Editing The Pen Addict 68/transcript (section)

== Company Launch ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' So. Yeah. So. I started a company Myke. Tell me about it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's nerve wracking. I'll tell you that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But. But. All right. So. I've always. Wanted to. Do something else. Besides blogging. That was. You know. Somehow affiliated with. With the pen addict. Whether it's. You know. Designing a pen. Or starting a pen store. I just wanted to do something. A little bit more. Than just necessarily. Writing about. You know. Pens and paper. And pen cases. And things like that. Just do something. That you know. I could put my name on. And be proud of. And something like that. Just be. You know. Add on to that creative vibe. That. You know. Which I'm enjoying. Doing. On the pen addict blog. Writing. And. Reviewing pens. You know. I wanted to kind of. Take that next step. And. Get a little bit more creative. And. For those that read the post today. On pen addict dot com. You're probably familiar with. Jeffrey's work. From a company called. Alter manufacturing. Where I reviewed a pen case. That he had sent me. It's probably been a year ago. It's called the motto. Motto two. And it's a pen case. That I really. Really liked. It's just. It's very utilitarian. Design. In its form. In its function. It's very well. Constructed. Feels very durable. And. You know. It's a case that I've. Always carried. Ever since I got it. So. Jeff and I. Over the past year. Have just kind of. We've kept that friendship going. And. You know. We throw it around. Boy. We really need to do something together. Or. We need to make a. Design. Come up with a pen case design. Or something other.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And so. Just. Maybe a month ago. We finally said. It's time. Let's do it. No turning back. Let's put it down on paper. Let's get everything formed. We've got some ideas. That we want to do. Let's meet up. Go through these ideas. And see what we can come up with. So. Jeffrey lives about. An hour and a half away. So. That's why this. This relationship. Works out really well. We drive. Meet halfway.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The first time we met. In person. We went through. A bunch of sketches. Went through. A bunch of designs. And. Said. Okay. I think we've got something here. You know. We. Went through that initial meeting. We came up with some product designs. And. From that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Notco was born. I mean. It was. It was really. That simple. We felt. We felt comfortable working together. We felt good. About. The ideas that we had. That we wanted to do. That we wanted to get out of this company.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And. I. I just think it's going to be a real. Real positive thing. We got a lot of work ahead of us. We went ahead and launched today. Well. Not. I wouldn't say launch. We went ahead and announced today. Because we wanted to share with everyone. Just kind of our.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Growth process. You know. We've gone from sketches on piece of paper. To now we're in the prototype phase. So we're showing people. You know. Here's some of these ideas we came up with. Here's what our plans are. Here's. You know. A sneak peek of. Of what's to come. And we're still working on perfecting the designs. Working on perfecting. What we're going to launch on Kickstarter.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And. And things like that. So it's. It's.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The. Ball is. Is. Fully. Fully rolling. At this point. We've spent about two or three weeks. Just going hardcore at it. So we felt it was time to. To unveil today. If you will.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Will you allow me. Will you permit me. To interview you a little. Sure. Yeah. That would be good. You can feel. You know. I mean. I don't know what you're willing to share. We haven't had a discussion. Up front about this. But. So. You're launching a Kickstarter project. In September.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. That's the plan. Hopefully early September. So. The. There's some dates. That are fixed. Just back end type stuff. That we may not. May not be able to get around. So I didn't want to give a specific date. So. September should be. A non-issue. Yes.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And what will the Kickstarter entail? Because. I mean. If you look on the Instagram page. For example. Which is. Instagram.com. Slash. Knock. Co. You've got a bunch of prototypes here. So what is the Kickstarter going to be for? Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You'll see one. One of our. Our pictures just has like a pile. Of prototypes. So. The Kickstarters. We're going to narrow it down to. Four or five. Product designs. That. You know. Involve different. Different case designs. Um. And then. Within those designs. We're going to have different colorways. For each design. Um. So there'll be. You know. We're. Everything is kind of in this black and gray color right now. Because that's just where we're using for prototypes. But. Almost all of the. Production models. Are going to be some type of color. Um. Color. Um.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know. Color. Canvas. Color. Binding. Um. Colored. Lining. Things like that. So. Um. They're going to be. Um. Really good looking. And. We got. We have the color samples in. We're getting some of the color. Um. Prototypes made now. So we'll be able to share some of those. What these colors are going to look like. And then we're going to do. Um. We're going to do a couple of. Kickstarter. Limited. Uh. Limited colors. That will only be available on Kickstarter. Some. And. We'll pick a certain. Product. Say. I don't know. Most of the. Most of the Kickstarter products. Right now. If you. I'll go through them real quick. We. We haven't finalized the list. But we have a case. That. Jeffrey and I. Two cases that we love. One is the. What I call the three plus one. Oh god. Just take.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Just take my money.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Take it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Just take my money right now. Why do I have to wait?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I know. That one's getting a lot of good feedback. I just. I just. That was a design. I just thought was very useful. That I didn't have right now. Like. Everyone's. Carries their pens. Everyone carries. You know. Their memo books. You know. Be it field notes. Doan. Moleskine. Rodeo. Whatever. And. I just wanted a case. Where I could have pens. I could have pens on one side. The case in the other. And have just like a simple bifold case. And. You know. It. It's not rocket science. But it's something that's just not that available. In. You know. The materials that we're using. You know. There's lots of higher end leather type cases. That kind of. Sort of. Do something like this. But I really wanted. The impetus of this whole company. Is. I thought there was a space. I thought there's a. There's a gap. Between. Like. Some basic pen cases. That are available. Like. On the low end of the price. Price point. Like. It's staples. Or things like that. And then it jumps. You know. Really up into like. Really high end leather stuff. So. We. We. We wanted to make a nice. Durable. You know. Canvas cloth. Case. That's. That's. It's going to wear well. It's going to hold up well. It's going to protect your pens well. And it's going to look good. So. That three plus one case. Is something that. I was really. Looking forward to. And the prototypes are coming out really good. That's the one. I'm. I'm carrying that a bunch now. Oh.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I hate you man. But you're. You're just using it now.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. And. You know. And what's good about me and Jeffrey. Is. You know. We're. We're sharing these prototypes. Back and forth. And. You know. He's really easy to work with. And hopefully I'm. The same to him. And we. You know. I get it. And I say. You know. Here's what I don't like about it. And he's like. Okay. Let me. You know. I'm going to look at this tomorrow. Then I'm. I'm going to send you another one. And I'm like. Okay.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm happy that you're using them daily. Because I know that you're going to be very meticulous. About it. Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. And that was. That was one of my hesitancies. About. Just. Announcing this. The day. The Kickstarter launched. Right. I.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I. I kind of didn't want to do that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' In one way. It helps. That. You know. Now that we've announced. And there's this lead up time. Until. There's actually products. People can buy. You know. You're kind of running the risk of. You know. Burning people out. Or. You know. Driving people crazy. By not having. By announcing and not having a product available. But on the flip side. I didn't want to just turn on the Kickstarter. One day. And say. Hey. Go buy. These cases. You know. I wanted to have. People have that background information. Ahead of time. And knowing how much we're putting into this project. Before just flipping the switch on Kickstarter.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think. So another.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's the right way to do it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So. And that's why. And we felt that we're going to do it soon enough. To where there's not going to be any burnout. Or any. You know. Forgetfulness. Or lag time. In between us. Announcing. And the Kickstarter really going. We're pretty far along. The whole process. So. It's. It's. A September launch. With. Without question. At this point. But another case. Yes.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I was going to say. I think I kind of sidetracked you a bit. So. You're looking. Launching with multiple products. For one Kickstarter.