Editing The Pen Addict 484/transcript (section)

== New Pen Addict List Items ==


'''Brad:'''  This is a crazy interesting list. Lots of new things on the list this week. First off, the Tibaldi N60 fountain pens. I reviewed a different model Tibaldi. I think this is probably the better model to go with, the N60 model. They look nice. They're a really good rider. I really enjoyed my experience with it. It's a great pen. The Mayora Impronte is a pen I've just reviewed that I think is really great as well. If you like Leonardo-style pens, Mayora is another company that is along those lines. They have the same DNA coming from Omos, the closure of Omos. This was one of the splinter companies.

'''Myke:''' I think we spoke about them a couple of weeks ago, didn't we?

'''Brad:'''  Yep, yep. We talked about my review, which I loved. And then you scroll down. There's some really interesting stuff down here. Once you get down, there's a pen from Stipula called the Suprema, which I have never seen before. It's an expensive pen, but it's a big discount. And this is something I would have to research and not necessarily buy on a whim. But I'm kind of intrigued by how the Stipula looks. And Stipula has been doing some new things recently. Sorry, my apologies. The closure of Delta from the new pen makers. My apologies. I said that wrong. There's too many closures and too many spawning companies. The interesting thing, Myke, the Platinum 3776 Mac E.A. fountain pens are getting closer to the standard 3776 prices, which is a compelling price point.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, that's the one I was just looking at. Like, I can't believe the price of this Mac E.A. pen 3776.

'''Brad:'''  It's really good. And then the President, which is being discontinued by Platinum, is an even lesser price. You're getting down into the full 3776 price range at this point. So it's an interesting list. There is a lot of good stuff on this list from Pen Chalet. So I appreciate Ron putting all this together. It looks fantastic.

'''Myke:''' All right. If you want to go check this out for yourself, go to penchalet.com and click the podcast link at the top of the website and enter the password penaddict. Our thanks to Pen Chalet for their continued support of this show and RelayFM.

'''Myke:''' Anything happen this week that we need to talk about? So in case people aren't aware, Brad sent out a newsletter to the Knock Co newsletter subscription list and announced it in other places as well. Knock Co, of course, the brand that Brad's been running for like six or seven years, I think.

'''Brad:'''  Um, 2014, I think. Yeah, 2014 was like the website launch. Was that the Kickstarter launch? That was the Kickstarter launch too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was 2014. So there you go.

'''Myke:''' So many years now, like six or seven years. And Brad announced that Knock Co in its current iteration is no more.

'''Brad:'''  It is. It is. This has been a decision a long time in the making, as Myke has been privy to. One of the few people that have been privy to the long term rolling around in my head of making this decision. And it's not obviously an easy decision to make, but it's the right decision at the right time to make. Knock can no longer sustain itself as it is without me putting in more time and money. And that's the short version of it. And, you know, it's probably how a lot of businesses shut down. No more time, no more money. And Knock is a heavy time and money investment brand, right? There is so much that goes into products. There's so much money that goes into, like, the capital. There's a lot of inventory float that you have to have and a lot of money tied up. And it could work. Like, the reason why it took me so long to let this go is because I know it could be successful if I had more time and money to put into it. So, the problem with that is I have so many other things going on that are going really well. I don't have, like, the 40 hours a week that Knock would need to be successful. Like, I fully believe if Knock was my only job and I spent 40 hours a week doing it and, like, that's all I wanted to do, it would be just a really successful, sustainable business. But as it's set up now to where the product launches are stretched out, you know, the inventory is large, the requirements from, you know, just design, production, inventory management, operations, marketing, shipping, all of those things, there's not enough time for me to, like, really get in there and make a difference, right? So, I threw money at it from my own bank account just trying to sustain because I know it's a good business, right? What were you sustaining? I was sustaining nothing. I was just sustaining.

'''Myke:''' What were you throwing money at?

'''Brad:'''  Oh, inventory, inventory.

'''Myke:''' Right, but this is part of the stuff that I think it can be difficult to get you out around, right? Mm-hmm. If the business was selling stuff that you had to get, you know, if you needed to replace inventory, why were you having to pay for it?

'''Brad:'''  Right, right. So, let me explain it. Let me explain it this way. Yeah. So, the business basics, and I think some people will understand this and some people won't, but especially for small businesses or non-public, non-public you run businesses, people, business owners talk about being profitable or not profitable, right? And that's just accounting magic for a small business. Small businesses do not want to run at a profit because you are then taxed on your profit. So, if you're not in these types of businesses, you haven't run these types of businesses, that sounds really weird. But it's not when the expenses for running a small business include your salary or your distributions or your bonuses or however, whatever money you are making for actually doing the work, right? Those come off before you get to the final end of the year decision. Did we make a profit? Yeah. So, not only... So, Nock has never been profitable, right? But we've always gotten paid. Mm-hmm. I haven't made a personal dime from Nock in about two years.

'''Myke:''' So, you... All I've done is work. You haven't even been...

'''Brad:'''  There's been zero distributions to me in about two years.

'''Myke:''' So, this is like no, no profit, like real no profit.

'''Brad:'''  Like, that's a different version of the business is not profitable. That is like literally I'm losing money because all I'm doing is spending time and investing my own money to just kind of float the inventory a little bit longer, right? So, that's a different type of not making a profit. Like, I think most small businesses that are sustainable, I think they're proud to say they're not profitable if they're like sustaining payroll and, you know, payments and disbursements. Like, if you're not in this world, like you don't... People may not understand how that works.

'''Myke:''' It's also worth saying it's different in different countries. It's not as clear cut as that here in most popular types of ways that businesses are put together.

'''Brad:'''  Yes, that's a good point. So, in the US, you can be... Your business can not make a profit forever and you run a successful business, right? Right? So, what we're doing is we're like literally not making a profit as in I'm only spending time and money and not getting... It's the bad version. I'm not getting anything back. So, at some point that has to end, right?

'''Myke:''' So, here's the part that like to go back that was very good, very helpful. But like the part that's saying like if you were buying inventory out of your own personal money... Yes. ...why were you doing that? You know what I mean? Like you must have been selling stuff to buy inventory, right?

'''Brad:'''  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because I wanted to keep it going because like it's one of the things I'm most proud of and it's kind of my baby. But like what I mean is...

'''Myke:''' Okay, so it's complicated. Yeah. For you to buy inventory, the company must have been selling stuff for you to replace their inventory, otherwise you wouldn't buy it, right? Yes. So, why couldn't the company pay for the inventory? Because it doesn't move fast enough. Right. So, you were... So, there's bulk ordering... You were buying new products, right? Hoping that they would sell to offset some of the cost of everything else.

'''Brad:'''  Right. Okay. And in this business, like a single case could be a year from design to production to receipt and then another six months to a year to sell through the product. And then you multiply that by like how many different products we have. It just becomes this whole spider web of trying to manage from trying to make the right decisions all along the way. And it just ends up catching up to you. Like it's difficult to manage this many products with like order minimums and time that it takes to make a product. Like these products... I'm not making a digital product that's infinitely repeatable, right? Yeah. Like we're making a thing that has long lead times and large minimums and things like that. So, you just end up getting stretched too thin in the end. So, all I was doing was just trying to keep my head afloat until I got to the point where it's like I can't make new things because I can't commit the time or money to make me feel like there's some kind of big turnaround or something, right? Like I know it's a good business and I know it's a great product. But I can't run it individually. Like, you know, I talked about how the different things I've got going on, right? Like all the pen addict stuff, you know, the blog, the podcast, the membership, like that stuff is doing great, right? Yep. And all the spoke stuff that I've got going on with Brian, like all that stuff's doing great. And like people were emailing me, it's like I'm shutting down Nock. Are you going to be okay? And I'm like, Nock has cost me money for two years. Like I've been okay for like the last two years because the other things I have are doing good. So, and those things I can allocate my time and resources to because they're not just the huge bulk of time and resources that Nock requires, right? I can do those things, you know, I could spend 10 hours and make a difference, 10 hours a week and make a difference in pen addict stuff. I can't spend 10 hours a week and make a difference in Nock stuff, right? Yeah. It would require 40 hours. So, and I can't do that, right? So, you know, that's why I've just been stringing it along for a couple of years. Like keep thinking like, well, I'll just do another few case designs. I'll make some more, you know, orders and put out some money and then it'll eventually come back. And it's just this slow burn. Like it's a really long, long process. And if it was the only thing I did, like it would work fine. I fully believe that. But like, I just don't have that. And the way everything that I do is set up, like I also have like spending the time on like the pen addict stuff and the spoke stuff is definitely more worthwhile. Like that stuff's paying the bills. Well, I don't want to just have those things bring in money that I spend on Nock. Because of some vanity reason, right? Like, you know, just wanted to keep it going. And so, yeah, I eventually just decided to pull the plug. We've been talking about it a while. You and I have probably been talking about it for six months or more. Just like I need to do this. And it's a hard decision to make. It's not easy.

'''Myke:''' So, I have a bunch of questions for you. There's more I want you to say. But just to, because you mentioned the other brands.

'''Myke:''' I know that obviously like, I think we have a similar thing of like you have an idea and you want to pursue it. But would it be fair to say that you ended up moving and looking at other products, other companies because maybe Nock wasn't where you wanted it to be?

'''Brad:'''  I'm not tracking you. Say that again. How do you mean?

'''Myke:''' So, like, you know, you have all these other endeavors that you were a part of. Like, Spoke and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. And was it a thing of like, you were even more pushed or desired to do other things because Nock couldn't do what you hoped it would? Yeah.

'''Brad:'''  Like, you can see more on the table. Like, there's opportunities that I'm not pursuing with Pen Addict and Spoke to improve both of those things because I don't have the time. Yes. Well, what is, where can I get this time back? I was like, and I've never considered like that not closing down Nock was the thing until I finally, until I kept writing checks. And I was like, you know what, this thing is costing me money. And I know, like, I have lists of things. Like, I spent vacation, like, writing down all the things I want to do going forward, right? And they were all Pen Addict and Spoke things and no Nock things because I knew it was over. So, I spent vacation, like, writing the newsletter to send out to close down Nock because it's just not working for me personally anymore.

'''Brad:'''  You know, some of the things I wrote in the newsletter that I sent out were talking about, you know, what the future of the brand. Like, I'm not saying, like, Nock is done forever, but it sure as heck isn't going to move along like this, you know. Am I leaving the door open for, like, to carry, like, the note cards, which was, like, the biggest comment I got in reply to, you know, the newsletter and the news of Nock shutting down. I was like, well, where am I going to get my index cards now? Yeah. You know, could I keep that as a one-off and sell them in the pen store? Sure. Like, I'm not there yet. Like, but, like, I'm not saying no to that, you know. Could I do, like, a special project with the Sinclair and we do some fun collaboration type of thing? Sure. Like, you know, I'm leaving that door open from a Nock type of product. But Nock as it is now is not going to be, like, a large retailer of pen cases and stationery. It's just not sustainable for me.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. Okay.

'''Myke:''' Do you have – so, you have a couple of points in our notes here that I want to make sure that you feel like you've hit on before I pepper you with my questions. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is there anything more that you want to mention on this before we take a break and get to that?

'''Brad:'''  OMG the feedback. Y'all are amazing. Everyone who replied, who, like, ordered stuff, it's mind-blowing, the feedback I got. And it just –

'''Myke:''' Yeah, because your plan was to basically, like, sell off everything just so you had no inventory. But I remember you saying to me, you thought it was going to take a while.

'''Brad:'''  Yeah. So, I put in the – I didn't know what to think. So, I did kind of an inventory before I did this, right, a product inventory. So, I knew what I had to put on the site for sale. And then I announced that all the cases were going at 50% off in the newsletter. And it was madness. I can't believe the amount of orders. I can't believe how quickly everything went. There's still plenty left for some cases. But what happened was not in my purview, right? I didn't think what happened happened. I now have a big Kickstarter level of shipping to do. I might have to send out another newsletter today saying, number one, thank you for all the amazing feedback. Number two, it might take me a month to get all these orders shipped. It was that big. Which is good. Like, that's what needed to happen. But even I – it caught me off guard for sure. Like, I'm in a shipping hole for a while. Which is okay. Like, you don't think about that. Like, I knew it was going to – like, oh, yeah, a bunch of people will order a bunch of stuff. Not at the scale that I saw happen this week. So, it was crazy.

'''Myke:''' You're going to be very busy, aren't you, over the next couple of weeks? Yeah.