Editing The Pen Addict 299/transcript (section)

== Fountain Pens ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' The short ones are often the hardest ones. If you could only keep three pens, what would they be, Myke? Fountain pens, please. This is fountain pens for Kalen.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm going to say, right now, I obviously will want to keep a sailor, and I think right now, today, it would have to be the pink love, because, like, I've gone through so much to get that thing. Then I, oh, see, now I'm looking at everything here. But today, today, it's probably going to be two sailors. I'm going to go with the pink love and the fifth anniversary, just because of how much I wanted them, and I'll be sad to have to let them go. And then, like, they're fountain pens, so they might run out of ink, and then what am I going to do? So then I'll go with a Retro 51 or some description.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, liars. See, it's got to be fountain pens, so.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, it was all fountain pens? Sorry, I misheard that part.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Then I'll also throw the Pilot M90 in, too. Oh, that's a good one. I didn't think about that one. So, yeah, I mean, I think, I hate to say, like, super obvious things, but it's my Pilot 823, it's my Nakaya portable, and my Sailor King of pen. I think, if I just had those three pens, I'd be happy, so look for a big sale coming soon. Just kidding.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right, this one's from Ken, so maybe I'll see Ken in Arkansas. I got to meet him there last year.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And this is, I have an email in my inbox from someone else who was asking around this type of question, too, so maybe this will help them. We're seeing a lot of action around brick-and-mortar pen stores lately. In 2017, Daly's pen shop closed its physical store to focus solely on online sales, and Paradise Pen closed all their stores and ceased operations. Looks like a few Mont Blanc boutiques closed last year, too. Amid all these closures, the Andersons are thriving in a smallish physical market, and they just announced they're opening a second location. Yay! Also, ex-Fountain pens transformed into Birmingham pens and opened a brick-and-mortar in Pittsburgh. To what do you attribute these wild differences in success? Why do established companies and large markets fade away when relative newcomers explode in smaller markets? Is it due to business practices, philosophies, successful leverage of internet and social media? Voodoo? What do you think is going on here?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' To me, it's easy. And I don't think we have to look very hard for the answer. And it's... Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I know who you're done with this.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's who's keeping up to date with all the changes going on in the market, which is social media, internet sales. Yep. Who listens to this show, has ever set foot in dailies? Has ever bought anything from dailies online? Has ever bought anything from Paradise Pens online? You might have set foot in a Paradise Pens before. Or who has bought from a Mont Blanc store. Every place he's said that's shut down is a non-player in our game, if you will. I don't know another way to put it. But they are... They do not exist in the realm of the modern pen shopper. Things have changed. Those who change with it thrive. You know who those companies are. And they're allowed to move that success into areas like new brick-and-mortar locations that I fully anticipate will thrive as well and bring in a whole new market into their business. So I think there's a pretty clear line of demarcation just in Ken's words on that page. Everyone who's closed didn't count. Like, they weren't... They weren't willing to adapt. Yeah, they weren't in this game. They're playing an old game. There's a new game that's been played for the last 10 years. And if you're not, you know, figuring out those rules for that game, you're going to be gone just like the rest of them. So, wow, that was mean, Brad.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I know. You're just throwing down the gauntlet today.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, okay. This is a quick one. See, I haven't gone through these letters again. There's only a few. This was actually a short question. Okay. And this is actually a postscript. So it's a PS. This is from Andrew. Do all Signo 207s write like this? It skips mad. Ugh. So I think I saved this one because some of the 207s, especially .5mm, write like crap. So thankfully, the 307s do not. So switch over to the 307. They have a much more consistent ink. But I saved that because I've mentioned that in the past. Especially the blue .5 207s were really bad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's a pen I love. You know I love that pen. But those are not real good. All right. I should have come more prepared for this letter writing thing. I still have them all in the original envelopes. And I'm doing a dance while I open this letter to see where the question is because this letter is two pages long. Hang on a second. And it's green. And I'm wondering if I'm going to get the ink on my hand. Why is this in the stack? Oh. So this letter says. There we go. All I've called in this letter so far is Mr. Hurley for shame. Oh, come on. I like this one already. Yeah. So let me just read this letter because I don't know why it's in the stack. It's got hashtag TPA at the top. So let me just go through it because I can't pull out the question. And this is from Mule. It's short for Samuel. Dear Misters Dowdy and Hurley. Because we want to see how Mule dogs you out. So thank you for the hard work each of you do to create such a wonderful show each week. Oh, that's clearly why I put this in here. While I cannot say I'm a longtime listener, I'm concurrently listening to the current episodes and all the backup episodes starting with episode one. I only have about a year left to go before I'm all caught up. Despite being a fan of the show, I must say I'm disappointed with Mr. Hurley's most recent episode of Myke at the Movies. This must be why I saved it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' What is happening? Okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, this is great. The topic was a few good men and Mr. Hurley failed to mention Kevin Pollock's pen story from the set of that movie, which was discussed on episode 154 of the Pen Addict podcast. For shame, Mr. Hurley. For shame. We have a couple of things here. I remember that. I remember that. I'm taking umbrage with this already. This is a great letter, Mule. This is a wonderful letter.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is terrible. All right. Let me tell you why. It frustrates me. Okay. I'm channeling a frustration here when people say, you forgot to mention this, right? Like, no, I didn't. It just wasn't in my head, right? Like, it wasn't like I was going to talk about it and then forgot to talk about it. It was just like, when we spoke about that on May 11th, 2015, on episode 154, I had no concept of the movie. I'd never seen it. So, I would not retain that information. So, that's all I'm going to say on this matter.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So, I'm going to get to the Ask TPA, but let me continue. That horrendous moment aside, let us move on to my question.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Gosh.