Even though in the end, I fully don't believe it matters. I'm just like, that's interesting. And it's just another little thing. So a little weird. Like the pen, it'll do well. You know?

'''Myke:''' I can imagine this being one like the Lighthouse where I didn't want it. And then I saw it and was like, oh man, you know what? I wish I would have got that. 100%. 100%. I could imagine it. I could imagine the blue finish, like the sparkly finish, the Meta Shine, could have to it something quite cool looking that doesn't necessarily come across in the imagery. Like I could imagine that being the case. But just looking at this here, it isn't really one that floats my boat. Right.

'''Brad:''' And I'm a well-renowned orange guy, but like one of my favorite color combinations is different types of blues and reds together. But for something about this one, it's not hitting right in the imagery. But like if I saw it in person, I could see ending up with like the middle size one. I definitely don't see King of Pen in my future on this one. But I said that about the Tangerine too. And that was just, that was a really good decision. I really like that pen. So there you go. All right. So that's our sailor talk.

'''Myke:''' So the, we spoke about this a couple of weeks ago, the Lego member special that we have recorded is going to be published on May 13th, which is tomorrow as we're recording this. So most of you will be hearing this when it's either going to be out within 24 hours or it's already out when you're hearing it. So this is a special bonus episode that we do every year for RelayFM members. You can go to relay.fm membership to learn more and sign up. Or you can click the link that's in the show notes of this episode in your podcast app, and you'll be able to sign up and support this show. If you become a RelayFM member, not only do you get access to these extra special content shows, you also get access to some other stuff that we do, crossover shows. And we have a show called Backstage and Fusion that we do every month, which are just for RelayFM members. Backstage is me and Stephen talking you through our tips and tricks for starting a podcast of your own. Fusion combines multiple RelayFM hosts from different shows every month to talk about a topic. And you also get access to our RelayFM members Discord, which is a fantastic community full of wonderful people. It's a safe, moderated space. It's something that we really built into something wonderful over the last year with the help of all of our fine moderators there. And you will get access to our Lego special where me and Brad built the Paris set over, was it three and a half hours, I think is the length of the show?

'''Brad:''' About three and a half. We didn't kill each other. Got close, though. As shown by us being here today. Close. Showing up to work today. Close.

'''Myke:''' There are a couple of moments where I really lost my patience with you. It's a very fun episode, as always. And so you can go check it out. So yeah, Relay.fm membership to learn more about our membership. You can sign up on that page. Or if you just click the link in the podcast app, it's the very top link in your show notes. You'll be able to sign up and support the show. And we thank you all so much for your support if you do that.

'''Myke:''' All right, let's take our first break of this episode and thank Squarespace for their support of this show. They are the all-in-one platform to build your online presence and run your business. From websites and online stores to marketing tools and analytics, Squarespace has you covered. They combine cutting-edge design with world-class engineering to make it easier than ever to establish your place online and make your ideas a reality. Squarespace has everything you need to create a beautiful and modern website. You start with professional design. The templates are beautiful. And you just drag and drop everything around. They have these wonderful tools to help make it your own. You customize the look and feel, the settings, even the products you have on sale if you want to run a store with Squarespace with just a few clicks. Everything's optimized for mobile as well, so your content automatically adjusts so it's going to look great on any device. One of my favorite features when designing a Squarespace website is in the designer itself, you can click these buttons to shrink the website, like to shrink the design view. So you can see like, okay, this is what it looks like in a desktop. I press a button, now it's tablet size, and I press another button, now it's phone size. So you can actually do all of that design work without needing to have a plethora of devices in front of you. It's really clever. With Squarespace, you'll also get free, unlimited hosting, top-of-the-line security, and dependable resources to help you succeed. There's nothing to patch, install, or upgrade. And they have award-winning 24-7 customer support as well. They'll let you quickly and easily grab a unique domain name. And they have everything you need for SEO and email marketing to get your ideas out there to people. You can use Squarespace to turn your big idea into a new website, showcase your work with their wonderful portfolio designs, publish your next blog post, promote your business, announce an upcoming event, and so much more. Go to squarespace.com slash penaddict to sign up for a free trial with no credit card required. When you're ready to launch, just use the offer code penaddict, and you'll save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at squarespace.com slash penaddict, and use the offer code penaddict to check out to get 10% off your first purchase. And to show you support for this show, our thanks to Squarespace for their continued support of the penaddict and RelayFM.

'''Brad:''' One point you reminded me there about Squarespace that we never usually talk about is how seamlessly it works on mobile devices. Like, I don't have to do anything for my blog to just show up and be easy to use for anyone reading it on, you know, mobile devices. You're not having to zoom in.

'''Myke:''' You don't have buttons that don't work, like none of that stuff.

'''Brad:''' You don't even have to think about it. Yeah, it's just frictionless. Works perfectly. All right. My pen cases are not frictionless, Myke, because I've added friction to them by adding more pens to slide in and out of them. My experiment to last one fountain pen, I knew it would not last long. I knew it wouldn't. Like, it's a given. That's not how I roll.

'''Myke:''' No.