Editing The Pen Addict 363/transcript (section)

== Notebook Production Issues ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' I figure I should say. I mean, I haven't told the full story about this, but, like, we can maybe tell it here. I originally came to you for this. Right. And so I mentioned on Cortex that we were rejected by American manufacturers. And it was your manufacturers that said they wouldn't do it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. So, like, you came to me. Like, you know, you've always, you know, you like how the Notco stuff has been printed. And I was like, our printer's pretty open.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I didn't want to spend a ton of time working out what paper to use. Right. I wanted to make my system. So I needed to go to somebody that I knew could get me a quality product. So I came to you. And then, again, that was also then when you couldn't help me, I went to Studio Neat.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. So, like, our manufacturer, our printer said, we're not going to quote this job.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' With the specs and details we gave them, that was the answer I got. And I was like, huh. All right. It's like, you're like this big, massive printer that can do all these things. And the answer I get is we're not going to quote this job. To me, I really, I took offense to that, honestly. And we now have a new printer. Like, we changed printers after that, to be honest. I don't know if I ever told you that. Because I thought that was just disrespectful of the customer. It's very disrespectful, I think.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I would like to give you money to make me something. And you won't even, you won't even, like, give me a quote.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. And it's a digital file, right? Like, it's digital printing. Yep. We won't be digital printing. It just has to be bound. So, I was not happy about that. This is something we haven't discussed. And there's not much more details to go into it. But I was very disappointed. And the end result is we now have a new printer for Knox. Still in Atlanta. Just different print shop. Because I felt a long-term relationship.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't think that it's good for when you have an idea, right? Right. Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Because I need more than what I just brought you. And if that's the reception I get for something that should be, okay, it's not basic, but it's not overly complex. Mm-hmm. Then I need to take my ideas somewhere else. Mm-hmm. So, that's what we did.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, then I went to Studio Neat because I knew they were working on the Totebook. I mean, the reason I knew that was because the Totebook was actually the product that existed before the Panobook. And having spoken to them for so long, I kind of, I knew all of that. And they'd sent me some prototypes of the Totebook. And I was like, I can 100% work with this. This is exactly what I'm looking for. So, I worked with Tom and Dan. And they've been very, very gracious in holding my hand and helping me through this process. But, oh, my God.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Brad, it's so hard.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The end result was the right decision. Like, it's a perfect complement to that style of Notebook, right? The interior is the perfect complement to that style and design of Notebook. But getting there, yeah, like, there's nothing good that ever comes out of the manufacturing process until it's done. It is so difficult. And it's so slow.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And it is so confusing. Like, there are things that I should know about this Notebook that I don't know because I've been told so many things I've forgotten. I don't know how many pages are in it. Right? Yeah. And, like, I don't actually even know the paper. All I know is it is incredibly similar to the Notebook paper. But they had to make some slight changes because it's digital printed and not ink printed. Mm-hmm. It's like, this was why. So, we made a very, I don't want to say how many, but we made a very, a very small number of these. Um, but it was enough still that I was concerned we wouldn't sell them all. Mm-hmm. Sure. Like, it was small, but it was still, like, okay, I mean, we sold stuff before that hasn't sold this amount, you know? Uh, and there was a few reasons for this. One, because we wanted to see, like, is anyone actually going to buy this thing? And the other was, we may have made these, had them shipped to Cotton Bureau, they were shipping them to me, and we may have scrapped the entire project. Right. Because I needed to be confident that what I was selling was good.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because of this show.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But it's also my own standards, right? Like, because I am a pen aficionado, there is absolutely no way that I would sell a product that would not meet my own needs. And, like, so I will say, right, like, this book works great with fountain pens for me. Like, yeah, there's a little bleed through, right? But it is more than acceptable for the stuff that I'm throwing at it. You know, I would say that, like, if you are unhappy with the performance of the panel book or the tote book for fountain pens, then this probably isn't the notebook for you. But I think that they handle them with aplomb.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, yeah. That's like a 90 percenter. Exactly. It's kind of like the knock paper is the same way. I mean, it's good with fountain pens. You can push it to a point where it's not.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm not going to go to the level at which it's perfect because that's madness. And it's really the majority of people that ever buy this book will not be using fountain pens in it. So I'm not going to go for the cost of trying to produce the perfect fountain pen notebook when I personally don't need that. Right. But I am like, Brad, I am so proud of what we have made.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So how long did it take to sell out? About 70 minutes. Seven or 70? 70. 70.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I know they were gone then. Yeah. And we have had. So for the amount that we've sold, we've already had about 20 times the amount of people sign up to be notified when there's more of them.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Jeez. So when is there going to be more of them?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, you tell me, man.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. The answer is.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm ordering them.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. The answer is whatever date you get. Manufacturing is not. It will not be by then.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Oh, I know that. If there's one thing I know by now, it's. And you can't add enough time to that number. No. So we're going to be ordering.

'''Myke Hurley:''' We're ordering 10 times the amount we ordered last time. All right. Good. Well, maybe not that many, but 10 times the amount we sold. Yeah. A lot. We have yet to sell. So we have not sold all that we made because we have to keep some aside in case there's problems. Right. Exactly. There's a small amount. It's like all this stuff that I just never had to think about before. I'm very lucky to work with a company like Cotton Bureau. Like basically I send the products to them and they're doing the fulfillment because I would have no idea what I'm doing. Right. Like there's no, there's no, there's no way that I could do like what you and Jeff did. Right. Where you just created a company and did it. Like I need fulfillment because I can't focus all of my energy on shipping the notebook. But yeah, we're going to make more.

'''Myke Hurley:''' We're going to make more of this exact one. We're not going to make changes to it yet because people seem to really want it. And I would like to be able to sell a lot to a larger amount of people if we're going to make this thing a success because I want the most feedback I can possibly get. Yeah. I don't want to speak out of school particularly, but. I'm really intrigued to see, can this become a thing that's bigger than me? Right. Like that's the goal, right? Sure. That should be the goal. You know what? Let's be the next bullet journal, right? Right. Yeah. Start seeing people write theme system in that, that font, the bullet journal font. Right. But yeah, I want to see if like, I mean, I have ideas, right? I have other theme system products I want to make, you know? Like I have lots of ideas. So now I want to see like where can it go? But first, let's try and sell a lot of them. Yep. That's kind of where I am. But I mean, we're not going to have them any time before like six weeks from now. Oh, right. That would be a miracle.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That would be a miracle.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's but like, you know, best case scenario, best case perfect scenario is like six weeks. Gotcha. But it's not going to be before then is what I'm saying. I will know more like we're putting in the order today, I think. And I assume that we'll get some kind of timeline and then we can work from there. But I'm blown. I was blown away, man. I couldn't believe it. Like I was worried we wouldn't sell them and they were gone immediately. You know, it's like immediately. Yeah. We've never sold anything this quickly.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like when I sell t-shirts and stuff, it takes longer than that to sell. Sure. I feel like I've really landed on something. And it's kind of crazy, really, because I had this idea and then I helped, you know, like I was the driving force behind this design. And it seems like it's really caught on in people's brains. So I'm super excited about it.