Editing The Pen Addict 254/transcript (section)

== Pen Show ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I need to find out how he learned to do this part, right? Like how did, how did he get on the Rushi train and how was he doing that? Yep. What a, what a wonderful talent he is. Yeah. Really, really is. And I'm, I'm so pleased that we got to meet him last year, um, and kind of got to know him before he became a megastar, you know, we knew, we knew Brooks, we knew Brooks back in a day, you know?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. We knew him, knew him when, so yeah, that was fun. And, uh, the pin, thank you, Jonathan. Yeah. It's just serious. Way uncalled for. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You didn't need to do it, but I'm really pleased that you did.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Definitely. But you can't have it back. Exactly. Shouldn't have done it. And I'm going to keep it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. You shouldn't have done it. And anytime you want to do it again, you shouldn't. But if you do.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm here for you, Jonathan.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. We got your back, bro. Just in case. Yeah. Seriously. Incredible. Yep. But there was a reason we were at the pen show. Mm-hmm. Right. And there was a thing that me and you were doing three days from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. We were standing behind a table and we were selling products. I knew all the names. I can't remember the prices. Mm-hmm. But I got all the names set. I was in it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And we were selling to anyone that would come near us. I was trying to get people to buy three cases at a time. Every time. You were awesome. Every time. Just trying to put more and more stuff in their hands. How did Knock do at the show, Brad?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We did great. So, just as an overall big picture, we had a better year this year than last year, which you can't really hope for anything more than that. Right? That's awesome.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You know, because it's like, I think the thing is, is the concern there is how many new people are coming to the show? And like, of the people that have came before, do they want to buy more? And what can you do there? And stuff like that. So, it's a real challenge, I think, every year. You know, the more we go, the more risks there are that we'll sell less, right? As well as there are opportunities to sell more.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. It's actually a huge challenge because now we have retail, too. So, a lot of these cases have been at retailers for a few months, right? So, you know, how many cases do people need and things like that? So, that's definitely a thing, right? You know, there's a lot of products that we had for sale that a lot of people already had. So, you wonder, you know, are we going to sell enough of these cases that have been out there for a few months? How many new cases can we make to bring to the show? So, we did introduce several new things just to, you know, give people options. You know, number one was a wax canvas Sinclair that sold extremely well. It's this beautiful micro wax canvas that I've never felt before we got the fabric in. Couldn't feel more different to a standard knot case. Yeah, it's very soft, actually, but it's going to be very durable on the exterior because of the fabric. And the burgundy interior just looks really, really nice and fancy with it. Those sold very, very well. We introduced the new Idea Dock version 2, which we worked with our buddy, Mr. Dudek, on. And that was received very, very well. Sold a bunch of those. It has pin slots in it, unlike our previous one just had like kind of a pin rest in it. And we also launched the Fodderstack XL in leather, which is our first leather good.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The reception on that was fantastic. We saw a bunch of those. Looks good. Everyone who came to the table picked that up. Yeah, smells good. What does it say? Smells like a farm. That was for Vito's leather. Yep. Because he was right next to us. And then we had the two new sizes of note cards, Gigante and Petite. You know, we had launched them on the site the week before, but this is the first time we've been able to get like lots of feedback from people. The Petite knocked people's socks off. They love that little card. And we sold a bunch of the Gigantes as well. So...

'''Myke Hurley:''' You know what? I think I really... I don't think I picked any of these up. Gosh darn it. I was looking at them.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think you said it like 10 times. Yep. And we just forgot to do it like on Monday. Yeah. We just get so busy, you forget things like that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. Next time.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So... Friday and Saturday, we were slammed pretty much all day.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Friday was... Felt like a busier day than Saturday.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Probably so. Probably so. We did almost the exact same amount of sales both days. And then Sunday was just stinky. There was no two ways about it. Sunday was a bad day. We never had a Sunday like this before because Atlanta had a huge storm. Roll through it that afternoon. Yep. So, it kept people away from the show. Which is okay because we did better on Friday and Saturday alone than we did all three days last year. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And it gave me and you some time to like just go walk around the show and enjoy the show and that kind of thing. But yeah, we could have packed up at noon and we would have been fine.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Yep. So... But we didn't. We stayed. We stayed around. We hung around. We stayed till about four. We started packing up about four. You know, just because it was really, really slow. Like I've never seen a show that slow on Sunday before. But it wasn't anyone's fault. It was just the weather. And just not a lot of time for people to get out there and see it. But, you know, we did learn that I had for all the like the cool colors and fun things that we do, people want to see even more color. Like, you know, if my takeaways from the show are we can't do enough color. Doesn't matter what. You know, all the bright colors sell. And, you know, people love... We had the Olive and Lime Lookout launch there. So that was another one. And it just... You can see it from a mile away. It just stands out on the table so much and people just gravitate towards that and loved it. So we sold a bunch of those.