Editing The Pen Addict 433/transcript (section)

== Retro 51 Market ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' And some extras. So you came out ahead.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You know, I sent you those extra pens, like the extra Celebration and the extra 849s. I thought maybe you'd have one for you, one for Adina, but apparently it didn't go that well for her.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The 849s, yes. But the Celebration, no, I want to keep mine all sealed up. That just feels like the right thing to do for me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, it's for eBay later.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, so I can sell it for 700 pounds on eBay. Right. I mean, it's 002. If number two pops up, you'll know it's mine.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, no, it's been stolen. Someone broke in and stole just that pen. Well, currently it's one of the most valuable things in this office.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, true.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Those kind of prices.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. Yeah, the Retro 51 market's pretty crazy. I still don't know what's going on with them for the rest of the year or in the future. Like, no clue. So who knows? All right. I guess that's a good lead into our business topic with Retro 51. We don't know what they're doing. And this is going to be a very kind of businessy, stationary businessy heavy episode because there were a couple of emails that I received and some notes that I received from other people. You know, did you see this? You can talk about this. You know, what's going on? And there's kind of like three or four separate topics I want to hit just on the business of stationary. And we can talk about how, you know, what we do and how it relates because I find all this stuff interesting. So the first one, I think it's the biggest one. It's from CW Pencil. So Caroline Weaver put out a huge blog post and an email. The title is Big Changes Ahead. The short version, it's a very long and detailed email, which we're going to get into some of it. But I want to read one specific little section, if you will allow me, and then use that as the jumping off points. Just bear with me for a second here. So this is, again, from Caroline Weaver. This is her writing. Six years ago, when I first put our website online, I had the goal of opening a shop that specializes only in pencils. Emphasis Hearst. The products on the website were extremely edited and carefully selected through the lens of a person who wanted to convince New York City that pencils are indeed an object that deserves more appreciation. Since then, we've moved to a bigger shop, multiplied the number of products we offer, and navigated our way through a global pandemic so far. The thing is, I don't feel like I need to convince anyone of anything anymore. And as I spent months working alone in my shop this spring, just trying to figure out how to save my business, I realized that since this website went live in November 2014, the thing that had become most important to me in my business over the past six years is not the concept itself, but the community built around it. So there's a lot to unpack. And that is like 100 words in an 800-word blog post, right? But that, I think, gives you the gist of what's going on here. So, you know, Caroline, what CWP started as was like a pencil-specific shop. Like, that was our go-to pencil shop, right? That's what they carried. They carried pencils. They did it very well. Caroline and her staff curated it perfectly. And it was beloved, right? Or it is beloved. I shouldn't. There's no was. It is beloved. You know, we have obviously met Caroline. We've been to the shop. You know, my thoughts on how she does her work and how, you know, she presents the store and everything. Like, I think she does great. And, you know, reading this, a couple of things. One, this last year has been a bear. You know, that's me reading between the lines. And that goes for all of us, especially us in the stationery industry and especially us in the niche stationery industry. You know, I've had, we've struggled with Nock, you know, over the past year or two, just trying to get things right. You know, this is hard to do correctly, right? And especially Caroline with a physical storefront in a city like New York. You can just imagine. And then having to rely on a lot of tourism to sustain the physical storefront. So I find it all interesting, you know, about that and the challenges. But what she gets to here at the end where she mentions the most important part is the community built around the shop. That's the most important thing to me when dealing as a business myself. You know, whether it's Pen Addict, Nock, SpokePen, whether it's working with other companies, you know, and choosing who I work with is that they are mainly community focused. But that's not something you necessarily see, like visually. Like we don't say we're community focused. It's how we act and how we present ourselves and how we approach our customer service and how we do our marketing. And the respect towards the customer is paramount. So that's going to allow Caroline to fully reboot what CW Pencil Enterprise is into a more local office supply shop first and foremost. And you can read all of this in her explanations in this wonderful blog post that we'll link in the show notes to build a place for the needs of the neighborhood around her and the city. Right. To build an office supply destination for the people locally that need her. So it's number one, not so heavily, heavily reliant on tourists and number two, not so heavily reliant on what's really, I don't want to say a small margin product, but a low sales product and a single pencil. Right. If you go in there and buy even a handful of single pencils, what are you, you're getting out there, you know, for 12 or $15, which is great. Like you feel awesome about your purchase and like, you know, they've made, you can't sustain on lots of, you know, $5 profits throughout the day. In New York City. Right. So there's a bigger opportunity to broaden the office supply space and destination for office supplies for local businesses.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' At a time when, especially in a city like New York, people need to get their own office supplies more than they ever did before now. Right. Because our homes have become our offices for many people.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. So she's going to use her experience in curating CW pencils to do that for a broader base of goods and have a focus on, you know, local, you know, smaller businesses, transparent businesses, sustainable businesses, ethical businesses. And pulling in these type of goods and then hopefully, you know, bring in a wider local commitment to the, to help the shop and then still have this great online business that she has. So there's a huge amount of changes that, that come into that. And she's working through those. And I just could not appreciate a post like this more. And we're going to talk about several other options like this in throughout this show. Like I have other things I want to talk about, but I just wanted to shine a light on this. Going back to her community statement and her transparent statement. Like I, I am very adamant in my stance on transparency with businesses I work with and for them to come out for Caroline to come out and say like, this is like the challenges that we've had. This is, you know, why we've had problems. Here's the changes we're going to make. And here's what we're trying to do in the future. That builds community around a product. That's something that the community can get behind that have supported CWP in the past. And it makes you want to support them in the future where companies that are not that way and hide behind marketing and hide behind, you know, obfuscation. It's harder to support them wholeheartedly when you don't feel like you're part of the business. And you don't have the commitment from the owner that they're putting the customer first. And that's what I see with Caroline. That's the way Caroline's always been. So I just appreciate this type of thing. And this is how I try to run anything that I do with just 100% transparency and openness. Because while, you know, these ideas may not be the most profitable, I think they're going to be the most sustainable. If you build that customer base, that's going to return because they believe in you, not necessarily the product, right? They believe in the person behind the product. And I think that's the most sustainable form of business. But it doesn't mean there's not challenges and there's not growing pains. But that gives you the opportunity like CWP has to make this pivot. And I am convinced it will be successful. I just know it is. But it's not going to be without challenges. And it's not going to be without the need of support from the community that Caroline's built over the years. And I just look forward to seeing what she's going to do in the future with this. And the continuation of the open, transparent conversation that she's having with all of her supporters. So I thought it was very well done.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. One, I wonder if Caroline will rebrand. I wonder if that is in the future.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think that in a parallel unit. So I think that the idea of going from expanding from just pencils to all types of stationery and general office supplies is a very logical next step for Caroline and her business. One that you could imagine she would have eventually made because people want to grow. Right? And this is a growth. I would imagine in a parallel universe, she would have opened a second store. Right. We're not in that parallel universe. And business is trickier to manage a little bit right now. Right? So I could have imagined a world where if the pandemic wouldn't have happened maybe in a year or two, she might have been like, I want a second location. And I want it to be a general office supply store. Right. But this time she has decided, no, I'm going to take what we are good at and apply it to a wider field. And I know that for me personally, I will be even more interested in CWPE because of the fact that I like pencils, but I'm not big on pencils. But I always really appreciate the team and their ability to curate. So taking that superpower and applying it to a wider space is very intriguing to me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I think that's the right word. It's interesting to me to see what they can do because I already believe in them wholeheartedly as it is. And now you're going to mix it up, not because you want to, but honestly because you need to survive and already have the utmost faith in them to begin with. So to be able to see what they do next is going to be cool. So one of the bits of fallout from the changes is their pencil box subscription is being discontinued.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right.