Editing The Pen Addict 310/transcript (section)

== Big Brands ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, so, that brings us into the big brands. Like, this is an area, like, I don't, one thing I want to, I'll stop and say this right now, is, this is the view from my chair. Like, I don't have knowledge of all these operations of all these companies and how they work. This is just my perception of being in the industry and talking to people and having my own business. This is my, you know, my perception of what I think. I certainly, you know, will, you know, give it to the, the other experts and business owners if they would like to chime in and, and correct, you know, where I'm, I'm mistaken. I would love to hear from anyone who wants to add to this conversation. But back to the big brands, this is where I get confused a little bit just as far as how they're going to continue to grow and succeed because they're growing and succeeding big time. So I mentioned two brands in the article, Pelican and Sailor, and they both confuse me in their own right. Pelican has, I, the, the anecdote I told was about me being in drum ghouls and seeing literally every Pelican pin you would see in a Pelican catalog. Every size, every style, every shape, essentially all their striped models in fountain, rollerball, ballpoint, pencil, in every size from 200 up to 1,000. Like, literally the entire Pelican catalog. And the only pin people repeatedly asked to see was the Pelican Ocean Swirl, which is a special edition they launched. You know, it's sitting there amongst the Pelicans too. The regular stock lineup. So, does the stock lineup continue to be a successful endeavor for Pelican? Is that their main source of income? I'd argue that yes, it's very important to them for new customers, continuing customers, gift and corporate customers. But, in our world, you know, the online world, the pin addict world, we want to know where the limited editions are. So, the question I posed is, does Pelican want to sell you one or two pins over your lifetime? Or do they want to sell you one or two pins a year? And what are the percentages of those sales? Like, the one or two pins over a lifetime, is that 75% of their sales? Because that market is so huge that I just don't have scope of? Or, is it all the limited editions, that they churn through, you know, six or eight or ten times throughout the year, does that take up 50 or 60% of their sales? I would wager not. So, I'm confused on that. Like, what is going to happen with a super big brand like Pelican who has a core lineup that never changes, right? When's the last time Pelican's introduced, like, new base level stripe pins? I mean, I don't know. I'm not a Pelican expert. I could probably ask Joshua and find out. So, I don't know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, that's the question I have around them. These are just things I'm like saying out loud because I don't have answers to. I assume the core product lineup obviously does very well for them in a lot of markets. But I wonder if there will be a shift in that, you know, in the near term. On the other side of the coin, I talk about Sailor and I wonder, do you even know what their stock lineup is? Are they purely limited in special editions? I mean, the answer is no. They have a stock lineup, but I couldn't name it for you. Like, I could name Pelican's stock lineup right now. You know, it's probably 50, 60, 80 pins. I can't tell you what Sailor's stock lineup is. Is that important to them as a business? Do they only do these special releases now? I just, these are just things I'm asking out loud because I don't really have the answers for, but I find it interesting that two huge brands like that operate in very, very different ways, I think. Do you have anything to say on these?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I would expect that, and I'm trying to think of the analogy, but I can't think of it, but I know there is one, that the standard edition Pelicans, you know, and this is probably the same for a company like Montblanc too, the sale of those editions pay for everything else. So, like, that would be my expectation is the corporate and executive sales and the graduation presents and all that kind of stuff, those pens, the standard ones that they sell, the black ones with the gold trim or whatever, you know, they are, I would expect, paying for the creativity that can occur in the limited editions. Because I would expect for a company like Pelican, or the size of Pelican, that they, considering they're seeming to do more of this sort of stuff now than they have before, potentially, my expectation is this is just people who are creative who just want to make some beautiful pens and they do these as a thing to sell to their kind of hardcore client, people like you, right? Right, right. And they will, and they will just keep doing those and they charge probably a premium for them, so it just, you know, because whatever, why not? But I would expect that a lot of the costs that is required for this type of stuff is recouped by their kind of standard edition, their bread and butter.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So this was the group where I had the most questions and the least answers, right? And I find it extremely interesting what the future is going to hold for the big brands.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think a lot of them are not stupid. I think that's why this has happened. Right? Except Lamy. Lamy's stupid. Lamy is questionable. Lamy is questionable. Because the thing about Lamy is, like, they've always been a little bit more wild than the others anyway, right? Like, to begin with. Because they do special editions in certain countries and, you know, they've always, for as long as I've known them, they've done some stuff. It's just, they don't make special editions of their expensive pens. Yeah. They make special editions of the Safari or whatever, right? Their special editions are way more frequent in their plastic pens than their Macrolon pens or whatever that material is called. You know? Man. But I... Can you imagine

'''Brad Dowdy:''' if they expanded that Macrolon lineup? Good lord. Sorry.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I assume that there is a reason and that reason is maybe not wanting to dilute the specialness of the 2000. Sure.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know. And again, this is, the big brands is also the perfect example of I only see it through my eyes, right? Like, I have no clue about how these brands operate worldwide. You know, it's certainly an interesting topic and I think we're both right in that these, the Pelican example is, you know, that's a super healthy business for them and that allows them to do the other fun things that pen addicts like to buy. So, yeah, it's good for all of us. So, last topic I wrote about were pen shows and vintage pens. I kind of lumped those things together because vintage is really hard to purchase online. Like, a pen show is a really good place to buy vintage. I think the pen show circuit will have a mini reckoning here in the next five to ten years where some shows are going to die out, smaller shows are going to grow, and new shows might pop up to take over some of these fading away shows. At some point, that's got to happen. We may see it. You know, this year is the telling year for DC. I mean, DC's not going to go away, per se, but it might be a completely different show as soon as next year, depending on what happens. You know, I talked about how some of the traditional vendors are boycotting the show and not going to go to the show because, you know, the people who run the show are not really good at their jobs. LA has that kind of same problem. So, are you going to see some churn in the pin show world? I kind of think so. Like, I think there's room, not today, but, like, in the next few years, there might be room for one or two, like, new style shows where it's not just a pin show, it's the pin convention topic that we've talked about for years, right? I could see that happening, like, in a place like Philadelphia or Baltimore or Atlanta or things like that. So, you know, San Francisco is a prime example of a show that's, you know, really turned up the heat on these traditional shows and it's going to start cutting out, you know, some of the, some of the smaller, less well-run shows. So, I see opportunities there. I actually see opportunity in vintage pins if some of the vintage vendors would take the time or we have some new vintage vendors come up that have an education front as the leading, the leading thing that they want to sell. Vintage pins are scary to a lot of people that listen to our show and, you know, that are newer into the industry because they just don't know a lot about them. There's not a lot of information. The information is hard to find or hard to digest and you have to go talk to people in person at pin shows to learn these things and not everyone can do that. So, there's an opportunity, a real opportunity. Someone like Jesse, who's in the chat room and is on the BYOB podcast, she's a huge Esther Brook restorer. She's like one of the most nicest people you'll meet. She'll sit there and talk to you and tell you everything about these pins and that's why people shop with her because she makes it easy for you. A lot of vintage vendors do not make it easy for you. There's a massive opportunity for someone to come in and do vintage for the modern consumer and I don't know if that's going to happen. I would love it to happen. I would support them every step of the way. I would go out of my way to do anything I could because we actually we need this vintage market to continue on through our lifetimes and I'm a little scared that it's not. And I'm not the person that can lead that charge. That's not my area of expertise but there's a lot of people our age that are really into vintage pins. I just think there's a massive educational opportunity there for someone who wants to take that ball and run with it. We'll see. That's one of those things I hope will happen that I don't know will happen but I would die to see that. That would be a great thing and it won't be easy because like I said on selling that stuff online is super tough. If you could make a name for yourself in quality vintage pins and education of said pins I think you could do pretty well.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I agree with that actually.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah and I would love to shop with that person. Like I pay premiums for vintage pins that I know have been restored and come from someone I respect like Martin Ferguson. You know it's worth me buying you know $150 vacuum that I know is perfect and I can just take home and go than a $75 vacuumatic from some that's just laying on a table you know with you know ink stains and jacked up nibs that you don't know what's going to happen with that pin. So I don't know. I think there's a there's an opportunity in both pin shows and vintage pins and we'll see what happens. I hope to see some changes in that too. So any last thoughts on this? I talked about this a lot more in refill went into depth on a lot of these topics and still only scratched the surface right? That's like 10% of the conversation and it's also skewed by my perception.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And a lot of this is conjecture like sure it's what we think and and that that you know you can take that with a grain of salt but I think that there are certain areas that we've can't help but have paid a lot of attention to you know especially around kind of the indie scene. Right. But that that's the big one for me. I think that we're going to see more of that. I think that we I know you're pretty you seem pretty bullish on like more traditional retail. I'm less than than you are on that like I think that it will it will change but I don't think that the business is going to get bigger. I just think a lot of the old God are going to go away.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's far and away the scariest traditional retail is the scariest. I mean if it wasn't scary I would have opened a pen shop in Atlanta already.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Of course you would have. Right. But there is nowhere near the same like kind of risk will reward ratio than there is setting up a Kickstarter campaign right for a thing that you want to make. Plus the bit that those businesses are just so different anyway. But yeah so it's it's I find it to be very interesting to look at the kind of the business and the economics of this and again like I'm keen to see where we are in the next few years.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep.