Editing The Pen Addict 400/transcript (section)

== USA Market Brands ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. Yes. Yes. The USA market, you'll notice when I list off a few of these companies, that is a very different type of list than the European market. The European market has very historical brands. In the U.S., we could talk about Parker's and Estabrooks and Cross and other things that were founded in the U.S., but those pens don't really rank in our world right now. They're good pens. They're perfectly fine. But they're not as interesting as some of the other brands we have in the U.S.A. This is more of a maker's list, wouldn't you say? I would, yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, Estabrook are back. Sure. They were gone for a while and were kind of just vintage only, but that brand has seen a resurgence. But especially the brands that we talk about on this show the most, that are American, tend to have seen their life born on Kickstarter.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, Franklin Kristoff is the exception to that, and I guess Edison is too. Franklin Kristoff has been around for a while. Edison and Carolina Pen Company, all three of those brands make beautiful acrylic pens. They are pushing the envelope on pen design and what can be made with, you know, CNC machines and interesting materials and different things like that, that really kind of, they really lean into the customization of what a fountain pen can be, I believe. And then I also included Karas Customs on here. They weren't the first ones to make metal pens, but they kind of took off in that market, and there's been a bunch of other companies that have come since then.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They were one of the real early successes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They are one of the early Kickstarter successes, too. That was actually a Kickstarter success in that they've made a business model out of making unique metal pens and out of different materials. So I think it's, the USA market is definitely more of a maker space than a historical market, like the next one we have coming up.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Japan. Japan. This is where the real history is, baby.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, well, the German companies are older, right? You know, they have some time, they have some years on them, but Japan will often refer to as the big three manufacturers in Japan, which is Pilot, Platinum, and Sailor. They all have 100 plus years behind them in manufacturing, manufacturing every part of their pens head to toe, and have really high quality, great standards. Japan is still to this day one of the stationary capitals of the world, and they just make really high quality goods. I've also included Nakaya in this list, which is an offshoot of Platinum. It's essentially Platinum's luxury brand lineup, where you get a lot of handmade pens, and it comes up a lot in this show, because I have a fascination with them as a brand and as a writing instrument, and it's one of my favorite brands.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, we both do. I just don't own one yet.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes, yes, yes. One of these years.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I've definitely come around to Platinum, because I was kind of a Platinum hold-off for a bit. So, I believe in Nakaya is again back in my future. Gotcha.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Gotcha. And like I said, we're listing these, because these are a lot of the brands you're going to hear the most. If you start today listening to The Pit Addict with this episode, and you start to dig into the back episodes, all the brands we're mentioning now are just the repeating themes that you'll hear. So, hopefully, this gives you a good baseline of what we're talking about.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, saying that, when we look at paper, two companies we've already mentioned a couple of times in this episode, Rodia and Leuchtturm. Leuchtturm 1917 is the actual full name of the brand. These are the best products that you're going to be able to replace your Moleskine with.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Correct. Correct. And then we also talk about a product called Tomoe River Paper, which isn't necessarily a brand, but more of a paper that other printers use, such as Hobonichi, which we refer to a lot. That's one of the best calendar agenda planner companies out there. And they use a paper called Tomoe River Paper, which is very fountain pen friendly. It's a very unique design. So, they come up a lot during the show, as do Midori and the Traveler's Notebook system. So, these are hugely stationary friendly notebooks, Midori and Traveler's. You'll see them just all over Instagram, all over different blogs and things like that. So, you know, the paper goods list could be, could take up this entire show if we named off all the brands. You know, like my good friend Chad Donut at Donut Paper makes a wonderful paper. And like we could go on and on and on about all the awesome paper makers, write and story supply and things like that. You know, maybe that's a future paper only episode where we explore all the paper goods. But these are the brands you'll hear coming up a lot in our talks.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And then we have inks as well.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So, I made this little category as inks, as ink only, right? These are companies that generally just make ink, not pens. So, Robert Oster is one of my favorite ink makers out of Australia. Diamine out of the UK. Ackermann out of the Netherlands. Noodlers out of the US. Bungu Box, who makes in collaboration with Sailor out of Japan. And I think probably those brands are kind of, ink is kind of like paper where we could make this list and it would be infinitely long, right? It would just keep going and going and going. But as far as the conversation around these brands in the podcast, these are the ones that come up the most because they're good. Like, we talk about these products because they make interesting products and they've proven over time to be of a good quality. So, that's why these names make these very short lists is for those very, very good reasons, I think.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Bungu Box are probably the outlier there because they make customized pens, but ink is their business. And I also wanted to just make sure that we mentioned them because we do talk about them an awful lot on the show.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Correct. And that's how we got it started talking about them was the ink in the beginning. Yep. So, that does come up a lot. All right, Myke, you ready for some fun?