Editing The Pen Addict 414/transcript (section)

== Brand Evolution and Adaptation ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' This is a funny thing to me. Because it's an idea of how companies evolve and the way that they're branded. Like this pen doesn't turn. Mm-hmm.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right? Well, there is a turn in the nose cone to get the refill out. But yes, I get you.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. But like the idea of tactile turn, I think, probably came from the bolt action. Right? Maybe. Yep. Tactile, it is still very much so. So it's still got 50% of it in there. But I like that. But the bigger point that I want to make with this is that I like that they are not sticking too much to the idea of what tactile turn makes. And they've had a good idea for a product that they want to execute on. So they've moved ahead with that. And so now it's like tactile press or whatever, you know. But like this is an evolution of a business, right? Like they go through different things and make different products. And this is an example of that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So the chat room would like to make a counterpoint to your turn, Myke. All of the pens are turned on a lathe.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Is that the expectation of where the name came from?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. So all of these pens, when they're machined, they're turned. So how's that? That's something to consider, I think.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But what I'm asking is like, is that why it's called tactile turn? I guess we'll come out to ourselves. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We'll get Will. We need to have Will on the show. We'll have Will on the show one of these years. Okay. You see how I dated it there, Myke, to protect us?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Uh-huh.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. Go check out the tactile turn. And yeah, I'm going to go with lathe turn, Myke. Oh, yeah? I think Will is safe in the naming convention of his company.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So let's talk about our good friends at Squarespace. And then I want to brag about something like super, super simple.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Make your next move with Squarespace. They will let you easily create a website for your next idea or project. You can grab a unique domain name, take advantage of award-winning templates, and so much more. No matter what type of site you want to make, Squarespace is the all-in-one platform that will let you do it. There's nothing to install or patch or upgrade. They have got you covered, and they have all of the functionality that you're looking for. Blog functionality, portfolio functionality, store functionality. There's so many templates that you can choose from to help you kind of get started. And then you can drag and drop in the functionality that you need. And it's all super customizable. They have really great font options. They make recommendations of font pairings that work well together, which I really like. And I just love that no matter what type of website I want to make, they have the tools for me. So I just put together a website a few days ago where I wanted a blog part, which I did, like just a text field, and then a form that people could fill out. And it's like, oh, yeah, Squarespace can do all of that. And then they can also connect with my Google Sheets account. So every time somebody fills out that form, it just goes into a Google Sheet because I don't want to receive those by email. But you can do whatever you want, and they have those integrations. I really love the flexibility of Squarespace. It just makes it easy because then I can build what I want without having to know how to do it from scratch, which is important for me because that will slow me down when I have ideas. Squarespace have 24-7 customer support as well. So if you need any help or if the person that you're suggesting set up a Squarespace website needs any help, they have a team right there to help them. Squarespace plans start at just $12 a month, but you can get a free trial with no credit card required but going to squarespace.com slash penaddict. And then when you sign up, use the offer code penaddict and you'll get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain and show your support for this show. Once again, that is squarespace.com slash penaddict and the code penaddict for 10% off your first purchase. Our thanks to Squarespace for the continued support of this show and all of RelayFM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' This is one of the silliest stances that I have in the stationary world in that how important I think the Sailor Mano Inc. lineup is. Like, I think it's a very silly talking point, but to me, it's one of those minutiae things that I really dig into and am so happy that this ink exists because following Sailor's path in ink creation since I started the penaddict and getting into fountain pens like a decade ago has been to, it's been an exercise in the weird, right? So Sailor made probably the best stock inks you could buy in the Sailor Gentle Ink lineup. They were fairly priced. They were like $18 a bottle and they were 50 milliliter bottles. The colors were spectacular and the performance was great. And they would release new colors, you know, once a year, give us eight new colors and kind of retire out these other colors. And that's fine. But they always kept that price point in that size. And then something happened along the way about two years ago where they retired that lineup, came back with a completely new lineup that added like 50% to the price and shrunk the bottle size to like 30 milliliters. These are raw numbers. I don't have the exact details, but like it's easy to see that they like went straight from a base ink lineup to a premium ink lineup and remove the base ink lineup. I was like, what is happening here? This doesn't make sense. It's like, how can I support Sailor's ink lineups when they're doing this? And this is their main ink lineups, right? I'm not counting in all their store brands that they do. I'm not counting the Sailor ink studio series that they do. Those are all specialty. I'm talking about main retail inks. And I was like, this is ridiculous. Like, this is not what this is not why I love Sailor inks. What is going on here? And then last year, out of the blue, when they have all of these weird, weirdly priced, very expensive per milliliter inks, they come out with a lineup called Sailor Manio. And the minute I saw it, I was like, wow, these are going to be like crazy expensive because they went back to 50 milliliter bottles. And I'm sure it's going to be outrageously priced. And they're not. They're like $20. It's like back to the Sailor gentle ink lineup. And I did like a happy dance around my house, right? Because these inks are so good. Like this stuff matters to me. This is like why we have the Pen Addict podcast. This doesn't matter to anybody. But as someone who's constantly said Sailor is like my number one ink, like they were not for a while because the price didn't match the value that you got. And the Manio inks were super well received as they should have been. They are really good quality, really unique colors, really great performance, really great price, really good value. And they're going to keep it going. So there's a round two of Sailor Manio inks is hitting in August. And this just makes me happy for complete stationary nerd reasons that Sailor wants to have a main retail ink lineup on top of having all the specialty stuff that they do. So I'm very happy that these inks exist. Thank you, Sailor, for hopefully you realize the error of your ways because you left a big hole in the market a couple of years ago with all the shenanigans you were going through with trying to figure out how to make and sell these inks to your customers. And the Manio is it. It's the ticket. They're fantastic. And I can recommend them wholeheartedly. So the only thing that caught me a little bit by surprise, I didn't realize with the first round of eight inks of Manio. So they're coming out with another eight this this year that they're calling these overseas exclusive inks. What do you think that means?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I don't know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I guess like everywhere but Japan. Like I'm guessing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I guess that doesn't make I don't know why exactly they would do that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But right. It's like it's a retail release, right? This is not special limited or anything. It's a retail release. But everywhere but Japan. That's how I read that, which I don't care. Like that's that's fine. But I it's a little bit interesting. And I don't know. Is that in response to the feedback they got at their pricing fiasco from a couple years ago? I don't know. But I found that wording to be interesting. Not that I know what it means. So it's pretty, pretty interesting. So anyway, new Sailor Manio inks. There's going to be a bright green one. There's it's we don't have great pictures yet. This is from the the link in the show notes will be from Sailor North America's Instagram page. But there's going to be some cool colors. And I highly recommend these inks. They're just they're fantastic. I use them all the time.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right, Myke. As excited as you were to hear me talk about Sailor Manio inks. I know you are on the edge. You're on the edge of your seat to hear me talk about the new Blackwing volume three, the Ravi Shankar pencil. Right. So excited. You've preordered this, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Of course.