Editing The Pen Addict 493/transcript (section)

== Brand Preferences ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' And then Sailor is like, yeah, okay. Like, people like Sailor. But then Lamy is then too low, I feel like.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Lamy is hard to understand. I could go either way with Lamy.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Maybe they're more forgettable.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think that's Kaweko.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, but yeah, but that's why Kaweko is down in number eight. Right. I'm almost saying that Lamy should be down there, too. If Kaweko is down there, Lamy should be down there.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And you know I love Lamy. You know. Like, I would probably have Lamy. If I'm doing this list, gosh, I can't even remember. Like, if I had to order this list. Like, we just had to do check boxes, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Mm-hmm.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like, you know, pick our favorites. But if I had to do a personal order, I don't even know what I would do.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I would go Sailor Platinum.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's one and two, for sure. Sailor Platinum is one and two. Yeah. I don't know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm glad Lamy's that high. I'm, yeah, I'm just, I'm trying to understand. Like you said, I could stare at this slide for an hour and have a million different thoughts.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Platinum's too close to Pelican for me. Platinum should have a, in my, again, my opinion, Platinum should be much further ahead than Pelican.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' See, I disagree. Okay. Because Platinum has no range whatsoever. Well, I know, but the pens. In their product line.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They do have a so good.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They're lucky to have 270. They're lucky to be at number five.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' While they could be technically the best pen on the market.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But they're lucky to be at number five just because there's not a lot of options. Right? That's impressive. Pelican has infinite more range than Platinum does. Although Platinum's low end range is spectacular. Like before you get to the 3776, their zero to $50 range is better. It's, that's Twisby level of good.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' With the Playziers and the Preppies and things like that. Right? So, but do, does the Platinum, does having 10 Platinum Preppies make them your favorite fountain pen brand? Like, it's, like, people don't really do that. Right? They're going to have, like, a Twisby Eco or a 580. And that's going to be the special pen where the Preppies is just the entry level pen. It doesn't equate. I don't know. I want to talk more about Leonardo and Schoen again.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It makes me really happy to see that. Because that's not something, neither one of those would have been, it's hard. Like, they're two of my favorite brands. I don't know that I would have, I don't know how I voted for this or what I did. I'm just happy that they're there. Right? I think it's, I think it's cool. And also, Myke, I just want to, one caveat. Michael and Kat did have to, like, create these categories. It wasn't a write-in. So, they did miss some. Like, Franklin, not Franklin Kristoff, Faber-Castell. Like, wasn't on the list. Not that it would have rated in the top. But, like, Faber-Castell, Graff von Faber-Castell. A couple of other, you know, brands, like, just forgot on this list. I don't know that they would have cracked the top 12 here. But I do find it telling that Leonardo and Schoen are ahead of Mont Blanc. And I think that's pretty cool. I think it's representative of our community. I think it's great.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Especially Schoen design. I just would have not expected that. But I like it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Sidebar on this slide. I think the way this, the vintage versus modern breakdown is almost 85% of respondents preferred modern. I think that's how I'm reading this. Yeah. In this chart.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Separate from fountain pens, non-fountain pen writing instruments, Myke. Pretty even spread among the top types. Yep. Rollerball, ballpoint. Gel was number one, 478. 478. But then rollerball, 402. Yeah. Rollerball. Number two in this chart, which Kat mentioned was interesting. Mechanical pencil was number two. Gel pen, 478. Mechanical pencil, 425.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think that makes sense to me. Like, mechanical pencils serve a completely different purpose, as does, like, gel pens. That's exactly right. You should have one of each. You've got to have one of each, right? Like, even if you just have one of each, because you never, you know, you might need them.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. So, and then rollerball, 402, and ballpoint, 358, and wooden pencil, 328. Those are, I mean, you could just, you know, you could throw a blanket over all those. Those are all really, really close. So, and then separate, like, a complete, like, several deviations down is fineliner, felt tips, and markers. And those are kind of all the same category, you know, if you're thinking about it. All right. And then related to that, this is the non-fountain pen category. So, favorite standard pen brands. It's Pilot at number one. Retro 51, number two. Uniball number three. Zebra four. Pentel five. Lamy six. Sharpie seven. Spoke eight. Karen Dash nine. Rotring Parker. Better than Bic. The retro 51 is, all you have to do is look at the community that replied to this. It's kind of crazy.

'''Myke Hurley:''' There's one for everyone, right? Like. Yeah. Again. And then once you get it, you realize it's a great pen. And it's an easy, like, entrant. The pen is easy to find one for you. And then once you get it, I think everyone gets a bit surprised by it for the first time.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. So, I was still surprised to see it at number two. The rest of it. So, let's take the big. This is, like, my sweet spot for the broader stationary scope. Pilot, Uniball, Zebra, Pentel, right? Those are the big four. And that's the order that they came in at. And that's probably how I would say the general public would vote for that. I would put Uniball one, but it's close. Pilot 328, Uniball 311.

'''Myke Hurley:''' There is one thing that we've learned from so far. Pilot, best pen company ever in all of history. Every product, constantly the best.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I mean, they make the most popular gel. Like, it's not the best. They make the best mechanical pencil. And then, by the way, they have a fountain pen, you know, inventory that crosses, like, every price point ever. Like, hey. And maybe I need to start yelling at them more instead of Lamy. I yell at Pilot's my number two company I yell at. Lamy's still number one, though. But my point being, Pilot and Uniball are far and away the one and two compared to Zebra and Pentel. Like, there's that category is segmented exactly as I would see the overall stationary market. It's Pilot and Uniball at the top and Zebra and Pentel in the second tier. But they each, like, Zebra and Pentel each have some great products. And that's why, like, you know, throw out Retro 51. It's Pilot, Uniball, Zebra, Pentel. Like, that's it. I mean, that lined up with, like, what I think about when I think about standard pens.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So I think that you need to make a product called the Spoke 100 because there's just something about that written down that I really like.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It does look funny. So the two of them on this list look funny. Spoke 100 and Bic 88. It seems like it should be. Like, what is the big? I actually, like, tilted my head. Also, Caran Dache 94 is something about that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because Caran Dache just looks so weird written down to me anyway. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, and they already use numbers, like the 849 is their pen. So, yeah, they use numbers in the name. And the Bic 88 just seems like a Bic pen, like one of their weird pens.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Celebration pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Next up are some fun, some content survey questions. Stationary and Fountain Pen Podcast. This was just a general, what do you listen to? Or do you listen to these things? Or do you not listen to anything? Number one, pen addict. Number two, Tokyo Inklings. Number three, the nib section. Bent Tines, Erasable. And we can go on and on and on. Myke's favorite category is number seven. And he would like to address those 75 people. So, go ahead. Oh, wait. They're not going to hear you.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Can I? I can't address them. But I just don't understand the 75 people that filled in a survey for a Slack based on a podcast. But don't listen to that podcast. I don't get it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's based on a blog. Based on a blog.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, all right. That has a podcast. Fair enough. Fair enough. But nevertheless, you never talk about the pen addict Slack on the website.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No. Right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I feel like it's only ever been mentioned here.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I don't want people to know it exists. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's the whole joke on everybody is like, this isn't supposed to exist.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's like, so yeah, I just find it, I just find it really odd. And I don't, I don't really understand how those people found their way there. Maybe they don't, maybe they used to listen to the show and can't stand me and then like stop listening. I'm sure that happens. So, I don't know what the deal is, but it's always fascinating to me. Yeah. Yeah. I do think it's funny.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's good. Um, the point on this slide and the, the next few slides is that if you listen to one of these shows, there's other shows out there that may be worth checking out and have, you know, different kind of, um, you know, focuses from, you know, maybe the pen addict, you know, like the erasable focuses a lot on pens, uh, excuse me, pencils, you know, and, you know, just different, different types of, of creators doing different type of content. So that goes into the stationary and fountain pen YouTube channels. Um, I think it's like, I think the, the top four is, is the break point because, uh, it's Goulet pens, fig boot on pens, uh, Steven Brown and ink dependence. And then number five is none. Right. So that's your gap right there. So like, I do think those are probably the top four kind of most common in the community YouTube channels, Goulet, fig boot, uh, Steven and Myke. And then, um, you get into, uh, Aziza, Gourmet pens, Anderson pens, Inky rocks, uh, Pinboy Roy, and, and, and a bunch more. So like some really good content. Again, you want to use this for discovery purposes, right? Oh, I've never really watched any YouTube channels. Maybe I'll pick, you know, go check out what Aziza does at Gourmet pens and check out her handwriting and, and her pen reviews that she does just such a good job on, you know, something like that. It's like really, really good for discovery. I was surprised to see this next slide or this question, even, uh, to begin with stationary and fountain pen Twitch channels. So, you know, it's got myself, toasty treat penguins, creative havoc, Rose, and Oh, high joy. Um, we're the top five and then none at four 31. One, I'm pretty happy that at least 50% of people even know what Twitch is because that is, it's such an outlier right now. I was actually happy with this result, not because, uh, I was happy that this even exists as a thing because I just think we'll see more and more people, uh, Twitch is such a good platform for stationary. Yeah. And I think it's only going to grow. Obviously I'm biased because I spend a lot of time there, um, and have worked, worked a lot on my Twitch channel and have like so much more I could do. So I am clearly biased and wanting Twitch to succeed, but I, the community's great. Uh, it's very open, very welcoming and it's, it's just cool. So I was happy to see that. And y'all should definitely go check, check out, uh, toasty treat and penguins creative and havoc rose and Oh high joy. And we have a whole, whole bunch of others that I can point people to, to, you know, kind of, um, you know, hang out and, you know, make their day go by a little bit better. Hearing someone talk about stationary, even if it's just in the background. All right. Switching slides a little bit. We're going to go into favorite nib size, Myke. I think this is pretty much in line with the percentages. I would guess. So we're favorite nib size. We're going with general stock nib sizes here. So extra fine, fine, medium, broad, double broad, and zoom. I'm surprised zoom made this. There was a whole discussion. Michael had a whole discussion about, Hey, where do I put stub? Where do I put zoom? Uh, in this. So, um, that's, those are things that, uh, we can continue to work on separating out or segmenting as we see fit. There's a next slide is called favorite grind, which we'll talk about. So the top two are fine and medium, uh, fine with 31.4% medium with 30% and then extra fine with 19%. Um, no surprises here. I'm actually surprised extra fine is that high, but I think with the modern fountain pen user, that extra fine, you know, people transition from gel pens. A lot of times, um, they see, you know, want to try to write in some of the extra fine stuff. Um, but any surprises here to you?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Um, I don't think so. I was, I liked seeing medium and fine basically equal. Yeah. About 30%. And I think that's a good comment that you make that like fine and extra fine probably do pretty well for people coming from those things. And then I think like then a lot of people move to medium because I do think for a lot of people, medium is a better fountain pen experience because you're getting a little bit of a more rounded experience, I think. Right. Right. You get some of the more qualities a fountain pen can give you.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. And then Kat had a good commentary, you know, just from a survey standpoint. It's like, well, do we differentiate between Western and Japanese, you know, line widths, right? Like not all mediums are created equal. What am I answering here? That type of thing. So it's, it's a little bit difficult. Yes.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's tricky because there isn't a standard. Right. Right. Right. Because certain pen brands might, a medium and one might be halfway between a broad and a medium. You know what I mean? There isn't like a, oh, a medium nib grind is this millimeter.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Right. Right. So you bring it into favorite grind and this is the, you know, this is where you ratchet up the nerd level. Right. So the no, no grind on the pens is 34.6%. Right. So in that category. Mm-hmm. Which is fair. Like you don't, this is, this is like the specialty category, right? So stub nib is second at 15.5. Curse of italic, 12.6. Architect at 10.9. I think that's pretty high. Then we have like the sig nib and then like some other specialty nibs, needlepoint, naganadas.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think I know why Architect is so high. Why? Because it is a branded, like a known grind. I think it's one that people said like they want to get a nib grind. I've heard of Architect.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. Same thing goes for the sig grind that Franklin Kristoff does, the naganada grind and the needlepoint grind, right? Those are like almost like brand name grinds, if you will.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Sig grind, I understand what it is where it is because you can get it in one place really. Like, you know. Yeah. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And it's, it's a grind that's in between like the stub and the cursive italic, generally speaking. So it fits a lot of people's idea of, hey, I want to modify.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I've never really considered stub as a grind because I've never had someone do that. I buy stub nibs.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I've had stub nibs ground. Uh-huh. I've had like a medium turned into a stub. Um, so yeah, I have had that. And that was one of Michael's points is like, do we put stub, since you can get a lot of stock stub nibs, do we put that in the stock or does that go in the grind? So yeah, it's like all these kind of, uh, machinations on where to put the right things. The other hobbies category is always interesting. And it would be like literally from one to 23 is how many items on here. Not one of these is a surprise. A lot of rock climbers, Brad. That's true. Rock climbing was, uh, was, was up there. Uh, 31, 31 rock climbers ahead of the 13 homebrewers. Mm-hmm. Um, knitting I thought would be a little bit higher. Knitting was down at 21 on the list, um, where photography is way up at number five on the list at 250, as well as cooking and baking and hiking and camping. So, um. Watches at 14 feels lower than I would have expected. I was going to say the same thing. Based on the activity in the Slack channel, that must be the entirety of the Slack watches channel, which is the most active channel on there. Um, but that must be like the entirety of that group must have voted on this list, uh, just to get that high in here is, is what I'm thinking.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, it's still a lot of crossover between those two, really. I mean, like, even the companies.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' This whole list. Yeah. This whole list is, is really telling for the, the, the crossover potential, right? Like, it's, it's obvious to me what it is. Next question I thought was extremely interesting. Maybe the most interesting slide. Theoretical maximum budget for a single pen. What that, I mean, you've already looked at the chart. You're probably staring at it right now, but what would you have said, or how did you answer this to you, if you recall?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Probably like 2000. Yeah. Like, if we'd like, cause this is, I can't imagine spending that on a pen. I'd haven't. Right. I've, I've, I've got to a thousand. Yes. I've never crossed it, but that means that a thousand is not my maximum budget. So, I'd have to say 2000.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' See, I've spent over a thousand on a single pen, but I don't have the desire to do it again, just because like, I don't know what pen would make me that happy to spend that much money on. So, I, I, I'm probably picked a thousand. Um, I'm actually surprised. So, $2,000 was 51.9% of the respondents. And that surprised me. I thought it would be either 500 or a thousand.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, I think it is the problem that a lot of people have hit a thousand.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Maybe so.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Or like close. Context. To like 800 or whatever.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know? Like, I think some of like the, the people have been doing this for a while and are really into the hobby and are like fountain pen fanatics. A lot of them have crossed the $500 threshold, right? For sure. That $500 to $1,000 range. You can get a lot of really like crazy good pens in there in like, for like seven, 800, six, seven, $800. I think like the most, like a lot of people have hit that. So, would they consider spending more? Like, yeah. I don't know. So, I, I, I was surprised it was that, that big a number was 2000.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It is pretty big.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I will, I will, I will agree with you that. Like 52, 52% said they would, you know? And this is not just like magic money. This is like, hey, I had to work for this. I had to save this up. I had to do the thing, you know? I had to, like, you didn't win the lottery.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I could imagine though. You know what I think it might be too is like, there aren't a lot of pens that break a grand. Yeah. And so like everyone, even if they don't have it, everyone has a pen that is $1,000 that they're like, I would love to own that. Probably, yeah. So maybe that makes it feel less like, like if they were ever going to have the ability to do it, maybe they would do it. I don't know. I don't know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I would have, I just would have thought those two categories would have flipped. Like $1,000 maximum budget is 26% and then $2,000 is 52%. I thought those would have been exactly flipped, would have been my guess.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think that would have made more logical sense to what I would have expected.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But here we are. Here we are. All right. Last question. The best question of them all. And this was a little bit surprising. To post or not to post. No, don't post the pen or yes, post the pen. So the no's have it as they should, but only at 58.3%. That's not high enough. It's not high enough. No. So the posters were at 41.7%. That needs to be like 75, 25.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I'm going to need y'all. We're going to need to work on the question next year and force people into the right answer. Kat and Michael, we're going to have to tweak the question just to get those percentages a little bit higher.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And also, if anybody answers none to the podcast question, it just automatically starts playing an episode of the show.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So none is a download link to episode 400 of the Pen Addict podcast.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They can no longer say that because they've listened.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We'll work on that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' We'll work on that. This is so good. I appreciate so greatly the time spent by Kat and Michael on this. I know what it's like to create a Google form that people complete and you try and draw information from it. And it is a lot of work. So I greatly appreciate it. I love the presentation. I love that you share it the way that you do. And I hope that you feel the want to continue.