Editing The Pen Addict 418/transcript (section)

== Product Cannibalization ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. It's, it's kind of moving around. I was going to say something I didn't mean to say, which is like moving around the deck chairs, but that's not what I meant to say. Cause that makes it seem like that they're going down. Cause it's referenced to the Titanic, but, um, which it really kind of seems like it might be the opposite for sailor now, depending on what we were talking about last week. But I think this is just a change in product offering, change in branding. Clearly the gentle was not selling. Otherwise you wouldn't get rid of it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, yeah, they cannibalize their own products constantly.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, sometimes you need to do that. Like, you know, like sometimes that's it, right? Like if things stop, you got to keep developing and there's only so many types of products sailor can make. Eventually they, if they want to change what they're doing along ink, well, they're going to end up just making more ink and then that's not going to, but it, but then something that they are doing alongside is I assume this is their new ink cartridge technology that we've been talking about. Right. For the four seasons Shikiori ink, um, which seems, I don't know, like the sailor of North America's saying that this seems to be a big deal that I, maybe I'm not aware of, but what's going on here with this?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, they're basically taking their awesome ink colors, the mainline ink color lineup that contains like Yamadori and Ken Makuse and some of these other inks that are super popular and turning them into a cartridge product, which, you know, the cartridge products are, I love cartridges, but they're the most inefficient way to ink your pens, right? Price per milliliter wise, right? They're outrageously expensive for what they are, which tells me that they're probably a good, a decent profit center.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' If you buy cans of soda instead of large bottles of soda. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. But, you know, if you look on the store shelves, what do you see more of? Generally cans, but although I guess it's, it's even, but most people buy cans. I mean, I love the, I love ink cartridges. They're just inefficient and expensive for what they are, but I like that sailors doing this. What's funny is, is they marketed this as, I guess, limited edition. Like this isn't going to stay, but I would like to just see them stay and make this part of the product lineup. I would use them. Yeah. Maybe they will. Just for ease of use.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like a real great way to see if people are interested in something is to release it in a small batch first.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I was just going to say the Shikiori lineup is the same color lineup that they did in those brush pens that I love, right? That I ordered from Japan. I like that they're leaning into this as different products for all of these different ink colors. Like this is like one, I like this more than like the cocktail series and the new King of Pen, to be perfectly honest, right? That just goes into like what you were saying about, we were talking about, you know, cannibalizing your own products. Like how many new things can you come up with? And I think that's, I think Sailor, I don't want to say they had their directionless. It's just like they're shotgunning it, right? They're just, it's just, they're doing everything at once and it could use a little bit of a refinement. So maybe we're seeing that in the gentle ink discontinuation. That's fine. That's, that's low hanging fruit, but maybe they're going to start to refine some of the other things in the next year or two. So we'll see.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm particularly interested in seeing what these cartridges are like. I think the packaging on them is kind of fascinating and maybe overkill. Um, I want to see what these things are all about.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Oh, I will definitely get some. I will definitely get some. And just to put a bow on this whole discussion, we talk about Sailor so much because no one else is doing this. This is in the span of the last week. Essentially the cartridges I had lined up to talk about last week. We, they just didn't fit in, but like no one else puts out content like Sailor does in our industry and that's why we find them so fascinating because number one, we really like the style and the aesthetic and the quality and they're, they're very good pens to recommend and they're just excellent writers. But then again, like every few days there seems like they're launching some product and it's like, we can't help but talk about it. And I don't know. I'm wondering how this affected them the last few years with all the things. And if we're going to see some change in the coming years, so I'm sure we'll talk about it. I'm pretty sure that Sailor will be mentioned in future podcast episodes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't know.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, I, I didn't buy any of this Sailor stuff because I spent all my money on something else, Myke.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. But first, let's talk about our good friends at ExpressVPN.

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'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. So we had a pen release that we have been waiting for since we saw the materials from our friend Jonathan Brooks. And that's the Leonardo Memento Zero Grande fountain pen in primary manipulation.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't even know where to begin with this one other than when I saw the pictures of the Stromboli, which is one of the colors and the Vesuvio, which is the second color, which we'll dig into both of those here in a minute. I like my jaw dropped, right? I'm already a huge Leonardo fan. I'm a huge Carolina pen company fan. I'm a huge primary manipulation fan. And my jaw just hit the deck. And then I looked at the price and then I just calmly stepped away from the browser for a minute and had to think. So tell me about your thoughts when you saw this fountain pen drop in our feeds. What? This was two days ago, Monday, maybe? Did this happen?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I saw these some few days ago, I think. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So Leonardo teased them first and then all the retailers started.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And I've been trying to get my hands on one. Now, I don't really know the situation here, but I contacted Leonardo via Instagram and they sent me via an email address. And the last I heard, I'm waiting on a price. I don't know if I have entered into some magical realm here, but I feel like I didn't. I have not tried to throw my weight around. I just asked. So, look, I want one of these big time. The Vesuvio is the one for me, which is the dark, the one which has more red than green because I already have a green primary manipulation.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And a different one that is a Newton pen. Yep. They look absolutely fantastic. And I mentioned this before, I'm intrigued about Leonardo because you talk so highly of them. And this has an interesting piston mechanism, which apparently can hold all the ink in the world inside of it. So, I'm trying to get one of these.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, my path on this was exactly what I said. It's like, holy cow, this is amazing. And then I saw the prices and let's not beat around the bush here. So, in the U.S., $649.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, let me be clear up front. There's only 50 of each pen, right? I don't think I said that in the beginning. So, there's 50 green Stromboli and 50 red. Not numbered. Not numbered. Yeah. But just 50 were made. They got 140 rods from Brooks. We're able to make 100 pens and 50 of each of the main two colors. So, the Stromboli and Vesuvius of Vesuvio. And I was like, I can't do that. Like, that's a lot. That's a lot. And, you know, I was looking on the European sites and they're less expensive, but they're still like 480 euros, 500 euros, something like that. And I was like, okay. I need to, like, I'm okay not getting this because of the price. And then I thought about it. Some more. I let it sit for, like, a day. And I was like, well, I'm going to buy one of their new piston fillers, right? One of the new piston filler mechanisms that they're going to drop this year. Or maybe have just dropped around the time of this. And I think they may come in steel nibs and gold nibs. I don't know, but the piston fillers are still going to be, like, 400, 500 dollars with gold nibs. And both of these models, the primary manipulation models, have gold nibs. So, I said, I think I'm going to regret not trying to buy one of these. And I wasn't sure I can get one. So, I started poking around all the different sites that had this up for sale and out of stock, out of stock, out of stock. And I found it at Fanta Plumo, which has sponsored the blog, the Pen Addict blog in the past.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' How many websites can carry a pen where there's only 50 of them?