Editing The Pen Addict 64/transcript (section)

== Pen Design Concerns ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Let me tell you what I think. How about that? And just kind of a big picture. What I believe this is. What I believe it isn't. And then we'll just kind of jump off from there. So one thing. Let's get this out the way real quick. There's people that are tossing around the word scam. Around this Kickstarter project. I don't believe for one second this is a scam project. And by scam I mean that, you know, you're going to pledge your money. And the money is going to vanish. And you're not going to get a product. I don't think for a second. I think this is a legitimate pen that's being manufactured.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That said. I think there are so many red flags around the manufacturer of this pen. One. That I don't know that even at $37. Which is the. Well, that pledge level is gone. And we're going to talk about that more too. Right now it's $45 you can get it at. I don't think it's a good value. And the reasons why are very, very long. But let's start with the founder of the project.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Boy, I'm blanking on his name. I think it's Malcolm. Oh, sorry. Morgan. Morgan. Morgan is the guy behind the BHG design. And so what Morgan did was he came up with this whole project around this Visionaire pen. And if nothing else, Morgan is a brilliant marketer.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. That's what I mean. I watched the video and pledged.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I mean, he kills the project page of the Visionaire pen. The video is extraordinarily well done. His writing is very well done. He hits.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' He's got the magic as far as the marketing goes. Okay. So I think that's why a lot of people got in on this pen. If you start. If you look at some of the original comments, people are saying, this is my first fountain pen. This is going to be my first fountain pen. I've never used a fountain pen before, but I'm backing this. You know, that's kind of a recurring theme right in the beginning, right? It's people who don't have any fountain pen experience and are looking at this, seeing it's a good deal. And the way he is marketed and compares it to other high-end pens and things like that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' He really, he sells the heck out of this pen on this project page. He does a killer job. If he's not in marketing, he should be. Because that's the best thing about this project page by far. So then this project starts to get some traction. And some people with more fountain pen experience start to get involved. They start backing it. And they're happy with it. And then they start just asking general questions. Where's the pen being manufactured? What's the nib material made from? You know, all kinds of different, like, physical spec-type questions. What's the material of the pen?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Things like that. And Morgan is not doing a good job answering those questions. He is answering around those questions without answering them directly. And that makes that, that's when this thing starts getting sideways a little bit. Where people are really questioning the sourcing of this pen, the design of this pen, how it's coming to be, how it's going to be manufactured. And Morgan, to his demise a little bit in this, as well as the marketing piece of this done, the customer service piece, he is not handling that well as far as answering backers' questions. So I read, there's, what, what are we at now? 383 comments already on this. And I read through them all this weekend in preparation. I knew we were going to talk about this. And it's really gone from, you know, the original comments were, I'm a new fountain pen user, to now, you know, everyone's got lots of questions about, basically, everyone's becoming very skeptical of this project. And I don't have any firsthand knowledge of this pen. I am not a backer of this pen. And what I did yesterday is I did reach out to Morgan, sent him an email through the backer page. There's a contact page. He got back to me, like, within an hour, like, really quick.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' He, you know, I said, hey, I wanted to ask him some questions or, you know, call him about this project. He got back to me. He said, yeah, I'd be happy to. We can do this over email or phone. So I sent him my phone number, told him I'm free right now. He could call me. I said, and I can also put together a list of questions that I'll send you an email, kind of, you know, the questions I have around this project. So I sent him that last night. And as of this morning, I hadn't gotten a phone call or haven't gotten any answers back to my questions. You know, it's he didn't have the longest amount of time to answer it. So I don't really fault him for that. You know, I sent it late last night at like around midnight. And as of now, he hasn't replied to my email. About 20 minutes before we started recording, Myke, he sent me a text.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' He said, Brad, watching my kids this afternoon, we'll try to call you later today or tomorrow around five.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think that's a really good person that he, you know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' He's said that several times before in his other comments. I'm on my family vacation. I'm spending time with my family. That's a recurring theme, though. So it is what it is. I'm assuming I can't do anything, but assume that's true. And to his defense, I didn't send these questions till late last night anyway. So I just replied. I said, sounds good. We're recording the podcast in about 20 minutes. If you have a chance to answer those email questions beforehand, that would be great. If not, I understand.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So tell me, what are the concerns here then? Like, why are there concerns?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The concerns are around the manufacturing of the pen, the design of the pen, what he's calling, what he designed, what pieces did he design, where it's being manufactured, and what the, basically, I think anyone with fountain pen experience is looking at this and going, where's the value? And where's the innovation? So do you want to know the questions I emailed him?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. So reading through everything. And let me go back. Let me talk about the project a little bit more. I need to lay some more groundwork. So you watch the video. The recurring theme on the project page is Morgan Hessein. He is a, he designed, he repeatedly says he designed this pen to fit his needs and things like that. And one of the problems with him repeatedly saying that is then he comes back in the comments section when backers are questioning the design of the pen. He says, I don't have a lot of experience with fountain pens. So that's a big contradiction and a red flag to me. If you design this pen, and then on top of that, you don't have a lot of fountain pen experience. What did you design?