Editing The Pen Addict 667/transcript (section)

== Campaigning for President of Stationery ==

* But no, I thought this would be a fun topic that if you or I were going to run for the President of Stationary, what would we campaign on? Like, what is our platform? What types of things do we want to see if we got installed as the President of Stationary? What changes would we make? So, I asked Myke to, you know, pick two or three or four things to come up with as a platform. So, do we need to flip a coin? How do they determine who goes first on these debates? I think you should go first. Okay. You just want to be able to answer back to me. Well, maybe, you know. I didn't know that. Maybe. Maybe I can shift around to what I want to put in and where I want to put it. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So, I will go first.
* Dear friends, thank you for joining us here today. I appreciate you. Thank the moderators. Thank the hosts. I don't watch debates. I don't know how they go. You couldn't pay me to watch that mess. So, I am here to run on a platform of change, Myke. Wow. And that change needs to start with manufacturers of fountain pens and inks. Because if you're a company that manufactures both, you are now going to be required to also manufacture notebooks.
* Why is that, Myke? Because, as a manufacturer, if you make a fountain pen and you make an ink to go into that fountain pen and you tell your customer that their warranty will be voided if they use other inks, well, you're also forgetting about the third part that is very important of the writing experience and that is the paper that you use. So, if a manufacturer, if you're a manufacturer, you're going to use. So, if a manufacturer, from a warranty perspective, wants to control the ink that you use, they can't fully do that unless they control the paper that you use. So, I'm looking at you, sailor and platinum and pelican and pilot. Even though some of you have manufactured small amounts of paper, you should have a stock notebook that your company stands by that works with your fountain pen and your inks. You need to manage product expectations through the entire writing cycle.
* And if you don't provide paper to go with your fountain pen and your ink, are you really selling the full experience? So, this is something I strongly believe in. We've seen companies like Lamy dabble in their own paper goods and that I appreciate. And their paper goods are very good. And I need to see all companies, if you make both a fountain pen and a line of ink and tell people that they can only use these things together, well, you need to include paper into that mix. And therefore, all manufacturers need to manufacture notebooks to go along with their paper and ink. All right. Thank you. I like it.
* If you vote for me, we're going to live in a land of freedom. That's what we're all about here. Freedom. And I think for too long, for too long, we have been constrained by standardized paper sizes. It is time to break free of the shackles of A4 to slice at A5. And we could just make them in any size we want. Who even needs standards? We need freedom. We need freedom of paper size. That is what my platform begins on. I've had enough of foreign nations telling me the size of my notebook. So if you vote for me, we're going to make notebooks in whatever size we want. You want a big one? You want a little one? It doesn't matter. You can have it because we're going to do whatever we want. Ah, the crowd goes wild.
* Was that cheering? Yeah. That was cheering. Okay. Thank you. Oh, thank you. I wasn't expecting that from you, to be honest. Oh, just wait. That wasn't for me. That was from the crowd. The crowd's on your side. But over here, Myke, we're a party of standards. And while we may not be looking for paper standards, and these notebook manufacturers may choose to create any size notebook that they wish, We do believe in a new world of worldwide standardized nib sizes.
* This is a problem for people new to fountain pens, to stationery as a whole, that they go buy a pen from one manufacturer that says the nib is a fine. And then they go buy a pen from another manufacturer that says the nib is a fine, and they aren't even close to being the same size. From a beginner experience, it is a huge negative on this industry. So we need to standardize and come together with one standard between Western and Eastern nib sizes. Now, companies like their specialty nib sizes and making unique products, those can stand alone. But if you're marking a pen nib with extra fine, fine, medium, or broad, those should be in the same guidelines across the world. That should be, you know, a pretty standard, common experience for customers. If we have to create new sizes on the outer bounds of these ranges, that's fine too, as long as we can make something that's standard. If a Japanese extra fine nib right now is finer than anything on the European side of the ledger, let's make an extra, extra fine. That ranges from one millimeter to two millimeters. An extra fine would be three to four millimeters, or 0.3 to 0.4 millimeters.
* And standardize the writing experience from the stock product lineups for all companies. Thank you. I trust my opponent to think that he can solve things by trying to bring people together. This is the platform that he's running on. You vote for me. We're not letting the Germans tell us what to do. Japan, get out of here. We're making our own standard that everybody else is going to have to go and look at. You want to make a nib and be successful? When I'm president, we'll make our own sizes. And do you know what? We're not going to have anything around here, extra fine. Get out of here. We don't want you. Fine. What are you doing? No, we're not fine. We're great. Our nibs start at great.
* We're better than fine. Great is the smallest size. It's bigger than any of this nonsense that these people are going to have. We're going from great to greater to greatest to greatimus maximus. And that's going to be like a Sharpie. And that's going to be a fountain pen. I don't care if it's possible. We're going to find a way to do it because we can do anything. Just vote for me. We can do anything.
* Are you getting it yet, by the way? Yeah, yeah. You're getting what I'm doing. Yeah, I am. I'm really feeling like Joe Biden and I don't have any words right now. I'm just staring. I'm so excited about this. This is so good. Oh, my God. We've got two more. I know, man. You're on it. All right. Next topic. I think even my opponent would be signing on to this change in the fountain pen world.
* All fountain pens, regardless of price, if it is a cartridge converter filling system, will ship with a converter. This is not something that companies should upcharge for outside of the product that they're selling. This is part of the experience of using a fountain pen, is adding in your own ink. And to ask me, even for an inexpensive pen, to pay more than I just paid for the pen for the experience of using a converter. Well, that's going to end here with this administration. You may have to raise the price on that platinum preppy by a couple of dollars, but the experience you're going to add will be more than worth the change by giving new customers and existing customers of your products the tools they need to fully experience what a fountain pen should be. Trust my opponent to suggest such a limited scope and then say you're going to charge more for it. No, if you vote for me, you're getting a cartridge. You're getting a converter. You're getting a blunt nose needle. You're getting grease in the package. And you know what? It's going to be cheaper. All right. And that's what happens if you vote for me. But this isn't even my campaign path long. He just riles me up with the way that he makes these suggestions. No, if you vote for me, we have one rollable refill. It's the Schmidt P8126. I love those people at Schmidt. We had a great meeting. They bought me something. They bought me a plane. This becomes the new standard. Nothing else. There will be... I've been talking to Schmidt. They don't know this yet, but I'm going to let them know they're going to make these in different sizes. So we can have little ones. We can have big ones. It doesn't matter, but it's all P8126 when I'm voted president. One rollable. Why bother with anything else?
* P8126. Thank you to my fine friends at Schmidt. I love them.
* My opponent is going to be thrilled with this next campaign talk. Because he can make it for all of the products he wishes to create and grift from. What all products need for my opponent clearly is a barcode on each and every one of them. So he can scan them and put them into his Bitcoin wallet and watch the money just go up in his account and his account only while taking from everyone else. If your product has a barcode on it, you clearly support my opponent in this race. And I am here to eliminate the gaudy, tacky, beautiful barcodes that my opponent loves. Big, beautiful barcodes. All over pens and products. If you put a barcode... Wait, you want to remove barcodes? If you imprint a barcode onto your pen, you are no friend of this campaign. Oh, on the sticker on the pen? A sticker or something? Not on the sticker. On the barrel. There are companies out there. I'm looking at you, Pentel. That's gross. If you put the barcode on the pen, this needs to end and it needs to end now. Well, let me say, audience, even a stop clock can be right once today.
* More for you, right? Do you want to hear my final campaign platform? This is my final message. All right. Let's bring manufacturer back home.
* Let's do it. All right. I'm sick of this. Let's bring manufacturer back home. We need more manufacturer here. Companies that can should actually accept the work. Or you know what? They'll be forced to. And everyone's going to be making everything. And there's going to be more notebooks of different sizes than you could ever imagine. They're coming back home. This was legitimately, Brad, my first one. And I was like, oh, I see where this is going now. Because I actually agree with this.
* Make more notebooks everywhere. Let's bring manufacturer back home. Bring it back home, baby.
* All right. Last one. I'm a party of the people, not for myself. So we're going to make Fountain Pen Day a worldwide government-recognized holiday. We're going to sit with all the other countries. And we're going to get this on the calendar and make it an official day. A day of celebration for our community. Not just, you know, a one-off day here, you know, randomly for retailers. Let's make it a worldwide holiday. Let's bring writing back to the people. Thank you, everyone, for listening to this, for putting up with us. And for voting here, you know, coming up in a few weeks. We're going to have a big vote. Wow. And, yeah. No, I mean, we're not. But, you know. I look forward to it. I look forward to becoming president of Stationary. Yeah. President of Stationary. Myke Hurley, or president of Stationary. Brad Dowdy. You have heard our platforms. Let us know what you think. I'll let you be vice president, if you want. Yeah. We'd be a good team. Yeah. You could be vice president. You're a little bit questionable. I'll meet people at least once a week.
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* Less duties, more doodles. That's a campaign platform right there. Yeah. Tariffs Schmariffs also. Big fan. Mm-hmm. Big fan. All right. Let's hit some ass TPA. Okay. Rain this madness back in. Gustavo wrote in and said, I recently moved from San Jose to Denver, and the difference in local availability of stationery beyond greetings cards is stark. There's a part of me that's considering embarking on the long journey of starting up a brick-and-mortar stationery store of my own. I've run a family business in the past, but never a stationery shop. Could you beautiful people either talk me out of it or give me some sage advice on how to build a community hub the likes of Atlas or Yoseka? What makes a good shop? This is a great question, and I will never talk anyone out of doing this as long as you realize it's going to be insanely tough, right, in this market. I don't think we even have to tell that to Gustavo. Yeah. I think that's understood. Here's the thing that I'll say to begin with, Gustavo. Are you okay with making no money for a while? Mm-hmm. Because that's kind of the realities of something like this because you need to establish yourself with vendors, you need to establish yourself in the community. And then, you know, I'm sure that like stationery retail is a pretty thin margin business. Mm-hmm. I would expect anyway. Unless maybe you're working kind of directly with some independent makers. I think the fact that there is such a strong distributor presence in the business, right, would make it quite hard for the margins to be pretty decent is my expectation. I don't know, but that is my expectation.
* That you would have to, you know, you really have to be shifting a lot of product for it to be something that's good. But I feel like Denver, that feels like a place that could have a good store, right? Right. My understanding is like Colorado's pretty hip.
* Yeah. No, Denver would be a great place, I would think. So the challenges in an odd way play a little bit into like some of the positives. And what I would do if I was starting a brick and mortar is you're going to be forced to start small, right? You're going to be forced to be very particular about what you carry because no one's going, no new one-off stationery retailer that's not a chain, right? Like Kino Kaniya, like a massive, massive chain is going to come in big, right, into a community.