Editing The Pen Addict 200/transcript (section)

== Nock Business ==


'''Brad:''' So, it was our first show ever for Nock. It went, I mean, of course, it ended up going super last year. This year, it was, from a business perspective, like, obviously better just because there's more people. We were better prepared inventory-wise. We were able to set up and not be nervous wrecks in a shorter time frame because we've done it before. Just the same thing as anyone going to their first pin show. People here, I know a bunch of y'all have been, this is your first pin show. It's super stressful not going to know who's the right person to talk to, who's the right person to buy from. And it's like the same thing with us setting up is like, I don't know exactly what to do. I told Jimmy Dole of the show promoter last year that you should put me next to the Andersons because when I panic and have questions, I know them already. And I can get help quickly. Luckily, I didn't require any help and it came out fine. So, this year is definitely calmer from a personal standpoint. I feel like, you know, the ship ran very smoothly this year. Not that it didn't last year, but we made our own lives easier this year and business is booming.

'''Myke:''' Not overall. Yeah. Because we did this this year. Yeah.

'''Brad:''' Very different. We did this thing with all the eyeballs looking at us. Yeah.

'''Myke:''' But you talk about the Blue Label stuff.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. So, we try, we like to mess around. I mean, we like to create things and try to do innovative things or try something new that hasn't been done. And Jeff's the pro at that. Like, I get emails or text or Slack images. What about this? What about that? Just like all of his brain is constantly going on like design stuff. Um, and it's like all really good. Like, Jeff doesn't have a lot of misses, which is what impresses me the most out of him. Um, so he just comes up with these ideas and we're at a point as a company where we're hitting this growth spurt that we can't quite handle. Like with standard inventory. Yep. But we still have to scratch that creative itch a little bit or we'd go insane. Right. So, we're able to fit in something like limited edition, limited colors. And we decided to give it a name. We always kind of did this thing. We call it small batch and we release it online, which would be just a case we make already in just a different color or something a little bit different. So, we decided to give it like an official name. And it's kind of like our playground. So, the Blue Label is like our playground. We're going to try new products there. We're going to try new designs. We never made a case with a snap before. So, we wanted to see how that would work and what people think about it. So, um.

'''Myke:''' So, this case that you made, because you've been teasing it, it's a snap open. Mm-hmm. It's blue and red. Blue and red. Like a royal blue and a bright red. The flap which you open up has got a place where you can pop your pen in. Yeah. It's got a pen slot. You need a clipped pen, preferably. Yep. Or just slide right out of there. Or, and then it's basically just like a big pocket. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a, it's like an envelope carry type case. Envelope case.

'''Ana Reinert:''' I have one with me. Anyone? You want to see it? Yeah.

'''Myke:''' So, this is what, you know, this is something that you did. And how did we sell them? Because this is, this is pretty funny. Yeah.

'''Brad:''' So, I mean, you know, we want to try to be good to all our customers and make sure everyone gets what they want. So, we kind of, we knew we were only going to make a limited amount. So, we made 40 of them. We bought enough material, you know, to, to manage doing something extra in our workflow is a challenge as it is. So, we had to pick a number that was good enough to give everyone a taste if they wanted, but not 200 to where we can't make regular stuff. So, we did that and we teased a little bit online and we set it up. We just made 40 of them. We broke them out at noon on Friday. We let everyone know ahead of time. So, we had a, we had a pretty good crowd.

'''Myke:''' People were coming up, right? This is at like 9 a.m. on Friday morning. The show is not even open, right? There are still people that haven't even arrived to set up. You got the label stuff? Like, you got the special case? It's like 12 o'clock. Come back at 12. 11.45 is probably about eight or nine people just like waiting.

'''Myke:''' And they're just waiting. And then, and then, so basically 12 o'clock rolls around and the thing starts standing. And Jeff had some policy that he set up, which I saw in action that he was very strict about. So, it was one per person and you had to be there. Like, you had a couple of people send him text messages saying like, can you hold one for me? And I saw him say, no, I cannot hold one for you. Yeah. I stole the first one and just rung it through the Square Reader. Yeah, Myke didn't even get any advanced special treatment. No, I basically put them on the table and I just picked one up and just ran my card through the Square Reader. So, I got one. And then, I think we sold like half in about two minutes. And then, the rest kind of staggered out over like an hour or so.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, yeah.

'''Myke:''' Like, I went away to get a drink. It's like, it's died down. I was like, oh, okay. We have these for a while. Went away to get a drink. Came back and they're all gone. So, I don't know. It's like a second wave of people. But you're pretty happy with that, right? Yeah, super happy with it.

'''Brad:''' And, you know, this is something like we want to continue to do. We love getting feedback on our cases, how they're functioning. You know, especially when we try something new and getting those out there in people's hands. And letting them play with it and do things that we wouldn't normally do with it. And see how they hold up and how they function and what we can do better. Like, it's great. Like, all of our customers are like really good at giving us feedback on our products. Like, you know, I'll have people walking up to me today saying, you know, what do you, you know, can we talk about this case? And here's how I use it. And here's the things that I'm thinking about when I'm using it. And is that something, you know, you might think about integrating? And, you know, we don't know. But just having that conversation is super helpful as a business.

'''Myke:''' So, for me, I think the biggest change this year is the vibe. The vibe of the show has been really different. Tons of new faces.

'''Myke:''' Lots of listeners of the show have been coming up to me. Like, a ton of people that I didn't meet last time have been coming up. And I think one, like, personally, something that's been really interesting is how many people have been telling me about the other real AFM shows they listen to. Yeah.

'''Brad:''' Like CGP Grey woke me up in the bed the other morning.

'''Myke:''' Well, that was a whole different thing. I was watching a video. He had a video come out. You woke me up at, like, 5 a.m. I was, you know, I was relaxing. And, yeah, there's been a couple of Cortex t-shirts. I'm looking at one on Doug right now. And, yeah, it's been really cool, actually. Yeah. It feels like one of two things are happening, which is either, like, Pan Addict listeners are going out and finding other shows. And the other one, which I've heard, is, like, people are hearing about this show from other shows on Real AFM and tuning in, which is great. And I'm happy that we're finding people like that. I've heard from a bunch of people who have done the all the way from the beginning in, like, I think it's almost like 30 days. Chuck, was it 30 days? Yeah, 30 days, 200 episodes. Like, doesn't sleep, I don't think. Yeah. And there's a bunch of people who have done a thing that I think is really interesting that I don't think I could do, which is, like, coming in at, like, 180 and listening to the new episode every week, but also going back. Like, so hearing, like, these two separate timelines of us. I don't know how you keep that straight. Yeah. And a ton of comments about, like, you guys hated fountain pens. Yeah. Never lived that one down. Yeah. But I'm really excited for next year now because looking at how much this has grown is incredible. And, like, doing this, it's going quite well, I think, with all these people in the room feeling all right about it now. I'm very excited to do it all over again. So this has been great, and I can't wait to do it next year. I'm not even done yet.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. No, we've got a long way to go.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Do you guys want to do this again next year?

'''Brad:''' Yeah.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. I like that. Team club time. Yeah. All right. So I've come to the end of our planned topic, so I think it's time for some questions. So if anybody has any questions, please, if you could go and line up at the microphone.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. So while we're waiting, I'm going to go with the first question, okay? While we're going to get someone up there. So y'all don't listen to me. Y'all go get in line. So my first question is, do you remember episode 194 when we talked about a certain pen that a certain long worldwide traveler bought? Maybe had a skull or two on it. She may have arrived today. She might be sitting right over there. So we talked about a particular Nakaya we had, and we made a particular comment about this. And she stopped by earlier and brought something that I think you're going to like. So this is from Miss Lee Reyes, and we got a shirt that uses a quote from our show that seems to have lived on. So why don't you tell everyone what it says?

'''Myke:''' So on the shirt pocket of this shirt, it says, forged by pure evil. And then it has our logo and says, the pen addict podcast episode 194. Thank you, Leigh. That is amazing.

'''Myke:''' All right. Someone, come on. Come on. Come to the microphone. Don't be shy. Someone's going to have a question. All right, Dan. You go. Come on. You give me a face. Come and ask me a question.

'''Audience member:''' Who's your favorite Arizona pen manufacturer? I was just curious about that.

'''Brad:''' Are there any? Yeah. I got my phone. Let me look some up. There's a map on all things stationary. You can check out. Oh, okay. So if we need someone, but I'm going to go with Karas Customs because they're legitimately awesome.

'''Myke:''' Karas has a really interesting thing this year, which is a teal ink, right?

'''Audience member:''' Yeah.

'''Myke:''' And Dan was telling us at breakfast that this one's slightly different to the rest because they all had to be painted, right? Right. So tell me about that. Talk into the microphone. Tell me about it.

'''Audience member:''' So, yeah, we wanted something different for Atlanta. So we originally wanted to do an anodized teal, and everyone knows all the problems we have with anodized. So we came up with a solution where, well, they came up with a solution where I have to airbrush every single one, and then we put them in an oven, and then we bake them. Yeah. And, you know, the cookies come out, and then they're teal pens.

'''Brad:''' So y'all have heard me tell the story about the Kaweco Fire Blue Lilliput, where the theory is that Michael Gubrele, the CEO, president of Kaweco, takes the blowtorch to these pens himself. That's all I can see Dan in the Karas Customs office painting these things himself. There's a video of it. Yeah.

'''Audience member:''' It's on the, I think, the Karas Penco, and someone got mad at me because I didn't have a dust mask on. I kept telling Paul, I was like, don't show my face.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. You have a beard, so you're covered, I think. Yeah, yeah.

'''Audience member:''' It's filtration. I think that overrides OSHA regulations. I didn't get a flu shot because I just grew the beard, so. Is there any left? You still selling any? We sold all of the inks, but I think we have some EDKs, and then we did some faux patina on brass EDKs. I've seen that. So we're going to do some other ones. I think it's going to be fun. So it's something that if I don't want to do any office work, I can go out and make the shop guys mad because there's this huge dust cloud and fumes going towards the areas.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Isn't there something interesting about that material that you're using for the teal?

'''Audience member:''' It was primarily developed, I think, originally in the 60s for coating steel for firearms. So you can do, like they did like black and camouflage and stuff. And so it's like a ceramic-based coating, I guess. You bake it for a couple hours at 350 degrees, and it hardens it. So I don't know, it's kind of cool. Like I worked in the automotive paint industry for a long time, and so I mess with all kinds of paints, but this is the first time it's something that was oven cured like that.

'''Brad:''' So I'm going to brag on Karis Customs for a second because something cool happened today. Like I told Myke when we showed up Friday, we have these yellow knock notebooks that don't have our best paper in it, admittedly. That was version one. Version one. We've improved on it then. So I said any kids that come up to our table, hand them the pack of notebooks because we just want to promote that. We believe in that. We want the kids to be part of this. Give the pens, give the kids the paper, right? Yeah, right. Hey, DJ, DW and Phineas earmuffs, buddies. So yeah, we've been passing that out. And earlier this afternoon, our friend Chris from Alabama, he had his wife and his daughter, and they'd come and seen us. And they just had a few hours to spend at the show. And they came back, and I was walking somewhere, and they stopped me in the hallway like, you're not going to believe what just happened. And Dan or Paul, I don't know who it was, but they gave their daughter one of the copper EDKs, and they were just freaking ecstatic. I was so excited. Did she be able to lift that? How strong is this kid?

'''Audience member:''' She had to arm wrestle one of us first. I think that was Paul, yeah.

'''Brad:''' I thought that was super cool, and that's what this show's about. And I just wanted to say that was really, really cool. Yeah, I mean, the children are our future. Or was it Paul? Paul's got the heart, right? Yeah. Yeah, sing for us, Dan.

'''Myke:''' Nobody needs that. Thank you. So come on. Someone's got another question for us. Sorry, Anthony.

'''Brad:''' Anthony's got a question. Oh, he's going in front of the microphone and in front of the camera. This is probably going to be trouble.

'''Anthony:''' Hi. So this is a question for Myke. Okay. You've come a really long way to Atlanta for the pen show. This is your second show. So what did you do personally differently to prepare for this? And since it's almost two-thirds of the way through now, what do you want to do next year differently from this year?

'''Myke:''' I think the biggest thing was just trying to think through how we would have a show with an audience. Because it's a very different experience. Because if I do something stupid, there's people that are watching it happen. So that I can't hide from. One of the things that I learned from last year that I did differently this year was think about the fact that I was doing a show in two days and actually write some stuff down. Because last year, it was like 10 minutes before we were recording. And Brad said, what are we talking about? And I said, I don't know. So I've been writing stuff down as I usually do. But usually I'm not surrounded by pens for a few days. So I've been taking some notes and prepping. Next time, I want to see if we can get a bigger audience. Nice. So. Yeah, look at you. Look, everyone. There are people standing up right now. I would like everyone to be sitting down. And then maybe some more standing.