Editing The Pen Addict 467/transcript (section)

== Product Promotion ==


'''Brad:''' Like it just works. It does its job exceptionally well. Right. So it's, it's that type of product. The other pen that I'm brought is I'm trying to figure out how it relates. To the Leonardo and that's Mayora. So that I have the Impronte Oversize Postalipo Golden Touch. Very long name. I don't know which part of the name means which part of the product other than Oversize. It's a large pen. A little bit bigger than the Memento Zero. Wider in diameter. And it has one of those very concave grip sections. So between the size of the pen and the concave grip section, I wasn't sure if I would like this pen. So I held off when they kind of launched. I don't know. Or not launched. But when they first came around, I don't know, a year or so ago. I was like, ooh, that's a really nice looking pen. But it's probably a little big for me. Then I got my Kasama Una. And it has kind of that same shape. It's a wide diameter barrel with a very concrete cave grip. And it turns out that that works for me. So this one's working for me so far. I'm liking it. Both Mayora and Leonardo came from the remnants of the Delta closure. When Delta fountain pens shut down in Italy. Both of the families that now went on to form these two companies came from that. And you can see that these pens kind of favor each other in design.

'''Myke:'''  Well, you see a family tree, right? You've got the look of the Delta pen and their two children. Because the Mayora and the Leonardo look very similar in design. Everything about it, really, to me, the key difference between the two of them is the clip design.

'''Myke:'''  That's the thing that really sets the kind of standard apart, right? Like they're big, bright, colorful acrylic pens with bands that go around in metal, right? Like at certain points on the pen. But the clip design seems to really set the two apart.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. Would you say the Mayora is a little more standard, basic, and the Leonardo is a little bit more modern, classic? I don't even know how to describe them. I would say... Neither of them are like... They're not like... We're not talking about like... For those of you who can't see the image, we're not talking about like a Visconti clip situation here.

'''Myke:'''  No. Like the Mayora's clip is very basic. Like it's just this is a clip. And the Leonardo clip, they've tried to do something with it. They put that kind of like little steamroller on the bottom of it, which I actually don't like. I don't have a big problem with the Leonardo clip. It's not a stopping point for me like Visconti, right? But just the general design of the clip is a turnoff for me, for the Leonardo. However, the Mayora pen, I don't like that. I would prefer... Honestly, for me anyway, I'd prefer both of these pens without a clip on them. Aesthetically. Because the clip design itself is not... One is too basic and one is too much for me.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. So that's funny. I had to go look at the images. That's how little I've noticed the clips on these pens for having used them for a while. That's how little they stand out to me. I think I saw them as like, okay, clip, good. And then just moved on to something else.

'''Myke:'''  I'm quite picky with clips. I think it's because in general, I prefer pens without clips on them. So if I'm going to have a clip design, it needs to be one that I like. And just like in general, I enjoy both Sailor and Platinum's clip designs. Sure. Because Platinum's clip design is very basic, but they've kind of nailed it, right? Like it's a very standardized shape, but it's got like a nice engraving that goes around the outside. And just I enjoy Sailor's overall design, which is reminiscent of a kind of duck bill. But luckily, they have gone even further in that direction before, but then pulled it back again.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I inked up this Mayora. I definitely went matchy-matchy with this one and continued my travels into Pannonia Inkland. So I have Marexold in this one, which is called Poison Green. And it's really kind of more of a blue-green, which fits this pen. Yeah. Like I don't even – I was actually confused when I went to go see what color this was and that it had actually green anywhere in the name because it was really more like an aqua teal maybe. It's great. It's fantastic. It matches this pen perfectly. So I'll be talking about more of both of these pens and both inks soon. So this is what – I brought these because they're new to me, and I'm going to start working on their reviews. So I need to get them inked up and used so I can kind of get a good baseline. I will definitely review the Mayora first just because I've reviewed a Leonardo before. And I'll review this one separately, but the Mayora is going to be first just because it's really new to me. And I'm happy with it so far. I have a couple of minor questions that I want to – just need to explore a little bit more. But I think overall it's going to get like a good review, but then you can't help but have to compare it to the Leonardo, and it's just not going to rank as well. Just because in a recommendation kind of way, not a personal kind of way, it's wider and has more questions to ask around the grip section. So it's for less people right out the gate from a recommendation perspective. So that's how I kind of look at these things. So that's my initial thoughts, but I'm definitely enjoying it.

'''Myke:'''  All right, let's take our first break of this episode and thank our first sponsor. It's a new sponsor for the show, Micro.blog. If you're a pen addict who wants to share your love of pens and ink and stationery and more, you can join Micro.blog where you'll find kindred spirits. Micro.blog is an easy-to-use blogging platform where you can write short or long blog posts. You can share photos, video, or even host a podcast of your own. But more than a place to post your stuff, it's also a friendly community of people with a wide range of interests who share and comment via the service's social timeline, backed by strong community guidelines that are enforced by the people running and moderating the communities. It really is a very cool and special thing. Like, Micro.blog's been around for a while now, and I've always loved myself how on the site, the content that you put on there, it actually feels much more like it's yours because it doesn't feel like it's belonging to a company to fuel their algorithms and sell their ads because this isn't something that they do. You have so much more control about where things live and where they're seen, and the fact that the communities themselves are more focused than other social networks, you may be able to more freely explore the things that you love. They also actually, just before sponsoring the show, they added a feature to use emoji to discover things that you care about. And so what would be good for listeners to this show, any post that uses the fountain pen emoji attached to it will be surfaced in a new pens and ink topic on Micro.blog, so you can very easily find new people to share stuff with. So I think that's super, super cool. I really love that feature. That was really nice to see them put that in there. Look, Micro.blog is different. There's no ads. There's no behind-the-scenes algorithm choosing which posts appear on your timeline. If you're always wanting to share your love of pens but have felt lost or discouraged by larger social media sites, come to Micro.blog. You can meet fellow enthusiasts in the rest of the community and share interesting things that they love. Micro.blog hosting starts at $5 a month. You can use your own domain and you can even cross-post from there to Twitter, Tumblr, and Mastodon. Using your own domain name, your posts reside on a blog that you control. And you can use Micro.blog via Mac, iOS, and Android, as well as the web. If you're ready to try a different blogging and social media experience, head to micro.blog slash penaddict where you'll be able to sign up for free and try out all of the features of Micro.blog for one month of free usage. That's micro.blog slash penaddict for a one-month free trial. Our thanks to micro.blog for their support of this show and RelayFM.

'''Brad:''' Can I say a few words about this?

'''Myke:'''  Yes, I would love you to.

'''Brad:''' I'm inordinately excited about this sponsorship. I was a supporter of the launch of Micro.blog.

'''Myke:'''  It was a Kickstarter, right?

'''Brad:''' From their Kickstarter campaign. Yeah, and I was like, I love this idea. And I haven't been using it, like admittedly. And late last year, I was like, I need to start working on this a little bit more. And I talked with one of the main people over there at micro.blog, Jean. She's a good friend of yours and ours and just an awesome all-around person. And I was like, I really need what micro.blog is offering. I need this comfortable social media experience that's fun and fascinating and interesting and community built. And it's really cool. So I'm going to start leaning into this a lot more going forward. Not just because they're sponsoring the show, but because it has been on my fingertips here for the longest time that I really need to use this for pen-related stuff and be involved in this space. Because I like everything about it and want to be part of it. So yeah, I'm going to start working on that soon. I spent some time kind of cleaning up my old accounts, trying to get everything kind of spiffied up. So I will shoot over a link to my micro.blog. I'm Brad on there. So from the OG days when you sign up at Kickstarter, you got to reserve your name. So you can find me at Brad.

'''Myke:'''  Yeah, what you definitely need is another different username.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, that's good. I'll probably continue to work on that and make more new usernames for different things. But no, I'm excited about this. I've been wanting to work on my micro.blog for a while just because it's easy and it's fun. And I look forward to it.

'''Brad:''' Something else we can look forward to, Myke.

'''Myke:'''  Okay.

'''Brad:''' Every few months.

'''Myke:'''  Yeah.

'''Brad:''' In your mail. What do you got?

'''Myke:'''  Yeah, I mentioned this a little bit last time and I thought that I don't know, we could maybe touch on it a little bit more. The Theme System Journal now is offered via a quarterly rolling subscription. So previously, you've been able to just go to cortexmatch.com or buy a Theme System Journal of your own whenever you've wanted one. And listeners of this show have been following the story of this will know that we have had what I consider now at this point to be historic levels of stock shortages.

'''Myke:'''  The product is now two years old and we have sold more in the last year than we did in the prior year and a half. And one of the big reasons for this is because for most of that year and a half, the product was not in stock at all. We couldn't keep it in stock. And now we are in a position where we have a better supply flow, I'll say. You know, like we've moved to a different manufacturer where we're able to tweak things a little bit differently and we're able to restock much faster. And so now we're very comfortable with our stock levels so much that we are willing to say, hey, if you want to give us if you want to subscribe, give us money every quarter, you'll get one every quarter. Right. And this isn't something we could have done before, because if we didn't if we weren't confident in the amount of time it takes us to restock the product, then we wouldn't be able to fulfill the subscriptions. Right. So, you know, you'd come to like subscription refill time and it's like, oh, we don't have any of these and we're not going to have them for three months. Now, again, like this is a we're kind of calling this like a beta, really, because we still got to make it work. Right. Like something could happen that we're not anticipating and then we need like it's like hair on fire time trying to get new ones of these things printed in time. Right. So like we're still kind of we're still kind of getting our heads around this, which is why we've launched it in the middle of the year. Right. Like the best time for anything related to the theme system journal is between like November and January, because that's when people are thinking about their next year. Like even though the product technically lasts kind of around 90 days, if you journal every day, it's just not really the time frame that people are thinking, hey, I'm going to start my new yearly theme in July. Right. But people that are in the system and are using it, they need one every 90 days. So we have people now that are getting ready to buy their new journal. So we're like, hey, if you want now, you can subscribe instead. And we're working with Cotton Bureau on this. This is the first subscription product they've done. And they've been really awesome in helping us kind of get this off the ground. So things are, you know, they're a little bit delicate in places. You know, like we have fixed times that we send them. You know, like people said, like, it would be great if I could just get one 90 day under the 90 day interval from when I first buy. And I agree with that. But that logistically is too complicated for us right now with the setup that we have. So effectively, when you go to the page, it says like, hey, if you order before this day, you'll get one in this amount of time. And then your next delivery will be this time. And then it will be every three months from there. You know, so by and large, most people would have the journal for every day that they need. It might, you know, after your first one, you might have like a day or two, depending on when you buy, where you need to wait for your next journal to arrive. But we're also sending them, starting to send them like a month before you need them. So I reckon people will be fine. Like, this isn't something we're going to know about on mass for a while. You know, like, how is it like, what do people think of the delivery process and stuff? But there are benefits to doing it. Like, we've taken $5 off the price, which I think is pretty great. So instead of $25, it costs $20. And we're throwing in just some little thank you extras, like stickers and stuff like that, which I'm hoping as the subscription grows, like the people that grow, we might be able to offer more elaborate gifts. You know, this is like, like, you know, look, listeners of this show know what I'm doing here, right? Quarterly subscriptions, right? You can understand why I want to grow this. Like, I have grand dreams of custom covers and stuff, right? But like, this is, that's a long way off in the future for us. We need to like, build a large subscriber base before that stuff even starts to become economically feasible. It is really interesting now, you know, I'm sure you went through this whole journey, to look at something like Field Notes and understand how difficult it must be to be there. You know? So hard. To make money, you know? It's tricky. But maybe, you know, that's a grand dream I have for the future. But for now, it's a way to kind of say to people like, hey, you're gonna, you're gonna have one all the time. And Cotton Bureau, like, we're working with them on logistical stuff. And, you know, they told me, like, we're gonna keep an eye on how many subscribers there are. And if you start to get low, we're gonna hold journals or something. Like, we're all working it out together, right? But this is kind of the next stage of this product's life is subscriptions.

'''Brad:''' Well, that's great. I think that's, like, perfect. That's a big deal. Like, I'm listening to you talk going, like, this is so difficult to pull off. And so, I know how much you put into it. So, yeah, I think it's great.

'''Myke:'''  Yeah, I'm like, as I'm talking about it now, I'm already starting to feel the anxiety of the holidays again.

'''Myke:''' Oh, yeah.

'''Myke:'''  Like, we have a lot. Like, we have 10,000 of these that just arrived. And so, I'm expecting that's gonna last us now all the way until the end of the year. Right. You know, because we've sold nearly 9,000 of these in total so far, the second edition. So, from, like, late December to now. So, you know, 10,000, I think that's gonna be enough for us to start off the holiday season with. And we'll probably have a journal order that will come in, like, maybe September, October time to help put us over, hopefully, like, over the war for the holidays, you know? Yep. But provided they keep selling, you know, like, you know, I've been really surprised. We sell... I'm giving a lot of information here, but this is what you get on the Panadict. Do you get the behind the scenes? We sell, I don't know, like, 10 of these a day? Just every day. Yeah, that's crazy. Which I just, which is more than I would have expected without any marketing, you know, like, it's... We mention them on Cortex every now and then, like, every couple of episodes or whatever. But irrespective of any mention, we sell that amount. And we're gearing up for advertising now. Like, I'm working on some advertising stuff that we're gonna do, and we're gonna start advertising them on Instagram. Have you ever done any of that?

'''Brad:''' Not on Instagram, but I know Brian has.

'''Myke:'''  Okay.

'''Brad:''' Has done some Instagram ads. Wow, we're really getting into the weeds now, but...

'''Myke:'''  Mm-hmm.

'''Brad:''' The short version is... That seems to be the most successful current way to advertise products.