Editing The Pen Addict 252/transcript (section)

== Physical Shop ==


'''Caroline Weaver:''' Oh yeah, it was, it was much, it was very quick actually. Um, it was, I guess, March of 2015. Oh wow. That the physical shop opened. So it all happened very quickly. It didn't feel fast at the time. It felt okay at the time, but yeah. Um, yeah, it took about a month to get the shop set up. Um, yeah, I hired a contractor to help me with the things I definitely couldn't do myself, but every little thing that I could do myself, I did. Um, and yeah, I've, the problem, it was really crazy, but the problem was that I had ordered, I had found this guy on Etsy to make all the furniture for the shop for me because I had a very specific vision of what I thought the furniture would be like. And so I found this guy to make the furniture and, um, the last thing was the furniture to arrive. So I still have like the wall set up with all the jars of pencils, like labeled and ready to go. And I just sat in there for like weeks, like just with a folding table and a few chairs waiting for this furniture to arrive. And then it did. And then the next morning we opened.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, wow. How did, how did that initial opening go?

'''Caroline Weaver:''' Um, I kind of treated it the same as I treated the website. I didn't, I was kind of scared to tell anyone. Um, so I just didn't, I just like open the doors and that was that. Um, and people came, people who were just walking by, um, every day there would be like maybe one more person who was like, oh, my friend told me about this and that's why I'm here. Um, and I had, I had planned that like maybe in a, I had given myself like three months. I felt like, okay, three months, nothing happens. Then maybe I'll start like thinking about a budget for marketing. Um, but I got really lucky because within a couple of weeks, um, Gothamist, which is like a website about things in New York, did an article about the shop. And then, um, just about, I guess like a month after that, the New York Times showed up and the rest is history. It was just a snowball effect from there.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's amazing. That's amazing. So how long was it from when you opened till you said, I need some help in here? Let's get, let's get these pencil ladies hired who are awesome. I just want to say Caitlin and Alex, who I talk to frequently and who else, who else do you have working there for you now? I want to get a model shout out.

'''Caroline Weaver:''' Meredith too.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Meredith.

'''Caroline Weaver:''' Yeah. Meredith does like all of, well, all of our like artwork recently. Yes, she does like the stickers, she did the pins for us, anything that requires anything like creative. That's Meredith's thing. She's an illustrator and she's very talented. Um, but yeah, I guess, well, actually Caitlin's two year shop anniversary is coming up in like five days. We just looked up the other day, we looked up the, um, the email that she sent me. Um, and this was in April. So this would have been like a little less than three months or a little less than one month after the shop opened. And this Gothamist article had just been posted and, um, she was in the shop shopping coincidentally on the last day of her old job. Um, she had just quit her job. She was in the shop shopping because somebody told her about it. And I was, she overheard me telling somebody that I was starting to get really busy and I was going to need to think about hiring someone. And then she emailed me the next day and admitted to eavesdropping and was just like really funny about it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And, um, that pretty much sounds like her.

'''Caroline Weaver:''' Yeah. And then she came in the next day and we talked and she started a few days later. Um, and I, yeah, I just hired her on the spot. I really needed the help. This girl seems normal. She seems smart. We're good to go.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' On her second anniversary. Does she get a free foil stamp pencil? Does she get to like, go say, you know, make her own fancy pencil?

'''Caroline Weaver:''' Oh, I should like do one. I should do like a silly shop anniversary pencil for her. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So you have some neat things in the shop like that, right? I mean, people can foil stamp their own pencils, right?

'''Caroline Weaver:''' Yeah. Yeah. We have a Kingsley machine from the 1960s that we used to hot foil stamp pencils. That's actually Alex's job now. She's officially in charge of custom pencils. So she does all of that. Um, she coordinates all of that with customers and companies who place big orders and, um, she's the expert. Um, but it's cool. It's, it has, the machine has to be like 300 degrees and we handset all the type and the machine itself is a really amazing object. We used to keep it in the shop just because it looks really cool and people loved seeing that whole process happen. But it started to become a problem because we were just like stamping pencils all day long because people would come in and be like, Ooh, what's that? Like, can you do one with like this name and this name and this name? And then we were just going and going and going. And so we had to move it down the street to the office. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So paint a picture real quick for those of us like myself who have not been there. Uh, unlike Myke who has had the, the privilege of being at your store. It's, uh, what's, what are the dimensions like? Cause I know it's a pretty small and I imagine a foil stamping machine in there not only is large, but warm.

'''Caroline Weaver:''' Yes, definitely a safety hazard. But the, the shop is 200 square feet. It's very small. It's, um, slightly above street level. So you have to walk up three steps to get into it. Um, and we have a huge, the whole front of the store is just one big window that looks out onto a park that has a big soccer field. Um, we're on a very quiet street, like quiet enough that in the summertime there are actually like kids playing in the street. It's kind of amazing. Um, and yeah, in the shop we have a desk in the back and, um, a little desk in the front where we keep all the pencils that we sell in the drawer so you can sit down and test them all and we can make recommendations. Um, and there's a case that's like, I bought one of those, like a lot of those bulletin boards that you have in schools that has like a glass cover and you can lock it. And I filled it with cork and I, I pin, um, all the vintage pencils in there. Um, and then we have a wall, which is like the thing that I think everyone's seen a picture of where it's just like shelves with tiny jars of pencils, all labeled, um, all alphabetical by brand, um, with like stacks of boxes on the top.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Do you still get, I imagine on a daily, if not weekly basis, do you get people stumbling in that didn't, didn't know anything about pencils or say, you know, oh my God, there's a pencil shop. What is going on here?

'''Caroline Weaver:''' Yeah. We, we still get that maybe like once a day.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Caroline Weaver:''' Every other day, people who are really surprised. Um, yeah, we get a lot of people who come in and they're like, they're, they'll be like, oh, like I was just talking about this and like, I really can't believe that this is real. Um, yeah, that's, it's where the shop is, is a really kind of odd location. It's kind of between a lot of different neighborhoods, but it's not really in its own neighborhood. It's like on the cusp of Chinatown and the lower East side and Nolita and you go like a few blocks North and you're in the East village. It's, it's a really confusing location. And I think, and that, that's what I love about it is that like, I liked, I liked the idea that it's a place that you kind of just have to discover. Nobody, unless you're, nobody like really walks. Well, people do all the time. That's how they find us. But like nobody walks down my street, like expecting to find something like that. And I, I love that like element of surprise when people are like, why is this here? Like, that's so strange that this thing is on this street.