Editing The Pen Addict 74/transcript (section)

== Product Satisfaction ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, no, I totally appreciate that. And that's, you know, I've gotten a lot, believe me, my parents are asking, you know, do you have this? Is this right? You know, are you doing this? Are you doing that? And I'm like, yes, mom, we're doing that. But, you know, and also, you know, I'm fortunate enough to have friends like Dan Bishop at Keras Customs.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Of course, yes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I can call up and spend, you know, two hours on the phone and say, you know, this is what we're trying to do. What am I missing, you know, and have things like that. So I've got the benefit of being able to talk to people like Dan and kind of get some feedback to make sure we have all our bases covered. And he's been like that too. He's like, now I'm seeing the pricing. Like, are you sure you've got this covered and this covered? And I'm like, yep, we've got it. It's right here. I'm staring right at it. It's accounted for. So, you know, it's, you know, it's still, there's still a possibility of the unknown happening. But I feel more comfortable about the manufacturing and fulfillment piece of it than anything.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Do you have any concerns? Like that you can point to?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Not really. I'm feeling pretty good about it. You know, it might get down to, if it really goes berserk, like if something, say it goes to $100,000 and there's, you know, I don't know, whatever number of backers, thousands of backers. There might be some time, you know, concerns. Yeah. But I really don't think on that side of the ledger.

'''Myke Hurley:''' In January. Right. Which is, and that, you haven't left that, like typically people leave it a bit longer for a manufacturing. But it's because you know you can do it. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if you've started working on them. I don't, I don't know. Or will be very, very soon.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. We haven't decided that yet. I think we're going to wait a little bit longer because we'll have to order the, we want to get the quantities right. When we order the fabrics and stuff like that, we don't have all that. So it just depends on how ahead of time we want to do it. I know talking with Dan, you know, it can be, say after the funding period ends, it can be weeks before the money actually gets into your bank account to where you're able to start ordering. And we may just have to bite the bullet and get that ordered, you know, and get that ordered early before the money actually appears to where we can pay for it kind of thing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, you're going to have 30 day terms with a lot of companies anyway to get the product to pay. Right. If the business is done the same way. And I guess the benefit you've got is you know you're going to get the money. Whether it takes two, three, four weeks, you know it's coming. So even if you had to find some other way to finance it that it wasn't a problem for you, like if you had the ability to do that, then you could do it. Right. You could, if you needed to spend $5,000 to get some stuff in and between the two of you, you can throw that money together, then you just do it because it makes the whole thing easier for you. Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Right. Yeah. So like manufacturing and fulfillment, that stuff doesn't keep me up at night, you know.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What keeps me up at night is making a product that people like and people want and that people think is going to be good.

'''Myke Hurley:''' See, I think, I know that for me personally, and when I, because I've been showing this to everybody that I can just because of how proud I am of you. Like all my friends, my family, they've all seen this. I've had to explain Kickstarter to so many people. I actually showed it to my mom and she was like, why can't you do this? I was like, thanks mom.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Cheers. Thanks for that. Yeah. I'll get right on that. And because she's seen the number, right? She saw it yesterday and you'd made like 16,000 or something. She's like, why don't you do this? It's like, because I haven't got the great idea like, like Brad and Jeffrey. I don't have that. I didn't have the idea. And by saying like, I think people, this comes across in your video, I think to people that don't know you, but the people that are, that know you, they know you're not what, this is how I feel. You're not going to make a bad product here. Because you know what you want. And I feel like for being a good friend, I feel you're, we are good friends. I know that you have very strict levels of what you consider to be acceptable and unacceptable in something. And I believe you wouldn't ship an unacceptable product. Right. Like you just wouldn't do that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. There's no doubt. And Jeffrey, you know, that's one of the things that clicked with us right in the beginning is we're both kind of that same way. We're, you know, we're very particular about what we like and what we want and what we want to see. And, you know, what the, you know, concerned about the minutiae type of stuff. So, yeah. Yeah. So, we're both very concerned about, not concerned isn't the right word, but we're very, you know, aware of, you know, look and fit and finish and style. And, you know, everything that's going to, you know, make a high quality product that people are going to get in their hands and love, hopefully love. So, yeah. We take pride in this. And, you know, we're, I guess we're at this point, you know, now we're anxious to like start getting stuff into people's hands.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Speaking of which, you've been sending some like prototype models out, haven't you?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, yeah, I did. I don't have a lot to send out. So, I picked out a few of my blogging friends, sent some out on Saturday. So, they would arrive kind of, you know, early this week and just kind of, you know, people who know me, you know, like me, you know, my family, my wife, you know, my family that have actually physically seen these cases. They're like, oh, it's great. It's fantastic. But they don't use the cases like I use the cases or you would use the cases. And so, to be able to get it in the hands, we didn't send any out like early, early on, like our early prototypes when we were still working on. This is kind of our final prototypes. You know, I wanted to get some other feedback on. And so, like Ed Jelly made a post today.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' His photography is always so great. And Ed's been a guest on this show. And he did a great job. We sent him the lookout, which is just the, it's the holster style case. And he did a really good job of doing some photos. And he actually, when I woke up today and was talking to Jeffrey, he's like, did you see Ed's post? I was like, yeah. Did you see all the stuff he was doing with the case and sticking the field notes in there and flipping it over like a stand? I was like, yeah, I didn't know you could do that. So, you know, those are the things, you know, you get staring at a product for so long. You need a fresh set of eyes on it and see kind of the neat things that Ed did with it. I thought that was pretty cool.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Joe, I'm looking at these, like that material. I know this is going to sound insane. But if some ink leaked in there, that's going to look awesome, in my opinion. Like if you had like, say like the dark blue one and maybe some dark blue ink, like say, I don't know, say you had a fountain pen explosion. There's something about that to me that I think would look really cool. I don't think everyone would agree. But for me personally, there would be something about that that I would quite like. I'm not going to pour ink all over mine when I receive them. I will allow the wear and tear to get it for me. But there's just something about that just because they're so, they're very attractive, but they're rugged in a good way. Yes, yes. And there's something about that once they, once these cases are going to start to look like worn in and used, I think that they will take on an individual life for everyone. And I think that's kind of cool. I like that. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And that's why, you know, Jeff and I both like this material, this nylon corduroy material. It's a real durable, I mean, it's essentially like exterior backpack material, you know, for all intents and purposes. So it's thick and durable, but it's still pliable and soft, you know, to where, you know, it's going to work good, you know, when you're carrying it around and, you know, putting it in other bags and things like that. It's just kind of going to work well for anyone who's using it for pen storage and, you know, being mobile and carrying it around. So that was kind of our goal. That's why we wanted to use this fabric, just because, you know, Jeffrey and I like it and we think it makes for a good pen case.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It looks good, but it's fit for purpose.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And you're Mr. Myke Dudek.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I love that. He shared out a picture last night and I sent him a sample case too. He has a different model. His is called the Hightower, which has been a very popular case. It's the three plus one case where you have three pen slots on the left side and then a single pocket on the right side for a memo book.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's the one that I can't wait to get my hands on. I feel like that's the one that I will use every day.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah, same here. I've been using the Brasstown, the Zip Roll, but then the Hightower is probably the second most used one that I use.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's just super functional. It just fit a need that I wanted. There were two cases that were the first designs that I had to have. It was this Hightower, which is the three plus one, and then the Roll Pen case, which is the Brasstown. So I knew if we were doing this, those two would be made. And I just like Myke's picture. I was like, wow. Once you start seeing it with other people, then you're going, we made that? Man, that guy's got a cool case. Where did he get that? Oh, we made that. That's kind of nice. Yeah. It puts a big smile on my face. And I love the, I don't know, I just like that shot from Myke. And we'll have all this in the show notes. And the label came out really good.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We did go ahead and get a bunch of labels ordered, and I like how they turned out. They look good on the case.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I can tell, I don't know who chose the colors, but if it was a mixed effort, I definitely know what ones you chose.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Which ones are that?

'''Myke Hurley:''' The orange one.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, no doubt. No doubt.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Did you work on the, obviously the orange was your choice, but did you pick the other colors too, or was that like a collaborative effort?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Actually, we collaborated on all three of the colors. It was, it's, that was actually kind of a difficult process. I mean, we did it somewhat quickly, but trying to figure out what works well together without seeing like big sheets of fabric. You know, we just have like small, like three by three inch fabric samples and trying to put that together and see what comes out well.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm very pleased that you went with a greenish Kickstarter only.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, it's, it's kind of, sort of, kind of, sort of green. That's, that color is.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Man, the render case look good in those. Sorry. I just see, I just looked at that picture again and seeing those render case look.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' In person, and even in pictures, this one came out really well with the dark interior. It's the only one with the darkest interior and a lighter outside. It's kind of reversed from the other ones, which all have a darker outside exterior material and a lighter interior material. This one's kind of reversed, and it came out really good looking.