Editing The Pen Addict 243/transcript (section)

== Ink Choices ==


'''Jared:''' It's just, it just kind of stinks that that's the main focus for so many people when there's just better choices out there. So, that's always been my argument with Moleskine. I agree. It's perfect for a lot of people. So, there's just better choices and better options, in my opinion. And, you know, unfortunately, Moleskine is the, they did the marketing stuff right, but that's, it really came out in the article that that's what they care about more than anything, than any product they make.

'''Myke Hurley:''' In a way, I'm kind of happy that Moleskine believed the way that they believe, because it allows companies like Lodgeterm and Baron Fig to exist. Because these, you know, the customers of these brands are customers that are used to this form factor, and have maybe decided that they want to get a better product. And if Moleskine's paper was excellent, they would own it all. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, I'm happy that there are, you know, there are other companies out there that can benefit from Moleskine's apathy. Right. Or Moleskine. Maybe we should just start calling them Moleskine.

'''Jared:''' So, we, that's one of the oldest tropes on the show, I guess, is that the proper word, is how do you pronounce Moleskine? Um, it was like early on.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They have, this annoys me so much that they have no official pronunciation. It's like, if you, if you want an encapsulation of everything that's wrong with that brand, that's it. They don't even have an opinion on how to pronounce their name.

'''Jared:''' Right. They basically, so the answer we got was basically do what you want. There's three kind of officially versions, but not officially. Moleskine is the official Italian way to say it. No one says that, though. Um, Moleskine is an option, and Moleskine is an option, and none of them are wrong, according to them. So, yeah. But branding, you know, whatever.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Whatever. Talk about branding.

'''Jared:''' Talking about companies and their business. Let's roll right back into branding. Talking about companies and their business. Lamy, ugh. What are you doing to me, Lamy? You're just making me talk about silly stuff. Um, so we were talking about the AL Star Pacific Blue release last week. We were concerned whether it was really metallic after some of the pictures we shot. It's definitely metallic.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep.

'''Jared:''' Um, and it looks great. It's an awesome looking pen. I love the color. And along with Lamy's pen releases, they do ink releases. And we were concerned that just in the first shot I had seen a week or two ago of Pacific Blue, that boy, that looks like Lamy turquoise ink. Well, it turns out that there's a good reason it looks like Lamy turquoise ink, because it is Lamy turquoise ink. So, my thoughts on this are wide ranging. Number one, I don't want to make a bigger deal out of this than it is. On the scale of things that are a big deal, this is like a two out of ten.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's not one.

'''Jared:''' It's not a big deal. But the problem I had was when I found out and started asking around, Lamy did not tell the retailers that it's the same ink, right? Because it's now called Pacific Blue. It has a different box pattern and a new skew. So, if you're a vendor, you look at that and you go, great, I'm going to order all the Pacific Blue ink to go with these Pacific Blue pens, kind of like I did for Dark Lilac last year. And boy, that Dark Lilac, we sold the heck out of that. So, let me buy even more of this, because I ran out of Dark Lilac immediately. And you pay all this money, and then you get an ink that you already have. Just with a new brand. With a new box. Is it more expensive? Is it limited edition pricing? Last year, they weren't. So, like last year, Dark Lilac was $10.50 a bottle, which is the same pricing, I believe. So, you know, it's not that big a deal. It's not the end of the world. I just don't like how they essentially jobbed retailers in this.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, the only person that loses here is the retailer, really.

'''Jared:''' Yeah, and the reason why I always, you know, tend to fall on the retailer side on these things is because the retailers are the ones that are taking the risk for us. They're assuming the monetary risk so that we have nice places to shop. Yep. And when they're overspending and are trying to manage budgets, I would like for them to have the full information up front. I mean, this isn't going to hurt damage anybody. This isn't going to hurt anybody. If you don't have Lamy Turquoise, you should buy Pacific Blue because Lamy Turquoise is one of the great underrated inks. It's a really, really good ink. I use that ink frequently because it's that good. So, this will be a good ink. It's just, Lamy's just done some weird stuff this year or in the past year and a half. So, you know, it's a head scratcher. It was like, it went from, boy, that looks like turquoise to asking, is it turquoise? And then Lamy says, yes, it's the same ink as turquoise. Like, Lamy has said this. People I've talked to have said this, that they got that answer direct from Lamy, except no one knew it up front.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, it's like they're super willing to give the information when you ask. Which is a very strange way to do it.

'''Jared:''' So, I mean, in the end, no one's going to be sitting on Pacific Blue ink because, fortunately, it's a very good ink. The Lamy Turquoise is excellent and it's inexpensive, but it's just weird. It's just like, why do we do, these are not the questions we need to be spending five minutes on, on the podcast. But we do, anyway. Is some vendor doing something silly like this? I just, I don't get it, so.