Editing The Pen Addict 192/transcript (section)

== Case Series ==


'''Dan Bishop:''' Gotcha. Yeah. I would say that's about right. So, when is this new case series? When are we looking at seeing those for the first time?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We're working on manufacturing them right now. We're getting rid of some of our older stock. Just the, I would call it, I guess, the version 1.0. Now that we're just selling some of those out and getting those out of our inventory just so we're not having a bunch of parts. Because they look pretty much identical, like the caps and stuff do. But some of the internal dimensions and things are different. So, we don't want to have a bunch of stuff overlapping in the warehouse. Right. So, as soon as that stuff kind of gets out the way, I just said get out the way.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' As soon as some of that is out the door, we're going to be ready. I mean, we're still manufacturing. We still have to make a bunch of bodies. We're kind of recovering from the holiday season a little bit, which was great for us. But at the same time, you know, it's like a bakery. Your whole goal is to sell out at the end of the day. So, you know, every day when you sell out a product, you have to make more. And that's kind of the stage we're in right now.

'''Dan Bishop:''' So, as far as barrel materials go, are you looking at anything new across the entire lineup? You know, just more out of curiosity. I mean, I think, I don't know that you necessarily need it. I love the aluminum. Aluminum is still my favorite anodized aluminum. But are y'all playing around with anything?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Um, I'm, we're playing around with it. There's some other materials that we're looking at. And the main issue with other materials is they don't machine the same as metal does. So, you have to do different setups and things like that to make them work well. So, after we meet our production numbers for our existing products, then we can kind of explore other options. So, it's probably going to be, I mean, I think we're going to try to experiment with some stuff. I mean, we've talked about it before. And we did, several years ago, use phenolic. Or, we call it phenolic because that's the name of the plastic. Micarta is what most people know it as.

'''Dan Bishop:''' Mm-hmm.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Um, but, uh, that material is kind of finicky. That's kind of why Twisby discontinued their pens, because it's, it's notoriously brittle.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, we're looking at, I mean, there's other plastics like Delrin and things that are machinable. We just have to see what makes the most sense. Or if, if we need to design a new pen around those materials, rather than try to adapt it to an existing product. That might be a better solution.

'''Dan Bishop:''' I gotcha. That makes sense. That makes sense. You know, everyone likes to, um, you know, it's good that you're, you're so accessible to the community. Um, you're, you're never short of, uh, suggestions for what you should make, are you?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, everybody's, everybody's always asking about, you know, this or that, which is, which is totally fine. It's awesome. We love our customers.

'''Dan Bishop:''' It's awesome.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And, I mean, it's good to get feedback, but it's funny when you get feedback from the same three people over and over and over again. Um, everybody wants titanium too, which is, is so fascinating to me. Um, it's, it's a, it's an interesting material. Titanium is used on all kinds of stuff, you know, high performance bicycles to the space shuttle and stuff. And it's really only optimized, um, in its use because it's, it's weight to strength ratio is so good. You know, you can make it really thin walled and it's really strong. But if you make something like a pen, that's got thick walls and all this stuff, you're just making it out of titanium to say that it's titanium. It doesn't have any advantage. So it would be cool, but, um, it's just not, I don't know. Yeah. It's not something that we're interested in at this time. And, you know, I can't, you know, don't want to say never, um, because, you know, like you said, you'd never use fountain pens and the people come back and poke fun at you. But it's the production of, it's a little bit more difficult. Like I said, it's anytime you change materials, um, whether softer or harder, things change a little bit and you potentially have to, you know, get new tooling and, and, uh, do your setups a little differently. So right now we're focusing on making sure we have things in, in stock for our customers and, and have a good consistent product, which, you know, we've been working towards and making small improvements on everything like little by little. And most people, um, don't notice it, but it's things that we strive to, to do on a regular basis and have been very happy to, um, have little, uh, stepping stones of accomplishment along the way.