Editing The Pen Addict 420/transcript (section)

== USPS Delivery Issues ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' but mine still hasn't arrived. It's like a big ask. Oof.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Or is it, it's, it's local but stuck now? Is that where we left it? No.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It looks like this is on USPS's side now. So, I'm still trying to deal with it. Because I spoke to the team here and they're like, no, it never made it, it never arrived, but we'll see.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. All right, I got a new pen, Myke. I don't, I don't know if you know this, but I like pens and like, I don't, I can't buy all the Sailor King of Pens because I have to hold, hold back some funds when I have the opportunity to buy these weird experimental pens that I've been tracking for a while. And a perfect example is a pen company or a pen brand called Kusama. Have you ever heard of them before I put them in the show notes? No,

'''Myke Hurley:''' is that how you say that?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I have no idea, but I'm going to go with Kusama. Okay, because there's a H at the end.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, Kusama, P-H. There's a P-H. That's Philippines. Philippines. Sorry, yes, Kusama, yeah, because the Instagram handle. You're looking at the Instagram account. Yes, it's Kusama P-H because Philippines because that's where they're made.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep, yep. So, I first laid eyes on these. You know, they made it around Instagram and blogosphere in the past year or two. And I always liked the looks of them. I wasn't sure if the design was for me. I wasn't sure if like the build was going to be for me because they're uniquely built. We'll put a bunch of links in the show notes for what these pens are. And this is a great example of why pen shows are valuable because I was able to go at Philly this year. Some of my friends had the Kusama pens where I could test them before outlaying a bunch of money for a pen that I don't know is going to be my style, fit my hand, be something I want to use. You know, and even though I like the aesthetic and I like the idea of what Kusama is doing. So, Kusama is made by these pens are manufactured by a surgeon. Like, this is a side job and they found these cool materials like in the medical field that they've transferred into additionally they were trying to make like a hardcore EDC type fountain pen like a heavy duty you know, can take a beating fountain pen like

'''Myke Hurley:''' beautiful.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, so they landed on something really quick that started to spread as a thing but I, like I, they're hard to buy, they're hard to acquire.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I was about to ask that. I can't find a way to possibly purchase one of these.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Because there isn't. Like, if you read a bunch of their Instagram stuff is like, yeah, we built all these pens and we're not selling them. Like, they just really, you know, it's cool. Like, this is a side thing for them. But, their machining and their quality and their style and aesthetic is top tier, right, to a lot of people. Like, it's not everyone's thing. So, they were on my radar for a while. I got to try one and said, okay, yeah, I see it. This would actually work for me and I know exactly which one I want. And the one I wanted is called, gosh, what's the name of it? Ulam? Ultum. Ultum. Which is, like, this orange translucent very hard acrylic. Like, it's, you know, it has a different feeling than, like, your standard, you know, barrel acrylics. Very, very strong. Like, it feels like one of those pens that you could run over, like, with a car and it wouldn't see a problem. I don't know that it's marketed that way, but that's the feel you get from it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The grip section looks, and a big chunk of the body is made out of some kind of metal, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, so titanium. Oh. It's, it's almost half of, if you uncap the pen, it's almost half of the barrel, right? So from where the nib screws into the front end of the pen up to the midpoint of the pen is metal. So in this case, it's titanium. They use aluminum for some other ones and I'm sure they have some other metals too as well, but my particular one is titanium, I think. Now that I say that, I'm questioning myself. But it's, it's anodized, you know, it's got that really pretty anodization fade into it, you know, it goes from blue to purple to orange and clear orange barrel, which, which I like and, you know, you can hear this plastic, it's, it's a different than like your, your standard fountain pens. They wouldn't make that type of noise. And yeah, the grip was what held me off at first because this is a wide diameter pen and I, and the grip to make it more comfortable has a very deep concave section in it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, it looks like a pen, which is very opinionated on how you should hold it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. Yeah. So, and I'm fine with that, like, they're taking a stand, this is how we believe the pen works the best, but I had to feel it in person to know whether it's going to work for me, and it does, right? I generally don't like wider pens, but if I can get the feeling of this big cutout in the grip section, it makes the pen sit in my hands, you know, the way I like to use it. So, it's really comfortable, really lovely to use, and you just can't get them. So, that's the kicker. So, after I decided in February, yes, I can own a Kasama Una, which is the shape, I think, and Ultem is the material. And, you just, there's no way to get them. So, our friend, Mark Bacchus, was able to get some that he, you know, like a few, and he was able to resell them. So, I was essentially on his list for when he ever required more, and he's like, for like a couple of months, and he's like, I don't know what I'm going to get anymore. Do you want to buy mine? And, he was just very nice to offer that up to me. And, I, of course, said yes, because I wanted this pen. And, I got it, and it's everything I wanted to be. But, like, this is a pen I can't recommend to anyone without trying it first. Like, this is why I wanted to put this in the show notes. The only people that I recommend this pen to, if you don't get to try it first, are people who are down with buying, like, the experimental pens, right? And, there's a big group of people that will just go out and buy, like, these very unique experimental pens, not knowing how it's really going to work in the end for them. So, that's kind of, like, the word I wanted to put out there on this pen. It fits me really, really well in a lot of ways. Style, design, aesthetic, you know, why it exists, you know, the experimental thing. But, not every consumer should just go out and buy some of these things like this. Some of these products you really need to think about this one, it's just hard to get to begin with. But, you know, it's just part of that buying process to where it's good for me, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone right now without being able to try one first. And that's where this falls. is a lot of unique things and then maybe they'll start, you know, getting, they're getting great feedback right now from everyone who's bought them. And hopefully we'll see a chance later to where they have an online shop and can sell things. But it's really just, I don't know if it's one person, two people, or whatever, but whatever they've landed on is really, really good. And I hope to see it succeed. But at the same time, I also can't tell everyone to go out and, you know, buy one of these pens because it's very particular. Like, this is not a pen for you whatsoever.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, I don't think so. I would love to try one. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But you do not need to own this pen.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, I feel like that I might not like the restrictiveness of it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But yeah, I've been, I've only had it for a few days. I'm extraordinarily pleased with it, but I'm glad I waited for probably over a year to come up with one. But it's one of those things we talk about shopping lists sometimes. Sometimes you just have to put things on a list and just be ready when the opportunity arises, whether, you know, you finally got the money to pay for it, you know, you saved up enough money, or the opportunity comes to, you know, buy one secondhand when you haven't been able to buy one new for, you know, a year, things like that. So, like, that's what I use, like, my shopping list for. So, and this, this was on it. So, I had the opportunity and I had already decided that it was going to work for me. So, I went for it and I'm very happy that I did.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Should we, should we wrap up a couple of Ask TPA questions today?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, we have a lot of Ask TPA and I appreciate everyone sending them in and please continue sending them in. I feel a little guilty that we don't get to more of them, but one of these, once the build up happens, we'll just dedicate like half a show to doing them because we have a lot of really good questions that I want to answer for people.

'''Myke Hurley:''' First one comes from Jill's desk. If you designed your own sailor 1911, what would it look like?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You go first.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The main thing that I would want, and I only really have one thing, I don't really care about color or anything, I would like one of the really sparkly designs in a demonstrator in the 1911. So, you know, like stuff like what I have, like the sparkling purple cosmos or something, the demonstrator ones with the tons of colorful glitter, I would love that entire thing in a 1911.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Now that you've said that out loud, they all come in pro gears, don't they?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Hmm.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I didn't think about that. I'm sure there's some 1911 sparkles out there, but the vast majority of them are in pro gears, and I didn't think about that until you just said that. If I design my own sailor, I think I would probably, you know, as much as I like orange, they've done a really good job with orange, I would design something along the lines of the Wicked Witch of the West, but do a translucent purple with the dark hardware, and like it would be pretty simple. I would probably, I would like to do it in a Rialo, dark purple, translucent, maybe do the ink window in an alternate color, like, I don't know, like a lime green ink window with a translucent purple Rialo barrel and black ion plated hardware. That sounds pretty hot to me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' so like Wicked Witch of the West on steroids.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah, more new, a nuclear option of the Wicked Witch. It's, it basically, you know what it would be? It would be her cauldron, you know, it would have the green, the green stuff bubbling out of it, you know, like in the middle, so we could call it the cauldron right there. So I think I just designed, I think I just designed a sailor pen, Myke, and I already have the, the product name for it. It's called the cauldron.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I love that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right, I think we're going to have to start like a change.org petition for that one to get them to listen to me. They won't listen to me. They don't care.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They don't know why. Greg Co3 asks, what do you think is the best looking nib on the market based on shape, imprint, color, et cetera, rather than performance base?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You want to go? You want me to go?

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is difficult. I mean, I really do love the way that Platinum's nibs look.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So Platinum wouldn't even rank for me. I get it though. Like, they're clean. And the Mount Fuji outline, the way it staggers up the nib is glorious. I honestly think it's probably Montblanc. It's between Montblanc and sailor for me. And I say this as someone who owns very few or little Montblancs. I think Montblanc's nib designs, just the nib design are spectacular. And then they do like specialty, specialty nibs, you know, stamping. I guess we're not talking about that as we're talking about stock nibs. But sailor and Montblanc would be my two.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I saw in refill that you were using a Montblanc. Which one was it?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' 149. It's the big classic fountain pen. It's the traditional fountain pen. Like I think you have a 146, which is the smaller of them, even though it's a standard size. And 149 is like the big honking classic. It's just the upgrade, the bigger sized. I have the smaller one. It's like the 1911 thing. It's like, you know, slim and large kind of thing. But it's very large. Like your 146 is sailor 1911 large size and the 149 is like king of pen size. That's the difference between the two.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But reading it did make me think that like maybe I should add like a good Montblanc into my collection at some point. Because mine is like, it's old and busted and like I've had it cleaned but it needs nib work because it was like the first pen that I dropped, right? And I've just never had the nib worked on.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But I did always feel that that pen was a little too dainty. Especially now, right? Like with my preferences now, that 146 is a little smaller than I would want from a pen like that. Right. But yeah, I think I would actually quite like to bring some kind of Montblanc into my collection again. Because I think we look down at them a little bit because it's like, oh, the typical executive. pen or whatever. But they do make good pens. Like the pens are good. They're not all good. They're glorious to use. They're not all good. We've seen this, right? But like their good stuff is as good as a lot of any other pens can be. Like their good stuff is really good.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Completely. I mean, I couldn't agree more with that and we give them, you know, short shrift in coverage just because we're not in that market. We don't use them very much, you know. Just like as much as I love Pelican, I don't use a lot of Pelicans and don't purchase a lot of Pelicans because the nibs are too wide for me. You know, Montblanc's kind of in the same category. But I fill up this 149 and like I said in that article, I get it. I see exactly why this pen is so beloved because it really is that good.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And Karim Barr asks, do you know why some pen retailers do pre-orders and some don't? Why is that?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So this is why I want to answer all the Ask TPA questions because it's a great question, right? Like some will go ahead and say, hey, we're going to accept money on this pen. Let's just take Sailor Wicked Witch of the West. That's what I think of when this came out. Like some retailers will say, hey, we know we're getting, you know, X number. We're going to go ahead and offer them up now. We'll take your money now and ship them. Where others will say, we're not going to do any pre-orders and then we'll have essentially a launch day. They will appear on the website and you may purchase them directly then. Why they choose to do that, I don't know, other than if they want to control a little bit of the number and the invoicing and purchasing process to where, okay, we sold 20, we can order, you know, 25 instead of, okay, we can order 20 to sell on launch day and we sell 10 and just hang on to the other ones for a slower sell. You know, maybe it's just, you know, a preference, right? I don't know that there's any real benefit pro or con. I think it's just how different retailers prefer to work.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, okay. I can see that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I don't know that I have a great answer for that, but I love the question because I don't know and I don't think it's some like real spectacular answer to the question. I think it's just more of a feel. I think smaller retailers will generally pre-order and larger retailers will launch because smaller retailers might need to allocate funds in a more exacting fashion instead of having a larger pool of funds for just a pure launch.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, and they may adjust what they order if possible in some cases, right? So you only end up ordering what your pre-orders for. That's not always going to be possible depending on timelines, but that's definitely a part of it. So like, you know, if you take us and our businesses, we both have done and continue to do product sales, you know, whether it's merchandise or otherwise, where we do pre-orders and then some where we do just here's a stock and just buy it. And it's a confidence thing, you know, like, oh, I want to make this t-shirt. It's the first time I've ever made this t-shirt. I don't know if people are going to like the design because I've been burned in the past of like, oh, people are going to love this and it just doesn't resonate for whatever reason, which is exactly what we were talking about earlier on in the show with Sailor. King of Pin. Yeah. Like, sometimes you have to be like, oh, people are going to love it and then they just, they're nothing, like crickets and it's very peculiar. So, you know, it's just this thing that happens in business and you have to readjust your expectations. and then there are some times where it's like, okay, I have this thing, I know it's done well in the past or like, I'm very confident and we're just going to, it's like for me, the difference is between like merchandise and like my, like the theme system journals or typical merchandise or like, you know, Cortex has a limited range of merchandise that's always available because it's always sold well. So we just have small amounts of it available constantly. But if I was going to do a new shirt for the show, I would still do it as pre-order because I have no idea if people will buy it and I don't want to, and merchandise like t-shirts are especially difficult because you have sizes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Right. Yeah, like I'm planning on doing one for Knox soon, sooner than later, and it'll be a pre-order because we won't manufacture them until, you know, we, you know, sell enough kind of thing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. And you know what? If we do a pre-order like that, I don't lose a cent. Right. It's all profit. Right? Where, with stuff where you're, you know, we are buying it up to sell it, you have costs that you have to put up in front and then you have to be confident you've got the order numbers right and if you don't, then you have stock that's just burning a hole in your pocket.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes, I know, Myke. Yeah. Fine. Fine. So the only other gotcha with pre-orders, and I do think it is kind of like a small versus large business, like you can tell me and Myke, smaller businesses with pre-orders work for us. The only gotcha in the pin world is for super hot items. You know, you take something, I don't know if the Platinum Shion would rank as that, but like the Kumpu did that they had more demand than they had access to products and that's when the pre-orders are a little bit weird because your retailer might not get their true allocation from the distributor. So that's always something to keep in mind about pre-orders. But, you know.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, Gordon in the Discord just says, Goulet Pens doesn't do pre-orders because sometimes they get short stock by their suppliers, so it's bad to let people down. But what I would say to that is Goulet Pens can afford that to make that decision because they're massive. Yes. Right. So like they are confident they don't even need to do that because their customer base is going to come and do it anyway. Right. They'll take everything they can get.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. They'll take everything they can get. They just don't know what that number is. So they can, they're okay doing it that way where smaller companies might, you know, they're hanging on the five pens that they're going to get, not the 50. Right. Yep. So, yeah, it's a great conversation. That's why I love these Ask TPA questions because this is actually I don't think there's a real direct answer for this, but it's a great conversation to have.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I think so. Yep. So please continue sending in those questions to help us have these types of interesting conversations. We love to do it. If you want to do that, you can send out a tweet with the hashtag Ask TPA and that will work for you. Or you can email them to hello at penaddict dot com. Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Correct.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Correct. I think we have it hooked up in the discord. If you use the question mark Ask TPA, it will also, if you're in the RelayFM members discord, it should work there too. I will say that. It is true.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We'll get a test. Someone will test it right now.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And then I can have it added.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't think that that functionality here has been added yet. So I will work on that. So it will be done very soon.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Hey, before you continue, tell them what we're doing tomorrow.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, yeah. We're recording at least part one of our member special tomorrow. So this will be coming out in August. So every year we do bonus episodes for a bunch of shows. We do some fun things. And over the last few years, me and Brad have been building Lego sets together. So if you're a RelayFM member, you can get these in the RelayFM member crossover feed. But the way that we do this is, say, for example, I have the instructions. Brad has the set. I have to instruct Brad how to build it over Skype.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, while Brad cannot

'''Myke Hurley:''' look at any instructions. Indeed. So this year, I'm building, Brad's instructing. And I thought to myself, oh, we've really liked the Lego architecture series sets. That's what we've done in the past. I built a London set. You built a, I think, a San Francisco set. Yep, staring right at it. So I was looking at the series when I was deciding to do this. And I was like, oh, there's a Trafalgar Square set. That will look really nice next to my London set. So I bought it and thought, great, that's going to be awesome. And it arrived and I was like, oh, that box is pretty big. So the London one had 468 pieces. And it took us, I don't know, the best part of three hours to do that? Yeah, three, three and a half, yeah. So 468, right? The Trafalgar Square set is 1,197 Lego pieces.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We're hosed.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So it's going to take a while. And we're expecting, I don't know, maybe six to nine hours of build this year. Who knows?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I might have to have an Ivy drip for this one.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Obviously, we, I have a limit on our time tomorrow. So there may be multiple Lego build specials from the Panatics this year.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We'll find out. I've never seen someone so inflated about what we were about to do and the Lego set they were about to build until it ordered. And then I got the deflated text that I think the only thing I got in my text was, oh, no, I've made a mistake or something like that. And then you told me what it was. And there's nothing we could do.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, so there is something we could do, but we're not going to do it. Like the thing we could do is get another set. But I want to do this now because why not? It will be fun. And we will, I guess, just work it out.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You say it's going to be fun. That's the whole key with this whole thing is how frequently we can fight and argue. And, you know, the less is better for our mental health, but it's inevitable that we're going to refrigerate and rotate something incorrectly.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I mean, oh, my God, the washing machine.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Washer machine. That's what I was thinking of, not the refrigerator. Washer machine.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's fun. Join relay.fm membership. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' If you go to relay.fm slash membership or you can go to slash pen addict and you can become a member, support the show directly. But if you support any show on the network, you do get these specials. These are the specials available to everybody. So if you're supporting another one for bonus content, which we're not doing at this point on this show, you will still get these crossover specials. So there'll probably be many this year. So the reason, one of the reasons I mentioned this is if you do want to build along, there are lots of people that do this, which is great. So they buy the set and build along with the instructions. You maybe want to get that order in now.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' True. We always have a few builders with us and it goes shockingly well. I'm surprised at how well it actually executes. And just to give credit where credit is due, this is my NotCo partner, Jeff's idea. Just random idea blurted out of his mouth one day when we were figuring out what to do. And we both just thought it was so stupid it might work and it has and we appreciate everyone who supports us.

'''Myke Hurley:''' If you want to find out more about the show, you go to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 420 baby. About the baby, just 420. You can go to penaddict.com, knock.co, go buy some NotCo cases. Yeah. There's always stuff there, great colors, great fabrics, just amazing stuff to put your pen products in. And note cards. And note cards. Don't forget the note cards. Don't forget the note cards. Thank you so much to Squarespace for the support of the show and thank you for listening and we'll be back next time. Oh, Tuesdays, Thursdays, 10 a.m. Eastern, Brad, streams, twitch.tv slash penaddict. Don't forget it. See you next time.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Except this Thursday.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Except this week because we're building Lego instead. Say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]