Editing The Pen Addict 422/transcript (section)

== Ask TPA ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Exactly. All right. Next mini topic, then we'll get into some Ask TPA and catch up on all the ones that we still owe people. This is from K9 Plays. You brought up before how fountain pens have the most variety. I guess it's talking to me. Is this due to them being older, or is there something intrinsic to fountain pens that makes them more customizable? Do you think a company like Retro would be able to thrive in the future, or is the future fountains? This is, again, there's a lot to take into this question, which is why I asked for this type of question.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I want to be very explicit on the record in this answer that the future is not fountain pens. I want to be very clear on that. Fountain pens will never get past a niche market, in my opinion. That doesn't mean it can't be a huge market, and that doesn't mean there's not going to be continued innovation and interest in the fountain pen market. It's just never going to surpass, it's never going to be the number one writing market, ever. It's just not. There's too many variables that prevent the access to fountain pens becoming the number one type of writing instrument.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Do you have anything to say just on that specific statement? I just wanted to kind of take that in the beginning.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I don't know why the future would be fountain pens. I don't think it is. I mean, I think that there are more opportunities for people making fountain pens than there's ever been, but it's never going to, the fountain pens are never going to become like the big answer. You know what I mean? It's a luxury good, not a necessity. It's a luxury good. There is a barrier to entry. They're difficult. They're messy. They're complex. It's not the future. I mean, I think we are currently in the fountain pens present. The future of like, oh, there can be a resurgence has happened. We're there. That's what it is now. Mm-hmm. And I think it'll continue. Continue as is. Yes. Not continue to increase.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Yeah. And I think we'll continue to see what we're seeing right now. I don't think we're at a plateau. I think we could still peak a little bit more, but that plateau is going to run out. I mean, I mean that in a positive way. The plateau is going to continue to stay high. Like, I think the fountain pens are, you know, very unique, provide something very unique, which is the first part of this question that I'll get to. Yeah. And I don't think it's going to go down, but there is a ceiling that fountain pens will hit to where you can't ever say the future is fountain pens. Right. So, but I do say they are the most customizable because of the writing style options, the personal style options, and the, just the uniqueness of that writing experience. You can't go by from a store shelf or just grab off of Amazon, you know, the next time you make an order, there are ways to make your experience better. Whether you're looking to improve your handwriting, like for me, I can, I like to write really tiny or write, like to write really blocky. Well, traditional gel, rollerball, ballpoint pens don't always fit those needs. Some fountain pens do. I can also buy a pen that fits my style. And let me just circle back to what I just said. No one needs a fountain pen. These are luxury items. These are, you know, if you own a fountain pen, you've decided to say, Hey, I care about my writing and want to try something different and unique, but you're also making a style statement too. Like, I don't want to get that lost in the shuffle and I don't want it to sound pretentious, but we care about the things we use. We like fountain pens because they're pretty or they look cool or they're a material I like, or I can throw it in my backpack and not have to worry about, you know, it scratching up. You know, like if you buy metal fountain pens, you know, you can support art and small makers and, you know, vendors that, you know, do things differently than, you know, other, you know, big box retailers and things like that. So that's where like you get into the customization of fountain pens. It's not just the writing experience while we all like fountain pens so much. That's definitely a huge part of it, but it's part of the other part of it is I can express myself in my style, right? I get, it's like choosing a shirt or a pair of sneakers. You know, for me, the pen goes in that category as well. Oh, this one's orange. It looks awesome. It's what I want. It kind of reminds me of this, you know, things like that. So that's what I'm talking about. Customizable. I'm not always talking about writing experience.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So the final piece of this question is, do you think a company like retro would be able to thrive in the future? I don't see why not. I don't have an answer for after all these months of us knowing that retro is theoretically closing down next month, supposedly, right? We haven't really followed up on that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I would love to know what the deal is going on there. But I mean, there's nothing to suggest that anything's changed.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I still don't know who is going to pick up the mantle in the exact same fashion that they did. They had something very, very, you don't think it's unique, but it's extremely unique, mainly because of the high level of execution that they are able to put into these products, right? And that's harder to deliver than just delivering products themselves, right? They execute flawlessly, in my opinion. And I haven't seen really anyone else attempt that. Not that other people can't do it, but I haven't seen those attempts yet to say, oh, this, you know, Acme or Karen Dash or anyone has like really nailed like what the stories Retro 51 is trying to tell with each individual product. So, you know, I think we can see another company like that thrive. I don't see why not. But that would be a hard act to follow. This is one you want to be the guy after the guy, right? So, but the guy after the guy, after the guy. So, you don't, I don't know that you want to go first right after Retro. Someone else is, you kind of want to wait and see and see if, you know, how, how to execute on, on that. So I did get an interesting email this morning, Myke, from our good friend, Mary. She said, what if Retro 51 made one final last hurrah release and it was the Willy Wonka golden ticket and if you found it, you got to take over the company.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think we've made this joke.

'''Mary:''' Have we? We might have. I think so. When we're talking about the fish, the fish golden tickets.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But nevertheless, if we haven't, that's, it's very funny. I like that a lot. I love that so much.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That is how it should be. So, yeah. So we'll see if there, I don't know, maybe there's a 10,000 issue release coming up of pens and one of those is a golden ticket.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So I kind of got it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh my gosh. So, yeah, I love these questions. You know, a lot of Ask TPAs are the same format, but I kind of break them out a little bit to these broader questions, have these little mini topics, which I love. So keep sending that type of stuff in and you can tag them, Ask TPA, and I'll still get them in the form or you can email them to me. But yeah, I love these kind of bigger picture questions where we can just kind of riff on these things. You know, we don't have all the answers. We have some things we'd like to see. We know what we want this community to be and know what we want out of like the stationary community or the stationary business in a broader sense. But I like, you know, kind of thinking about these things. So, yeah, it's very cool.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Speaking about big questions, we also have some small questions in the form of hashtag Ask TPA. First question this week comes from Tim. Tim wants to know, am I making this up or sometime in the last few years? Was there a semi-exclusive 1911 that had like a mosaic tile pattern on it? I'm sure you talked about it on the show, but can't find images anywhere.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Can I tell you how much I love this question? You can. Just like that someone's putting in the thought process because this is me. Tim, I'm speaking to you as someone who does this exact thing. Am I making this up or was there this product that did this? And a lot of times we have discovered that, yeah, there was this product that did this. And that's the exact case in this, in what Tim's talking about. Do you recall this before you clicked on the link? Did you know what Tim was talking about? Because I knew immediately.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I know because I regretted that I never bought one of these.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, Sailor did a series of King of Pen years and years and years ago called the Mosaic. And they spell it in a very interesting way. M-O-Z-A-I-Q-U-E. Mosaic.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And the story goes, so I have one of the original King of Pen mosaics. That's how I pronounce them, just like mosaic, like M-O-S-A-I-C, like a tile table. But anyway, that's neither here nor there. I don't know the proper pronunciation, which is not a shock to anyone who's ever listened to this show. And the story goes that Sailor found X amount of material in rod form from that King of Pen project sitting in the warehouse. And decided to make a series, a small run of the 1911 model, which is the smaller version of the King of Pen, in these four mosaic patterns. And that's what this is. So, we'll put a link in the show note for you, Tim. I took a picture of one and sent to Myke one of the red, I think, was it red mosaic? Yeah. So, the red mosaic I sent to Myke when I saw it at a pen show, took a picture. And they're really neat. And I thought you went out of your way to get one of those, but apparently not, huh?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think there was one of these things that happens to me every now and again where, like, I got really close and then got cold feet. Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And it was also a matter of not all materials were available in equal quantity, right? Like, the green one, which is what I have for the King of Pen, I think there was hardly any of those. But there was, like, a lot of the brown ones. And the red one I got to see in person looked spectacular. But, like, this was a quick, quick, small launch, and they went away fast. But that is, you are not making it up, Tim. And I hope this helps.