Editing The Pen Addict 181/transcript (section)

== Awesome Products ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' He made out like a bandit. All right. We've been talking about crappy, useless products. Let's talk about an awesome one.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Let's do it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This week's episode is brought to you once again by Dudek Modern Goods. Dudek Modern Goods was created by the lovely Myke Dudek of the Clicky Post. And these products were created because Myke wanted somewhere that he could store his fantastic pens that he started to amass. So as Myke was diving deeper and deeper into the pen addict rabbit hole, he decided that he needed somewhere and he knew that he wanted somewhere that he could store his stuff that was beautiful and elegant and would also give him all of the features that he wanted. But he couldn't find anything. So the awesome guy that he is, instead of giving up, Myke decided to make his own. And products like the Cube, the Block, and the Groove were born. Mr. Dudek is super passionate about crafting beautiful yet functional products that should last you a lifetime. All of the products that you'll find in the store at DudekModernGoods.com are all handmade in Arizona, USA from solid walnut and have a distinct modern and minimal design. Mixed with the rich grain and color of the walnut, these pieces will earn their place on your desk a day and still will look fantastic in 30 years from now. There are nine different designs to choose from with several options to fit your needs, whether you have larger pens in your collection or you need a space to hold your pocket notebooks or journal in addition to your writing instruments. Mr. Dowdy, you have some Dudek Modern Goods, do you not?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Some's an understatement. So, yeah, you know, Myke has sent me some out of the kindness of his heart, but I love the products so much. I just buy the ones that I feel like are going to fit my needs as well. So I've bought as many products as he sent me in the past. And I just love everything about them. I have probably four or five of them on my desk here at home. I have another one that I keep at work just because they're so functional, so useful. So, you know, if you're listening to this show and you're obviously into pens, pencils and those types of things, and you don't have something like a little small display to keep some of your favorite pens handy, this is the way to go. There's nothing better. There's nothing that looks better. There's nothing manufactured better than what Myke is doing at Dudek Modern Goods. I love these products. I will always support Myke's work because he does it right. And it's just a great story, too, behind what he's done and how, you know, seeing this business grow. And, you know, I love all the products. And you have to have one. There's just no two ways about it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, you should go check it out. These are great little all-in-one solutions that can not only store pens but can also store notebooks. They can store ink bottles. He's really kind of – and you can tell when you look at this stuff how Myke is one of us, right? Like he thinks in that way. Like I remember like the first stuff, the first Dudek Modern Goods stuff, whilst awesome, it was completely different, right? They all like one pen size holes and they were like mainly just like nine holes for pens, right? That was all it was. But now like the stuff that he does, like the cube, which has like the nine holes, the holes are huge, right? So they can fit all sizes of pens. Like you can see as time has gone on, he has learned. And as his knowledge continues to grow in this stuff, his products just get better and better and better over time. It's just awesome to watch. Myke ships internationally. He has reasonable shipping rates. You have to remember Walnut is heavy and has shipped to more than 20 countries so far. As the holiday months are generally the busiest of people like Myke who make things, he wanted to get the word out to all of you guys and girls. If you're thinking of buying a piece for yourself or you're thinking of buying it for a gift for somebody else or you're thinking of asking for one of the Dudek Modern Goods products for Christmas or for the holidays this year, it might be the time now to start letting people know or to start buying one of these yourself because every piece is handmade. It's important to get that order in early so it can arrive in time for your gift exchanges this holiday season. And as a special promotion for listeners, the pen addict podcast is going to give 10% off any Dudek Modern Goods products. Just go to DudekModernGoods.com. There'll be a link in the show notes for that and use the code pen addict to check out for 10% off as pen addict or one word. This month, this offer, this offer code is only available through to the end of November 2015. So make sure you get in there fast and get your order placed. Thank you so much to Myke Dudek and Dudek Modern Goods for sponsoring this show.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I wanted to highlight, I haven't been highlighting many blog posts on the show recently. We need to do that more often. That's on me because I enjoy doing that type of thing. And Drees at the Pencil Case blog did a post recently where he visited the manufacturer. And you may, I don't even know if you're familiar with this manufacturer, but they're called Conid. Yeah, I know. Yeah, so they make this bulk filling fountain pen I first learned about from our good friend Thomas Hall. And he raved about this pen and the filling system and how much ink capacity it can have, how well the pen was built. They use titanium nibs, things like that. A lot of it came, a lot of the story behind the pen, the Conid brand happened on Fountain Pen Network years and years ago. So there's lots of stories and lots of, you know, build up and lots of, you know, that's how they basically became a business. They became, they started taking orders on Fountain Pen Network. And now they're just a full-fledged fountain pen manufacturer. And Drees went to the, went to the factory where they make the pens. And it blows my mind, you know, when I look, try to compare like what we do at Knock, you know, and, you know, the challenges we have and the things we're trying to build. And then looking at someone like Conid who has this, who basically just went all in on this fountain pen design and the mechanics and machinery and manufacturing that they have to put into this is just so impressive. To see these stories and these behind the scenes stories. And especially from like a self-made company like this, you know, Werner, the owner, just, I mean, it basically did this on his own, you know. And I just thought it was a really fun article to point out and to see the behind the scenes of like a real small manufacturer like this. And how cool their designs are if you're not familiar with Conid at all and how well engineered and super functional they are. I do own one Conid so far. It's in my friend Susan's hands who writes for the Pen Addict. She's actually going to review it for me because she loves the pen so much she doesn't want to send it back to me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Conid's famous for this really unique filling mechanism that they developed, right? Which is like a vacuum filling mechanism that basically fills up the majority of the barrel.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, it's like a power vac filling system and it's unique to their pens. It's basically the whole reason for their company to exist is this filling system.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So it's something they did. So Drees goes into it a little bit on the blog. But it's well worth your time to spend a few minutes reading about this. Drees did a wonderful post.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And it's just cool to see. I like this behind the scenes stuff. We all like the behind the scenes stuff to kind of see. But especially when you see something like Conid, it's different than going to just a major manufacturer. Like I don't know you'd get this behind the scenes at like the Lamy factory tour, right? You're just going to get the show version. This is like the pure behind the scenes stuff here. And I think it's great. So I just wanted to shine a little bit of a light on this post and y'all should go check it out for sure.