Editing The Pen Addict 666/transcript (section)

== Discussion on decision-making and paradox of choice. ==

* On the other hand, is how do I choose, right? So someone linked last week, Rattler Jen, shout out to Rattler Jen last week. And I meant, I meant to mention this, like the paradox of choice, like this is like a more is less situation. It was like, you stare at that rack. And at some point, your eyes just glaze over. And it's like, okay, I'm just going to go now. Right? It's like, how do you grab one? How do you make a decision standing in front of that? And what is uni doing to help, you know, help you make a decision? Like, are they doing anything? And that's what, that's all I would like to see is uni to help you make a decision when you're staring at 50 hooks of not just the singular, like take the, the vision elite, for example, but vision elite also comes in BLX, right? Which is the black ink formula. So there's just infinite depth below the, the main line of uni's products. And yeah, at some point you just go, wow, that's a lot. How do I make a decision? And that's what I'm trying to figure out. It's one of those things where I tend to try and have faith that the people making these decisions know what they're doing.
* And that, that often, not often, that often enough, I'll say is, is becomes clear is not the case, right? With like, there are, there are other corporate things going on that makes people, that incentivizes bad decision making. But I like to try and assume that the people making the decisions have more information than me. Like I try and take that as my starting point. Yes. I generally do that too. And so if I assume that, then the assumption I'll make here is the same assumption I made last time, is that uni believe that by having so many models, they are essentially like capturing all of the business, right? Like I think that in so much as like, they don't even, maybe, I don't know about this case, but I can imagine a lot of stationery stores, they don't even really care if you know it's them.
* Right. That like, they look at all of these products that, you know, they expect somebody looks at all of these products and they're like, look at all these pens, like all these different names of pens. And I'll choose the one that I want. And they just have something at every price point, like Samsung, right? They do this, that there is a Samsung phone at like every price point possible, but you just don't know about them. Right. Because they have the ones that they show you the big flashy ones, but then they have them at like, every like $50 or even closer price point, all the way down to like $200 or something. And they just offer like everything. And yeah. So I think that's what some, that is the strategy of some companies. And if you've got your logistics right, you can manage it. That would be my assumption. Cause I don't know. Cause basically my thinking is why would you keep doing it? Right. Right. Why would you have all of these? And then like, as we were talking about last week's show, here's more sub brands. Like I figure there has to be some reasoning for why they would do that. But maybe I'm wrong and I'm being too kind. I don't think so. I think you're right. And like at a minimum it's marketing, right? It's base level marketing that this exists, even if I'm not making a purchase today, this now exists and maybe I'll go look at it some more. So, yeah. So it's good. I want, you need to continue down this path. I'm just looking for a little bit of guidance for someone who's staring at this for the first time or second time, you know, someone who's been in someone who found an Onyx at the office, because that's a kind of, kind of a classic office pen and then figuring out where do they go next? Because I think there is like a line there. There's like a progression in their products. So anyway, good stuff. This thing that Nathan has suggested like shouldn't be happening. Right. There shouldn't be like a uni display with like 40 pen models. Like it should be a little bit smarter than that. But that's that is a very complicated thing to do. It's like offering the right products in the right places is what I'm saying. Right. Yes. Because they're not selling the same amount of all of these things in this one location. So like being a bit smarter with that. But maybe they are. Maybe I have to stumble. Maybe they are. Yeah. Qelpenguino wrote in and says for the question about reducing a stock stub nib. I can't give a nib mice this perspective, but I can say that I have had it done and was happy with the result. I bought a used Franklin Kristoff that shipped of 1.5 stub and brought it down to about 0.9 line and have had no problems. Okay. Yeah. That's good feedback. And like I, my observation or comment on this was it's absolutely possible to do. Am I going to be happy with the visual of it? Right. I think it will work. Like I have no doubt that it will work and that a nib meister can do it and it's no issue at all. Am I going to be, and this is, and I'm just only talking about me personally. Am I going to be happy with the visual of that? And if they can shave that down and manage the feed size and everything and get it down to the proper thing. And that's good. I, I would actually like to see this in person. So, you know, maybe that's something I explore the next time I've been at a pen show. Maybe I get this done myself and see if I'm happy with the results because going from 1.5 to one is a big, big jump for me visually. So I want to see, I want to see how that, how that goes. So yeah. But that's good. So I would like to see this. If you have this done, if you see me in a pen show, and then maybe I will explore getting this done for myself because I have plenty of 1.5 stubs that I would like to be narrower. So there we go. All right. You want me to handle this last one? Yeah, go for it. Yeah. Yeah. Cause this is something I emailed directly. I got on this. So via Matt. So Matt said, I was asking about the Conklin EF nib issue on the last episode. I was thinking along the same lines as there being an issue with the nib. I did a little bit of self-testing because I noted with the Perkyo. So this was a comparison between the Kaweco Perkyo and the Conklin EF and only having problems with the Conklin EF. So I noted with the Perkyo that the ink was extremely wet as well. So I did the following, the original inking. So in the Perkyo, Matt used Private Reserve Infinity Violet. Seemed very wet in this pen. And then on the Conklin, Matt used Organic Studio Nitrogen. So immediately my red flag went up right here. So this is why, where ink matters and information matters when we're talking about things. Organic Studio Nitrogen, while it is a great ink, it is highly aggressively super sheeny. This is an extreme ink. And testing this in a Conklin EF nib is probably going to give you a problem. Or I won't say probably. It is a huge variable that can go a lot of different ways in this. And I would immediately take this ink out and clean it out and try it again. So guess what? Matt did. So she said, this is the one I struggled to write with the Conklin with the Organic Studio Nitrogen. It seemed to snag the paper. We're seeing what type seemed like an unnatural amount of pressure to lay any ink on the page. I tried switching inks and that seemed to have helped the issue. So there you go. So, and I basically replied back to Matt as like, boom, there's your answer. Like nothing wrong with Organic Studio Nitrogen other than that is an ink that requires properly set expectations. Right? So we can use all the extreme inks we want. We can use all the shimmer ink we want. We can use all the pigmented ink we want. But you need to change your baseline expectation of what could happen with this ink and this nib combination and this paper combination. And if you're having a problem like out the blue, like from the first fill with Organic Studio Nitrogen in a pen, I'm looking directly at the ink. But you also have to have that information going ahead. Maybe, you know, Matt was not aware that like nitrogen could be like really extreme and tough and challenging for some nibs. Right? Maybe people, you know, just read how great this ink is and it is. But not aware of the downsides. Some inks have downsides. Like if you're buying, you know, Diamine Meadow, you're not going to have a lot of downsides. Right? Just a basic standard straightforward ink. You know, if you're buying Pilot Blue, you're not going to have a lot of downsides. There's a certain level of ink where you just have to be aware of it. Like nothing wrong with the ink, but now you've introduced more challenges into play when you're testing and trying out ink. So there you go. I thought that was good feedback from Matt because as soon as he said that, I was like, well, that's it. Well, that's your problem. Yeah. Like, and again, nothing wrong with the ink, but it's not going to work anywhere, everywhere with every nib. And you need to just, it's an awareness thing that is hopefully something we can help out with here on the podcast. All right. You ready to get into it, Myke? Oh, I am. I tested a lot of paper this week. Okay. I was a very, very fortunate boy to get in several new paper goods. After last week's episode, I said I had ordered the iWriter notebook, so let's tackle those first. Okay.
* Number one, shout out on the shipping. These came from Japan. And what did it take? A week, maybe? You know, I paid for it, right? You know, it was 30, 40 bucks in shipping, which is my expectation. Like, it's the proper shipping, but I still would have expected two, three weeks. Am I going to get dinged for something else? You know, some tariff or something. To tariff. I'll just say the word. I don't care. Like, it's, there's no beating around the bush. Am I going to get dinged? Like, you know, the total price was low enough. It should fly under whatever thresholds, but you know, you still never know. You just don't. Who knows today? Right. Who knows? Yeah.