Editing The Pen Addict 229/transcript (section)

== Acura ==


'''Brian Anderson:''' And then after a couple years, we bought our Acura. We had an MDX. And this year, actually, it died on the way to the LA Pen Show. We were about half an hour out of town and the car just gave up. And we ended up buying a new car that day on the way to the show.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Wow. I guess you didn't have a choice at that point, right? You were fully packed, right?

'''Brian Anderson:''' We were. And LA is such a big show, we couldn't afford to miss it. We'd already paid our fees and all of that, so we had to go. It was certainly not the way most people, including us, would choose to buy a car.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, for sure. That's never a good experience, no matter if you're in the perfect situation. You were far, far from it. So, going to these shows over the past few years and seeing the online growth continue. Y'all are bringing in more brands online. You're adding more tables at every show you go to because your product lineup is expanding. And everything is going great. And you get this wonderful idea, again, to just throw more at yourselves. Let's open a brick and mortar store on top of all of this other stuff going on. So, how did those conversations come about? Because in my book, you're already on the crazy train. Everything you do, and it's awesome. It's like beyond impressive. I say that jokingly because what it is, it's impressive what you're doing. And then you say, let's do exactly what everyone thinks we shouldn't do, and that's open a brick and mortar store. So, how did that come about?

'''Brian Anderson:''' Well, I think it was actually a natural extension of what we were doing. At one point, we had Pen stuff in every room of the house. And I think a lot of people will relate to that. But, I mean, we literally had it in both bathrooms. We were finding stuff in the kitchen, like, for years after we moved out of the house.

'''Brian Anderson:''' Under pot holders, in the junk drawer.

'''Brian Anderson:''' Crazy places we would find things. You know, syringes. I found a bottle of Aurora Black in the cabinet in the kitchen. But we decided we were going to renovate our basement. And we had about, I don't know, it was about 500 square feet. We had shelves put in. It took us about a year. And six months later, we had completely outgrown it. We couldn't sustain it. And we said, well, we need to move this out of the house. And so, we were kind of walking. We have a nice little downtown area. We live about a mile, not even a mile from the downtown area. We said, well, why don't we just get a place that we can open, not only to house the inventory and handle shipping and all that. But maybe we can have some walk-in traffic. And then there are also some brands that will only sell to brick and mortar. So, we walked around. And we eventually, it took us about, I don't know, about a year? Yeah. About a year or so. And we finally found the right place. And we made it happen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And when was that? It's been, what, maybe two years?

'''Brian Anderson:''' It'll be three years.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Next month.

'''Brian Anderson:''' Actually, I think we signed the lease three years ago this week. And we got the keys right at Halloween.

'''Brian Anderson:''' Yeah. So, sometime like this week, three years ago. And then we opened for business two weeks later.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Dang. That's so cool. Yeah. I can see how that actually, in your minds, the way everything is going. And as busy as you guys are, that actually makes sense. Let's have our own shop. You know, it's close by. We can at least do our work out of there. And oh, by the way, it'll be a storefront. Maybe people will come in, too. And at this time, are you still working other jobs at this time? Like, are you doing all these things, traveling all over the country, open a brick and mortar? Or are you still, you know, teaching Lisa O'Brien? Are you still in the IT world?

'''Brian Anderson:''' Yes. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That boggles my mind.

'''Brian Anderson:''' I had stopped teaching face-to-face during the day. And I was doing, I was teaching some online classes and some night classes in Appleton. And I was the only one at the store for quite a while. But, you know, we figured that if we were going to have to pay, you know, warehouse or office space, it might as well be retail. And we were surprised at how well it took off.

'''Brian Anderson:''' Yeah. And downtown Appleton is not, real estate prices aren't that, this is not downtown Chicago. Sure. The prices are very reasonable. But I was still working. And we were often doing, going to a show. And then we would, we always leave right after the show. We drive home. And we were, in most cases, we would drive home. And then I would go directly to work. I mean, I would not sleep. I would just go straight to work because that's how it worked out.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I mean, if nothing else, people should take away from this how much you guys love what you do. Like, as far as this pen industry that we're all fortunate to be in. I mean, you guys are committed like no other that I have ever heard of in my life. And I, quite honestly, it's impressive. And I don't have a question. I just wanted you to know that. It's seriously, seriously impressive. And you should be proud of everything that y'all built.

'''Brian Anderson:''' I was going to say that we're both pretty driven and goal-oriented. And we knew that we could do more. And we knew that this was what we wanted to continue to do. And we knew that we both still wanted to buy other pens, which meant we had to sell some things. Yeah, we're going to talk about that. It was just, you know, you put your head down and you do what you have to do. And when you look up, you are shocked at how far you've come.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So I'm wondering, like, kind of about the store. Is there a lot of foot traffic? Or is it like you have the store because you need the space for the online stuff as well? And kind of it goes hand in hand quite nicely.

'''Brian Anderson:''' No, we're surprised at how much foot traffic we get.

'''Brian Anderson:''' It's quite busy. That's awesome. You know, we get some traffic during the week, of course. But Saturdays are just when we're open. It's just it's completely crazy. You open the door. People start coming in. The next thing you know, it's time to close.

'''Brian Anderson:''' And people are still there.

'''Brian Anderson:''' Yeah. Yeah. We're very surprised. I mean, the store pays for itself and all of its expenses and all the employees on its own.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So that's really exciting and like not meant in a bad way, but surprising. It's just interesting that like a dedicated pen store in a town can do that. Right. Like it's it's it's an exciting thing to think about.

'''Brian Anderson:''' Well, especially with so many other pen stores closing, I think that we had the advantage that we both had retail experience. So and Brian has an MBA. And so we just tried to be really smart about how we did things. It got to be a kind of a problem that we were so busy and we were open barely five months and we hired our first full time employee.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Wow. Wow. Full time as well. Like that's such a huge jump. Right. Like from from nobody to a full time employee. Like that's that's amazing.

'''Brian Anderson:''' It was nice to have company.