Editing The Pen Addict 242/transcript (section)

== Ask TPA Segment ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's strange. It's strange. You want to get stranger? We can do Ask TPA. That's where the strangeness always comes out. Yeah, that's where the strange is. This first one is actually more disappointing than strange. And it's from Michael in Slack. He says, I'm not sure if this would be podcast material, but I'd be interested to hear how you pick colorways for not products. So, there's no science to it. We don't use the blue bottle waterproof journal to lay out our master plans. And Jeff and I know kind of what we like. And we hope you like it too. That's kind of our philosophy. Like, we try to make things that are cool that we like. And we look at it and we say, I think people will like this. Or we hope people will like this. There's no hard, fast science to it. There's no, like, we're not taking the Pantone color of the year, for example, and integrating that through all of our products. We say, this looks cool together. Will it work as a product? Yes. Okay, move forward. No. Okay, go to the next thing. And, you know, we get out fabric samples. We lay them all out. We'll sit there, you know, sometime later this year. Well, like last year when we did the three new retail colors. So, we have Raven and Aqua. We have brown, coffee and amethyst. And we have Peacock and Coal. So, just the theory is we sit down and say, okay, we need to come up with our new case colors for this next batch of cases. So, we get out the books, start looking. And, like, I knew we've always wanted to do a brown exterior case. So, okay, we're definitely going to pick out a brown. What's going to look good with that? Well, purple would look pretty sweet with that. And do we have a good purple? And we landed on one pretty quick. And then we just go, done. We don't look at it again. Coffee and amethyst, done. Off to the side. Okay, that's kind of a wild color. We should probably do a regular-ish color. As regular as Knock will do. Okay, we don't have any black exterior cases. Let's make one. People always like black exteriors. You know, it's subtle. But we've got to have some pop into it. Because we're not going to do gray on the inside of the black. It's just not what we do. So, find a color. Hey, this Aqua looks pretty good. Oh, yeah. That Aqua looks good. Put some blue thread on it. Yeah. Okay. Raven and Aqua. Done. So, now we've got two pretty good colors. Do we want to do one more? Are we covered in this? I was like, no. Let's do something brighter. You know, something with a really exterior that pops. And a more subtle interior. And that's how Peacock and Cole comes up. I mean, those three colorways probably took us 30 minutes to come up with. I mean, there's no magic. We know what we like. We know what works together. We know what the case is going to look like with the added colors of pop. You know, opening it. What's the thread color going to look like? Like, it's pretty quick. And then we'll sleep on it. And if we have, like, any consternation about it. But I promise you, those three colorways we did were in about 30 minutes. And there was no change from the moment we decided on them. That's just how we work. I don't know how to explain it other than that. Which is also why we work so good together, right? I mean, we just.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We sit down. We know kind of generally what we want to accomplish. We break out material books. And then we go. It came out so good.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That purple's good looking.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I was the most worried about that case. Yeah. Because that purple's really, really strong. Uh-huh. It came out better than I even thought it would.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So these colorways, these three colorways you're talking about, they're only available at retailers, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, for now. We'll eventually have them on the shop. And we hope to bring them to pin shows. We're having all kinds of manufacturing delays right now.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I know, man. I'm sorry.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So. But that's about to be finished up. Yeah? Probably today. Yeah. Like, we're back on track. Back on production. So, yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Good man. Because that's what you were getting out there for, right? That's what you were meant to be on that plane for.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. That's what the plane route was for. So we got it all sorted out on the Skype on my phone after that. Good. I'm all about that purple. Well, I need these cases to sell in Atlanta. We're not making anything for the Atlanta pin show because we're counting on these products.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. Do you want me to come early and get to selling?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, sure. That'd be good. All right.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Sweet. Okay. I'll work on that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Yep. All right. So the next one we have kind of discussed on and off. And it never fails to be an excellent question. And it's one that I don't spend enough time thinking about. But I'm going to give this a shot anyway. So this is from Jacqueline in the Slack. Myers 18 Purdue. I think she's in the chat room today. She was earlier. From your perspective, what are the gaps in the stationary analog market that still need to be filled? Not only products, but also information, resources, etc. Is there anything that people ask you about or for on a regular basis that doesn't exist? You want to take a crack at this? Because you actually had a note.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's something that I've wanted for a long time. At one point in my life, I hoped you would do it. But then you had a better idea. I really want a cool fountain pen subscription service. Like you pay an amount of money that isn't absolutely obscene. And you get a nice cool pen once a quarter or something. You know, like a cool acrylic pen, you know, or something like that. Right, right, right. Or like something that's got like a really unique filling system to kind of help you broaden your landscapes a bit. I mean, it's something that it would be difficult to do because it would be expensive for everyone. But it's something that I still kind of really wish existed.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I took it from, well, first off, yours. Yeah, that would be cool. It would be wicked expensive, right? I mean. That's the problem. Just, yeah, that's the catch. But maybe it's even like a twice a year thing. Yeah. You know, but that would still be cool. So, like we could, I don't know, maybe not could do a case thing. It sure wouldn't be quarterly, you know, once a year, twice a year. I don't even know if we'd ever do a subscription thing. But once you get up to a certain price point on the subscriptions, it's certainly a difficult sell. Yeah, it's too hard. And difficult to manage. I mean, these things are more expensive because they take longer time to make. And there's just lots involved. But I like the idea of it. I took it from the question, the part about not only products, but also information, resources. What do people ask you about on a regular basis that doesn't exist? What I get asked the most in my email is recommendations. I need to build a recommendation engine that can take, like, the most detailed questions and narrow it down into a group of pens.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And spit out an answer. Look at these pens. So, I haven't done anything with this. I haven't started on this. I haven't bought a domain name. I haven't said we're going to make a wiki that we're never going to make.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I was thinking about that the other day.

'''Myke Hurley:''' We already dropped a poll on that one.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So, someone feel free. I even have a good domain.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, someone feel free to steal that answer or work with me on it. Because we could go, the amount of input we could have and the amount of, it would take a lot of work. Because you'd have to tag, like, every pen. Like, it would basically be, you know, like Pandora for, what do they call it? The music genome project. Like, to have the pen genome project. Mm-hmm. To where you can have a recommendation engine for ink colors, for pens, for anything. Gel, pencil, all of these things. It's a massive, massive undertaking. But that's something that I would find so useful. You could monetize it pretty well, too. Like, I mean, I think you could make some money doing this. So, someone feel free to steal this idea. I'll be happy to consult and collaborate with you. And I think it could work. But it would be a lot of work. So, anyway, that's what got me thinking about this. It's not necessarily the products that I want that I don't have. But what information can I provide that would make my life easier?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think about the I'll Failed project a lot. Which was to kind of, what was it? So, basically to turn the show into a resource? Yeah. Right, was the idea?