Editing The Pen Addict 350/transcript (section)

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'''Myke Hurley:''' I did. I did. And oh, boy, are we going to get into those? Because I think there's a little theme going on at the moment, as there always tends to be. But before we do that, I want to take a moment to thank one of our very favorite companies, and that is Pen Chalet. By Pen Chalet, they're sponsoring this show like they've sponsored so many for so many years of us now. And we absolutely love Pen Chalet for a very good reason, because they have fantastic deals and wonderful customer service, offering pens and rollerballs and fountain pens and ballpoints and mechanical pencils and so many other goods. So they have a bunch of different cases and pen holders and inks and converters, and they carry all of these products from your favorite brands as well, brands like Lamy and Sailor, Kaweco, Pilot, Namiki, and so many more. They do Retro 51. We love Pen Chalet because they're so supportive of the show. You know, they've been a backer of ours and a sponsor of ours for so long, but they're also so great for the community of listeners that we have, because they're always doing wonderful deals. Like, not only do you get free shipping in the US on orders of over $50, you get great shipping rates if you're overseas as well, but they're also doing discounts, and they always have discount codes available for Pen Addict listeners. So to get those, go to penchalet.com, P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com, click the podcast link at the top of the website and enter the password penaddict. This is where you'll get this week's special offer and the code that you need to save 10% on anything at Pen Chalet at any time. So Brad, what do we have up on deck for this episode from Ron?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We have more Conklins that I haven't used, but I have resolved that issue thanks to Evan in the chat, which I think Evan is one of the people where we just need to get the t-shirt so he wears it at the Pen Show that just says Evan in the chat room, right? Like, he seems like Evan, he seems like one of those guys. He's just in the chat. He walked up to me in Baltimore. He said, hey, I heard you haven't tried a Conklin, and goes, bloonk, and put one in my hand. So it's sitting here waiting for me to try. I just hadn't had the time yet to get it done, but they have this really nice all-black one in here that's only not very much. I was going to say the price, and I'm not allowed to.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That looks cool. That looks right up my alley, so I got to try those. They also have the Monteverdi One Touch Stylus ballpoint pens, which I think everyone should own one of those, and at this price, it's kind of a no-brainer not to. So, you know, this is some cool stuff from Ron. And by the way, Myke, we might have to get Ron on the show one of these days because Little Birdie, and by Little Birdie, I mean Instagram, showed Ron over in Japan with a bunch of other vendors going over for Platinum's 100th anniversary. So that might be an interesting thing to talk about with him. So we may have to put him up to that one day.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That would be fun. We should look into that. That would be definitely fun. You can get yourself looks at all these deals. You can get yourself that special code, so you can save 10% on anything at any time just by going to penshalet.com and hitting the podcast link at the top of the website and using the special code PENADDICT. Our thanks to Pen Chalet for the continued support of this show and Relay FM. All right. I think there's something we need to talk about here, which is, as typically is a thing on the show, Kickstarter campaigns. There are a lot going on right now. Obviously, we are contributing. You are contributing to that. But there seems to have been like another big bunch of them in the last week or two, and we're going to touch on a few of these. But I just kind of wonder, do you think there's any kind of reason that this stuff comes in waves?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I do.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think right now, and this is just guessing on my part, and it's not some 4D chess kind of answer, but I think it makes a big difference for Kickstarter creators and backers to start and finish a project in the same year. That's a mental thing, right? If I'm going to back a project, I want to be able to see the ship date, not say 2020. So how do you do that? Well, you start the project early in the year. It gives you the right time frame. You ship, start the project, you know, winter, early spring, work through it through the spring and summer, ship it in the fall or winter. You know, that's just kind of why I think you're seeing just a rash of products. Even though if I launched a product in September and said I could deliver it in January, that's a shorter time frame, but that date says 2020 on it. And I feel a little bit weird about that, right? As a buyer, it's like, oh man, it's going to be 2020 before I get that, even though it's five months from now. And I'm telling you, this project is going to take nine months, but it's all in 2019. I'm in, right? I think it's just mental.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Is another thing the holidays? Oh, absolutely. Right, so like it's maybe those two things combined. It's either like, get it for the holidays. Yeah, we've talked about that. And or like, that 2020 mental block is like a really, really good point that I wouldn't have thought about before.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, like we've talked about the holiday thing before. We wanted to launch the SpokePen last year, but it got, you know, working on it took so long. We were ready in November, but there was no way we're going to launch that campaign in November. There's just no way. So you start seeing them at the beginning of the year. You'd be a fool to do that, right? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's just no way you do that. So that's why I think we're kind of seeing a lot of these projects at the beginning of the year. But even if, even not, it does seem like it comes in batches. There'll be like, you know, like a pin or stationary dead zone. Then there'll all of a sudden be like four or five projects all kind of overlapping at the same time. But speaking of which, the SpokePen wrapped up. It was, we were so close. We were like watching it at the last minute, see if we could get to 90K and 1,000 backers. But we hit 88K and 994 backers, which is just outrageous.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's amazing. Congratulations to you too. Thank you. That's an incredible result. And I'm super excited. I put my order in. Thank you. Thank you. I ordered the two weird ones, the orange crush and the Joker.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So Brian has been doing a killer job of getting all the details and information out. And the survey already went out because we need to know, you know, quantities of colors. And so he asked me to guess, you know, what I thought the most popular colors were going to be. And I said, orange crush by a long shot. So I asked him last night and I was like, what are the, what are the results look like? And he was like, orange crush by a long shot. So I did that one. You know your audience. Well, the feedback too, people were saying, you know, just that, that was the one that always popped up, even though all the other ones are great. That one was just a little bit different. So it was cool. So thank you everyone who supports all this stuff that we do.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. And also, you know, it's not necessarily just a support thing, right? Like, and I think it's important that people, they believe they're going to get a good product and they're paying for a good product and with you guys, they're going to get it. But like, I, you know, I always like to try and, I know that I say for our campaign, like, thank you for the support, but it's not a charity thing that we're doing. You know, which is why, like there is no tier on our campaign, which is just like, hey, give us some money. Like I see that a lot and I don't have a problem with it for other people, but I don't like to do that. Like I really see Kickstarter as an exchange of goods for money. Yeah. Whatever that ends up being physical, digital or whatever, but like, it's not a charity platform. We're not asking for charity. Like we're asking for, you give us money and we will produce something and give it back to you. So, you know, like, yes, thank you so much to your support for our campaign, for the support to Brad's stuff, all the campaigns that he's done. But like, it is in the essence of building a business, building a product, building something that you're going to get in return. Right. I think that's really important. And I like that, by and large, Kickstarter has stuck to their guns from like a rules perspective about how that stuff works. Because I think it's important to have different platforms. Like Indiegogo has more charity stuff to it and it has different kind of mechanisms built into it. And I'm pleased Indiegogo exists, right? Right. Because it does a lot of things to help people out when they're in bad situations. And I think that their like flexible funding stuff is really good. But I'm pleased that they are two distinct platforms. That if you need this, you go here. And if you need this, you go here. And I think it's good that we have that. I think it's good that there's that choice, you know? Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Totally.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But anyway.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So obviously, I'm a big Kickstarter fan. I'm a super backer now, Myke. I'm like 102 projects back.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm a super backer too, I think. But I haven't backed as many as you.