The Pen Addict 179/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	179
Title:	Super Traditional Camo Pattern
Release Date:	November 3rd, 2015
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 179
Audio File:	Audio Episode 179
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 179
Length:	7575 min <br />1.25 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 179. Today's show is kindly brought to you by our friends over at lynda.com, Dudek Modern Goods, and Fracture. And we'll have a little bit more to say about each of those lovely companies a little later on in the show. My name is Myke Hurley, and I'm joined by a slightly hoarse, but I think pretty happy, Mr. Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: I am pretty happy. How are you, sir?

Myke Hurley: I am very well. I am very well indeed. I'm looking forward to today's show.

Field Notes

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah, me too. So I am slightly under the weather, but I'm not feeling terrible. It's just, you know, mostly in the head and throat, kind of the things that might affect you actually recording a podcast and talking into a microphone for an hour. So otherwise, I'm feeling pretty good. But if you see me jumping out every now and then, you know, I'm sparing Myke's ears at that time.

Myke Hurley: But more really, you know, sparing all of you from listening to him hack up along. And we're going to find out later on in the show exactly why you're feeling that way. Yes, yeah.

Brad Dowdy: There's no reason for it. Well, me and you have been hanging out. I caught it from you.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I wished. I wished. It's way too far away until that happens again.

Brad Dowdy: Yep, yep. I know. That's true. Let's not think about that.

Myke Hurley: I just want to state for the record that nobody from Field Notes has called us on our challenge. Right. Okay. I just want to put that out there, you know. We'll throw that out there. The idea of me and you going by Chicago. No one's called us out on it yet, so.

Brad Dowdy: Right, right. We'll work on that. We're waiting.

Traveler's Notebook

Brad Dowdy: Live and in person. That would be cool. Yep. We'll have to work on that. We'll work on it. We actually have some Field Notes to talk about today. Always. You showed me something new today that we're going to talk about here in a few minutes. But the first show, you put together a bunch of show notes for today, and I was actually super surprised you put this first one in. So I'm going to let you lead this off.

Myke Hurley: So I saw a link to this lovely article on the Pen Addict. This is from The Final Points. This is Jenny Mason's site. And Jenny took some time to write about and photograph her Midori Traveler's notebook, right? Yeah. Yeah. She kind of documented her setup. And for me, really, I just wanted to link to this for the beautiful photography and the beautiful images of Jenny's diary. Yeah. And what she does with her diary is it's really, really fantastic. So I kind of just wanted to point people towards there because I'm very, very jealous of her ability to do this stuff.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. I took a lot out of this article, actually, which is why I reposted it or I think I tweeted it out when she did it. And this is a wonderful post that she did. You're right about the photography. And the images I keep coming back to are the same ones that you do on just the calendar piece of the article. She's like, oh, yeah. On each day has like what about an inch vertically worth of space or so, maybe an inch and a half at the most. And on each of those little days, say like October 19th, she kind of almost like sketchnoted her day and has, you know, some text about the things that she did, some handwritten text. And then some little images of some other things that she did. You know, like she picked up her iPhone one day. So there's a little picture of the iPhone. You know, she was in front of the computer a bunch of the day. She has her head in front of the glowing computer screen. It looks like a Pulp Fiction briefcase scene to me. But I just think it's funny. And it's super cool how she did all this. And I took a lot out of this because I'm one that has difficulty capturing the small things that I do in a day. Right. I feel like for me to write it down, it's got to be some important big thing. But, you know, she has just like these little things, you know, like Dawson's Creek, Dawson's Creek season four marathon. Boom. Put it down. You know, and I never do those little small things. And I appreciate how she did all this and how she set it up. Because I actually carry my traveler's notebook in my backpack every day. But I don't use it that much. I love the setup. I love the shape, the layout, the customization that you can do. I do use it for a few different things. I have some like blog notes in one notebook. And then I have, you know, Nock planning in another notebook and things like that. But I end up using just like my Nock pocket notebook or a field notes most of the time. Just the single notebook instead of using like the one big Midori. So I'll see next year how it goes. And I'll report back because I'm going to use the Hobonichi for 2016. And so I'll see if I have any place for the traveler's notebook as well. So, and you don't have a traveler's notebook, right, Myke?

Myke Hurley: I don't have one of these. I have the Pele Journal. Right, right. Which aesthetically is very similar. But I have the small one. Right. But I don't use it. Did the Pele Journal riff off the Midori? Was it the other way around?

Brad Dowdy: No, the Pele riffed off the Midori.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. And it's different, but very, very similar. Exactly. Kind of look and kind of execution. But that was way more meant for, I think, single or two notebooks where the Midori is kind of designed to be like, you've got to stuff as much in here as you can.

Brad Dowdy: Right. And Jenny put at the end of her post links to a bunch of other people who use these regularly. It's definitely, the traveler's notebook is a thing, right? It's like you go online and there's tons of resources about this specific setup for the traveler's notebook. It's actually such a big thing. Midori is actually breaking out the brand completely online. It's just going to be traveler's notebook. It's not going to be Midori traveler's notebook anymore. I like that brand. Yeah, it's become that big of a thing to where it's just going to stand on its own, which is very cool.

Myke Hurley: I think it's very smart because Midori doesn't really mean anything to a majority of people. So you've got to really kind of push and stand on what makes you different. And this definitely is it. And of course, Jenny links to Patrick Ning, who we spoke about many times on the show. And when I look at his setup, I get scared for the thought of like, what if you lost that?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: That's what really worries me about why I'm very hesitant to really go all in on a system like this is if you lost that book, that's like your life.

Brad Dowdy: Well, think of it from Patrick's perspective. And I mean, this is me putting words into his mouth, but it's part of his life. It's basically an extension of him. It's going to be like, how many times have you lost your wallet?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, this is exactly the idea of why I always say to people, like, if you keep losing pens, buy one that's like $20 because you won't lose it. Right. But there's still just like the fear because if you lose your wallet, right, that's fine. You can replace everything. Like there's no memories or anything lost. So it's not like with the frequency of how often you could lose it. But if you did, everything you would lose. It seems like such a big loss. You know, like it seems like so much of people's lives go into these things. And that just it just kind of terrifies me to my core.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I completely understand that. And I just think of when I look at someone like Patrick, it's just such a huge part of his life that it would be, you know, if he was at a coffee shop and working on his in his traveler's notebook and he got up and left, it would be like he left his left arm behind. Yeah. You just don't leave your arm laying behind there in the table. It's that much of a part where it's just not some random piece that gets left behind. Like you might leave your pen on the table, but, you know, you're not going to leave the traveler's notebook.

Myke Hurley: I guess one of those things when I stand up to leave from somewhere, I pat my front pockets and back pockets, you know, just 100% make sure that I've got everything. Yep.

Brad Dowdy: And then I get in the car and I do it again and get to where I'm going and do it again. Yeah. I'm super anal about that.

Myke Hurley: You should see what I'm like when I go on plane journeys. Mm-hmm. And I, the amount of times I check where my passport is. Oh my gosh. Yes.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. I'm totally with you on that. I'm, I am super, super crazy about that. So, and I never forget, but, um, I do, I do send myself into a bit of a tizzy about checking everything. So it's like, you know, you're not going to forget it, Brad is like, yeah, but you know, I still need to check it 10 times. So, but, um, the Midori has always been a fascination of mine and, uh, we'll, we'll continue to talk about it as the days and years go on. Because it's, it's such a cool system. Um, another cool system we love, which really in the system, it's just a, it's just a thing is our, is our, is our field notes. We love our field notes. And did you have a chance to catch, uh, Aaron Draplin on Mark Maron's WTF podcast? Did you listen to that episode?

Myke Hurley: It's high up in my, my, uh, overcast queue, but I've not gotten to it yet. Is it good?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's real good. I actually just caught it. I just finally got to it on like Friday or so last Thursday or Friday. It's really good. I actually, when I was listening to it, you know, Aaron, Aaron is, you know, laugh out loud, funny. I mean, just the stuff he says, he cracks me up and, you know, just kind of his, um, the way his conversation flows. And, you know, a lot of the things he talked about with Mark, part of their podcast was like, Mark has no clue who Aaron is. Right. I mean, that's not in his, in his realm, but you know, he got to know Aaron a little bit over the past few months and he was actually in Portland recording the show. And, um, so they kind of, you know, riffed back and forth on that, just learning about Aaron. So it's a lot of things we know already, you know, and some of the stories that Aaron tells, you know, fans like ourselves have heard. Um, and then he drops in nuggets, like, um, when they were, Mark was trying to figure out about like the paper products, like field notes. And Mark's like, yeah, I've used like moleskin before. And Aaron's like, no, no, no, I don't use the M word around the shop. And, and I just, I wrote that down and tweeted it out. Cause I just thought it was priceless. And, uh, that fits into like the things that we talk about all the time. And I just thought that was hilarious, but you know, it's, it's a lot of back and forth banter like that. And, uh, you know, Aaron telling stories about how, um, you know, how he came to be, how all this, how his work came to be and things like that. And did you, did you know Aaron's working on a book?

Myke Hurley: I didn't know that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. For next year, he's, um, he's, he doesn't talk about it like directly a lot, but he said it several times. I've heard him say it in several places. Like I'm working on a book.

Myke Hurley: Oh man, that'll be sweet.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So in 2016, he's got a book coming out. Um, I forget the name of the author that's done it, but he's done other series of, you know, design oriented type books. And then, you know, that's what, it's not like a biography thing. I think it's like a design type thing, right? Um, like a showing of his work. If I'm, if I'm understanding what Aaron said so far.

Myke Hurley: So I would prefer that to a written book. Like I want something that is there to, to highlight and show to me, um, a handpicked selection of Aaron's favorite work. That's what I want to see.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I would too, because, you know, we're such fans of Aaron's, you know, like I, I read all his interviews and listen to all his podcasts and watch all his videos. Like, I know a lot of the stories, right? You know, when, when you're a speaker, like he does, not only is he a designer, he's a speaker. Well, you give the same speech, you know, he's, I think he's did it like 40 times last year or the year before, you know, it's a lot of the same running threads and you don't need that in a book. Right. So it's, it's, it'd be cool to see like, you know, more design stuff and more process stuff and things like that. So it's, it's definitely worth a listen to. Um, they, they did a good job on the podcast.

Myke Hurley: Cool. I've got, I'm looking forward to checking that one out.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So then you compile these show notes and then, you know, it's like, Oh good. We need to talk about that Draplin thing. And then you throw in this link under this. So, so how did you come across this?

Myke Hurley: So I saw Ginny at three staples tweet this and it's a Instagram photo. It's not her photo. It's taken by somebody called Dwayne King of a special edition field notes that I've never seen. And I hadn't come across them ever.

Brad Dowdy: You, when you linked it, I clicked over there and I was like, I have never seen this, never heard of this, never laid eyes on it. Never had any, you know, heads up from any of the field nuts group. Um, it's 0.0.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Um, I don't, what, I don't know what that is. That's, I don't know if that was a conference or something. It was an edition of a thousand.

Myke Hurley: So the guy who posted these is a guy called Dwayne King, who is a designer and he put on a conference in Brooklyn that these were a part of.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. So it looks, so they're a pastel color. Think Easter, you know, like pink, light blue and purple. Um, but the covers are debossed. Um, I think that's the right term. Someone will correct me. Uh, embossed is where the, the cover is like pressed in like the lettering. And this is like the raised lettering on the covers, right? I think that's called debossed. So you feel it like on the outside. So like all the field notes logo is raised. Um, any of the design work is, is raised. Like there's some little circles and dots on the, on the back cover. Um, they're all raised up. They're really good looking.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. And then they've got the 0.0 conference. I believe it was called. Yeah. 0.0 conference was at 0.0 in Brooklyn. And they've got the logo, um, on the back. Now, what scares me about these is how incredible they do actually look and they are super limited and nobody seems to know about them.

Brad Dowdy: Well, and then Dwayne says in his Instagram that, oh, we found some laying around. So we're going to sell them.

Myke Hurley: Oh, really?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. If you read down the, if you read down the, uh, the comments, um, so I'm sure, um, all the field nuts, uh, are, are all over that, but, uh, it's a cool addition. I love the embossed and debossed, uh, covers. Those are some of my favorite. Um, anytime you, you get kind of that texture on the, uh, on the covers, those have often been some of my favorite additions. Um, either the, just the regular colors or any, um, any side additions, which most of them don't have that level of cover detail. If you will, most of them are just printed somehow, you know, printed, fancy printed, beautiful printed, stamped foil, whatever, but don't have the, um, don't have the depth of the, uh, embossing and debossing, right?

Myke Hurley: No.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. You see that like on the grass stained green Raven's wing, um, some of those older additions. Um, so anytime I see that, I think it's pretty cool.

Myke Hurley: And I think there's a yellow one, a blue one and a pink one. Hmm. Nice. Easter. Very good looking.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. So we'll see. I'll be interested to see if someone like we know, like in the field notes groups actually gets their hands on one. And I'd like, I'd like to see the interior of them more and, um, kind of, uh, kind of see what they're all about, but I'm not chasing them.

Myke Hurley: No, neither am I.

Brad Dowdy: No, no.

Myke Hurley: Uh, I do actually have some of those Nixon ones on the way. Oh, cool. Yeah. Those are really pretty. Ginny helped me out with that. Cause you know, they were shipping in the U S only.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, Aaron actually talks about that in, in WTF that he was one of, I think he was one of like an original, like Nixon graphic designer, like didn't work for Nixon, but did some of their early work way back in the day, um, as far as design work goes. So that was a good little tidbit that I caught on the podcast.

Myke Hurley: Hmm. There you go. Mm-hmm.

Paper Products

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm. All right. We got more paper stuff to talk about.

Myke Hurley: Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. Us. Let me take a break. Thank our friends over at lynda.com for helping support this episode. They are the online learning platform that has over 3000 on demand video courses that are there to help you strengthen your business technology and creative skills for a free 10 day trial. Visit lynda.com slash pen addict. That's L Y N D A.com slash pen addict. I want to mention just straight up top, just to re kind of remind people about this, that Aaron Traplin did that incredible logo making course with lynda.com a while ago, uh, that you should sign up for the free trial just to go and see it. Right. If you haven't seen that course, you need to go and see that. Yeah. Just to see him in his shop and hear him talking and showing his work and how he kind of roughs out a design like, oh my God, that was so awesome. I would love to see more of those.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Not to hijack you completely, but I had an email a couple of weeks ago said, Hey, you know, I know lynda's a sponsor and I think you did some kind of design a video you linked to and someone was going through their design process. And I said, Oh, I know exactly what you're talking about. So that one that has definitely stuck with people.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Oh, cause it's just fantastic. It is. Lynda.com has videos for all types of people who are thinking in all different types of ways. Whether you're trying to solve a problem that you've got, you know, cause you're working on this project and you just don't know how to do this thing. Whether you're curious to learn something new, some new skills that you've never thought about before. Or if you want to kind of learn something to help advance yourself in your work in some way. Lynda.com is there to help you. You can learn about design like, you know, and you can watch those great videos that Aaron makes. You can learn about color and how to implement that in your work. You can learn about how to get things done using the GTD course. You can, no matter what it is that you're thinking about trying to take your hand to, lynda.com will have videos there to help you. They have software and hardware courses, right? So you can learn how to use Photoshop. You can learn how to use Lightroom, but you can also learn how to take great portrait photography. They have courses on everything that you're going to need to know, all types of things that you can put into practical use in your life. And all of their courses are taught by experts. People have a passion for teaching. You can watch any of their courses in any order you want. And they're all broken down even within each course, right? So you can watch any video you like. You can pick or choose. They're all available to you when you sign up, even on the 10 day free trials. Unlimited access to everything. And you can go in and inside of each individual course, they're all broken up into bite-sized chunks. You can pick and choose from them as well. So maybe you just need to learn something specific, or maybe you want to go back to something you learned a few months ago and you want to follow along with their transcript to make sure that you get to that point in the video that you need. You can create and save playlists of these courses and these videos, and you can customize them and put them in any order you like. And you can share these with friends, colleagues, and team members as well. And you can even watch and learn on the go and download courses to your Android and iOS device. So your Lynda.com membership will be able to give you unlimited access to training on hundreds of topics for one flat rate. Whether you're looking to become an industry expert, you're passionate about a hobby, or you're just looking to learn something new, go ahead and visit lynda.com slash penaddict and sign up for your free 10-day trial. Thank you so much to Lynda.com for supporting this show.

Brad Dowdy: So we talked about the Hobonichi earlier, and I'm going to give it another shot here in 2016. And one thing that we have seen this year upon this year's release of the Hobonichi is that they are sending them to many, many other vendors outside of just themselves, right? Which they probably did in Japan before, but not necessarily outside of Japan. We've seen U.S. and Canadian retailers. And like, you know, for example, we put it in the show notes that JetPens got in the Hobonichi, got in the Techo, and then got in like a handful of covers for them. And they sold immediately out, right?

Myke Hurley: It was just like, here they are, and they're gone. They have eight products, and they're all gone.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so they, you know, in talking with them, I knew they were going to do it. And they actually gave me a heads up saying, you know, that this was going to happen. And they actually sent me a Techo and one of the covers. I have the red cover. And I'm going to give that away on the blog here in the next week or two. So definitely pay attention for that. And I didn't get a chance to, before today's episode, to find out if and when they're going to get some more in. I would wager that they are, you know, before the holidays. So I will try to find out and see when they'll get some more in. But I like, you know, a lot of people are hesitant, and understandably so, to, you know, necessarily buy from Japanese sites, and not for any particular reason other than the ordering difficulty can be a little bit of a challenge sometimes. And then depending on where you are in the world, the shipping might be high. So, you know, some people who are insane like myself don't mind. And, you know, I just go through and go through the 1101 store and go things, go order things through them without issue. But some people definitely like this. To be able to get it from a retailer that they've used for years, like JetPens. So I think it's kind of cool to see the brand reach out to other retailers like this. You have any thoughts on that? Where, you know, they've just kind of, they've moved on in allowing other regions to kind of carry these much more easily than they have in the past?

Myke Hurley: I think it's needed.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I think that's the right word.

Myke Hurley: This is something that they have to do. Right. That they have to eventually start branching out if they want to continue to grow their business. I'm sure they want to. Right.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Right. So like WonderPens in Canada, I got them. They got them. So like, you know, the Canadian users or people who are wanting that, the Hobonichi in Canada, that's an easy place for them to get it from. And now, you know, somewhere like JetPens able to stock them and ship them out as well in the US. And so I think we'll just continue to see more and more of this. And I think it's good. You know, like the Midori, the traveler's notebook we mentioned before, you know, that was also kind of an in-house thing. And now it's just, it just totally helps spread everywhere else once they get into other retailers and things like this. And I think just for Hobonichi itself, I think it's a good move.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I completely agree. I'm pleased they're doing it.

Brad Dowdy: And obviously for JetPens, it's a good move because they have such a built-in, I mean, this is their people, right? The people who are ordering from JetPens are all about some Hobonichi. So it's no, yeah, it's no wonder it sells out immediately. But I do have, I already had ordered mine, the one that I'm going to use for next year's, but I have an extra Techo and the red cover. So stay tuned. I don't know if I'm going to get that up. Next week or the week after, but it'll be very, very soon that I will be giving one away.

Myke Hurley: It's one of the things that had held me off. Like, you know, one reason is I wouldn't really use them, but one thing that had held me off was not being able to get this from a site that I knew and trusted.

Brad Dowdy: Sure. Oh, I imagine a lot of people felt the exact same way.

Myke Hurley: Yep.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And especially before last year was the first year they had an, even an English site where you can check out on.

Myke Hurley: I was just about to say that, which is even, you know, that's, that's even worse. I mean, obviously they can do whatever they want to do, but like, you know, if you're, if you're trying to buy this stuff, like you're going to be a little bit apprehensive. If you're buying from a website, you don't know if the website's not in your native language, that is like another thing, right? That's a whole other book.

Brad Dowdy: Right. There was a, uh, one of the, I'm totally blanking on her name right now, but, um, the, the woman we know here in the U S that does the Hobonichi translations, she wrote an entire website on how to purchase one via the Japanese website. You know, she'd be essentially translated. Yep. Yep. And, uh, I think she's still, I think she still does that work for Hobonichi. I forget. Um, if I can remember, I'll, I'll, I'll put that in the show notes cause she was, she's always cool to talk to her on Twitter. I keep in touch with her on Twitter. Um, some cause she's still doing the Hobonichi work. So yeah, very cool. Um, I've been on, well, not me Kickstarter pin projects have been on a roll recently. Right. And I think I'm finally caught up with the last one where I had the preview models of between, um, you know, uh, the gist and the pin type B and the EDK, even though it wasn't Kickstarter, it was a, it was a new pin launch. And now I did the mini click, um, which is, uh, by the guy that's behind, um, tough writer pins who makes a kind of a tactical, you know, tactical looking and feeling pin. This is a more, uh, simplistic design, um, then some of the like totally outrageous, the tough, some of the tough writers aren't really out there, but you know, the totally tactical pins that, you know, don't really, it's not really our market, you know, air quote, our market. Um, but there is a huge market for that in the people who are really looking for that ultra heavy duty type pin, you know, for any type of reasons for travel or for some of them, you know, lots of, you know, police officers, army people, you know, just need something super, super durable. Um, so, uh, Jack, who is, who is the owner of tough writer, um, they did a, the ultimate clicky pin. I think that was last year. And that, that project went really, really big on Kickstarter. I think they did a really good job on that one. And a lot of people thought it was a little bit big, a little bit overbuilt. And so he simplified a little bit into the mini click, um, which is a really nice looking pin. And, you know, the pins that we buy, like from Karis customs and tactical tactical turn that have the, the knock mechanism. That's a stock mechanism from Schmidt, which is a really good mechanism. I like, but Jack redesigned that mechanism from scratch for on his own. Um, and added that to this pin. So he's, he's built his own click mechanism. It looks a lot, it looks very similar, but it's, it's rebuilt completely by him. And I did a review of the pin today on the blog and it's really nice. It's great looking anodization. Um, it's really pretty, it's really well built. The only thing I didn't like were the O-rings and the grip section. Um, I think that's just like a, kind of like a failure point, right? You know, you have loose bits in probably the most, um, um, grabbed area. Of the pin, if you will, you know, you're moving that in and out of a pocket. It's going to hit those rings. You're gripping it and writing it. It's going to hit those rings.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I just tend not to like O-rings anyway. Like they, they never feel like the right solution to any problem.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Right. And it's like, it's like, it's the pins trying to be very useful for very extreme situations. You know, if you're, if you have your hand in a glove and you need that extra grip on the pin, you know, having those O-rings there, it's certainly going to help.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. My feeling is though, just make a rubber section.

Brad Dowdy: Right. I would just rather, I would honestly, I would just go for a plain section, you know, a smooth section and then just deal with the gripping issue.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Well, there's so many things you can do. You can knell it. Right. That's one thing you can do. I mean, or like if you really want the rubber grip, then put a rubber grip on it. Like that, that's my thing. Just, just go all in on the grip. Right. I don't really like the O-rings. I think that they're kind of like a bad solution to an interesting problem.

Brad Dowdy: Right. I just think that, yeah, they're really unnecessary, to be honest. You're not going to get, you're going to have as much frustration as you are going to have benefit from them, I believe. And that's not the best trade-off in my opinion on design.

Myke Hurley: But to be fair, they have been prevalent on all of his designs. So his customers must not complain. Right.

Brad Dowdy: So that was, that was coming out of my mouth, but he's done this before, right? This is how his designs work. And he obviously has great feedback from his customers on this. And I know some other people who have bought the, the ultimate clicky pin that have very much enjoyed using, using that pin. And, you know, if you like that pin and like that style of pin, this one's a no brainer because it's, it's a rock solid pin. You know, like I love the knock. I love the clip. The anodization is really cool. It's not only anodized, it's kind of got this glossy finish. Um, so the colors are really, really sharp and vibrant. So it's a great looking pin. Um, I'm just not a O-ring in the grip guy. Um, and you, you know, I lost one when I was playing around with the pin.

Myke Hurley: So tell me, um, why, or tell me the difference here between, um, this, the, the, the knock that has been made here. Mm-hmm. But what's the guy's name? Jack. Jack. So the, the knock that Jack has made as opposed to the knock that comes that everybody else is using.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I mean, he just wanted to, to control it all himself, right? If, if there's any issues, he's the guy that can fix it instead of relying on someone else.

Myke Hurley: Sure. But how, well, how does it feel? Like what's, what's the difference?

Brad Dowdy: Oh, how does it feel? It feels a little bit more, there's kind of more depth to it. If that makes sense. Like it's not, it's not like a superficially type click. It's like a deeper, sturdier click, if that makes sense. Um, and you can feel, you can feel that, um, when you're, uh, activating it, um, when you're pressing it, um, it, it feels a little bit different. Um, despite it, it looks very, very similar.

Myke Hurley: Um, Dan in the chat room, obviously Mr. Bishop is saying it's made of stainless steel instead of nickel plate of brass. That's like a material difference. Gotcha. Gotcha. Like, cause the, the one that is on like all the pens that we've used, right? You mentioned it's on some Karas custom stuff. It's, it's fine, right? Yeah. No, I like it. Like it, it does the job fine. Uh, yeah. I mean, I would maybe sometimes wish it was just a little clickier, but that's kind of being super picky.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. This one's not clickier. Um, it's, it's the same type. It's not a ladder click.

Pen Mechanisms

Myke Hurley: It's not a, but if it's not clickier, then I don't know for me personally, I don't know what the, why you would want a difference, but yeah.

Brad Dowdy: He's also able to stylize these a little bit more since he's making them himself. You know, some of them have like rings around, um, the mechanism, you know, instead of just the smooth mechanism, just for visual.

Myke Hurley: More O-rings. Yeah. Covering an O-ring.

Brad Dowdy: It's at least, it's at least you can, you can add them there if you need to. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: See, now you're making me cough.

Myke Hurley: The colors, the colors do look really, really great. I love the look of the green one. Mm-hmm. Um, and what refills does this take?

Brad Dowdy: Um, any Parker style refill. So I did the, uh, Myke, mine has the Fisher space pen refill, which I actually like this Fisher space pen refill. I just get the fine ones. I don't get the, the medium and the, the bold one, the broad ones that they, that they have. I always go for the fine blue, uh, Fisher, um, just like, and they fit the Moleskine gel, but I'm having a hard time getting any of the Moleskine gels in the size that I want. So.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. So this is, um, I mean, you know, we've said there's a bunch, these pens and there was a great piece by, uh, Anthony Scullin, right. About the idea of these tactical pens being ugly. Right. Um, this one is probably one of the better looking of this type of pen, but this type of pen is still not in, it's just not interesting to me.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So this is, I would say this is a moderately tactical looking pen.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: It's not full on like some of the, um, some of the other ones. Um, so it, it, it kind of bridges that bridges that gap from, you know, an off the shelf type pen to, um, you know, to getting into a little bit more tactical, which isn't necessarily our style just as a whole. That's why we like, um, what Dan does it at Karis Customs. We can get that nice machine pen, but it still looks like a pen. Not that we're going, you know, you know, not that we're heading out on our, our police beat tonight, you know?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Um, so yeah, that, that's, that's a really good way of putting it. It's like a lot of the benefits, but without the big trade-offs in design.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Right. Speaking of design, Michael Hurley, you've come, you've become quite the flower designer.

Coloring Pages

Myke Hurley: I know. Right. I finally finished my first, um, the coloring page, like completely finished. Yeah. Uh, and so I put a picture of it on Instagram. I was pretty proud of it, you know?

Brad Dowdy: I am so impressed. I love it. I, I, yeah, it looks so good. You're actually way ahead of me. I haven't even finished my first page yet. Um, but I'm going to work on that too. So I love it. I think it, I think it came out real good. How, how much time do you think that took? Oh, any, any, any concept of that?

Myke Hurley: That's at least eight hours, nine hours at least.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It's crazy, isn't it?

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: But it's, it's, it's good though. I mean, it's right. You, you feel different. Like when you're doing it, I do.

Myke Hurley: Well, because all during this time, it's like, so I do this when I edit, right? That's just whenever I do it. So every couple of weeks I'll spend an hour or two, maybe, maybe more doing this stuff. So that's why it's taken me like a month to do this. Um, and during this time, all I would be doing would be like just dicking around, right? Playing a game, reading tweets, like, or whatever, or doing something that's going to take my attention away. Mm-hmm. And really what I want to be able to do during this period of time, well, is, is focus on what my task at hand is, which is the edit. But I need something to do, um, during this, this stuff. And, you know, me and Gray were just talking about this on Cortex today. Like he is able to play video games sometimes. Uh, but I can with some edits, but with some of the shows that I edit, they require me to be, uh, too frequently, um, using the mouse and keyboard, right? To like cut, cut this, cut this, move this, move that. So I can't really do something else on the computer because I'll just be switching in and out all the time. But like when I'm coloring in, I've got my keyboard right in front of me. So as soon as I hear something, I can just hit the space bar to pause it and it just pauses it and then I can go and fix it. Right. So as soon as I hear something, I'm like, bang, pause. Yeah. That's awesome. So that's what this works out pretty well for me. Um, you'll, if you, anybody takes a look, you'll notice my attempts at trying to keep all of the different flower designs, the same colors throughout. Right. No matter where they are. Yeah. That's difficult to try and spot those. I think there's maybe one or two, uh, little errors here and there, but I tried to keep the colorings the same. And I'm really proud of it. I'm, I think it's come out really nice and I'm really happy with it.

Brad Dowdy: Good. I, I'm proud of it. I'm proud of it too. I love looking at it. It's very cool.

Myke Hurley: My mom told me today, she was very proud. She, she now has one of these. Oh, good. Yeah. I don't know what one she got, but it's one, it is one of the Joanna, uh, Basford books. Mm-hmm. Um, but she, she, she, it's a Christmas present from my grandma. Nice. And she bought me just a, a cheaper coloring book as well. She just bought me one. But I was, I was traveling yesterday. I was going to see my brother and, um, I was in a train station, a big train station here called, uh, London, Victoria. It's one of the train stations that you get in to take you to trains all over the country. Right. Right. And they had a stationer there. It's like a stationary magazine bookshop called WH Smiths. Mm-hmm. Um, and they had, you know, you have those like island type things. So you have like a square in the middle of the store. They had four of those full of coloring books. Oh my God. And there were people surrounding them constantly picking them up, going to buy them.

Brad Dowdy: That's amazing.

Myke Hurley: This coloring thing is really taken off here, like in a huge, huge way in the UK.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. That, that's great. I love seeing this. And, uh, it, I think it's, it's just kind of coming into that consciousness of everybody in like a big way. It kind of, the, the, the books are starting to show up everywhere, right? Everywhere you turn, you're, you're seeing them. So there, it's kind of becoming a thing, um, despite the fact, you know, it's definitely been around for, for a while, but now it's just like, I, you know, I, we've, we've talked about a million times. That's why we like pin, pin so much. You know, we're so involved in our digital, uh, lives that it's, it's nice to get that, uh, those analog things back in your life. And it, uh, it actually, uh, yeah, I think it improves your life.

Modern Goods Sponsorship

Myke Hurley: Talking about improving your life. Let's talk about do that. Modern goods. They are a fantastic sponsor. We love them so much. And we love, we love Dudek modern goods so much. And I say them, it's Myke Dudek, right? You know, this is the guy. If you buy something from Dudek modern goods, you know, you are going to be getting something handmade by the wonderful Myke Dudek of the Clicky Post. Who's such a fantastic friend of this show. Um, and Myke started Dudek modern goods because as he was becoming more and more excited and interested in pens, he wanted somewhere elegant and useful to store his favorite stuff. So as his pen collection just grew and grew and grew over time, he had his own ideas of how he wanted to store them, but couldn't find any solutions that fit his mind. So he decided to go out and make his own stuff. So projects like the cube, the block and the groove were born. Um, and I actually have a groove on my desk now. You know, I've been using the cube for a long time. Um, I decided, uh, I wanted somewhere to put a couple of notebooks. So I was just leaving them on the desk. So I, uh, brought the, the groove out of the cupboard over there and I, it's, it's now sitting on my desk with all my favorite pens in it and a couple of field notes, notebooks here as well. Um, I couldn't be happier with my Dudek products so much so that when, uh, Relay FM had its one year anniversary, we commissioned Myke to make some, uh, little wooden blocks for us. Right. Which I spoke about before, because I wanted something that I could give as a gift that I hoped that my friends would keep around for a long time. And I knew I could trust Myke's work. So that was why I gave him that task. Right. Yep. He is super passionate about crafting these beautiful and functional products and he truly believes and he sets out to make sure that they will last you a lifetime. Um, all of these products, all of the Dudek's, Nudeck Modern Good products are handmade in Arizona, USA from solid walnut and they have a distinct modern and minimal design mixed with the rich grain and the color of the walnut. These pieces will earn a place on your desk today. And in 30 years time, they're still going to look great and still look like they belong. There are nine different designs that you can choose from with several options to fit your needs. Whether you have larger pens in your collection or need space to hold your pocket notebooks or journal in addition to your writing instruments. The support by our community for Dudek Modern Goods has been tremendous. And Myke wanted me to pass on a massive thank you to all of you and to say just how great a privilege it is every time he mails out a piece to a buyer. Myke does ship internationally with reasonable shipping rates. You have to remember that walnut is heavy, so it's not cheap, but it's reasonable. But, you know, for international shoppers, depending on where you are, the dollar can be good for you, right? So you can end up still making a pretty good deal. And he has shipped to more than 20 countries so far. Now, it's something I just wanted to mention. We are going to talk about this again in a little bit of a fracture. And Myke has the exact same issue. As the holiday months are generally the busiest for makers like Myke, he wanted to get the word out that if you are thinking about buying a piece as a gift, or if you want one as a gift yourself and you want somebody in your family or a friend to buy this for you, you should be getting those orders in right now. Because if you want to definitely get a piece for the holiday season, Myke should be starting to make it as soon as possible to make sure that you beat the rush. So if you are interested, which you really, really should be, go to dudekmoderngoods.com. That's D-U-D-E-K-M-O-D-E-R-N-G-O-O-D-S. And of course, there'll be a link in the show notes. That's dudekmoderngoods.com. Don't forget, every piece is handmade. So it's important to get that order in as soon as you can. And we have a special deal for Pen Addict listeners. He's going to offer 10% off, which is fantastic, any product from dudekmoderngoods.com and all the way through the month of November. So this is only available until the end of November, 2015. So act fast. Thank you so much to Myke Dudek and Dudek Modern Goods for sponsoring this week's episode and for being such a great pillar of our lovely community.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, this is wonderful. And everyone's seen pictures of my desk there. My desk is covered up. I probably have at least five or so different Dudek Modern Goods goods on my desk. And I ordered one specifically for work. I ordered the daily for work, which is like a three-pin slot in it. I keep two notebooks in the slot in the back. And I use that thing every day at work, you know, keep my pins in there, reach for them constantly, take my notebook when I have to go into, you know, one of the server rooms to do some work behind the scenes. So it's like the perfect little setup for my desk at work. And then at home, I just have the mass storage. I've got the block and I've got all kinds of things, all these different shapes, cubes and grooves and all them. But I love the ones with the notebook slots in them for sure, like the daily and the groove. Those are just, those are killer. Not only for yourself, but they make great gifts for anyone else that's in the stationery. They're just like the perfect setup for your desk. And I love them. So thank you, dude. Yeah, he's the best. Yep.

Myke Hurley: He's just a super nice guy as well. Just like, I can't stop talking about him now.

Brad Dowdy: I know. We talk a lot, Myke and I talk a lot just about like life stuff. Just, he's just all around like salt of the earth kind of guy.

Myke Hurley: Yep. No doubt. But yeah, you had a super busy weekend. Tell everybody why you're so sick right now.

Brad Dowdy: I'm sick because I have the conference, the conference crud. Is that what you got? Conference flu, man. Conference flu. Yeah. So, um, Notco exhibited at what was called American Field this weekend in Atlanta. It's like a pop-up shop, um, that they do around the country, um, under the American Field banner. It's, uh, you know, American made goods, um, lots of local craftsmen, um, that, and then lots of just, um, people that travel to all the American Field shows, vendors that travel to all the American Field shows. Um, they've had them in Boston and Brooklyn and DC and Atlanta. So, you know, they kind of get together these, these makers and, um, I'll come together under one roof and have, just have like a pop-up shop and get, uh, the, the community out to come check out these goods and, and support, uh, support local makers and USA made goods. And, you know, we weren't sure, you know, from a knock perspective, is this a good thing? Was, is it worthwhile type of stuff? Um, would we fit in, um, to, to the show? And, um, it turns out it was really, really good. Um, you know, it's like, it's totally like the hipster paradise, right? Like I totally, I felt out of place because I didn't have my jeans rolled up, you know, in like boots, or I didn't have any like, uh, man capris on, you know, and, and things like that. So I felt a little bit out of place, you know, as far as the, the hipster level goes, but, uh, like our friend, Matt Alexander and Need, that's, they would be fit in. Like perfectly there. Right. That's, that's the, uh, type of place it is. So it had a lot of those type of goods. Um, you know, you see like the, the raw denim goods and, you know, custom made boots goods and just beautiful craftsmanship and all this stuff. And then you'd have like a lot of local, like food vendors, right? Like coffee brewers and chocolatiers. And there was someone in Atlanta that made like their own special, like sweet tea, you know, and just like very cool things that, so it was like 50% like clothing type goods. And then probably like 40 or 50%, um, into like food type goods, which was, which was cool. Cause we always had samples of food. We had free beer, free vodka, bloody Mary mix. There was all kinds of great stuff. And, uh, it was, it was really great just to getting around, talking to a lot of these vendors, lots of leather workers there, you know, people making different bags and wallets and things like that. And, you know, it turned out to be great for us. Number one, cause we were such a big outlier. People were very confused. We confused the hell out of a lot of people, which was great because that allows us to have a conversation. Right. And that's why my voice is shot. And, you know, just from talking all weekend and explaining to people, like we were one of the few pops of color in the entire room, if you will. Like if you can picture like all the, you know, you look online, you see all like someone, uh, Dan said in the, uh, in the chat room, the urban lumberjack style, you know, it's dark and wood and flannel. And you see all those characteristics like running through the theme. Right. And then you go over to like the knock booth and you see this green with this bright yellow and this orange with this bright blue and sky blue with pink. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: That combo, man.

Brad Dowdy: We sold a bunch of those. Good. Good.

Myke Hurley: Those things, man. I'm telling you, you should just only sell them in person because.

Brad Dowdy: I know. It's the truth. They sell in person. They look good. They came out so good. And, um.

Myke Hurley: I have to, I want to just very quickly petition the audience. If you ever want to get a knock co-product, like trust me, buy the sky blue and the hot pink one. Just trust me. It looks amazing. So many people were buying those things. And I love my, uh, the, the, I have a couple of products in that, in that colorway. And it's way, way, way my favorite colorway.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. At the Atlanta pen show, we sold out of that color. Yep. I mean, I think that was the first color we sold out of, um, because it looks so good in person. Like people can't pass it up. So, you know, so people see the, like the color on our table, you know, in a room full of, you know, like tan leather. Um, it, it really stands out. So they'll come over and see what's going on and they look at it and they're like, huh? So this is a thing, you know, like this thing exists, you know, for pens and paper. I see. Okay. They're, they're very confused. And we talked to them. They're like, wow, this is really cool. And, you know, just enjoy hearing our story and hearing our conversation, especially, um, since, you know, most of the visitors to the show were, um, Atlantans or at least Georgians themselves, you know, in the area that, you know, someone local is actually doing this. And they were, they were, everyone always had like this huge grin on their face. Like, this is so strange yet it really, really cool. And, uh, just those conversations happened from, you know, the minute we opened to the minute we closed, you know, just people coming by and talking to us and learning about the products and, uh, and us getting to explain what we do. The funniest thing is that everyone who had most people, you know, 98% of the people, there had no idea what, like these were pin cases and, you know, what exactly we did. You know, we definitely had some of our customers come in and, you know, they were super to us and bought a lot of stuff, but most people, they would pick up the fodder stack, you know, that holds like the one notebook and the pin sleeve on the outside. Almost everyone who would come by the table, pick that up and like, try to open it up somehow and ask if they could fit their iPhone into it. So that was like, that was like the most common thing is like our fodder stack display, our, our poor little fodder stacks were getting, uh, we're getting a workout because people were trying to figure out how to open them. And then we had one, you know, loaded out, but people still don't look at it that way. They have a vision in their head of what it should be until I show them that here's how the notebook goes in and here's where the pin goes.

Myke Hurley: And they're like, Oh, that's really cool. When you see people try and use your products in this way, does it inform future product decisions?

Brad Dowdy: Sure. Sure.

Myke Hurley: Would you make potentially, right? No commitment. Like, would you make an iPhone case?

Brad Dowdy: We would. I mean, I mean, we don't have plans to specifically make one just an iPhone case, but that's kind of how the Sinclair came about. Um, and the Sinclair is a new product. We, we did the soft launch of the Sinclair at the show, right? So it's a new product where it's a zip top case. It's got three pin slots on one slot on one side, a notebook slot on the opposite side and can then kind of an open space in the middle where you can fit your pins on the one side, the notebook on one side, and you can slot a phone down the middle. I mean, it's kind of, uh, I can't say it was on purpose, but it wasn't not on purpose. Right. Because people use things for different, different people, you know, figure out how to use things to fit them the best way. And that was certainly kind of a conscious decision. We're not calling it like an iPhone case because I mean, like the iPhone sixes pluses are too big for it, but I keep picking up. I'm sorry. You hear me rattling the zippers. Um, but it's kind of a nice additional, additional thing you can use it for if you need to, you know, you can slide your phone in there and zip it up.

Sinclair Product

Myke Hurley: Let's come back to the Sinclair, right? Cause I want to talk about that in a minute, but I still have a bunch of other stuff that I want to talk to you about this American field. Um, how does this kind of environment differ for you from a pen show? Like I assume for one, you feel a little bit out of your depth, right? These aren't your people.

Brad Dowdy: Right. So it's definitely not our people, but we had the opportunity to get the feedback from people who aren't our people. So that's actually super important, right? So we, once we tell them what we do and show them the cases and show them how they work and you kind of hear just like one-off comments that someone might say about your design that you never considered before.

Myke Hurley: Sure.

Brad Dowdy: Right. I don't know that I have a specific off the top of my head about that, but that happens constantly. Right. People who are no clue or don't even use pens that would come over and, and look at the designs and they might make, you know, whatever comment. And it was funny, most of the, most of the, most of the comments were like, Oh, this is so great. And I love this. It was, it was really nice to hear that from people who have no concept of what we do at all telling us that, Oh, this is a great thing. And that just kind of, it solidifies a little bit like what you're doing. Um, it gives you that validation that, you know, we all like to be validated. Right. And I mean, that's an, you know, important, you know, we all like our backs padded and high-fived, you know, all the time. Hey, you make cool stuff. And it was like, we really appreciate that. And, you know, even if they have no interest in making a purchase whatsoever, it's great to hear that feedback. Um, and it's important to hear that feedback from not your normal customer, I think.

Myke Hurley: So the people that were buying these, do you have any idea what they were buying them for?

Brad Dowdy: A lot of people were figuring out that, Oh, I do have a use for this, or I have X family member that has a use for this. And then the people who were necessarily, some people weren't necessarily buying them for pens. Someone would buy like a brass town and say, Oh, I can manage all these cables and all these little slots that I do for my very specific job. Kind of thing. And like we sold the things we sold the most to probably the non hardcore stationary pin people was the brass town, which surprised me very much.

Myke Hurley: Um, do you remember the lady who wanted to put a silverware in them? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Atlanta. That made me laugh. That was really, really funny. She just bought a ton of the blue and pink ones, right? She's like, I put my silverware in them. Yep. This is the thing, right? So like, uh, you, I mean, you guys aren't dummies, but you must look at your business and be like the future of our businesses is in expanding outside of just pen storage. Right. Right. Like it's, it's bags stuff. Right. And bags can be exactly what you have right now. They are kind of bags for something. Absolutely. Right. But it's bags. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Actually, we use that. We use that phrase a lot. Um, after we, once we realized the crowd, that phrase kind of became like by the end of the first day and into the second day, you know, you could say that type of, that type of thing. Cause we sold a lot of the chimney tops, which are just flat storage, right? There's mass storage. People would say, Oh, I can use it for this. And, you know, the, our prices were extraordinarily reasonable, you know, when you're looking at leather goods up and down the aisle, right. Or any kind of like custom cloth type stuff that, you know, real fancy stuff, you know, our price points were spot on.

Myke Hurley: Um, I felt, um, especially at the chimney top, cause it's effectively buy on get one free.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Right. Yeah. It's like a, it's like a little kit and now we sold a bunch, a bunch of those, but like what we didn't sell, I think we may be sold one or two the entire weekend is the lookout, which is like one of my favorite cases. And it's got to be one of your top sellers, right? Like in general. It's absolutely, it's far away. One of our top sellers by far.

Myke Hurley: And the reason is this is a flat out pen storage case. Like you can't really use it for much else. Nope. So it's not going to sell there. Right. Right. Man, you must be like, cause at least my brain is, so I can't even imagine like your brains must just be like, were this whole time. Right. Cause it's like, this is how other people perceive our stuff. Right. Right. Cause I mean, and it's not, it's not a bad thing at all to focus on your market and niche, right? That that's how you start to begin growing a business. But like, eventually you need to look outside of it. Right. And like, and we've been like this, like, you know, we have a space podcast now. Right. Which is not like Apple tech stuff. I mean, you know, and I don't count this show in that cause it's been around forever. Right. You know, right. Right. This show preceded like Relay FM by a very, very long period of time. Right. So like pen addicts and outlier. Right. So like, I don't, I don't consider it and never really did consider it as like the core audience. But like, you know, it's like you guys, you make pen stuff for pen nerds. So you just make loads of pen stuff for loads of pen nerds. But eventually it's like, oh, but if we think about making this type of thing, this is for a different type of person and there will be overlaps, but they could bring like a whole new group of people into our product line.

Brad Dowdy: Absolutely. Yeah. The whole weekend was like that. And then on top of the customers who were there, the other vendors who were, let's say a leather bag maker would come over and look at our stuff. And then we can discuss like pattern making and building. And well, what if we did something together or I need this, you know, I make these leather bags, but I need this, you know, built in that goes in the bag and it's going to do these kinds of things. So we got a ton of people talking to us just about making, right? So you have the one, the customer side where you get feedback on your products and then you get the maker side where you actually get to talk about making the products with people who are doing similar things, but with different materials. And that was extremely valuable for Jeff and myself as well. You know, as much as the customer feedback, the other makers feedback on how we're putting things together and you know, how our stuff looked and how it's constructed. And then, you know, like, could we collaborate on different things, you know, down the line and just getting to meet people like that. Um, it was, it, it was successful just for that alone, you know, you know, money wise, we did fine, but like at the pen show we did, well, I think we probably sold more on Friday at the Atlanta pen show than we did the entire show here, but we certainly well made more than our money back. You know, we didn't lose money attending the show, but it's not like a blowout pen show type sales, right? Where it's your people, but the feedback and the contacts we made that's, you can't put a price on that stuff, right? Yeah. You know, that stuff's worth the price of admission, um, almost on its own.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Cause I guess the pen shows, they're kind of like self-fulfilling prophecies, right? You know, the people you're going to see, um, you know, that like, and you get new customers at these things, right? Cause they're not all pen addicts, right? You know, which is kind of what you'd want, right? Because the, the, the, the world of pen buyers is bigger than the amount of people that listen to the show and read your blog. Right. Um, so there's always a benefit to doing the pen shows, but the pen shows maybe don't teach you as much about future product design, right? Cause you can, you, you probably have a pretty good handle on what you need to do next to make that audience happy, right? They want a folio and they want a bag. Right. Right. And you know, and you can, and then you can do things like the Sinclair, which we're going to talk about in a moment, but like, there's this whole other world out there, which one day, if you guys can, can ever find the time, start to target. Right. And I guess this is how you find out what that world looks like and what Knox place is in that world. Right. I want to talk about the Sinclair. Okay. Because this is, this is an actual new product that you guys are doing for the listeners of this show. Right. So, right. But let me just talk about Fracture very quickly. Cause we love Fracture and I love to talk about them. They are the company that will take your favorite images and put them directly onto pieces of glass that you can proudly display or give as gifts. I want to, and Fracture want to say a general, most thank you to everyone out there who has been giving Fracture a chance to print all of your photos. They really do just the best work. I love the prints that they make. Like Fracture prints are unlike anything else that you could put on your wall display in your home. They give your photos like a whole new life to them. They just look really, really fantastic. Like these days, all of our favorite pictures are saved on there. You know, they're trapped behind pieces of glass in a kind of a weird way. They're on our iPhones and they're on our iPads and our Android phones. And we never look at them, right? Cause they just sit inside of that little box all the time. But with a Fracture, you get all of the benefits of seeing how great a picture looks behind a piece of glass, all the great color and all of the great, you know, just the great look that a photo like that has, but you can put it on the wall. And their prints that they do are so fantastic because they print the picture directly on, right? So there's no air gap in the middle. It's not moving around inside of the frame. It's a piece of glass. Your picture's printed straight onto it. And there's a piece of foam on the back so you can mount it or so that you can display it real easily. The team at Fracture put a ton of work into making this stuff right. And they hand assemble all of these things. They put them together in their factory in Gainesville, Florida. And again, like I was mentioning with Myke Dudek a little while ago, because they hand assemble this stuff, they can get really busy. And when they get really busy, like the line can go on forever, right? If you imagine something, it has to be hand assembled and hand checked. That's taking real person time because they want to make sure they get it right every single time. And every fracture that leaves their fractury looks fantastic. So with the holidays coming up, you want to make sure that if you're thinking about either get, as you say, right, getting a fracture for someone, or if you want a fracture as a gift and you want to tell somebody to get one for you, you want to do that as quickly as possible. I was talking to a couple of people over at Fracture today, and they were saying to me, like, they are in such great demand right now. They're super happy. They said, like, it's like nothing they've ever seen before. And again, they wanted me to thank all of you guys for buying them, because Fracture are having a great time over there, right?

Myke Hurley: But because of that, they are super busy, and they're busy right now. So if you want to get one of these great prints for the holiday season, make sure that you get that order in now. Go to fractureme.com to learn more and get started, and you can get yourself a lovely 15% off your first order by using the code PENADDICT at checkout. That's all one word, PENADDICT, and you'll get 15% off. Thank you so much to Fracture for supporting RelayFM. And when you get your own fractures printed, take a picture of them, send it to us on Twitter. We'd love to see it. Thank you so much to Fracture for their support of this show.

Brad Dowdy: Did you see our good friend Toffer sent Fracture, his collage he had? He had about six of them. Yeah. On Twitter, he sent it over to them. They're like, oh man, that's so great. And they wanted to use the image for one of their, I don't know if they put it on Instagram or something like that, but that was pretty cool to see.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, because he had a bunch of them. We said six different ones, and then he hung them on the wall. It looked great. Really, really great. So we spoke about the Sinclair a little bit. So the Sinclair is the Half Tower, right? That's correct. So for listeners of this show, the product we've been calling the Half Tower for so long has now got a name, and it's the Sinclair. And what is Sinclair?

Brad Dowdy: It's a lake in Georgia. Right. So it's going from mountains to lakes now. That's right. That's right. So we weren't going to totally pimp ourselves into only mountains, because then you get into some really interesting names that aren't necessarily great product names. But, you know, we keep it in that. What was that one?

Myke Hurley: What was that one you told me?

Brad Dowdy: I can't remember if it was on the show on it. What was it called? Well, you'll have to decide if you have to cut it out the show or not. But like the third or fourth tallest mountain in Georgia is called Dick's Knob.

Myke Hurley: And I'm not going to cut it out because that's the name of the mountain, right?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So it was like, you know, we can't really go with Dick's Knob for this new case. So let me look at what other names I can do. And I was like, oh, you know, this is a really Sinclair. Yeah. Sinclair sounds really good when you're comparing it to Dick's Knob. That won't be the title of the episode, though, before you guys start to listen. Yeah. So we'll go ahead and cut that out from the episode. So, yeah. So, you know, we figured if we keep it in that whole nature realm, and there's so many good, there's, you know, lots of good names on that. And we still kind of have that good current thing. And actually, at the show, we have our price list printed out on the thing. And we had a bunch of people that would kind of stare at it and kind of cock their head a little bit. And they'd go, wait a minute. Do you mean like Brasstown Mountain? And we're like, yeah, this is how we name our products. And they're like, oh, I live by Fodderstack and things like that.

Myke Hurley: Oh, that's cool, man.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So it was neat to see. People were all about the names. But yeah, back to the Sinclair. It was when we were in the prototype phase. Someone dubbed it, one of our customers dubbed it the Half Tower. And that really, really stuck. But, you know, and we let that go for a while. And we said, yeah, we're not going to call it that. But that's a great name on its own. But, you know, we had to find something that fit in with the rest of the lineup. So the Sinclair it is. And it's essentially the Hightower folded in half and has a zip top on it. So it's got three pin slots on one side, one side, a notebook slot on the other side. And a zip top, like a half zip around the top edge of the case. It came out really good. I finally got, I just got my production version this weekend at the show. I was going to make off with one of the wax canvas ones. But we sold so many of those. We sold out of those.

Myke Hurley: When are those wax ones going into the store? And how much of your stuff is going to have this wax on it in the future? Because that looks sick.

Brad Dowdy: It did look sick. It came out sick. And we're not doing any of it for the foreseeable future. What? It was a... That will be an eventually item. Okay. And a special edition item.

Myke Hurley: All right.

Brad Dowdy: Why, though? Huh? Why? I need to tell you why. Well, it's a thicker, harder material to work with. Okay.

Myke Hurley: So you can only make a small run for now.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Right, right, right. So, you know, we will eventually do it. And plus, we needed to kind of test it too, right? We needed to see how it's going to function, how it's going to work. Sure. And see if people enjoyed it.

Myke Hurley: That is sad to me though, man. Because I tell you, that looks so damn good.

Brad Dowdy: Well, everyone who bought one now has one more than me because I didn't even get one. All right.

Myke Hurley: See, I don't feel as bad if you don't have one.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I took one home Saturday night and I left it in my backpack and came back Sunday and we'd sold so many of them. I just got it right back out my bag, put it back up on the table. And, you know, I'd rather sell, I'd rather have someone else have it than me. I get plenty of cool stuff on my own. So I will eventually do more wax canvas goods in our lineup just because it's such a cool fabric. It's a really cool material. It looks unlike anything else that we really have while keeping, while allowing us to keep like the same style of case that we do. Like it doesn't change. Like you still know it's like a not case, right? But the look of it is killer. So it came out really good. But we are going to have all the colors that we already have in the Sinclair. We did introduce two new colors, which are killer in their own right, which is the camo exterior, black interior and red exterior or navy interior. And on that one, it has gray stitching on the inside, which came out fabulous. It's a killer, killer case. That's the one I ended up taking home. I thought I would do the camo, but the red looks so good. It's sick.

Camo and Red

Myke Hurley: So what about the camo and the red then?

Myke Hurley: Still no? What do you mean? Are you going to be selling those?

Brad Dowdy: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Those are stock. Those will be new stock. Camo and red are going to be new stock colors in all the cases, including the Sinclair.

Myke Hurley: Camo is a real nice option because as well, like, so I took a look at this. Like, so there aren't pictures of these that I've seen. I watched your Periscope replay, which I put in the show notes using some service I'd never heard of to keep it as like a permanent replay.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, we'll talk about that. We'll talk about you want to talk about that now real quick.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So there's a there's a service that Brian Goulet turned me on to. It's called Catch K-A-T-C-H. So Periscope, your videos, when they're done, they are up for 24 hours. And so this catch thing just all I had to do was like link my Twitter account to it. And when I Periscope, it keeps a permanent link to that video. So now I can share it. You know, if you missed it in the first 24 hours, you can go back and watch it. So I don't know much about it besides that, but it allows us to like link to what we're getting ready to talk about in the show notes. Right.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I actually did just find a picture on the NotCo account, which has all of the colors in there, but it was way easier to find to see on the on the video, I think, really. Yeah. So you've got camo. And what's the inside color on the camo? Black. Yeah. The camo you've chosen looks real good. Like it doesn't look tacky.

Brad Dowdy: Right.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. That's a real fine line. You can go there.

Brad Dowdy: Agree completely. Jeff and I are totally on the same page as you with the camo. And this is a super, super traditional large pattern camo. Right. It has a specific name. I don't know if this one's called woodland, but it's actually a very common pattern you see. But people have kind of bastardized camo these days. So you get a lot of weird patterns. So this is a super traditional classic camo pattern. And that's what we wanted to build this case around.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. It looks really great.

Brad Dowdy: And then you got the red. The red is like this really deep red. Like it's not like bright, pure red ink red. It's got a little bit more depth to it, but it's not like a brick red. It's definitely red. I didn't think about it till this weekend. And Jeff kept saying it to people. He said, yeah, it's like the Atlanta Braves case with the red is really bright. The navy is deep. And then the gray threading. That's like my favorite thing about this. I like the little small details. On the navy interiors, you can see we use gray thread. So there's like a pop of thread color in there that I think came out fantastic.

Myke Hurley: I'm looking forward to seeing those on the actual site when Jeff takes some real like light box photos of them.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So we're still working on that, but we did put up like red brass towns went up today. Um, you know, we introduced this weekend. We also introduced the chimney top XL, which is a longer length chimney top. So you can fit like unsharpened pencils in there. People, a lot of our pencil carrying fans needed something to carry full length pencils in. So we extended the chimney top and narrowed it a little bit. So it's a longer, skinnier chimney top. And I've actually been carrying one of those for months in my backpack and it works out great.

Myke Hurley: Did you have these at Atlanta?

Brad Dowdy: No, no, no, no. Okay. No, that's actually, we just had these right now. I mean, we just put them on the site today. Um, you know, and, and our pencil fans who, who've been wanting that they're, they're now available. Right. And, uh, we're also with, with that size, just to show that they carry pencils, we're giving you a free pencil to the Palomino HB pencil, which is this cool orange with the black dip end. We work with pencils.com to allow us to be able to, since we're not selling the pencils, um, they allowed us to break them up individually because they're normally only sold in dozens. Right. Um, so we said, well, we're just going to give them away. So like, oh yeah, that's cool. Yeah. So we can, we were allowed, they worked with us. We were happy for, uh, to let us, uh, to let us do that. Why are you doing that?

Brad Dowdy: Because it's cool.

Myke Hurley: Okay, cool. I mean, that wasn't a trick question, but like, I don't think you've given away anything free in a case before.

Brad Dowdy: No, no. I just, we just thought it was a cool thing. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. All right.

Brad Dowdy: I thought it's a, it's a, such a cool pencil. Um, and it really fits in with what we're trying to accomplish with that case. And you can just kind of link those two together, like mentally. Right. So, you know, you look at this case, you know, I can fit my pencils in it, you know, and I don't know. We just like to do cool things for cool people that are cool to order our cases. So why not? Right.

Brad Dowdy: No. Uh, no, we have no, uh, no ulterior motives other than to do something nice. Can I do something nice for you, Michael? You can. Once. You can. What is it?

Myke Hurley: No, I, it sounded like I was accusing you of something, but it wasn't that. I just was interested to know why, like what your thought process was. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: You know, we legitimately thought, oh, this would be cool. That was our thought process. And we can afford, you know, a single pencil, you know, like we can afford to do, you know, and it's something, it's something small, but hopefully meaningful and people will enjoy.

Myke Hurley: I find that with my business, sometimes some of the best stuff is the stuff that you do just because you like it.

Green Dot Dash Cards

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, exactly.

Myke Hurley: And you now have green, uh, dot dash cards. Okay.

Brad Dowdy: These things are, these things are great. I mean, I know this is like the whole, the full self pimp going on. I love these freaking green cards.

Myke Hurley: You gotta do it every now and then, man. You've had a busy week.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. These green cards are great. That, I, I love the Amber, which is our original. I'll never get tired of the Amber. I love this green one. It's, it's going to be, it's pretty hot. And Jeffrey designed the, um, the pack in cover for the note cards. So we have these cool little stripes on there. He does a really good job. They pop a lot more, um, than, um, than some of the other products. I kind of back to the American field stuff. The one thing that surprised me in a negative way, but it negative is a strong term, but I thought we would sell some paper goods individually on their own. We sold almost none. Um, people just saying, oh, cool notebook here. You know, like, you know, just random paper purchases. Very few, just random paper purchases. People who would buy products would also buy some paper. Sometimes we sold very little paper on its own, which I thought we actually might, especially the pocket notebooks, but no big deal. It was, that was just another one of those curiosity things that, you know, one of those takeaways from the show.

Myke Hurley: I wanted to say, like I was watching this video, I was watching this periscope and I felt so proud of you too. Well, thank you. You got a real business. Like this is no joke, you know? And this is no like, um, this is no small thing anymore. Like this is a real deal that you guys have built here. And, and I'm very proud of you both. And, but more importantly, the two of you should be very proud of yourselves, um, for everything that you've been able to accomplish in like the last 18 months. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: It's been like, it's been almost two years since the Kickstarter closed. The Kickstarter closed like right at the end of October, two years ago.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. You, you gotta, you know, you, you just gotta be so proud of everything that you've, you've managed to do.

Brad Dowdy: Well, I really appreciate that. I mean, we're working our tails off to, to get it done and to do things right, you know? And sometimes, you know, as you're building things, you know, Myke, you know, slow and steady is, is going to win the race, I think. And, you know, we're taking things not in a meticulous fashion, but in a metered fashion, um, to, you know, not getting in over our heads, which would just cause this vicious downward spiral. We're doing what we think we can accomplish while making a great product. And hopefully, you know, people will enjoy and, you know, having a good time doing it. So all those things syncing up together is while, while we're still here today, I think, you know? And why, you know, we're still just scratching the surface, which I've said a million times, there's so much, I think the future is, is really bright. Um, and I just, you know, every day that Jeff and I talk, it's always talking like, it's all like future planning stuff, right? It's, it's really good to be able to have those conversations, um, you know, about what's coming next and how are we going to do things better and how are we going to make more cool stuff for cool people?

Myke Hurley: No doubt. Do you have anything else you wanted to touch on today?

Brad Dowdy: I don't think so. I think, uh, uh, my, my glass is completely drained of water. Um, and I am about on that edge of totally exploding, um, a coughing attack in, into you, into the microphone. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: So I'm going to wrap up for us. If you want to find the show notes to this week's episode, including links to a bunch of products that we discussed, um, and all the new knock stuff, which you should go and check out, head on over to relay.fm slash pen addict slash one seven nine. If you want to find Brad online, he is over at knock.co, um, and also at pen addict.com. And he is pen addict on Instagram and dowdyism on Twitter, D O W D Y I S M. I am I Myke. I M Y K E on Twitter and Instagram. Thanks again to the great people, our lovely friends over at Linda, dudak, modern goods and fracture for helping support this episode and bring it to you. And most of all, thanks to you as always for listening to this show. We'll be back next week, provided that Brad has a voice until then say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.