Editing The Pen Addict 495/transcript (section)

== Sailor Build-Your-Pen Website ==


'''Brad:''' So what Sailor did was launched a high-end build-your-own-pen website. Now, it's not completely functional right now. They've actually taken down the build-your-pen section. We'll talk about that. But the videos and the layout of the site, you can get a lot of things, a lot of things you can figure out from this page that I find really interesting. So let me just give you the overview of what this is from the translation of the website. So the website says, you can freely choose and assemble your favorite parts from various colors and materials, such as pen tips, lids, lid plugs, torso, tail plugs, tip plugs, and metal parts, such as clips. In the future, we will prepare new materials and limited color parts, further expand the fun of choosing, and complete a gem that expresses your identity. What they did here was kind of like what Montegrappa did with their customizer, where you could pick literally kind of every part, like the barrel, the barrel cap, the clip color, the end cap on the barrel, and different materials were available at different times to mix and match from. Right? So they might have a green barrel available now, and when they run out of that part, those parts will switch out. The interesting thing, I don't know if you caught this while you were looking through the site, they had swirly resin barrels, and I've never seen Sailor offer a swirly resin anything. Did you notice that?

'''Myke:''' No, I didn't. Like I was, I've been really struggling to do anything on this website.

'''Brad:''' It's kind of broken. You can click through some of the links. So what I did-

'''Myke:''' Oh, I see it now, right? At the bottom?

'''Brad:''' Yeah, at the bottom, there's like this gray swirl. Okay. Right?

'''Myke:''' And a red one too.

'''Brad:''' And a red one. Yeah, that is not something we normally see from Sailor. No. And they have these opportunities to build a pin with like a barrel that is swirly. The most interesting thing I found about this, Myke, is they're using the 21K gold nibs. So those are generally reserved for the larger of the two main product lines, right? The 1911 standard and the Pro Gear. The standard Pro Gear, excuse me, and the 1911 large.

'''Brad:''' That's the upgraded nib from the Pro Gear Slim and the 1911 standard, which is a 14 karat nib. And there's, you can also get those nibs not just in gold, right? They have rhodium plating and then they have like the black ion plating, which is, they kind of went all in on this. Like I'm a little bit surprised. Normally when you see these products launch, it's going to be a little bit simpler, right? Gold nibs, gold trim, right? Maybe if you're lucky, the rhodium plated stuff, but they're having like the ion plated, the matching hardware to where you can get the same hardware as the nib color. And I'm like, huh, this is, this is exceptional. I think they did a really, really good job. And I wouldn't be so positive if the price was outrageous. Like the Montegrappa ones, when you build the Montegrappa pen, it's well over a thousand dollars, right? Like the custom Montegrappas are around $1,200, $1,400. These are 46,200 yen, which breaks down to about 400 bucks, which is your price of, that's almost a better price than the 1911 larges and the Pro Gears standards that we get in the U.S. right now. And this is something you can build yourself. I was kind of taken aback by this whole thing, to be perfectly honest. Not only does it look like they've executed it well with the options available, they've priced it kind of like a mainline product, which is stunning in and of itself. And I'm pretty pleased with this whole thing. Now, the build site. I wish I could use it. Yeah. So the build site is currently closed for renovation. That's what they say when you go to the page. But if you go to, I have a link in the show notes, Myke, we can put in there where you run it through archive.org to see like the previous settings to where you can actually play with some of the dropdowns. It works a lot better in Chrome than it does in Safari.

'''Myke:''' This explains why I was struggling because that wasn't working for me at all. And I just opened Chrome and now it works.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. So you still don't, you know, some of the images aren't archived, right? But they have the image names are in line there. So you can see there'll be like 10 different barrel choices and 10 different cap choices. It's pretty nice. So my question is how big they're willing to make this because they've already had to shut it down, you know, from the first launch. I did see on the website that they have it tied in with the Ankora store, which is their high-end store in the Ginza area of Tokyo. They're high-end retail establishment. So this isn't priced though. Like it's not like a $800 or $1,000 offering. Like it's a reasonably fair mainline price for this. Honestly, it's priced better than almost all of their other pens that are, you know, standard issue, limited edition, things like that. And you get to make it yourself, although you technically can't make one right now. Any other thoughts on this, even though you didn't really get to play with it? I just feel that like it checks all the right boxes of what I would hope for for a big-time pen brand to do a bespoke pen. And they just kind of hit all the high points. Well, I'm honestly surprised.

'''Myke:''' I love it. I want it to exist. I hope that they don't just have standard colors because I feel like I would struggle with those. Like I would want weird things. Like really for me, I would, you know, like choose the swirly one and leave it at that. You know, like they maybe do limited edition barrels through this.

'''Brad:''' Right.

'''Myke:''' I don't think that this is a thing that they're going to offer for very long into the future for all. It seems too complicated at the price point.

'''Brad:''' It's very aggressive. I don't think that's what's surprising me. It is very aggressive. Like they are going to cause a lot of work and a large.

'''Myke:''' Unless they've built some kind of incredible machine, which we know Sailor is a robotics company, right? Right, right, right. We know this now. But like unless they've built some kind of machine that can do this very easily and very quickly, I don't know how this is a sustainable business model.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, as soon as this turns into a six or 12 month turnaround, people are making different choices with their money at that point.

'''Myke:''' It's like you even know what this kind of stuff is like. Oh, sure. Right, we spoke. And it's impossible to do a scale. Right. It's way, way too complicated. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I could imagine if like there was a way that they could just ship you the parts and you put it together on your own. That would probably be easier. But I don't think they would do that. Yeah, they would never do that. Not in a million years. Not for $400, right?

'''Brad:''' Right. So yeah, I want to see them finish the renovation and then really take a look at it. Like you may not be able to order it outside of Japan, which is fine. Like that's a lot of times how these things are structured, right? But I at least want to see more feedback from people who use the system because I'm not sure if anyone has yet. I haven't dug into it too much. But I don't know if anyone got in on the initial ordering for this. But I am very curious. My interest is very piqued by this because they almost did too good a job. Like you're saying now I'm concerned. Like I feel like they really did a good job here. And let's see what happens. So something to keep an eye on as we go further in the year in 2022. We'll see what happens here with this. But if it is what they are saying it's going to be, they might have a winner on their hands. We'll see.

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