Editing The Pen Addict 450/transcript (section)

== Leuchtturm Bullet Journal ==


'''Brad:''' $79,416 October 2014, the Leuchtturm 1917 Bullet Journal launched. Both of us backed it. Both of us didn't realize it was a Kickstarter project. I was taken aback when I saw this on my list. I remember most of the things I backed. Not that one, but it was cool to see. I enjoyed seeing that. But the version 2 Bullet Journal, which I have yet to send you, was not launched on Kickstarter. The writer just launched that directly. And I think it's still sold out. So there you go. Maybe you should have done a Kickstarter. You might have had better numbers in the beginning to work off of. This is an interesting one, Myke. And I didn't realize you were a backer of it as well. It's the Pen Show PENXO 2mm Lead Holder. Yep. How could you not back this product if you're a pen and pencil and stationary fan? So what it was, was a lead holder. But it was basically a single piece lead holder. And if you're not familiar with this, you should go look at the link we're going to put in the show notes. It looks awesome, right? It looks like this is the coolest lead holder I've ever seen. It's won all these design awards. It's reasonably priced. I think it was like $29, something like that. They raised $334,000 in June of 2015 and 5,764 backers. Like, that's nuts.

'''Myke:''' Stunning design. So good.

'''Brad:''' Turned out it didn't work very well.

'''Myke:''' Well, it works fine. It's just a little fiddly. Yeah. It's hard to use. Because you have to kind of pull it apart. Like, you have to kind of separate it to get the lead to come out. I found mine recently and gave it to Adina. Because she was using a lead holder for something else. And I was just like, hey, I have this one. I like it in the sense of it's funny, very beautiful. But I don't use it. Do you want it? So I've been seeing it mucking around on her desk recently. But yeah, I don't think she's using it that much. Because again, it is frustrating to use. But I just think it's a very nice object.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, it is. And like, that's okay. I was like, even when I was backing it, I wasn't really a lead holder fan at the time. But I am now, like I'm a huge Caran D'Ache fix pencil fan. But that's got a mechanical part to it. Where this is just a physical splitting of the barrel to extend the lead. And I don't know. It ended up, you said it right. It was just fidgety. And it's not as beautifully functional as it is just straight up beautiful. Right? The functioning is a little bit awkward on it. But I just wanted to bring that up because I forgot how much money they raised on that. Which is just nuts. Because it was a, for Kickstarter purposes, it was a low dollar project. Right? For 29 bucks. That's a very, very high volume for a $29 project. It's crazy. And they executed pretty much perfectly, I think. I don't remember any issues with that campaign. So yeah, very, very cool. The next one is the CWNT Pintype B.

'''Brad:''' This is what happens when you believe in what you're doing. And I have that belief from Sayway and Taylor. No matter what happened with that first campaign, the CWNT Pintype A, and how, I don't want to say disastrous. Because they got all the products out there and people liked them. But just the drama. I would be exhausted from that. I was like, I'm never doing this again. But they came out with one of the all-time great designs for me, at least. I'm speaking from my perspective. All-time great pen designs in the Pintype B. To this day, I have two of them that sit on my desk. They raised $171,000 November 2015. Yep. And it's just amazing. I didn't bring it in here so I could pop it off in the microphone, which I'm prone to do. It's just awesome. I'm just happy for them. I was very happy for this.

'''Myke:''' It's going to be pretty rare that a company's second Kickstarter would make less money than their first.

'''Myke:''' I don't know about that. You think that's the way it would be? I tend to find that your first one, you're establishing yourself. And then the second one, you make more money. Especially if it's the same kind of product.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. I don't know. The prices are different. I don't know. There's a lot. A lot of people were maybe turned off from the Pintype A situation.

'''Myke:''' I know that that would be the reason. So in this situation, it'd be like, well, they had a struggle the first time. And also, there are similarities between the products. Maybe people don't feel like they would need both. But it wasn't so much a criticism on them in any way. It was just a thought. I can't imagine that that is a very typical thing.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. I see what you're saying. And I think as a creator, I think that's how I'd be looking at it, too. I was like, well, I did X the first time. I should do X plus this time, right? And it didn't. It did, what, maybe two-thirds of that or so. But still, it was a big number for... You got to remember, these are, I guess, not mass market products that they make, right? These are very unique, highly specific products that they're making. And this one just, it came off flawlessly, right? They, from funding to fulfillment, was six months. Like, boom. So, you know, they, I guess they learned what they needed to learn through the trials and tribulations. I guess it's no coincidence that these campaigns were four years apart. Because that first one probably took about, probably took them like two years to manage and then recover from. But yeah, this one, this is the one that really set them down the path as, like, kind of great makers and creators, right? The first one got them on the radar, good or bad. But this pen has carried them, I think, to this day to allow them to keep doing other cool stuff. And it's one of my favorites. I love it. Love it to death.

'''Brad:''' The next pen was a mistake by me. Not this campaign, the clip pen by Schoen Design, but me not backing Ian Schoen's first campaign. And I've talked about this a lot in the past. When I first reviewed Ian's first pocketable ballpoint pen, he launched it on Kickstarter. I hemmed and hawed about backing it. I was like, you know, like, I'm trying to be responsible, you know, and like, maybe it's not for me. So let's not just back things willy-nilly. And I didn't. And then Ian went on to fulfill it. And a lot of people bought it. And I got to use it and try it. And then I eventually, Ian sent me one and I got to review it. And I was like, huh. I think I missed out on this one. So I didn't miss out on the second one, which was the same pen as the first one, except Ian added a clip.

'''Brad:''' I'm glad I got in on that one. Yeah. And Ian's been one of the awesome creators to follow ever since then. Like, he's really doing weird and wild stuff now. I love what he's making. He's really flexing his brain muscles these days on the stuff he's creating. And I'm glad to see these successes that he had on Kickstarter back in the day. I kind of forgot about this one a little bit. But as soon as I saw it, I remembered, I was like, oh, this was his second project. I did not back the first one like I did on some of these other ones. I wasn't first on that one.

'''Myke:''' I mean, for me, Ian's pens really took seeing in person to understand.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, exactly. Like, once I got it in hand, I was like, oh, okay. This is pretty great. And, you know, I didn't really, you know, think that at first on the campaign. I was like, oh, cool. But I think maybe I have this already or it's not, like, super crazy inspiring to me. But once I got it in my hand, like, all bets were off. And now I own, I don't know, five or six of his pens. So, it's pretty great. Pretty great. Like this next product, Myke. I'm not saying this to butter these guys up. I'm not saying this because they're my friends. I think this is kind of like a Hall of Fame stationary product. And by that, I mean the Studio Neat Pano book. Yep. I think what it encompasses, what the decisions were to make it, and then the actual product itself, all of those things together could not have come out any better for Studio Neat in coming up with this book. It's a notebook, right? It's hard to make a good quality notebook product that's different from every other notebook product on the market. Notebooks have a much lower barrier to entry than pens. So, you have to be that much better than the other products. And the Studio Neat Pano book was.

'''Myke:''' And the idea of a unique selling point in a notebook, that is a difficult thing to achieve today in format. But they spotted a gap in the market, which was a notebook that lives between you and your keyboard. Super simple, but makes a lot of sense.

'''Brad:''' Which, from their perspective, is that technology buyer that was already their customer, not necessarily our stationary customers like us that listen to the Pen Addict podcast. Yes, there's some crossover, but they weren't looking at it from that perspective. But they took that idea of a good notebook and learned what made a good notebook and really worked hard at making a good notebook. And then also were able to sell it to people who work at a computer the whole time as an accessory. And $187,000. I didn't remember that when I looked up the campaign. For a notebook product, that's astonishing to me. And I really think it's just one of the great products that have come out of Kickstarter. And one of my favorite products Studio Neat has ever made. And I think I've... I was looking back. I had the Simple Bracket app in there. Myke, I was a backer of that. Of course, the Glyphs, the Cosmonaut, all the things. I love the Pano book. They did such a good job on that.

'''Myke:''' I use it every day. I mean, I would just say for Studio Neat as well, kind of changed them as a business. Yes. The success of this product. Because now... Yes. They make so many wonderful stationary items as well.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. I was going to mention that. Thank you for saying that. Like, it was... It gave them some insight. Like, hey, we have something here that was maybe different. And then they've obviously gone on to make some other cool things, which we're going to talk about here in a minute. I want to slide one in here, though. Real quick, Myke. This is kind of the opposite of the Studio Neat Pano book. But it's also kind of why Kickstarter exists. And this is the Tutu Pen.

'''Brad:''' This is an amazing product. I absolutely love it. I want this to exist. I want this to be a thing. And I literally never use it. But I am thrilled with it. But the Tutu Pen, if you recall, we covered it a bunch on the podcast. It's this very tiny acrylic... I don't even know what you call it. It's not even a pen barrel.

'''Myke:''' It's just a holder of two refills.

'''Brad:''' But at the same... To be used at the same time. Or, you know, you flip it over and can use it. It's an uncapped, uncovered D1 refill holder. Dual refill holder. Like, it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous in every way, shape, or form. But I want this product to exist. Like, listening to the maker and seeing how the maker thinks about it. Oh, Mario, I think was his name.

'''Brad:''' And it was astonishing to see. And, you know, it raised $9,000, right? March 2019. Like, it's not... Like, people obviously didn't, like, latch onto this as a thing. But I liked it. Because he used, like, fountain pen acrylics, right? The barrel looks like what it would be, like, a fancy fountain pen acrylic. Like a Leonardo. If they made this weird bookmark-looking pen. And I just love it. I have two of them. I just stare at them. I love them. I'll fidget with them. I never use the darn things. But, my gosh, I'm glad they exist.

'''Myke:''' I wanted to mention... I know we just spoke about Studio Neat. But I wanted to mention the Mark 1 Apollo. Because this is one of my favorite kind of, like, ideas for a campaign. So, the original Mark 1 was a big success, right? And, you know, now they do a bunch of pens. But this is, like, a special edition version of the Mark 1. Which is made out of stainless steel and PVD coated. But what I liked about it is it was... The pen's existence was to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. And the campaign was only available for the eight days of the flight plan, the mission. So, it launched at the time that the Apollo mission began. And ended when it ended. So, they only did an eight-day campaign. And it was beautiful. And I absolutely adore the pen. It's the best Mark 1.

'''Brad:''' It is. It's the one I'm using it today. This is the pen I chose to use for the Kickstarter episode. It is the best Mark 1. Agreed. And, yeah. It's fantastic. And that's one thing that Kickstarters improved over the years. Is they became a little bit more flexible in what creators could do. Like, I don't think you could have picked a start and a stop time a few years ago. To be able to tell the story around the campaign. So, that's a cool thing to see. And, yeah. To see it raise that much money. It obviously resonated with people. It's really cool. It's a great pen. Like I said. And you said it's my favorite Mark 1. One of the projects that I backed but did not succeed out of that list. So, I guess there was only like six of them I guess I had. There might have been a few more. The numbers on Kickstarter were not. Depending on which button I clicked. It showed me one number. Then, other page showed me a different number. But, anyway. This was one I wanted to exist, Myke. That did not exist. And we talked about it on the show. So, it's the Vitae Dual Nib Fountain Pen. And the idea of this is that the maker was going to use Lamy Nibs. And if you think of the tip of the pen. The Lamy Nibs were going to be face to facing each other. So, you would have these two nibs. And the actual writing of the nibs would be closer to the center line. You know, you could still only use one at a time. But they would be kind of back to back. They would be close to each other. The interesting thing was not necessarily putting these nibs together. But there was going to be a dual reservoir cartridge kind of thing that you would have to fill. Like a split in between it. That was the ink reservoir for these two refills. I wanted this to happen. I don't know that it would have been good. Right? I don't know that it would have been changing anything. And I think, obviously, it didn't fund. So, they were asking $28,000. And it raised like $17,000. And had 153 backers. Like, this was one of those way back in the day Kickstarter ideas that you like to see pop up. And you're taking a risk. You might just be throwing your money down the drain on this one. But I was in. I wanted to see this exist. Because of what maybe it could be. And it could have been garbage. But that's what Kickstarter was for. It's for someone like me to see a project like this that looks interesting. Send the creator some money to see if they can make this thing. And this one didn't happen. And I wish it did.

'''Myke:''' I saw this category. And this would have been my answer, too. Because as I was going through my list, I saw it there. And I was like, oh. Oh, I wish that had actually come to pass. Right? Very, very similar.

'''Brad:''' And the backer. I mean, excuse me. The creator. And pardon me. I don't have their name pulled up in front of me. Like, took this dead seriously. Like, there was tons of notes. Tons of information. Like, here's how we're going to do this.

'''Myke:''' I don't know if this is going to work. Right? Right. So, is it intriguing in that way? It's Kevin Sinclair. That was the creator of the project. So, I was very intrigued to see how he would go about making it work. But unfortunately, it didn't.

'''Brad:''' Yep. Yep. So, that was one I would have liked to see and seen what happened from there.

'''Brad:''' That's kind of the list. But we'd, of course, be remiss if we didn't mention some of our own projects. We are also Kickstarter creators. We've made some things. I launched with my partner, Jeff Notco, on Kickstarter. October 2013, Myke, we raised $78,000 with over 2,000 backers. This was a crazy, crazy time in my life with me and Jeff making all of this by hand. So, 2,000 backers, when we did the math, it was somewhere over like 6,000 cases. It's one of those where we definitely, I wouldn't say we got in over our heads, but it's one that like, wow. We now have to make a lot of cases. Yeah.

'''Myke:''' You have one of those like, okay, we're going to do this thing and it's going to start us off. But it kind of got out of hand. And I mean, looking at it now, it's pretty easy to see why you had too many options.

'''Brad:''' Oh, yes. Yeah. That's like people who come to me for Kickstarters now, that's my number one tip is limit the amount of backer levels.

'''Myke:''' Options and configurations. So, you had both production and inventory issues to deal with.

'''Brad:''' Yep. So, I remember spending weekends, spending the night in Jeff's apartment on his futon. The second bedroom was the sewing shop. We had like three machines in there and we'd just be covered in like strings and fuzz all day long. And then I'd sleep there on the weekends and Jeff would just be hammering away making. I would, you know, when I was QCing the cases and finishing the cases, I'd have like a pile like as high as my waist of like cases that I'm just working through. It was crazy good times. I mean, it was a lot. It was a lot of work. It was crazy. And we'd definitely done things different since then. But that was a wild campaign. I remember that. It was pretty mind-blowing, pretty eye-opening. But I'm glad it happened, right? Like all these things happen so you can get to where you are now. And speaking of which, our first Pen Addict Podcast Project, Myke. Yep. This was February 2015 to bring you to the Atlanta Pen Show and the first time we would meet in person. Yep. So we raised $13,500 to bring you over to the Atlanta Pen Show. You and I get to meet and then do a live show at the Atlanta Pen Show. So I didn't know what would happen when we did this.

'''Myke:''' No. We had no idea, did we?

'''Brad:''' Mm-mm. No. It was just like, well, let's try this. And so we can raise funds for travel, but we will give people a thing, right, for backing us, right? That's what we didn't want to do. We weren't just going to take money for travel without people getting something. So we made a case from Nock, one of which I do not have. It's a beautiful high tower in Kelly Green and yellow with a Union Jack tag on there. It's just really, really great.

'''Myke:''' It's the Australian case. I think we've called it many times.