Editing The Pen Addict 192/transcript (section)

== Lamy ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Everyone keeps asking. Probably the we probably won't be ever. I mean, maybe if this turns into like a giant empire, like one of these companies like Lamy or somebody where we have a huge facility, but the engineering and stuff that goes into that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And there's a reason that retractable fountain pens are so special and expensive because there aren't a lot of them. There's like four or five, right, that we know of that people can buy. Right. You got to take out some of the stupid ones like the one we spoke about a couple of weeks ago that moved by watch movement.

'''Dan Bishop:''' Oh, yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You know, like there is a very small handful and they're all very expensive because I can't even imagine the work that needs to go into making something like that happen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, it's funny because the engineering side of stuff isn't too terribly crazy. Most people, you know, I'm not an engineer and but I. I play one on TV kind of thing. The main issue is nibs that the technology used to make nibs is very specialized. And a lot of the companies that have been doing it either do it in-house or farm it out to people who've been doing it for 100 years. So, I mean, you could do, you know, small batch one-off stuff, you know, using a jeweler or, you know, doing something really slow. But in production, it just doesn't make sense because, you know, we don't want to make thousand dollar pens. Right. Like, no, you know, that's not the market that we're in. So, making a special nib unit that uses a retractable mechanism and has all that stuff would be problematic to say the least. I mean, we could do it. It's just would it be worth the investment and the time to put into it. Yeah. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Maybe someday, right? But just not. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I mean, I'm not saying no. Like, if somebody came up to us and said, hey, we want you to make this and this is how it's going to work. And, you know, have one of those sacks with a dollar sign drawn on it and they drop it on my desk. I can make it happen. But, no, it's mostly just because of the logistics involved. And now, I have looked at some of the, you know, have you seen the safety pens? Like the safety fountain pens? The ones that are not truly retractable. Right. But the nib unit does kind of recess in. I think it would be fun to do a modern take on that. But as far as like a vanishing point clicky type? Yeah. Not anything that would happen in the next five to ten years, I would bet.