Editing The Pen Addict 426/transcript (section)

== Business Practices ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' I read it, although it's great.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It is, but it's the fall 2020 update. He lets you know right up front and he's like, hey, I'm not here to sell you a specific thing today. I'm giving you the State of the Union address for the fall. So buckle up. He goes into the nuts and bolts of why he exists, what decisions they're having to make as a business right now, you know, what changes affect them by not being able to go to pen shows. As he mentions in the newsletter, we should be in San Francisco right now and I should be able to launch all these new products right now. And that's a big part of my year and that's damaging to my business. So what can I do about it and how can I explain that to you, the customer, in a very human way? And I just thought what he did was really, really nice. I take a lot. Like, I don't know that I've ever, like, saved a newsletter for future reference. Like, I put a link in pinboard to this and tagged it so I can find this later to use as a reference for ideas of what a newsletter should be. Because I'm going to have to have a newsletter similar to this for Not coming up here in the next couple weeks. So I'm thinking about this a lot because we've had some changes behind the scenes at Not. And I'm going to have a product launch soon for Not. But I also have to tell the story of why we made the changes we do. So when I see things like this from a retailer just taking you through the personal notes of the decisions that they make, it means a lot to me as a business person that someone's willing to do this. And I just really appreciate it. Like, he talks specifically about, hey, our products are freaking expensive, right? And here's why they're expensive. But that's also, like, maybe one of the things that's holding us back. So here's how we're going to address that, right? Like, he knows, Daryl knows exactly what's up. And being able to translate that into a communication with your customer is so valuable that you just want to support people like this. So I just wanted to fawn over this for a minute because this is the kind of thing that gets me going. And it's a weird thing to say that a retailer's newsletter gets me hyped up. And, like, these are the things that I find important.

'''Myke Hurley:''' We'll have all special things, Brad, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So you read the whole thing. I mean, I know I rambled a lot there. Do you want to say anything about this?

'''Myke Hurley:''' My favorite part. So, like, you know, they were talking about the ways that they want to change the business to make some of their products more affordable.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And I like this part specifically. We're embarking on a concerted effort to excise FOMO or the fear of missing out from our operations. The first concrete change you'll see in this regard is the removal of special edition nomenclature across our entire product line. So the idea being that, in general, there is, like, an element of FOMO. Like, you miss out, you know, and then, oh, so I've got to buy this thing so I will miss out. But, like, at the same time, there are a lot of people that are being rightly more considerate about their money. So if they decide not to buy, now they feel like they missed out from it. And it isn't about changing the business so that they don't have limited runs. Like, they even go on to reference, like, that some products are limited, like, later on in the email. But it's changing the naming so it's less in your face constantly. So they're not called limited editions. They're just called special editions. Special edition will go away. I don't know if this will be the thing that does that. I mean, I think it might require additional tweaking because I've said this a lot in the past. Like, a name is just the name of a thing until the thing becomes that thing. So, like, it might just end up being, for that Musubi, the phrase special edition causes the same FOMO. But it's the idea of being aware of this phenomenon and actively trying to take steps to change it that I think is very admirable.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Exactly. It's the recognizing, recognition of it and the concept of it and actively working to say, maybe I could do something a little bit different so I'm not necessarily pushing these factors that might, you know, be a negative, you know, in perception or in, you know, just anything else. I just thought it was, yeah, it was excellent. That was definitely something that stood out from there. So, like, this is a template of how to do it. And I just, this seems like a weird thing to share on the podcast, but I found it so good that I could not put it in the show notes to discuss the idea and the thoughts of this. Oh, and by the way, he's got a bunch of cool new products coming out, so y'all should go check those out too. But, like, that even, this whole thing isn't, the products didn't drive me wanting to discuss this. It's the business side of things and understanding your business and understanding your place in the world and understanding the, you know, the market and, you know, being honest and straightforward and transparent in your business. I just think it's great and it's a joy to see.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' This one, next link, Myke.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's not really a link, is it?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, good story here. This wasn't intended to be a follow-up from me praising Daryl's business decisions. As it turns out, what was going to just be a discussion about an ink bottle is now me praising another company's business decisions. So, one of the hot items in the stationary world this past week was seeing the new Krishna ink bottles that they were going to be shipping their next batch of inks in. So, Krishna is an ink maker out of India. Very popular. They've become very popular over the past few years. They have really cool colors, cool sheening and shading properties, things like that. So, they've gotten popular. So, this image was making its rounds on the internet. So, I was like, hey, let's put this, I put it in the show notes. I like, I want to talk about this bottle because it's cool. So, I put the link in the show notes last night. And then, this morning before the show, as I'm adding a couple of other things into the show doc, Myke's got a big red flag next to the link. It says, broken link. I'm like, well, we've had this before where maybe the site was down when Myke clicked it. And, you know, it was fine when I clicked it. So, I clicked it. And sure enough, it's not there. It's like, huh. So, I scoured the Krishna site. I'm looking for this link. I was like, this is a cool ink bottle. I want to talk about it, Myke. And I couldn't find it. So, I went into the Pen Addict Slack. I was like, someone's got it linked there. I'll go find a link from the Slack room. So, I go into the Ink channel. And there's a message from Aditya of Krishna Inks. I was like, this is interesting. I can't see the image of the bottle.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And it doesn't seem to exist on the internet anymore. And now, Aditya is putting a message in the Pen Addict Slack. And I thought it was interesting. So, let me just read this. And then, we'll kind of circle back. I would like to clarify the current situation. We had purchased the beautiful bottles from a vendor who claimed they were generic in his original design. We launched them in good faith, only to find out beyond doubt this morning that they were an imitation of Gecko Design bottles. We are retracting the bottles for now in discussion with the designer to see if something can be done for the current customers. We will refund any pre-orders immediately if we are not permitted to sell these. Apologies to all of you. We would never even consider these bottles had we known they were someone else's design. Perfect. Amazing response. This is what you want to see. They were trying to do something cool. They had all their ducks in a row up until the point that they didn't. Right? So, at that point, what do you do? You come straight out with the details. You know? And I have no reason not to trust Aditya's words in this. Like, we're just there pulling it back. They've scrubbed the internet of this image because I tried to find it. I'm sure we can find it again. And I just think this is how you handle things. These are the companies you want to support when they make the decisions like this, just like I was talking about with Musubi. I didn't think I was about to talk about Krishna's business decisions in this topic. But it turns out, here we are. Just from last night to this morning, it completely changed. So, I appreciate them doing this. Now, those of you who haven't seen the ink bottle, I don't know how to correctly describe this. It basically looks like it's out of a chemistry set. It's very neat. It's taken a round ink bottle base and then attached the top of the Ackermann ink bottle off the side. I don't know how to explain it other than that. It doesn't have a base. It has legs. So, the bottle itself has legs, a little short, you know, like one, two centimeter legs and a large capacity ball shaped ink well that you tip over into the top area where you would fill, unscrew the cap and then fill your fountain pen from. So, it was a very unique look, totally chemistry set and now we can't have nice things. So, there you have it. I just thought it was interesting. Like, I just, I was all jazzed to talk about this bottle and then we turn into, hey, we can't sell that bottle because the person we were buying it from didn't tell us the whole story. So, I appreciate Krishna just coming out with that statement and they're going to figure out what to do. And there you go. We'll see if there is another cool bottle after this. But I appreciate them trying. Frustration. I appreciate it. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like, to be thrown into a drama that you kind of didn't really have anything to cause. Right. Frustrating. It's very frustrating.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Yep. So, there you go. So, anyway, I just thought I appreciated how they handled that and I always want to give them a good shout out for that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. This episode is also brought to you by Kenro Industries. And we are very excited to talk about their new pen. dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear dear blue, carmine red, and tuxedo charcoal. I thoroughly enjoy the names of those colors. The metal clip and accents also match the ring on the pen and the nib too in color. They have an ergonomic grip, threaded cap, and stainless steel nib in glossy rhodium or gold plating. And there are plenty of nib sizes with a cartridge and converter filler system both included in the box. And it also comes in a fabric gift box with a polishing cloth as well. The JR Pocket Pen launches worldwide on September 4th, and you can find it on our friends at penchalet, P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T dot com. That's penchalet.com is one of the places you'll be able to pick up the JR Pocket Pen. Brad, I believe you have one of these, right? I have it in my hands right now. Okay, okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I had the secret delivery from Kenro. I've had this for a few days. This is a perfect execution of a modern vintage style fountain pen. So building off the original J series that Estabrook made, it's not a large pen, right? So when the new Estabrook came out, when Kenro took over, you know, one of their first pens was to make the Estabrook Esty, which is a very large acrylic pen, really nothing like the historical Estabrooks, right? It was a standalone pen. It was a new Estabrook and a new design. While this pen is not like a mimic of the J, you can see a lot of the J in this pen. Number one, the size. It is a smaller pen, smaller than the Estys. If the Estys are too big for you or the Camdens are too big for you, this is going to be your pen. It's got a very sleek barrel. When it's uncapped, the grip section has a concave, you know, grip section. It fits your hand well. It's very light. It's very sleek. When it's uncapped, it feels a lot like the J does in feel. Just, it kind of really imitates that feel and style and build and size of that classic pen. I have the Capri Blue mic, which is like a blue swirled acrylic with gold trim. If you went to a fountain pen show and you saw like a full tray of probably these three colors, this one, the red one, and the black one, you would think someone had found like a new old stock, like set of vintage pens. They really do have that vintage look. The cap has a little bit taper that looks like the J. The clip is probably the most telling homage to the J. It's got the same stripes on the clip that the J had in the past. You know, that's the closest thing this current J has to the old one. So like, I noticed that immediately. It's like, oh, the clip design is perfect. Like it's the perfect match. So I think this pen is going to do very, very well for what Kenro has tried to do with this, you know, re-imagining of the J. So it's the JR because it's the J re-imagined, right? It's the modern version of what, if Estabrook was building the J today, what would it look like? And I think they kind of nailed the idea of what they're going to do here. And I think they executed it very well. I'm really, really enjoying this pen because I like this size of pen a lot. Size and weight perspective, it reminds me a lot of the Pelican 2 series and 4 series pens. Like that's the size and scale we're talking about here. You know, that size of Pelican, it's around that size, that weight. And, and you know, that's one of my favorite pens already. So this is, this is right in line with that. I think it's fantastic. And I think it's going to do really well. I can't wait until I can finally share pictures of these at 1201 Eastern on Friday, because no one gets to see this pen except me until then. So y'all go check them out. Y'all go check them out.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You send me a picture. I want to see. And if you want to see those images as well, don't forget to follow the Estabrook pens account on Instagram. It's Estabrook underscore official. It's obviously going to be a great place to see the image of this wonderful new pen. And I want to thank camera industries for helping us for supporting the show and for allowing us to help them launch their new JR pocket pen, which you can find over at Pen Chalet. Our thanks to Ken Rowe for their support of this show and Relay FM.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. A little more pen talk today. Myke, do we have time for me to hit a few more pretty quick topics and then we'll call it a day, but we have some things to talk about. Yep. Retro 51 escape. Are you in or out?