Editing The Pen Addict 548/transcript (section)

== Diamine Ink and Community Engagement ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' And whichever one, you know, won that Reddit vote is what Diamine's going to make. And I just think that's really cool of them to participate in something like this. I voted for the one that eventually won on Sailor's Warning. So I have very good taste along with everyone else who chose. Chose number 37 was the sample that ended up winning. And the second one is Celadon Cat, which is a gray, blue, green. It's really hard to describe ink because even the samples are pretty varying. One could be very blue, one could be very brown, one could be very green. I voted for the third favorite. So this one was number 41, I believe. And that was my third favorite of the ink. So it's really, really neat to have this Diamine participation and see it continue to grow every year. And people get excited about this and think about this all year. Like, when did we do the original, gosh, it was probably like in the fall when it was time to, hey, let's give Diamine our ideas to eventually get down to these colors, right? They have that level of participation. Diamine's not saying, here's five inks we're thinking about. The literal origination of the ink ideas came from the Fountain Pen subreddit. And Diamine just goes with whatever they create. And I just think it's fantastic. And I think it's worth sharing. And I'm looking forward to these inks. I haven't been able to find a release date for these inks yet. But I'd imagine, you know, this is probably like a late spring type of summer thing, right? So the votes are in, the colors have been decided, the formulas have been decided. So now Diamine just has to make them, produce them, get them out into the system. And they're usually like a worldwide release. They're just part of the main product line now. Like Diamine Earl Grey, which is a great gray ink, came from this vote in a previous year. Like it's in Diamine Writer's Blood came from this vote in previous years that have become like core Diamine inks. And I just, I love this so much.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Certainly an interesting thing to do. Like it's intriguing to me. Like with this kind of stuff, I wonder of like, is it best for the business to like to do it this way? Like sometimes, you know, there's that old ad. And I don't know if this, I don't believe this is always correct. It's like you don't just listen to what people ask you for. I can't remember the phrase, right? Like you have to like work out what is coming. You can't just do everything that people ask for.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So where I think that comes into play here, and I agree with that sentiment, is the size and age of a company like Diamine, who has 150 years behind them. They're able to, you know, take, okay, let's say 2% of our energy to this. Yes. Where if you and I decided to have this ink company that we've been running for about five years, this would take 40% of our energy to accomplish. And then it's not as good of a decision for us, if that makes sense.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because that's the way I think about it. You're putting all that effort in for something that people tell you that they want, but then they maybe don't buy it. Like that's the concern, right? Right. That you run into that like you end up in a situation where you've made this thing that doesn't really have a point of view in it. It's just like what 100 people told you that they want. And then you're like, oh, all these people are going to buy it. But for whatever reason that I don't genuinely don't understand, it just doesn't work out that way. Right. Because people's intent to buy is not the same as people's actuality of buying.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Exactly. And you said the correct word. And I don't even think you know that you said it. But when you design things, especially as smaller companies, you said point of view, right? You have to make a decision that you believe in and are going to stand behind and can't let every single customer's whim affect that decision. Where smaller companies, that's hard for them to do. But a larger, stable, historical company like Diamine has that ability to absorb that a little bit better. So, yeah, it's great.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But like for a company of that size, it then is a good thing to do because it also generates, even if it doesn't result in sales as such, which it has, you say. But even if it didn't, it's good for building your community, which can be helpful around something that is ultimately like a faceless corporation kind of feel otherwise. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like literally people will talk year round about a singular ink from this brand. Yeah. And it's just a massive, enormous win for them. Yeah. And I very much believe like that wasn't their intent going into this, right? Like they think like, let's do this and see how it goes and we'll make a cool ink. And now it's just been, it's like, okay, yeah, that worked out perfectly. Let's keep going. So, yeah, it's fantastic.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Some young marketing person at Diamine came up with this idea and was just told, oh, well, you just run it yourself and see what happens. Right. And then it turned out to be a big success. Yeah. You love to see it. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform to help you build your brand and grow your business online. With Squarespace, you can stand out with a beautiful website, engage with your audience and sell your products, services and the content that you create. Squarespace has got you covered by offering everything for you. So it's very easy to get started. You go and you sign up and you choose from one of their beautiful templates. They are categorized to try and make it easy for you to work out which one you want. Maybe it matches to the type of site you want to make, you know, whether you want a portfolio or a blog, or maybe it helps if you like the type of business that you're running. You can pick a template that kind of reflects that. And they also, what I like, especially for the business ones, is it gives you like a template page structure. So like for a type, for a website of this kind, you need a contact page and an about page and maybe you need an FAQ, that kind of stuff. So it helps you think not just about the design, but also about like what a website like yours is going to need, which I think is very cool. And they then have all the tools. Once you've got it set up, which is great to do, it's easy to do, it's all drag and drop. You just click and choose colors and fonts and you can resize everything. You don't need to know any code to get a beautiful professional website at the end of it. Then once your site's up and running, you can sell your products in an online store. It doesn't matter whether you sell physical or digital products. Squarespace has all of the tools and integrations that you need to start selling online. And then once you've got things going further, you can then use Insights to help take your business to the next level. So Squarespace has an Insight platform built in to tell you where your visitors are coming from, where your sales are generating from, and which channels are most effective for you. Then once you have that data, you can improve your website, you can improve your business, and build a marketing strategy based on your top content or your top products. So go and check this out for yourself right now. I've been using Squarespace for 13 years, maybe.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I need to look at some anniversary dates for myself. It's got to be double digits.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I mean, it's probably a bit closer to that. I'm thinking about when I got started in podcasting, but I'd set up Squarespace's website for myself before. I was trying to do writing projects and stuff like that. So it's probably closer to 15 years now at this point. They are where I go when I want to start a website. So you should go there too. Go to squarespace.com slash penaddict, and you can sign up for a free trial today with no credit card required. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code penaddict to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That is squarespace.com slash penaddict. And when you sign up, use the offer code penaddict. You will get 10% off your first purchase and show your support for the show. Thanks to Squarespace for the continued support of this show and all of RelayFM.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' One little small item I wanted to bring up was a little bit of a follow-up to me just heaping praise on Pilot's new mechanical pencil-led Instagram that I just fawned over and could write a whole dissertation on. Stationary-wise, I loved it. Pilot had a couple new things pop up into their feeds. One is a bit of artwork from an artist called Eric Small Things on – at least that's their Instagram handle.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You don't think that's their real name? If you couldn't imagine.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, probably not their real name. Oh, okay. But they draw small things. And what they did for Pilot this time was essentially make digital wallpapers out of Pilot products. So there's like a – it looks like a poster, right? It's got like the Kakuno and the Dr. Grip and, you know, ink cartridges and ink bottles. And it's just this fun little bit of artwork. And they've made it so you can download, you know, like different sizes to have different wallpaper. And it's – yes, it's hashtag marketing like big time. It's good though. It's cool. It's cool. It's great, right? It just looks nice, yeah. This is, you know, just – it's those little things, right, that I get attracted to like this. Not only is the art just like really cool, like I don't care. It's like, hey, thanks Pilot for like doing something a little cool with an artist and sharing it with us. And just having these neat little things. So, yeah, if you're like a Pilot super fan like I am, you look at this and go, oh, man, that is super cool. Like I'm totally not going to use this as my wallpaper. Like it would be just too busy for me. But I love looking at this. And I love that they work with someone to make these types of things, right? Those are the types of things I want to keep praise on. Then I click over. Let's just keep things honest and real with Pilot here for a minute. Myke, we have talked about their product.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And I mess this up every time. It's I-L-M-I-L-Y, right? It's their little more like journaling focus. Basically, this is their Instagram product line. It's the I love me, I love you. Okay, there it is.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I was like, it must stand for something. And I reckon I-L-Y is I love you. But I couldn't work out what the I-L-M was.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. I love me, I love you. I call it the Barney lineup for certain reasons. I was going to say, yes, it's very Barney. And they haven't, I haven't seen much on this product, right? And again, this is a really journaling goods, stationary store, small items, you know, stamps, pens, highlighters, markers, accessories for like your journaling and, you know, different things like that. It's a very, very highly specific sub brand. And they came out with an interesting product line. And I'm trying to decide if this is like the ink I, excuse me, the link I put in there is this kind of two color pen. And I thought it was a friction at first because it looks like the one of the classic friction barrel designs that they've reused. But it's really more of just like, hey, this is ballpoint pen.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And I like me. I like you. It's not love.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay, sorry. Sorry. I was too, too much into the Barney there. So I have reviewed one of the ballpoint pens that they've made for this product line before. And it's really good. Like Pilot makes great products. And they generally, what they'll do is they'll kind of take a shell of a product and tweak it for the sub product line like this. But they had this ballpoint pen. And I'll get a link for it for the show notes. It's actually the second image on their current Instagram. But I know that doesn't really fly for talking about on this podcast. But I'll get the name of it. It's really good, but it's just a little bit overpriced, a little bit premium. And I'm curious on how this product lineup is going for them in general. So this is one of those things that I don't talk about a lot, but I keep an eye on because I want to see if it succeeds. Right. And I'm sure just strictly in the Japanese market, it's probably doing pretty well because it's basically stationary design for Instagram. Right. Like you can tell with the aesthetic of this brand, that's what they're trying to do. And like Diamine, you know, they probably had a group in Pilot. Pilot's a much, much larger company than Diamine. They probably had a group that said, hey, let's build a product line that focuses on this. And they obviously got the backing to do it. It's been around a couple of years now. It doesn't look like there's any slowing down. But I'm curious, like I'm like I see no interaction on these Instagram posts, right? No comments and things like that. So I'm just kind of curious how it goes. So this is one of those things I always have in the back of my head that I wanted to bring up because we haven't talked about it in a while. And it still exists. And, you know, I don't hope it fails or anything. I'm just curious. I'm curious, like I'm very curious about how this goes because it's almost I don't know how additive it is, right? So like if Pilot has the friction and the friction is just blowing up by, you know, any measure, it looks like the friction is blowing up. And they have all different types of frictions. And then they have frictions for like the professionals and they have frictions for the journalers and they have frictions for the Instagrammers. Do we also need this full product line that is kind of like cannibalizing some of their other stuff? I don't know how that stuff works, but Pilot's a huge company. They know better than me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, a lot of that, like the journaling and Instagramming crowd like that is probably additive sales. I don't know if it's necessarily cannibalizing their existing products, right? Like at least that's the goal of this product line.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And the thing is, if you take a one-to-one product, like say if you have a Dr. Grip standard and a Dr. Grip in the I Like Me, I Like You product line, there's a premium just for that product line, even though it's the same physical product, just for the paint job and the exterior, right? So you might have like a 50% premium for the same pen. So they're making up for it like at the price point level as well. So it's interesting. One of those things that I love about stationery is there's all kinds of things out there. Myke, I think the next thing I want to talk about might be even more specific than the James Bond pen as far as usefulness to people. I backed a Kickstarter project called the Carto. That's K-A-A-R-T-O. And why did I back it? Well, strictly because it's weird and that I thought it would work, right? So I don't just back Kickstarter projects on a whim because, oh, pen, you know, it's a pen. Let me back it, right? If I think it's, you know, somewhat cool, somewhat interesting, something I think I will use, something unique I want to test out to see, hey, does this work? Does it not work? And the Carto kind of checked all those boxes for me. So what it is, Myke's already called it the Batarang. And I think that's kind of a good way to put it. It's a small, thin, curved pen that is designed in this very ergonomic way to just kind of relieve all stress when you're writing. It just kind of fits into your hand, fits into your grip, gets you into this very traditional way to hold the pen, which is honestly one of the biggest flaws, right? And it's not a flaw in the design. It's a, like what we said, it's a point of view. Like that's what we said earlier. This is an opinionated product. This is why I cannot recommend this product to anyone. You just have to know if this would work for the way you hold a pen. For me, with a traditional grip, yes, it slots right in. Like I can just pick it up and go. Like I don't even have to adjust anything. It just works for me. For someone else, they could look at that and say, I could never use this because it's not going to fit the way my fingers hold a pen. It uses the Pilot Hi-Tech C Colito ink cartridge. It's got this slot in the back where you slide in the cartridge and you can actually reverse the cartridge to protect the tip when you're not using it. It's a really neat little design. It wasn't very expensive. I think it was about $40 or so for me to test out, which that's like a fair price for me to like take a shot on something. Uh-huh. Um, it's aluminum and I have been using it daily for like the past two or three days. I really love it. There is a, the one writing challenge that I've had with it is, and it would be hard to even explain this on like a product video, but your, your writing angle is kind of fixed. The, the angle that the tip hits the paper is hard to adjust lower, right? So if you have a low writing angle, right? So if you think of a pen hitting the paper at a 45 degree angle, okay? So like the tip hits at a 45 degree angle. Just work with me on this. So the Carto hits it at a little bit higher angle than that. So it's a more vertical angle of the pen and it's hard to drop lower, say to like a 35% angle because of the backside of the pen, the way it works into your hand, you don't get the correct balance or aim with your, your writing instrument. So you're very fixed to a more vertical writing tip. So it's kind of specific in that way, but it feels great. Like it feels like you're writing with nothing when it's locked in there really good. Like I don't feel the pen. I don't feel it hitting my hand. I just write with it and go. And like, it's, it's weird looking, but it's essentially like any other pen for me. Um, you could never use this, right? Like a bunch of people could never use this. I don't know that it's even great as the selling point of being like a very ergonomic learn, you know, how to grip a pen type of thing. I think it's more, it should just be sold as, Hey, this is a fun writing tool. Like if you, you know, this is, it's weird and I've been working on this cool design and this is how it works. And I think for a lot of people it would work super well, but like, I wouldn't go more than that. Right. To say that, Hey, this is going to change anything. Right. It's just more of a cool toy, uh, to have. And, and I genuinely like it. Like I'm using the heck out of it, but I think it's for most people, it's probably a no go.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I think so. This, you know, this feels like a very personal thing. I mean, I can just look at it and feel like this wasn't right. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And that's why this is, this is a very simple product to not recommend to anyone because it's a, it's a binary choice. You look at this product and you can go, yes, this will work for me or no, it will not work for me. There's not a lot of, well, maybe like it's, it's, it's either yes or no. For me, it's yes. I think, um, that's probably a small percentage of people, but like, I mean, it was obviously successfully backed. It was a smooth Kickstarter project, right? Like I haven't backed a lot of Kickstarter projects recently. Like this was just like, Hey, this looks cool. I backed it. The shipping timeframes were, you know, the basic couple of months and then boom, we're in, got the pin. Um, it showed up. I didn't even realize I had forgotten about it and here it was. And I've been kind of using it ever since it stays on the desk and it's just wild. Uh, I, I'm not going to stick it in my pocket or anything, but yeah, it's good to go.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Would it fit in the pocket? Just put it in the leg?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I mean, if you, you can actually reverse the, uh, the tip. So it's protected right for storage and portability. Oh, so you pull out the refill on the backside, reverse it. Yeah. So there's a little neat little notch design in here that is kind of serves two purposes. One is it holds the back end of the refill when it's in the writing position. So the refill doesn't move. But secondly, when you want to remove the refill, the tip of the refill goes into like a, um, further away section that that's kind of like custom built to protect the refill. So it it's, it's smartly made. So speaking of smart, smartly made Myke, I wanted to give our shout out of the week to derail pens. So Adolphus who I got to meet at the Orlando pen show, um, and picked up a pen from him at the Orlando pen show this past fall was my first time meeting him. Uh, even though I'd seen him at a couple other pen shows before and what we're doing with shout out of the week. Um, as I mentioned last week, it kind of came from blog of the week that used to be shout out of the weeks can now be anything, Myke, this, this week, this week, this week, it's a maker, right? Sometimes we're going to have a YouTube channel. Sometimes we might have an Instagram channel on here, um, an Instagram feed on here to, to give a shout out to. And I wanted to give a shout out to Adolphus because he's super cool, makes some great pens. Uh, Caroline, who, who writes, um, these monthly meet your makers, make your articles for the pen addict. This just happened to come out in a perfect time for me to put them out in the shout out of the week. And, uh, Adolphus and derail pens, they, he attends a lot of pen shows, right? So if you like what you see in the blog, go check out all the things that he makes, check him out at a pen show coming soon to, to, uh, your area. And, uh, yeah, I just wanted to give a huge shout out to like an awesome person and some, an awesome pen maker. So, uh, we will continue to see more from derail pens and he's been making pens for a long time, long time. And he does a great job. So I wanted to give him a shout out.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Good one. All right. This episode is brought to you by pen chalet. They have all of your favorite products from your favorite brands and maybe even products that you don't know are going to be your favorite yet, but you'll find them at pen chalet. We're very fast and reliable customer service. You'll find them at the best prices around because every month they are discounting products up and down, closeout specials, you know, everything. I don't mean they're discounting things up. I just meant like up and down the product line. You know what I mean? You get what I'm saying.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I gotcha. I gotcha.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They're always adding new styles of pens every month. You can go back to pen chalet. You can find yourself a new rollerball or a new fountain pen. You can find yourself a new pilot, a sailor, a cafeco at Monteverde and many more or even just the accessories that you're looking for, whether it's some new ink, a converter, a fountain pen case or holder. They got it all. Pen chalet do international shipping with great shipping rates. And if you're in the U.S. and spend over $75, shipping is free. Pen chalet has low prices on high quality pens and they offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee. So go right now to penchalet.com and click the podcast link at the top of the website. Enter the password pen addict and you'll be able to see this week's special offer and get the code you need to save 10% on anything at any time at pen chalet.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The one reason you should always check this page is because Ron just drops things in there that you don't think you would normally see. Right. So sometimes it's sometimes it's things you'd expect. Hey, you know, we're almost sold out of this pen, so let's move the last few units or things like that. But sometimes things pop up that you wouldn't expect. This time, the Lamy All-Star Bronze Fountain Pen, which was a several years ago edition, is now available. So this was one of the annual editions. It's like, did Ron just find a stock of these and now they're for sale on here?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's why you got to check this. And then I found something as I scrolled way down this list, Myke, something you never see. And I'm assuming I can talk about it, but there are retro 50 ones on sale here. So there's a couple of the popper models are on sale from Ron and they might be the pen chalet exclusive editions. I can't. I haven't clicked through to see exactly what.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Lamy special edition Safari Fountain Pen strawberries and cream. It's there, baby. Oh, nice. If you want it, you can get it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes, you can.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yes, you can.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, yeah, retro 51 is not something you normally see on this list. And the last one I want to talk about, the Viscont Rembrandt S, which I don't know if we mentioned recently. This is kind of a little bit of a change to Visconti's lineup. I think this is a newer price point that Visconti's trying to hit. And this is even discounted from there. I have never seen. Like, this is one of the most popular Visconti models. And they normally run around $200 or between like $2 and $250, depending on the model. This is outrageously priced and something that I even want to go look at. Oh, yeah. There's the strawberries and cream. So, yeah. There is a ton of stuff on this list. Oh, the Pinaferina. Wow, that's a good price. Okay. Yeah. Go look at the list. There's a lot of things. I've been a good boy this year, but maybe I need to go shopping at Pen Chalet myself here when we're done with the show.

'''Myke Hurley:''' P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T dot com. It's Pen Chalet dot com. Go to the top of the website. You want to click the podcast link there. Enter the password Pen Addict, and you will get your grubby mitts on these special offers. So, thanks to Pen Chalet for their support of this show at Relay FM.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Got something on my desk here, Myke.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's been here a while.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's been off camera, as they say. What could this be? It's soft launch season, baby.