Editing The Pen Addict 511/transcript (section)

== Twisby Ultimatum Update ==


'''Brad:''' Uh, the pen addict listeners have been asking, they've been demanding, pleading, do you have an update on the Twisby ultimatum? Which, when I first saw this, I was like, I have a pen called the ultimatum? This is where, this is where I am.

'''Myke:''' If they're smart, if they're smart, they need to just lean into this whole situation and make the Twisby ultimatum. Like, that's, I mean, I wouldn't put it past them to just come out with the Twisby ultimatum. Like, that would be good. So, we haven't heard much, or at least I haven't heard much since the ultimatum came out that, you know, Twisby was, um, taking a stance that Narwhal had copied their piston and in the future, uh, retailers would need to basically pick. You either carry Twisby products and not Narwhal, or if you continue to carry Narwhal, we will no longer sell you Twisby. Uh-huh. And it's been kind of, what, it's been a month or maybe a little bit more. And, you know, at first, obviously when that came out, it was, you know, pretty uproar and we had some things to say about it and I still stand by all those things. But it's gotten kind of quiet and I was kind of wondering, is this just going to go away? Is this going to vanish? Is this going to be a nothing burger? So, I had some questions this week from listeners wanting an update. So, I asked around to friends in the industry and just checked in a few different sources. And this is absolutely not going away. That was clear by talking to multiple different people. What's going to happen, I don't know. But my maybe guess that, hey, maybe those will just all just vanish and nothing will go further. That is, couldn't be further from the truth. It is apparently. Nothing has changed as far as any stances go. So, we're just going to have to see how it plays out like on the retail front, right? Like, are retailers going to have to make this decision? Are they going to put up a fight somehow? I don't know anything more than that.

'''Brad:''' As a reminder, TWSBI is saying any vendor that wants to sell TWSBI pens cannot sell narwhal pens. If you do, you won't be able to stock our products anymore, right?

'''Myke:''' Correct. Correct. So, apparently, that is still... I don't know. Was there a... There might have been a date, like a date by, like May 1st. May 1st.

'''Brad:''' I think the time is now, which is why we were getting asked.

'''Myke:''' Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Yeah, so I was thinking it was coming up right around now. So, yeah, we're going to see some decisions being made. I don't know who's doing what or when, but it is absolutely still a situation that we've heard of, like, right from the jump. It is not going away. So, we will probably start to actually hear more about it once these decisions are having to be made and if any companies are going to discuss, you know, why they make decision X or decision Y. And I don't know if we'll hear more from the companies themselves or not. They've been pretty quiet on this front as well.

'''Brad:''' Do you remember when it was that we spoke about this?

'''Myke:''' It was almost exactly a month ago, right? It was before the Atlanta Pen Show. End of March sometimes. So, we'll have to figure out the right date. But around the end of March, middle of March, something like that. So, I guess it's been probably five or six weeks.

'''Brad:''' Right.

'''Myke:''' So, yeah. That's, I don't have a great update other than the update is it's definitely 100% not going away. There is going to be ramifications somewhere for someone. I just don't know who, when, or where.

'''Brad:''' Yeah.

'''Myke:''' But it's not going away. That I got. The answer to that was very consistent. So, there you go.

'''Brad:''' Huh. Do you expect that brands?

'''Myke:''' I think there's going to be choice on both sides. Well, yeah. Some people, I think, yeah.

'''Myke:''' I'll say this. TWSBI's been around a lot longer and they make up a lot more business to retailers' bottom line than Narwhal. This is anecdotal. This is kind of what I'm trying to dance around. Yeah. I'm not saying that as I know this for a fact, but I think it's pretty obvious that TWSBI is more affecting to retailers' bottom lines than Narwhal.

'''Brad:''' This is like, so Sky in the Discord saying it feels like TWSBI is shooting themselves in the foot. I don't think that's the case at all. I think they know exactly what they're doing. And again, I don't think this is going to make a difference, Brad, because I think probably what's most likely to happen is if a retailer is going to decide if they're doing it on sales, they're probably going to go with TWSBI, I would assume. And therefore, TWSBI got what they wanted.

'''Myke:''' Right. Which sucks for all of us. I'm not going to lie. Like, it's a bully tactic. I hate that they're using the retailers like this. I've said as much when we talked about it before. I hate this path, but I understand they have to do something. Like, if they feel wronged, they're going to do something. Just putting it in the... Making retailers decide, I think, is the wrong move.

'''Brad:''' This is where we're in a complete agreement. I have no problem with them feeling like they need to defend something if they feel that they have been wronged. Sure. Right? Yeah. As I said, I don't think I can come to a decision. We can't come to a decision as to who is right and who is wrong here. Right. It's way over our pay grades, I think. Right.

'''Brad:''' And I have no problem if they feel like they need to do it to go through the channels to deal with it. But putting the decision in the hands of pen vendors, basically blackmailing them because they're aware of... Twisby is aware of their market position. That is a strong arm tactic that I don't enjoy.

'''Brad:''' But I don't think in the long term this is a bad thing for Twisby. Maybe some people in this corner of the community are going to stop buying Twisby pens or will stop buying Twisby pens for a while until they forget why they stopped buying Twisby pens and then buy Twisby pens again, which I think... That is no criticism, but that kind of stuff happens all the time, right? Sure. They only have so much limited room for stuff we can remember. But we are, I'm sure, a small portion of their market.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. I just think when the consumers get penalized and the retailers get penalized all from their... None of it's their own doing. You just start to look negatively at the companies involved and who has driven these discussions. And like, we didn't do anything. The retailers didn't do anything. And now they're put in a position to have to answer all these questions.

'''Myke:''' I just don't think it's a good business practice, obviously. But at the same turn, you and I both agree that if they feel wrong, they are going to do something.

'''Myke:''' And so it's just the long tail of that decision. It negatively affects the community as a whole. Right? Like, sure.

'''Brad:''' I don't think...

'''Brad:''' I'm just going to assume that Twisby don't necessarily feel threatened.

'''Myke:''' Right. Like, I used the term bully before, and I fully believe that's what this is.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. It's very strange to me. This is very strange. Very strange. I wish that the world would be a little bit more open about it.

'''Myke:''' Long story short, this isn't the last time we're going to be discussing this.

'''Brad:''' Yep.

'''Myke:''' Unfortunately.

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'''Myke:''' All right, Myke, leading into some Ask TPA that we'll get to towards the end of this show, I had a broader Ask TPA question. It's actually come up a couple of times in the past few weeks. Because I've created something a little bit different. And it also kind of relates to my planner choice for this year. So previous to my Hobonichi planner that I'm using this year, I used a William Hanna planner. Right? We've discussed this many times on the show. But essentially, I changed the format to be more useful to me. So I have this great William Hanna cover, this disbound system, this A5 size notebook. What am I going to do with it? Since I'm not using it on the daily for planning. And I thought about it for a while. And I kind of had this idea for a while. But it took me a while to actually execute on it. But the Atlanta Pen Show was the impetus for me to get this done. And what I've done is made this into a loose leaf paper sampler notebook. And it lives on my desk. And I love it. And so I've had a couple people ask me, you know, completely unaware that I've done this. Hey, what do I do with loose leaf sheets? Can I create like a loose leaf notebook? Should I get like a disc bound system? Should I buy the hole punch? Should I buy all of these things to build kind of the loose leaf notebook that I want with the paper that I want? And, you know, the short answer to that is yes. The long answer we'll discuss now. Because I have this great piece of kit, right? This William Hanna notebook. You know I love it. I love the leather cover. I got to build out, you know, the interior and the stitching and things like that. So I've got this whole great A5 system. And then I noticed that I had a pretty good quantity of top bound A5 pads. You know, non-bound, you know, non-hard bound notebooks. You know, just glue bound at the top to where like the pages just rip off or even perforated. But most of the ones I had are glue bound. And with papers that I love using, I'll refer to Life Bank paper repeatedly through this conversation. But that's kind of the one that got me started. It's one of my most used just general writing papers. It's kind of my favorite. It comes in an A5 top bound glue pad. Well, that binding is very easy to remove the pages from. You know, it's a very clean tear, if you will. So, and I end up having just, I'd use those sheets and end up having stacks of loose sheets. I was like, well, what if I got a hole punch to put in my disc-bound William Hanna system? So that's the thing about disc-bound planners, right? If you're going to add in papers that these planner systems don't sell. So it doesn't have to be William Hanna. You know, Levenger has their system. Staples has their system. I'm sure there's a couple more. But they all kind of use a universally sized disc to hook these papers into, right? It's not, you know, it's not a, it's kind of an open-sided, you know, paper punch. You're not putting holes in the paper. You're putting these notches in that the pages fit around these discs. So they're easy to add into a notebook and remove from a notebook, right? That's the big selling point of these disc-bound systems, right? They're modifiable very, very, very easily. So what I did was decide to gather up all of my, anything that can be made into a loose A5 sheet and put it in this notebook. So the first thing I had to do was buy a punch for that, Myke. So I talked about this punch decision, this hole punch decision, or disc-bound punch decision. A lot on stream, did a bunch of research. You know, Levenger makes one.

'''Myke:''' Atoma is kind of the big, the big brand. They make very, very high quality, expensive, you know, almost industrial strength type hole punches. So that's another one to check out. That's one I actually had on loan from a friend. I had an Atoma. And then the staplers, excuse me, staples, arc punch. Arc is their brand.