Editing The Pen Addict 258/transcript (section)

== Pen Chalet ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' You need to take a breath. Mm-hmm. Today's show is brought to you by Pen Chalet. Pen Chalet sell amazing rollerballs, fountain pens, ballpoints, mechanical pencils, and more from your favorite brands, like Pelican, Lamy, Pilot, Namiki, Sailor, Kaweka, Monteverde. All of them. All the great brands. And they're an authorized dealer as well. They have great shipping rates internationally, and offer free shipping on orders of over $50 in the US. Pen Chalet have a 100% satisfaction guarantee. That is what they care about. They want to make sure that you're happy with the orders that you receive. And I've seen many people who have had questions and queries for Pen Chalet, and they've wrote to us and be like, oh, they're great. They really helped us out. We know that this is the thing that is in action for them. They sell tons of different accessories as well. They have refills. They have pen holders. Whatever you're looking for, they've got it. They're always doing great discounts and great deals, and they're very fast and reliable customer service. So go to penchalet.com and click the podcast link at the top of the website. Enter the password penaddict, and you will get access to this week's special offer and the code that you need to save 10% on anything at Pen Chalet. Now, we have one of those offers this week that I'm not allowed to talk about. It is a fantastic pen that Pen Chalet have on offer. It's discounted in some select colors and nib sizes. Now, this is a pen that is very good to get any discount on, but you can get 30% off this pen plus the 10% coupon as well. You really need to go and look at this. It's penchalet.com. Click the podcast link at the top of the website and use the password penaddict, and you will be able to take a look. There's, I think, three or four pens there, but there's one of them specifically that is the special offer this week. You should go and look at it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, you should go. It's lower than I've seen anywhere ever, I think, for a pen that we recommend very highly. So you should go look at this. Hey, one of the ballpoints on here, there's a ballpoint on here. I don't know if I can say it or not, but it's pretty awesome, too. I've got this thing for ballpoint pens recently, and this one is really nice, and it's very, very, it's way under half price. So it looks good. So go to Pen Chalet this week. You will not be disappointed. I mean, you never are, but this week is even more special than usual.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, if you're listening to the show and you haven't gone yet, you should, because they might already be sold out. Thanks so much to Pen Chalet for the support of this show and RelayFM.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right, Myke. So I've had this email for probably like two months in my inbox, and I keep saving it in my inbox because it's great information that was passed along to me. And I want to share this information, and I actually wish I could post it somewhere. Maybe I'll see if I can repost the email on the Pen Addict because it's, I learned a lot from this post, and it's on a very simple pen. And I'm calling this the specialness of the Uniball Sino 307. So listener of the show, Adam, who lives in Japan, has been listening to the show. And I'm going to read, I think, this entire thing, and then we can talk about it. Maybe I'll stop. You can stop me if we want to talk about something in the middle. But I want to go through this whole thing because it kind of goes all together. And I'll try to clean it up a little bit because there's some jargony stuff in here. But this is about the Sino 307 or Signo 307, I should say. So Adam says the key feature to the Signo 307 line is the refill. Most Signo pens use the UMR-8 and then the character to denote their tip width refills. And some have an N on the end. But the 307 series refill has an E added on the end instead. On the Uniball Japanese website, the UMR-8 E refill is listed as compatible only with the 307, even though the shape and size of both refill types are identical to the non-E refills. So basically he's saying, we have a new refill on the 307 that's denoted with an E.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So he says, the true gem of the 307 ink is that it uses cellulose nanofibers, which is denoted as CNF, to reduce viscosity and increase ink flow. That's why the 307 writes flawlessly. Also, since CNF is derived from plant fibers, it has the added benefit of being eco-friendly compared to other synthetic ink additives. We have links to all, like he sourced out this whole email. I have links to everything. And it just keeps getting more interesting to me. The drawback is the price. A kilogram of the nanofiber gel costs between $50 and $100. He also has a link to that. So clearly it costs more to make ink than includes CNF. This informs the design changes compared to the 207. The 207 had a metal clip and barrel. The 307 has plastic for both. I believe these are cost-cutting measures to keep the pen at a similar price point. The pen series has expanded since you wrote the review in 2015. There are .38 and .5 tips now. In Japan, the 307 has completely replaced the 207. I can't find a 207 anywhere. I hope this illuminates the specialness of the Signo 307 series. I think it is a preview of future inks. So here's why I find this interesting. Number one, when the 307 came out, everyone was raving about it. Rightfully so. But me, and I think probably everyone, thought it was the same refill as the 207, and the body style changed. But when you see big companies like Uni, Mitsubishi, or Pilot doing this level of work to upgrade their gel ink, it makes me happy. This was one of the most exciting emails I ever got, because I'm that kind of dork, right? Like, I care about this. It's important to me that stationary moves forward somehow. And this is something that no one in their right mind would ever notice, right? It's nothing I would ever notice. I would notice, oh, this writes a little bit better than the last version. They must have done something. And I would kind of leave it at that, right? But this just makes me grin from ear to ear that a company in this day and age will invest that much into technology and research to use a different type of material when making the ink to reduce viscosity and increase ink flow. Like, in a $3 pen. Like, that's a lot, that's a big investment that doesn't translate to your normal pen user, right? No one's going to care that this has all these features added into the ink. They just care that their pen writes well. But to me, it gets me excited that, oh, that's cool that they did that. What can they do next? You know, what other cool thing are they going to have? Is this ink going to go into all the different inks? And Uniball is one that stealthily adds this stuff, right? When the Jetstream added Super Ink Technology, which is their archival features a few years back, they kind of didn't announce it right up front. It was in their liquid ink pens, the Super Ink Technology, and like the Vision or the Eye. And then they put it in the Jetstream. Jetstream, that was kind of a big deal because it's a different ink formulation completely. And now just all their pens by default have this Super Ink Technology to keep the ink from getting washed out or modified or anything like that. It essentially adds permanence without being a permanent pen. I don't know. This is just something about I've wanted to share this email forever, even though like I'm the only one that probably gets excited about these things. Because I have hope in this industry and something little like this makes a big deal. Plus, I eventually want them to knock off the Pilot G2. So Pilot will change their design and change their ink, which is a decade overdue. But they're the best-selling pen in the world. So, you know, is Uniball going to be able to put a funny YouTube commercial out that says, Hey, this ink's awesome and we're better and then all of a sudden take market share? It doesn't really work like that, right? But I don't know. This gets me excited. And, you know, I need to get some of the new 307.38 to have the .5s. And so, yeah, that's just something I wanted to read and share with everyone because that's what gets me. This is what gets me up in the morning, Myke. Pen industry news.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, yeah, I mean, of course. This is like the people say to me, like, how can you do a weekly show about pens? And I'm like, well, because every industry has news, right? Like it's every industry. There is an industry for everything. I want to repeat some of this back to you, though, Brad, to make sure that I've understood what's going on here. So the 307 was introduced a few years ago, right, to replace the 207 effectively. Right. And when you reviewed it, it had this new ink technology in?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I can go look at those pens that I still have and see if they have the markings because he's just saying he found this a few months ago. Okay. So now... Yeah, like a few months ago he's found that. Right. So I don't... But I don't know. Right. Was it always there and no one caught it till now? You've got to try it then. You've got to get some of these. Did they just... Well, I have the old ones. So I just need to go look at the old ones to see what kind of markings they have on the refill.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because they've got to have the E on them, right? If they've got the E on them, then they've got this new special technology in them. Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So for the show notes today, you know, my favorite Signo is the DX. What I call the DX, which is actually denoted as the UM151. Where they're coming out with a needlepoint, 0.38 millimeter that I have the early version of. And I'm using that because I wanted to look at the refill to see did it have this E on the refill indicator. And it doesn't. Right. So this is a purple pen, you know, maybe, okay, they've only solved this problem for black and red and blue so far. Is it going to propagate through other Signo lines? Is it going to propagate through the rest of the uniball lineup? I don't know. But I think it's interesting enough to pay attention to. Yeah, of course. Because that's what I do.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So the main property that they're trying to solve here, or the main property that they're adding to solve a problem, is to make sure that the ink flows evenly, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Exactly. So you want just a dead black smooth line that never fails. That's the ultimate goal. So you don't want any white space or skipping.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You know how you were talking about the super ink? I guess they're doing the same, right? They're adding this to kind of test it at scale before they talk about it and then add it, I guess, to this technology, whatever it is that they're doing. Well, I mean, you've explained it, but to me, it's still like whatever that is. Like, I don't know what that is. Right. Like whatever it is that they're doing, then they'll add it to their other pens and their other lines or other refills in theory, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. And it also, I think it's also telling that they're willing to spend, right? They're not trying to, how can we do this and do it cheaper? They're like, how can we do this better? And it's going to cost more. How can we figure out to charge the same price?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. And they just reduce some things that are kind of not important, like the fact that we're with the metal. The clip on a pen that costs a couple of dollars is plastic or metal, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right, right. They're not committing to a race to the bottom. They're committing to a better writing experience, even at an added cost or maybe some blowback because of that. You know, because it's not the cheapest gel ink pen on the market. That's why Pilot beats them.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right, because here's the thing. If you're making a pen like this, which really is intended to be mass market, you buy 20 of them, you lose 15 of them. I don't know if writing experience is the thing you should be, you know, you necessarily try and solve, right? Like if you want to increase the sales of the pen, make it look nicer, right? Like for that sort of market, that might be the best thing to do. But of course, we don't believe that. And I'm happy to see that a pen maker who makes the level of pens that they do, right, like in scale, also cares about the writing experience and not just like, how can we make this more visually appealing to sell more of them? Or like, for example, right, like why do you see the Lamy Safari in so many stores, right? Like it's a great pen, but you see it there because it looks good. And like people buy Lamy's because they're like, this looks cool. And I mean, I wouldn't say that the Uniball 307 looks very cool. It doesn't. I actually think personally, like aesthetically prefer the G2's design, which is probably why it sells so many. Because people like the way it looks, they buy it, it works great, then why would you change? So, I mean, I'm happy to see that still a company like Uni would put the effort in to the way that the ink flows as a way to try and gain some ground. I think it's a, at least for pen addicts, a good thing to do.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Because in the past, they've always been beaten by G2 in darkness. The G2 ink has always been blacker in my comparisons. Right. So now they're getting into, okay, well, we're just as dark of, you know, where the black is black ink and we're just better now. You know, it's going to write better. G2s always have been a little bit more rough writing, a little bit, you know, scratchier and things like that. But they just win in, you know, the darkness. It's like the first upgrade pen that people get, you know, when they're tired of what they're using at the office. They'll see a G2 at a grocery store. No more bits. Grab them and they're done. And it's funny, the chat room is looking at their 307s now. We already have a report in, hot off the presses from Hot Couple Loving, has the Sino 307 with a UMR87E refill. So that's the right new refill. So that's interesting. So now I need to check my old ones, which are, I guess at this point, closely, close to being three years old now, if they did that originally or not. So anyway, like this is the silly stuff that I could talk on and on about, you know, for ages, even though it's kind of not interesting. But in a big picture to me, it is.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Shh, don't say that. They'll stop listening.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Well, no, publicly, yeah. Like I can see, I was like, oh God, Brad's talking about $3 gel pen ink technology. Whoop-de-damn-do.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But I think it's fun. I didn't delete this email because I wanted at some point to read it. I just had to find the right time. And today was your lucky day, Myke. You got to learn more about Uni gel ink and we're all better off for it. So tell me how I can feed my belly.