Editing The Pen Addict 192/transcript (section)

== Karis Customs ==


'''Dan Bishop:''' Cool. Well, let's talk about one of our good friends before we really get into it with Dan. And talk about some more Karis Customs stuff and the LA Pen Show that's coming up.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You bet. This week's episode is brought to you by our friends at Harry's. I had a call with Harry's yesterday, Brad. They wanted to just check in with me because they love supporting the show. Nice. And they're really happy with the response. So, I want to thank everyone that goes and buys Harry's products. And encourage you to continue doing so because they love supporting the show. They're like, why is the Pen Addict? Why does it perform so well? I'm like, because these guys love to spend money. That's what it is. But more than that, we love a good deal, right? Shaving is expensive. And what Harry's does is they give you great quality products, which we love. We all love good quality products listening to this show at a fair price. This is what Harry's is all about. They make their own blades. They're German engineered. They have these five blade cartridges that they create that will give you a close, comfortable shave without cuts or razor burn. They guarantee the quality of their products because they believe in them so much. You'll get a full refund if you're not happy. Over a million people will switch to Harry's and you should be one of them if you haven't already. Because they offer those high quality razors for a high quality shave at about half the price of other big brand blades. For example, an everyday shaver that uses Harry's will save about $150 each year. They'll ship them to your front door for free. They have a great starter set for just $15. You'll get a razor, moisturizing shave cream, and three razor blades. Their razors look fantastic. All of their products smell great and it all feels great. This is a top quality product that I know listeners of this show will enjoy. If you haven't already, it's time to stop overpaying for a great shave. Go to harrys.com and you will get $5 off if you use the code PENADDICT to check out with your first purchase. That's harrys.com. Enter the coupon code PENADDICT to check out for a special $5 off so you can get yourself that starter set for just $10. Thank you so much to Harry's for their support of this show and RelayFM.

'''Dan Bishop:''' Awesome. Thank you, Harry's, very much. Dan could use some when he's trimming up whatever he's growing on his face. I don't even know what it looks like right now, but I guess I'll see this weekend. Dan, do we have some Wolverine going or what do we got going right now?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think we might try some Wolverine because the other employee that's coming with me is Paul that some of you have seen on the Slack Room and stuff. He's our customer service guy and he's got quite the beard and I didn't want to be like the beardy twins at the show. So I got to go back to the chops because it just feels better. It's like just natural, you know? It's just the way it's supposed to be.

'''Dan Bishop:''' I hear you. Well, before we get into that, and I have a couple of Karis questions for you. Myke wants to yell at us first, apparently. I didn't realize this, but what do you got, Myke?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, we spoke about this before the show and you guys said that I was crazy. I don't know how I missed this, but I've been seeing this like Knock Co case with a little Karis Customs tag popping up in places. And I don't know how I've missed this. You guys worked together on something at some point that got underbarated on?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That would be called the Superstition Edition is what you missed because all of Knock Co's products are named after local landmarks. And we have the famous Superstition Mountains here in Arizona. And so we did a Superstition Edition case and pen, notebook, bead, lanyard combo? Question mark?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I don't know how you missed it. It was all over social media.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I must have been asleep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So can people still buy this? It was limited edition, so we've sold out.

'''Dan Bishop:''' That's long gone. And Dan wanted to do a special Sinclair kind of around the launch. And their label that they did for the Sinclair, so killer. Yeah. You know, with the flag. I'm so happy with that. I'm so happy with that tag. Yeah. It makes me happy. The first time I saw that, I was like, wow, this is unbelievable. And then to top it off, the EDK y'all did was legit. I mean, it's so cool. It's a really great one.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. It was, I've always wanted to, we talked about doing a collaboration for a long time with you guys, kind of on, you know, on the back end of things. And when you guys had, because we were launching the EDK around the same time. And so we wanted to do something special. And since you guys were open to it, you know, we kind of went all out and did this. And to be fair, I think part of the popularity was because of your cases, because people would contact us and say, can I buy just a case? I don't want your pen.

'''Dan Bishop:''' Oh, yeah. Sorry about that. Yeah. No, it's fine. That's what makes a good collaboration, right? I mean, we do something cool. You do something cool. And we party together. I like it. It's my kind of thing. It's my kind of project to work on. And I know Jeff was stoked to work on it, too. So that was really cool. I just got asked yesterday or two days ago about the Render K that you guys make for us and that we're currently out of and we're not going to make anymore. And you're actually making some tweaks to the Render K, right? Can you tell us what's going on with that product lineup? Because I'm interested because that's how I and a lot of people got into Keras Customs first. I guess that was, was that the first machine pen?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, that was, that was the first one. That was the one that I kind of dreamt up at home on a weekend and, you know, scribbled out on paper and then turned into our first Kickstarter project. So, yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's pretty crazy, like looking back at this now, how much it's changed the business, right? You just had this little idea for a pen and now it's this whole big thing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah, we were talking about that. I mean, if you do look, I mean, the pen type A was the first, you know, machined pen, but we were kind of the first company to base a business around machine pens in the U.S. And it's just nuts to see, you know, we're up to, I always forget, I have to list them out. So we did the Render K, the Bolt, the Retract, the Ink, the Fountain K, and the EVK. That's six, six models of pens now. That's bananas. I can't even think of that. No, the line that we're going to be kind of referring to it as the K series now. Okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' More or less, the way that the Fountain K works now is that there's a grip section that screws into the body. And from the outside, it looks identical to the Render K. So we're adapting the rollerball and ballpoint line to work with the same architecture as the Fountain K. Okay. So now the cap and the body will be a universal product and then everything else will be accommodated to use that. That's great. As opposed to having several different versions of the pen.

'''Dan Bishop:''' Yeah. That only makes complete sense, right? Right. I mean, not just from your manufacturing perspective, but from a customer's perspective, if, you know, they need to swap parts. But you know, everyone that listens to us and buys your stuff is always fidgeting with their stuff and mixing and matching anyway. So that'll be good for everybody.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I actually had a customer come in yesterday. He's a local guy from Tucson. His name was Joseph. If I remember his name right. I'm bad at his name. But it was funny because you talked about at the beginning, you know, people recognize my voice. He came in the door and I said, hey, how's it going? And he goes, you're Dan, right? I recognize your voice. It's kind of creepy. But no, he came in and he bought some different products because he wanted to switch up the caps and all the different stuff. And we're working towards making everything better, more, you know, modular in the line and consistent so that you don't have to worry about, oh, does this work with this or this work with this? It's just all going to work all the time.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So the hope is that people could buy multiple pens of different lines even and you can still mix and match and customize and make them your own.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Like the Fountain K and the regular Render K pens. We won't have to have two different versions of it any longer. It's going to just be the grip section now is works with roller balls or or ballpoint or the P8126 or whatever. It just works with all the stuff.

'''Dan Bishop:''' Kind of like how you built the ink when you built the ink. It was all built to to allow for that. Right. Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' This is this is better. In fact, we improved the machining finishes on a lot of the pens. And so it looks fantastic. But when it comes to like the grip section on the Render K, we wanted to keep it keep it to where it wasn't super smooth and slick on the grip section. So we actually have like a I don't know what you would call it. We could come up with a fancy name for it, but it's basically a ultra fine machined texture on the on the surface of the grip section that'll give it some grip. But you won't. It doesn't look like anything's on there.

'''Dan Bishop:''' Gotcha.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So it's super cool.

'''Dan Bishop:''' So the retract is the only pin that doesn't have a fountain pen counterpart. When are you making a retractable fountain pen?