Editing The Pen Addict 455/transcript (section)

== Concept Store Discussion ==


'''Myke:'''Well, I mean, in theory, but it might just be one corner of one store.

'''Brad:'''  And one set of pens, right? So what I'm referring to is Tokyo Inklings podcast, episode number 28. CY and Jacob visited a brand new store. And actually, this is kind of what I want to talk about almost more than the sailor pro gear, what this store means. And found, so the store is called Ankora in the Ginza region of Tokyo, which is kind of the high end shopping district or one of the high end shopping districts. The store is called Ankora. Do you know what Ankora means, Myke?

'''Myke:'''I do not.

'''Brad:'''  It is Italian for anchor.

'''Myke:'''Okay.

'''Brad:'''  So this store is a collaboration between plus and sailor, which I find it like collaborations, probably the wrong term because plus own sailor, but it's considered to be a working together type of store, at least the way CY and Jacob were describing it. Right? So it's carries a lot of sailor products, but it's staffed by plus employees. So that's a whole conversation. You really should listen to this episode. If you're interested in this topic at all, because honestly, I think the sailor pro gear was almost the least interesting thing that came out of this. And we're going to talk about this a little bit more, but the sailor pro gear, the build your own is what, you know, brings in the eyeballs. So if you go to their show notes and you look at the Instagram page, there's, I mean, excuse me, the show notes had linked to a page where they show like five barrel colors of pro gear that you can mix and match to build your own. Now, CY and I were talking about this before they recorded. And I was like, you know, those colors fall a little flat, you know, for me, but I get it. Right. It's like a brown barrel, a white barrel, a Navy barrel, a red barrel. And what's the fifth one? I'm not looking at the picture. Um, and then you can swap around the finial, the top, you know, the top anchor finial, the bottom finial, the barrel, and the cap.

'''Myke:'''It's blue, brown,

'''Brad:'''  black, red, and white. Black. Okay. So black is what I missed. Some have gold trim. Some don't. I think one or two of them had rhodium plated trim.

'''Myke:'''The blue and black have rhodium, the brown, red, and white have gold.

'''Brad:'''  So my issue with like seeing this number one, okay, cool. Yeah, this is great. But what out of this matches with anything else in this list? Right? Like that was my initial thought is like, I'm glad we can mix and match these pins, but none of them go together. Right? These colors do not work well for a wide variety of mix. Yes. You can get a cool white and Navy pin, which I actually, I think there's a, there's a build of a white Navy pin, Navy pin that actually looks pretty sharp. Right? That looks like the classic say that looks like something sailor would do. Yeah. To like really push.

'''Myke:'''It helps that the white is like a lesson too.

'''Brad:'''  Yeah. But like, what else are you going to make out of this that you love? Maybe the red and black. I don't know. Like there's your, you've limited, you've made a custom offering where people are going to build like three different pin colors. Right. But at the same time, it exists. Like it's a thing. They're going to have someone there to help you pick your parts of a sailor pro gear, like a full size pro gear. This is not the slim. This is the regular.

'''Myke:'''And so this has come from sailor, right? Cause like when I, cause I haven't yet listened to the episode. It's in my queue. But when I first saw it, I wondered if someone had just gone rogue and just bought a bunch of parts.

'''Brad:'''  So consider, so this is the more of what I want to talk about. This is essentially a company run store, like a Lamy boutique, right? This is essentially plus has come in now with sailor. And since they bought sailor, this is now the boutique type of store. And Cora is the plus boutique. And in this plus boutique, we're going to carry sailor because we own sailor. And we're going to carry all this other stationary that plus already sells. And we're going to do all these special high end stuff at this store, because this is, you know, like the high rent district. And, you know, you want to like really show like your best where it's, it's like a flagship type store, even though there's, it's the store right now is only singular. But what I compare it to in my head is, you know, how like Nike has flagship stores. Like in Chicago, you go to the Nike flagship store and it's big. It's got all the Nike stuff. But within that store, they have a place called Nike labs where they can do cool stuff because they're directly tied in with Nike. It's a Nike owned store. And they're going to do, let you do, they're going to show off their new experimental products in this one corner of the store. That's what I see happening here, right? They're going to have the draw in to the store. Like, um, CY and Jacob were saying that immediately when you walk in, you get to see the build your own realos, not realos station, the, um, profit. No, the profit, the, the low end, like the $50 pin. So that's front and center. When you walk in that gets the people in the door, but then you have this whole experimental section in the back. Say, Hey, look at these pro gears. These are like $400, but you know, you can pick your finial color. Like it's, it's interesting in how they've positioned this store as a plus store with a sailor focus. That's going to allow them to do experimental things like say, Hey, does custom do custom pro gears work as a business model? Right? So that's my thought on what this store is going to be.

'''Myke:'''It's like a concept store. Yeah. That's a great word. Right.

'''Brad:'''  So they're going to have the standards,

'''Myke:'''right?

'''Brad:'''  To get you in the door. And then they're going to have the concepts and the experimentals everywhere. For example, they have an ink bar there. And in Japan, an ink bar is literally a mixing station where they have, you know, a bartender who will, you will sit with and mix your inks. See why I had to make an appointment to go to the bar, right? That's how you access the bar, the ink bar. So like in a week, he'll have his appointment. Him and three people have an appointment at the ink bar to go and get inks made. And there's some pictures in the episode. There's literally like, Oh my God, this is a shaker. There's a, there's a shaker on the table, Myke, like an alcohol shake, you know?

'''Myke:'''Oh my God. I love it.

'''Brad:'''  So like the idea that this is a concept store just really seems what it's going to be. And the most interesting thing was CY's conversation with the store manager. And like, you'll have to go listen to this episode. I implore y'all to go listen to this episode. If you're interested in Japanese stationery,

'''Myke:'''especially because we're just play drives in it so heavily, you really should go listen to it. So we'll feel better.

'''Brad:'''  Yeah. And I'm not telling anything like I am. This is like the top level stuff. They really get into it. But his conversation with the store manager was like, well, if this goes well, then we can, we're already looking at, you know, worldwide. Like, can we do this worldwide? But the interesting thing, and the thing why you want to go listen to the show is CY asked or got the store manager to say, essentially, that how did they feel about the market as a whole?

'''Brad:'''  And coming from a plus employee, they were alluding to the fact that they felt the market was flat, almost peaked, but they see a change in the market, right? From the traditional fountain pen, you know, things that drove the business in the past to this new modern style of individualism and personal stationary and journaling and this type of direction. So definitely go listen to this. I don't want to, I don't want to say too much more. I've said enough, but what I'm explaining about this conversation that CY and Jacob had about this Ankora shop, I got way more out of this conversation than just the building of Progears. I think that's almost like a secondary or tertiary topic in this. Like, that didn't excite me as much as just hearing the general idea of the store and what it could possibly hold for future, for the future of these two brands that we obviously love sailor and we want them to do well. And this will be interesting to watch. Yeah,

'''Myke:'''I really hope that this is a model that they can roll out to some big cities, you know, I think that would be super cool. Like how I went, we went to that Lamy boutique in San Francisco and they had all kinds of weird stuff. Remember, I got like the balloon pen thing and left added nibs and like, you could just go in there and just get things that were more unique, I guess. But this is like a whole other level and going in and mixing your own ink and building your own pen. Like it's, it's like a theme park for fountain pen nerds.

'''Brad:'''  But this, yeah, totally struck me as like experimental concept type of store, which I would be all about making and seeing if this is successful. That's way more interesting to me overall than the specific of the custom sailor pro gears. It's just the idea of the store as a whole. So I thoroughly enjoyed that conversation. Thank you to CY and Jacob for, you know, making this show and giving us all the, the details that, you know, we certainly would be like, I didn't even know and core existed till they talked about this store and, you know, they were able to like physically go in there. So y'all definitely got to check them out. If you're, as you can tell, I'm highly interested in this stuff. So, uh, I am going to like, uh, talk about it as much as possible because it fascinates me on a lot of levels, a lot of levels. So kind of like the black wing volume two, two, three, Myke fascinates me on a lot of levels.

'''Myke:'''So this is wild. Like I hadn't seen this cause I don't follow the black wing stuff. I kind of just wait for you to show it to me. And I click the link in the show notes. And I was like, Oh, okay. It was very surprising to me.

'''Brad:'''  I had almost the same reaction. So I clicked the link. Someone shared the link. I don't pay attention that much to it anymore until like after the fact with someone shows it to me and I see it, I clicked the link and I'm like, Whoa, but not necessarily like in a positive way, but more in a, like, did I click the right link type of way? This is so weird. Like what is happening on my screen? And then I actually took the five seconds to read what this is. I'm like, Oh, I get it. This is kind of cool. So I like what they did. This is basically the Woody Guthrie edition, um, based around his song. Uh, this land is your land. And you know, this is, this is the full on Americana thing, Myke, that I know you don't like if you're like ranking products, like those things don't really speak to you. This doesn't really speak to me either. Like I'm not like a Woody Guthrie fan or like, I couldn't sing that song off the top of my head right now, but I like what they did here. This is an outlier product for them for probably the person that I think a lot of Black Wings fans thought would get the very first pencil in the volumes edition because of the way that Black Wing is into music. The owners of Black Wing are into music, um, into, you know, the Americana thing and into like that. I think they were already doing some, like, I don't know if they were doing Woody Guthrie foundation stuff way back in the day, but like when they said they were going to do volumes, I think pretty much everyone thought, Oh, well, Black Wing volume one will be something Woody Guthrie and it's taking this long to get there. So I know a lot of people have been waiting for it. I think there's a lot of discussion around the design, right? It's a very, it's not abstract by definition, but compared to other Black Wing pencils, it is, uh, more of an abstract design, but it tells a story. It tells it well, I think it looks great. What else can I say? I thought they did pretty good. So I wanted to point this out, you know, like again, like the way I rank things is, will I buy the thing for me personally? No, I'm not going to buy this, but that doesn't mean it's not an awesome addition on its own. And I think this will do pretty well. This kind of fits the Black Wing aesthetic. They also did a composition book add on modeled after some of Woody Guthrie's original composition books. Like I would buy that if like, if it wasn't lined, you know, more than I'd buy the pencil, but I thought they did a good job. I really liked the design.

'''Myke:'''I like how you can line up the pencils in a certain way and see the full design. That's cute. I like that.

'''Brad:'''  Yep. So, you know, I didn't have too much to say about that, but this one kind of caught me off guard. Yeah.

'''Myke:'''It caught me off guard. It doesn't look like what I would have expected. I think Black Wing have done a really good job of making things look really like polished and refined. And this one by design is a little bit more unfinished in like the paint strokes and stuff. So I think it's cute. I think it's very cute, but not for me.

'''Brad:'''  They also, um, bonus points. They launched it on national pencil day, Myke.

'''Myke:'''Brad, if they didn't, it would be disappointing. Right. Like if they, if Black Wing launched their product like three days before or after, you know, it's like that stupid Volkswagen thing.

'''Brad:'''  I found out about that yesterday and read the, the verge article where they basically rewrote the entire article. And I was like, Oh my God, I would be enraged.

'''Myke:'''It's so stupid. Like, Oh, it was in the spirit of April 4th. No, you just published it early. That's what you did.

'''Brad:'''  Mistakes all around Myke, but no mistake on Black Wing volume two, two, three, um, winner in my book. I, I appreciate the design. I like it. So next up another, I didn't see that coming, Myke from our friend, Ian shown at shown design. Do you even know what Ultim is? Do you recall our previous discussions?

'''Myke:'''I don't remember this material. No.

'''Brad:'''  So I have a pen from a company called Kasama and they make Ultim fountain pens. They were the first one that I was aware of to make these Ultim barrel fountain pens and Ultim. You can, you notice it by the color. It's like this translucent amber, almost orange color. And what it is, is it's like a high end plastic, right? Used in the medical field. And it's known for like, it's a strength and durability and heat resistant type of product. Right. And people started making fountain pen barrels out of this. And Ian is making his own Ultim fountain pen, which I say, I didn't see this coming because it's a full length pen.

'''Myke:'''I wouldn't have known this until I saw it written down because I saw it and there's no context of size in the image. So I just assumed it was a pocket pen because it's a shown design pen. So, you know, I was just like, oh, that's a nice pocket pen, but no, it's full size.

'''Brad:'''  Yeah. So that's actually what caught me off guard was, Hey, not that Ian's using Ultim because Ian's an experimenter, right? He likes to like manage and manipulate and do kind of crazy things and see if they work. And that's why I'm always continually surprised by him. Like I didn't see that coming right with other pens. And this is more on the length of the pen, you know, first and then the material second, where the material, like some people aren't going to like the material for the color, but that's like the kind of the only color it comes in. But what it's going to allow, what it's allowed Ian to do is to make a really durable eyedropper focused, even though he like pictures them with a converter, you can see in the pictures, which we'll share in the show notes. He's got O-rings in different locations that you wouldn't normally see because he's going to, he's designed this to be an eyedropper pen without the use of silicone.

'''Myke:'''That's so cool. Like as a design element that took to think it through to that level, because you know, it's, it can be a little bit intimidating if you've not done that before. So I really liked that he's designed it in such a way.

'''Brad:'''  Yeah. So like, this is a pen that like speaks to me. Like, I like this pen. I like this design. I like the ultimate material. I think the eyedropper aspect of it is interesting. The thing, the other benefit of Ultum is that it doesn't stain. Right. So he's been testing it with Noodler's Baystate blue in the barrel and leaving it for, he's up, he's his, his like four day experiment. Like it's just a short experiment so far. It cleaned out flawlessly. He's doing a two week, he's doing a two week stage right now. And other people that have used other fountain pens say they use like the most strong and severe inks and it's never left a mark from eyedropping their pen, which is a very interesting property of Ultum. So it's going to be interesting to see how this plays out. So I love it. You know, this is one I would love to pick up at a pen show one day. You know, if we ever get back to those one of these years, uh, we will, which looks like maybe a topic for next week. Pen show schedules are ramping up for the summertime. So maybe we'll save that for next week. But yeah, I think this is going to do very well. Um, I'm mostly interested to ask Ian about the machining of Ultum. I don't have a good grasp on the difficulty of that yet. So my, my guess is that would be a challenge. So I will, I will, uh, asking about that. So anyway, I thought that was cool. I wanted to point it out because this is definitely an outlier product for Ian and I love it.

'''Myke:'''Um, and how is he releasing this? Is it just going to be like a available to buy product or is he doing? Yeah.

'''Brad:'''  Yeah. No, no Kickstarter straight to the website. I forget if the number was 100 units or 200 units. I think it might be a hundred units at first and then we'll see how it goes and get some feedback. A hundred. And then continue.

'''Myke:'''You're on number six nibs. Uh,

'''Brad:'''  yes. So the big nib.

'''Myke:'''Yep. And I think he said he's working on block number eight nib sections for some. Yeah. So he,

'''Brad:'''  yeah. So he'll change the, the fittings on the front end to fit a different nib unit, uh, down the line. So yeah, there you go. All right. Last topic this week. What do we got, Myke?

'''Myke:'''We have some new inks from Applebaum, which look like they ship in a decanter.

'''Myke:'''This is very interesting. It is a collection of 14 inks. All, uh, new to Applebaum in the Applebaum ink collection. Uh, it is created quote in collaboration with a well-known ink manufacturer. So it's not stated who, uh, the 14 inks, the names of each ink, the beginning letters of each name, spell out the founder's name, just Applebaum. And there are 41 bottles of each ink. I'm assuming that the bottle in the image is the bottle that you get. The ink in, I guess. Right. I haven't, why is, I don't know why they would, uh, why they would ship them. We have, should I read the names? Jazzy yellow, organized orange, oily olive of a silver sheen, shiny silver of a rainbow shimmer. I don't know what that means, but it's interesting. Tempting taupe, taupe, is it taupe? T-A-U-P-E? Taupe, yes. Absolutely azure, pretentious purple of a green sheen, perplexing pink of a gold and silver shimmer, eclectic ebony, luscious lime, basic blue, AKA bic blue, ostentatious okra, gold of a red sheen, oblivious oak, majestic mauve.

'''Brad:'''  Mm-hmm. Great names. Yeah, so let me ask you a couple questions. How many inks are in this?

'''Myke:'''Well, they said there's 14.