The Pen Addict 627/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	627
Title:	Pen Addict Privilege
Release Date:	August 14th, 2024
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 627
Audio File:	Audio Episode 627
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 627
Length:	6565 min <br />1.083 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

• From Relay, this is The Pen Addict, episode 627. My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi Brad. What's up Myke Hurley, how are you? I'm good, you know, I'm feeling real good. This is an interesting week. Before we were recording today, I was looking through some photos over the last 10 years. I'm kind of like, getting ready to think about my Instagram post for Sunday, with Relay's 10th, is actually Sunday. The proper date. Yeah, the real anniversary, not like the royal birthday that we had a couple of weeks ago. So, you know, just doing a little bit of reminiscing today, which was nice. So yeah, I'm looking forward to putting that together. I saw, it was either your post or Stephen's post about the post of the launch shows, which I thought was pretty cool. Yeah. It was a 512 pixels post. Well, no, it's like... Actually, so, the story behind that, and I'll put it in the show notes. Okay. It was like our Welcome to Relay FM post. That actually was on the Relay website. So like, for when we... The week before we launched, the 11th, we were like, hey, we're Relay FM, and we're coming in a week. And like, that was the... Yeah, we're coming for you. That was like, just that was all just on the website. And... Gotcha. Things were so... Just crazy at that point. We lost this page. Like, it was like a static page, and we didn't have a backup of it. And then, for years, me and Stephen tried to find it, and just find the text of it. And then one day, I don't even remember how now, but Stephen did find it. And to make sure we never lost it, he then put it on 512. So this is like the text and the imagery, but it doesn't have... And we don't have the actual visual of it. Nice. But it was kind of in our colors and stuff like that. But yeah. So a lot of that going on this week. Yeah. That was good stuff. I enjoyed that thoroughly.
• Yeah. Look at that. Pen Addict right there, you know? Yep. Yep. Pretty cool. But these are also the days. They're new days. Yeah. These are new days. I had new events to break down as we led into last week my Stationery Fest preview. I have been to Stationery Fest, and I have returned to tell the tale, Myke. Questionable travels. Like, we weren't sure if I was actually going to get there or return. But that's maybe like a different podcast, a different travel podcast. Maybe we should do a travel podcast one day for our members episode. I am interested, though, because it seemed like a lot of people... What was happening when you were trying to get there? So when I was trying to get there, we're well past the CrowdStrike stuff. So we're beyond that. So we got into a weather situation in the New York area. They actually had a full ground stop at JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark. No one was coming in or going out.
• Normally, those storms will blow through in like two or three hours, but it was about an eight-hour stop. It was one of those things where so many people... We had actually boarded our plane, and then we deplaned, said, you know, we can't go anywhere because we can't land. And like we had perfect weather, like in Atlanta, where I was flying out of, but we just couldn't get to where we were going because no one was moving in or out. But so the later it got, the more likelihood that it was going to get canceled because we're just stacking up. Like everyone trying to go to the New York area, it was just stacking up. And then we got the call. It was like, you will board now. Have your passes out. Let's go. Right? It was one of those situations where we had our window. By that point, we had lost like 50 travelers on that plane. Like it was a half full plane by the time we left, right? Because so many other... Like people are missing connections. People are having to make change in plans. I was like, well, either this flight's getting canceled and I'm driving home or I'm just going to sit here till we go. And I sat there till we went and we made it. And I got to the hotel about 3 a.m. So that was great. That's better than not making it, you know? Yeah. And then on the way home, so that was Tuesday of last week, was that weather. On Friday was when Hurricane Debe was rolling through.
• Debe. Debe. Debbie. Okay.
• What's happening?
• Hurricane Debe was rolling through. It was a tropical storm. It had been way downgraded by that time. But the winds were like, you know, 40, 50 miles an hour. So like, am I going to get to leave, right? Are we going to have further delays? So that was easy. We only had like 30 minutes of a delay that day. So we had a lot of weather to deal with the entire trip and weather at Yoseka Stationery Fest, which we're going to talk about during my recap today. But that's what I wanted to do today, Myke, is just kind of give the full breakdown. Well, as much as I remember of the event, I'm still not recovered just from being busy once I got back. But I try to capture as many notes as possible. I haven't written a blog post. I don't know that I'm going to write a blog post recap. I might.
• I just haven't had time to do that. But I did want to write down my thoughts analog style. So yeah, I did that. And that's what I want to talk about today. Because a lot of people have a lot of questions. So again, just as a reminder, Stationery Fest was organized by Yoseka Stationery, which is, which has, they have a company that has a store in Brooklyn. Yes, they're their brick and mortar stationery store in Brooklyn, New York. Which we've been to, right? We have not been to that one. Oh, what one did we go to? So they did not exist. We went to CW Pencil Enterprises in 2019. There was another store. Yep. We went to two other ones. We went to Goods for the Study, which still exists. And then we went to Kino Kaniya. That's the one I was mixing it up with. That's the one I was mixing it up with. That's the one I was mixing it up with. That's the one I was mixing it up with.
• So they're a Japanese company, right? Yoseka or a Japanese company? Korean. Korean. Thank you. That's a terrible thing to say. Thank you so much for correcting me. I believe. They're a Korean company and they have a store. We're all wrong. Now I'm wondering, well, no, I'm wondering, is Neil from Taiwan? Is that where's, like, I literally know all these things, but I'm not going to be able to pull it out of my head right now. But yeah. But they have a store in Brooklyn.
• Yep, brick and mortar. And they put together this pen show, essentially. We call it a stationery festival, but for our purposes and for, like, understanding analogs of it, it is a pen show. We're being told they're Taiwanese. So we're all wrong. Yes. And we'd like to apologize for our mistakes. Well, I was right. I just couldn't get there in a timely fashion. You said Korean. Well, I changed quickly knowing I was wrong. Sure, sure. But look, we're all wrong and you're just less wrong. Fair enough. Fair? I'll take less wrong. Yes. I'll take less wrong. They put together this show and they invited a bunch of exhibitors to come in to put on a show for three days?
• Yes. So it was a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday event. And I'll apologize in advance. I keep calling. I reference when I wrote my notes Friday, Saturday, Sunday, because that's my traditional pen show mental image of when things start and when things end. In my notebook, I've scratched out so many Fridays that I had to change to Wednesday. So if I misspeak later, if I say Friday, I mean Wednesday. If I say Saturday, I mean Thursday. And if I say Sunday, I mean Friday. Maybe you should just go with day one, day two, day three. I should. I should. But it was a three-day event. Three-day event.
• You know, from a lot of us that listen to this show that are used to your traditional fountain pen shows, it's mostly similar, right? Same type of setup, same type of deal. Vendors pay table fees to, you know, exhibit there. And then it's a regular retail show space, you know, where they're selling goods and things like that. So what I wanted to do today was talk about my experience, talk about some pros and cons, because there was a lot of conversation during the event, either in person or online, about what went well and what didn't, because there were some issues. And then I want to talk about the vendors and the people there. So I kind of broke it down into three parts. So you ready for me to get in this? And I'm going to do it, you know, pretty much, you know, in order, at least my overview. So I already mentioned the travel issues, right? So I got in my room about 3 a.m.
• Luckily, I didn't have to be to the show. My event on Wednesday was my interviews. So luckily, that didn't start till two o'clock. So I didn't really need to get there till about noon. I wanted to get there early and check in and whatever. But of course, when you have travels like that and you're going to somewhere you're excited about, you still can't sleep no matter how tired I was. I was up at eight o'clock, right? So, you know, I just, you know, got up, got ready, took it slow knowing I didn't have to run over there. But I stayed about a half a mile away and the weather was good enough for me to walk to the event the first day. I would have walked every day if the weather was nice, but we'll get into more weather as we go.
• But I pretty much carried an umbrella the whole time. Yeah, Debe. Um, pretty much carried an umbrella the whole time. Never really had to use it because it was bad enough on the second and third days that I just got an Uber over there, right? I wasn't going to fight that half mile of, of wind and rain. Um, so I walked over and the path I walked put me in position to land about the end of the line to get into stationary fest. Once again, this is Wednesday morning, the first day, day one, and the doors don't open until 11 o'clock. Um, although there are people who had, uh, classes. If you had classes earlier, you could get in earlier for that. Um, but general entrance was not till 11 a.m. They started checking people in or like around nine because people, you know, had to check in and get their badges, things like that. Um, so I walked up and I just see this line. I was like, Whoa, like I didn't know where exactly it ended, like, like at the door to get in, but I knew I was at the end of the line. So I took out my phone and I was like, okay, I need to walk this line and film it just to see how long it goes. Because I don't even know. I haven't walked it yet. And I just turned on my video and I started walking. And when I got to the entrance, I stopped the video and the video was in my, uh, photo reel or my photo album, uh, as two minutes and 47 seconds. So long line. That was a long line. It was a long line. So can I just, did they sell tickets in advance or was it like a general admission? Nope. Sold tickets in advance. Okay. So mostly people just had to check in. Yeah. So what is checking in though? Um, to get their physical badge, right? Like your lanyard that like shows that you paid. Right. Yep. So basically they could go up to the Yoseka storefront. So the Yoseka storefront was about like one or two units, you know, down the street from the actual entrance to the warehouse space where we had the event. Like you could literally, like I could put them both in the same camera frame if I stood across the street. Right. Yep. So you could go check in at Yoseka, get your badge, and then you would just go in line and wait for entrance. Right. Now you're, you're checked in, you have your badge, you're ready to go. Um, you know, it was rainy and wet. It wasn't cold or anything, but, um, it was, it was, you know, lots of umbrellas, lots of rain jackets, but people like seem to be in a pretty good place. So we're going to, we're going to talk more about the lines and the traffic and all that stuff when I get into like the pros and cons section. Sure. One thing I want to bring up now is what I'm referring to as panatic privilege, uh, for some of this event. So you do have to have, you do have to have some context of my experience is not the same as everyone else's experience because I was, I just want to be clear. I just, it feels weird to say, but I have to say this, like, this is context. Someone's going to say, well, that's not my experience. I'm like, yes, it's very clear. We might not have had the same experience. So I had a vendor badge, uh, or a vendor wristband, um, which allowed me to bypass the line. I actually think it might just be worth saying every time you ever go to a pan show, your experience is not everybody else's experience. I agree. But in this one, I want to be very clear. Okay. Like I did not have to wait in the queues that ended up being like a bit of an issue that, like I said, we're going to talk about later. So I want to make, make everyone clear. Like, I think everyone knows, but I want to be clear that I got yelled at from my friends who were waiting in line. I'd walk by them and they'd be like, boo.
• As I walked past them and I was like, yes, I know. Uh, I'm still going. I'm not going to lie. Maybe they would just chant in Brad, Brad, Brad. Brad. Yeah. So, you know, I did get to get in, uh, early, get to bypass some of that. So, um, I, I did get some, uh, did get some content, uh, though, from some people in line and heard about their situation. So again, we'll talk about that later. I will have a whole segment on that. Um, but yeah, that was my experience. Like I got to skip the line. And also if you had, like I said, they were doing a lot of classes at this event. So, you know, if you had a 10 30 AM class, you could, you could go up and there was actually a different, uh, physical location. You could go in and do that. Um, go to your class and you get in a little group and they'd send you up the elevator, like different from, uh, everyone going into the show floor. So the show floor itself, um, was your, if you could imagine an old warehouse, but in the same very traditional large rectangle show floor space that you see at a lot of pen shows, right? One single room, uh, I'd say that single room for those of you had, that have been to the DC pen show, the one single rooms, not as big as the, the big ballroom at DC, I'd say. Okay. Um, I think that's probably fair. Um, it wasn't quite that big, but plenty big. I didn't, I should have looked at the number of vendor tables, not the number of vendors. And I don't have that information, but they would be pretty easy to figure out. Um, so they had that, like a, basically the main ballroom and, you know, it had good while, good aisles. Um, there's basically like three aisles, like two around, you know, a one whole rectangle, uh, with tables on the outside and inside, and then an aisle through the middle. So there was a couple extra rows in there and it was a good space, right? The space was good. The aisles were wide when there was no one in there. Um, I mean, you see like, Oh, this is how, yeah, I would lay this out. It wasn't, it didn't feel too crunched at the time. Um, but it does get there eventually, which as we'll find out. So, you know, your standard, what, eight foot vendor tables, the vendors look like they had enough space when they were back to back. Look, they had enough space to get in between each other. They had, um, you know, like a little dividers between the tables on the backside in case vendors wanted to hang up signage and things like that. So very quick calculation. There were 103 vendor tables. Okay. Yeah. Sounds about right. So, so that, I mean, 103 vendors, because some vendors might have four, some might have two, some might have one. This is based on their, their like table layout, which includes individual tables for vendors who have multiple tables. Yep. Um, so that's a, that's a pro that we'll talk about later is you were quick to be able to find out that information because a lot of that's on the website and they did a good job with that. So yeah, shocking, shocking. Imagine having a website and having the information on the website. Yeah. Imagine, um, right outside, like as you walked into that show floor, so that's, I'm referring to that as the show floor. As you walked into the show floor, there was a little refreshment stand where they had just drinks and snacks. Uh, they had a local tea purveyor that was, uh, making a couple of types of their teas, which were very good. I did, uh, I did check that out. And then there was an area. So Muji was one of the sponsors of the show. Muji had like a sitting area. Again, this is as you're going into the show floor, but a little bit off to the side where they had like, uh, beanbag chairs for everyone to sit. Um, it was a little strange, like, like not everyone wants to be getting up and up and down from being bad chairs all day, but it was kind of nice. Like it looked comfortable. It was very popular space. And Muji was also like taking pictures of people there, like in the Muji background. And you could do like fun little, you know, like photo booth type stuff, uh, there. So that was just kind of the facility, like the resting area outside. And it was a little bit darker space. It definitely was not quiet, but it was at least a place you could go and chill for a second when you got out the show floor. So if the show floor was the first floor, the classes were up on the fifth floor of this building we were in, which was probably the top floor. I think it was, I don't think it was taller than that. And it was a big open area. Imagine like a mini show floor. And then they separated those show floors with like, um, you have like a table space and that table would have, you know, say a dozen chairs around like a large, a rectangular table for a class. And then those would be divided with like big cloth, like dividers, like cloth and metal dividers in between. It seemed like it worked well. I didn't take any classes and I didn't get much feedback from that area, but I didn't hear anything bad about it. And there would be like, how many, there were probably six of those spaces. In the room. Right. So they weren't all on top of each other, but somewhere like right next to each other. But I don't think there was much like issue with, you know, one class being disruptive to another class. I never heard anything like that. Um, so like that was the class space. They weren't like in a ballroom enclosed, but they were kind of separated within the floor space itself. Like you'd go by and you would see like one, like table would have like number one, number two, number three. So you'd know which one you were at at the time. And it seemed, you know, pretty well organized for that. Um, show hours were 11 to seven, uh, Wednesday to Friday. So a little bit window shifted later from a traditional pin show at a hotel.
• Um, so, you know, that was just kind of how it went. I don't, I don't know if that's a pro or a con. I don't know. I don't, it was nice to sleep in and not have to get there too early, but, um, it, it filled up immediately. Like when the show floor opened on, on Wednesday, right? Like on day one, with that line being so long. And as soon as they let people in, there was a cap, a fire marshal cap there of 700, a head count of 700. And in that room, in the show floor room. So they did have security there counting ins and outs. Um, and they did have to manage that. So some people were waiting in line for like two hours, right. To get in, like if you were at the end of the line. So that was an issue. Again, we'll recap that here in a little bit, um, in the, in the pros and cons section. So, um, yeah, it was, it was really busy and really crowded pretty much from open at 11 till probably about 5 PM. It started to like thin out a little bit and then as you know, a little bit more as it got towards the end. So that was the general overview. And then my day, like the first day, Wednesday, when I got there, just look, taking it all in, walking around, saying hi to friends, being surprised. Oh, you're here. Oh, interesting. Uh, because I didn't totally check out the full vendor list. I was like, Oh, cool. I'm glad you're here. Okay. Good to see you. And while you were just in DC last weekend, huh? And so it was, uh, it was pretty hectic for a lot of the vendors there, but, uh, they were, they were happy to be there and love the crowds, obviously. So I had my interviews scheduled for Wednesday and that was also, you can see it on the little map that you pulled up, Myke, that was at the end, one of the ends of the show floor. There was a little raised stage, probably, I don't know, eight foot by eight foot or 10 foot by 10 foot stage. Um, that was a little bit raised and that started at two o'clock. I did eight or nine interviews, ran until a little bit past four. Um, it was really good. I had some great sessions talking with everyone. So the goal, which I realized pretty quickly, the goal with these interviews wasn't to necessarily, uh, discuss them with the room, right? Like I wasn't, you know, trying the, the setup was such that the people right there around the stage, if they wanted to hear me interview a specific person, they could come hang out around the stage, but we really weren't blowing out audio through the room, right? That was not the goal of this. The goal is actually going to be these videos that we recorded for each interview, um, which will be up later on Yoseka's website. They haven't started doing that yet. The amount of content they, they recorded, um, was, was astronomical, but all these interviews will be up in their own segments on the Yoseka site on YouTube at some point. So that was fun, but you can imagine I was exhausted by the time I was done. Uh, I went and sat in the back for like 30 minutes and just pounded water. I drank so much water that day. Um, just, just, I was talking so much. I just kept, kept hammering water. And then like, I just mingled the rest of the day. I wanted to stay till the end of the day till seven o'clock, just to see how the rest of the show wound down. And it was, it was very smooth, very easy. I basically just made a game plan for the Thursday, which was going to be my shopping day. I don't think I bought anything on Wednesday. You know, it was really just, I was, I was, you know, focused on doing a good job for my interviews. And once I was done with that, I was mentally done. Right. So I just chilled and hung out. So, um, they had a little vendor party. That night at seven 30, I did attend that. Um, but I was out of the facility by like eight and walked back to the hotel and just crashed. Like I didn't even eat dinner that night. Cause again, I had just gotten there at three o'clock that morning and that was my day. Right. So I was smoked. I was smoked. So, um, yeah, that was, that was day one. Um, was day one. I considered like a work day. Right. Um, I was tired from travel. I had a job to do and I wanted to do a good job. So that was my focus, um, on day one. And then Thursday, I just, uh, like I burnt a hole in my credit card. Basically that's, that's the short version for Thursday was sleep in, get to the show around when they open and really actually do my shopping. See, um, what type of new vendors were there that I don't normally get to see. Right. So I still showed up about the same time around 10 30. The line was much shorter the second day.
• Um, and I, I used the pen addict privilege band to get in, uh, walk past the line again. And I went up, uh, I just, I started shopping at the tables that I knew were going to be busy, like cute things from Japan. Um, we're going to talk about the cues within the queue here later, but, um, you know, hitting them up right at 11 o'clock, I was able to like get to the table, get the few things that I wanted and, you know, started buying things. I knew on Thursday after giving a good look around Wednesday that I didn't even bring my small bag Thursday. I just brought my whole backpack knowing that it's going to get stuffed. And not only did my backpack get stuffed, I also had another tote bag full of stuff. So it was an Epic haul. So I do have my haul video up on YouTube. I did record that yet or yesterday on the Twitch stream. So, uh, I can get you a link to put that in the show notes. People want to see what I got because we're only going to talk about a few things that I bought because I still have a lot to talk about on this event. So, um, yeah, well, I'll do a whole little vendor segment here at the end and talk about some of my favorites, but I was still like, I hadn't catched up, caught up from sleep. I was tired. I think I left the event there at five 30 that day, but I did notice like the overall flow of that day was a little bit better, even though like numbers wise, it was still like pretty busy. Um, but the, I was exhausted, went back, had an early dinner and just like an early night. And I knew that Friday was only a half day at the event and I was leaving Friday afternoon. So this was a whirlwind tour for me. Right. But it was, uh, I, I got a lot in there. So like Friday, I just, uh, you know, packed up left and I had some work to do at the show. This was my Hobonichi day where I got a preview of the Hobonichi event on, um, their 2025 launch is this month, right. Um, for all their new 2025 planner stuff. And they were doing previews. It seems that way from their Instagram, their Instagram. Yeah. So what they did was bring all of their items or I won't say all, but a huge amount of items that were launching and people could sign up in like groups of 15 or 20. As long as you sign, you had to sign up for a time slot over the Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And then when you got there, you had to sign an NDA. No. Yeah.
• Come on. Come on.
• When you said sign, I thought you were going to, I was like, no way is he going to say it. Then you said sign up for a time. I'm like, phew.
• Seriously. Come on. Hobonichi. Like, what do you think you are? That's ridiculous, Brad. But for giving up your signature NDA, you did get a gift bag. So they, they made it work for a while.
• Everyone was excited. No one cared. Like literally no one cared about signing. I never heard a negative thing.
• Well, no, because everybody wanted a gift bag. Yeah. In the pen addict privilege column, I asked them if they wanted me to sign an NDA. They said, no, you're good. You see what I'm saying? You didn't have to have your rights impeded upon.
• Did you get the gift bag? No, I didn't get the gift. I wasn't going to ask for the gift bag. Because I was actually there for work. So I spent the time doing the tour. I was in a gap time to where they were still like before the first tour of the day. So they allowed me to come early, have some time with the Hobonichi reps there, learn about some of the products. Because at 1130, I was scheduled to do an interview with the person that was basically running the event for Hobonichi there. She was fantastic. Just a pure joy. Actually, this really ended up being one of my highlights. When I was actually, I didn't know what to expect about this. So I had to interview Hobonichi. And we did basically like a stand-up interview in one of the preview rooms. So they had two probably like, I don't know, 15 by 20 rooms with tables full of stuff. So I got the whole tour and got to talk a lot about the products with a couple of the reps there. And then got to do, we basically did a stand-up in that room. And Hobonichi did request that we submit questions to them early, which I didn't really have a problem with. I don't mind that kind of stuff. It helps people prepare. Especially when we're dealing with English as a second language. Like who I worked with, Tamaya, was awesome. Like she was amazing. But, you know, English is her second language. So, you know, give them some prep time. And, you know, they allowed me to ask a question about Tomoe River Paper, you know, and, you know, stuff like that. So they weren't like very restrictive on like what we could. They just wanted to see it in advance to prepare. And she was thoroughly prepared. So we did like a little 15-minute stand-up interview there. I think it went really well. Again, you'll get to see this. I wonder if they'll start doing this. I wonder if they'll release this one first because Hobonichi's big launch is like the 25th, I think, of this month. So it should come out around that time, I'm thinking. Okay. Yeah. That turned out even better than I anticipated.
• I guess because I didn't know what to expect. And I just really had a good time talking with him at Hobonichi. So, and that was it. Like that was my Friday. I did that. We were done like around noon. And then I had like a 430 flight. So like I just, you know, went around, said goodbye to everyone and crossed my fingers that the weather was going to be good. So that was kind of my whirlwind tour of the event. You know, made it over to the airport and got out on time. And that was it. So that was my general overview, Myke. Any questions on that before we get into like pros and cons, challenges? And then at the end, we're going to talk about vendors and what I bought. I think for me, my questions will probably be in the pros and cons. So I think we should take a break and then we can talk about kind of your feelings on that. Okay. I can't get over that NDA, man. I can't get. Look, I understand the desire to not have your products posted online.
• I just don't know if a piece of paper is what you have to do for that.
• Hey, at least they used multi-pin jet streams. For the signatures? Shout out. Yeah.
• And you got to keep, I think the pin was part of the gift.
• Here, sign your name here. Oh, you can keep the pin.
• Oi. This episode is brought to you by friends over at Penn Chalet. They have the products that you're looking for from the brands you love. Whether you're looking for something new from Pelican or Lamy, whether you want to find something new from Sailor and Cafeco. It doesn't matter what brand you want because they have all of them and they're an authorized dealer. Penn Chalet believe in fast and reliable customer service with all different types of products on offer. With rollerballs, fountain pens, to mechanical pencils, to ink, to refills, to carrying cases, to accessories, and so much more. Penn Chalet are adding new products. Every single month you're going to find new stuff added to Penn Chalet. Basically, as fast as they can put things on there, they're going on there. And they always believe in giving you the best prices that they can. So every couple of weeks you're going to find lots of awesome deals over at Penn Chalet. But of course, you know, by going to PennChalet.com slash PennAddict, you can save 10% off anything at Penn Chalet and see some exclusive offers for listeners of this show. Penn Chalet have low prices and high quality products and they offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee. So internationally, we have the best shipping rates they can give. And if you're in the U.S., you'll get free shipping on orders of over $75. Brad, what's available to listeners of this show this week from our friends at Penn Chalet? I think Penn Chalet has heard the feedback that our listeners really like these ink deals that they put on there because they didn't used to put very many inks on there. You'd have a smattering here and there, some random ink going on sale. But they have at least three different brands up right now, three oysters. Realistically, I believe that Ron responds to whatever does the best. You know what I mean? That's what I'm saying. Yeah. So that's what I'm saying. It's good to see. So I'm like, oh, this works. And I was like, oh, yeah, it's kind of like smart to put these inks up there because, you know, once you get into this hobby, people start to dabble in different inks, different brands, different colors, figure out what they like. So, you know, we have three oysters, Kyoto Tag and Colorverse are all listed in here with all different colors, different shades. And, you know, find something you like with, you know, opinion might like. They have a bunch of Y Studio products in here, which they've had before, but I think a couple of different models this time, including the ballpoint and the portable ballpoint. The portable ballpoint is one with like a little lanyard strap on it. I've had that one. And interestingly, the one I haven't seen before on here is the classic desk fountain pen and the brass one. Like this thing is awesome. And I've had the I've had the brass one, but I'm saying they sorry, they have the copper one available. I've had the brass one before, which has the the black lacquer over it and has the wear patterns. But this is just the copper one. That's just kind of like raw copper. And it's going to look really awesome. It comes in a desk stand. Those are really cool pens. People like those a lot. And there's just some some really cool stuff on this page. So thank you, Ron and everyone over at Pinchelay for setting this up for all the listeners of the pen addict. But oh, Kaweco Artsports to still have those. That's P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T dot com slash pen addict. And you will find these special offers and the code that you need to save 10 percent on anything at Pinchelay. Our thanks to Pinchelay for the continued support of this show and relay.
• All right. So next up, let's tackle some pros and cons from Stationery Fest because there was a lot of chatter.
• There was a lot of chatter. Shoutouts later. Shoutouts later. I know that if we don't mention it, people are going to be like, well, it's the shoutout of the week. But it's later on. There's a good reason. But it's later on. Yes. So this was out of habit. And I thought you did a pretty good job there. Thanks. So pros and cons. Let's do cons first because I think that was kind of like the big talking point online this week was the crowds. Crowd size, crowd management and crowd flow at Stationery Fest. So that took up a lot of the oxygen on Friday. See, I did it Friday. On Wednesday, day one. Day one. Of how big the line was, which I reflected to y'all just in my walk and video. How crowded it was on the inside. And what we haven't exactly discussed yet is how the crowds flowed once they were inside on the show floor.
• So Wednesday was by far the worst day for crowds, even though it wasn't the busiest day by headcount. And this will make sense here in a minute. But what happens with shows like this, especially a unique show like this, because this happens at fountain pen shows too, is people are excited. Right. People are excited to be there.
• It's a popular new event that people want to get to. So there's FOMO. Right. There's vendors with special releases that they might run out of.
• And it's just like hype. Like everyone's excited. Everyone wants to be there. Everyone wants to get there at the open. So there's always a exceedingly busy time at the open.
• The outside line was massive. Right. And a lot of people were waiting like two hours. I heard up to two and a half hours from the time they got in line. That's not good. Now, some of that could be early. Like some people did get there at like nine o'clock to queue up to get in at 11. So that one's they did to themselves. But I think it's more the people who showed up maybe around 11. Then having to queue for two hours. That was the challenge. That's not good. So as rough as that was, what you can't have happen is then have people have to queue up on the inside to see certain vendors after already waiting outside. And that's where things kind of fell apart on Wednesday. Yeah. Okay. So you can't have people double queue, right? To where you've already put them through a test of patience just to get in the building. And then to get in the building, there were vendors there. And that whose popularity exceeded, I think, even what Stationery Fest showrunners expected. So let's take, for example, two tables. Cute Things from Japan, which is a wonderful, wonderful, very, very popular stationery maker. And then the Coffee Monsters Co., who is one of the most popular journaler creators online. And they both make products, sell products. Those tables were essentially across the aisle from each other. And both of them, it just made this a huge blockade in the floor, right? So the good part about this was that the Yoseka staff, or the Stationery Fest staff, I should say, tried to make the best out of a bad situation. There was no coming back from this situation that they were in right now. So what they did was had volunteers, their show volunteers, like the workers that were working the floor. We're going to talk about them here in a minute.
• Come and organize queues to get to these tables because it was madness. What those queues also caused were people not to be able to get to other tables around those because lines were crossing in front of regular vendors who weren't involved in these lines, right? So other tables were getting blocked.
• So it was bad. I'm not going to sugarcoat this. It was bad. If you weren't interested in those two tables, you couldn't walk around that part of the floor because of the volume of people around there, right? Even I felt like the show floor setup, the aisles were wide enough, right? Like there were four and five wide aisles. I had no problem with that. But there were points where you couldn't get around. So yeah, like having people wait outside and then finally get in only to be met with another line where they might have to wait an hour to go buy some washi tape from Helen at Coffee Monsters, that's not going to lead to a good time, right? No, because that's not a good time. Right. Like that is not a good time. Right. So I think the outside cues, like they knew the outside cues were going to happen. I'm not sure the inside cues were totally in their purview. Surely they did not think people would be waiting two hours to get in. Surely they didn't think that. Yeah, maybe not. Because I feel like if you knew that, you wouldn't have had that happen. Yeah. Because like the way that you would do that is you'd have to give people check-in time, right? Right. So we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about solutions. Like I'm not just going to like totally. I know, but like that's what I was thinking. I can't imagine they thought people would, that that was going to happen, that it was going to be a multiple hour wait to get in, as well as then the huge waits to buy products. Because I feel like if you knew people would be waiting that long, you would try and stop that from happening. Yeah. And the reason why they, I'm confident they didn't know the inside issue was going to happen is because the easy solution is to separate these tables across the rooms from each other, right? Oh, so these two tables were actually next to each other. Not physically next to each other, but I would say across an aisle about 10 feet, 15 feet from each other. Yeah. So, you know, there was just congestion, right? So you can lay out the floor differently based on what you think might happen, but how do you know ahead of time, right? That takes experience. Right. Are you going to sort tables by YouTube viewers, right? And separate them that way? Like, it's like ahead of time, that's impossible. But now you have this, you know, it seems simple after the fact to say, oh, well, these tables shouldn't be next to each other. It's like, yeah, I like, yes, that was a problem. We can solve for this, right? So that's, I literally think that was the biggest con was the crowd management. But after day one, it wasn't near the challenge. There were shorter waits outside, 15 minutes maybe to get in. There were shorter waits at the most popular tables like Coffee Monsters. Travelers was another one. Travelers had like a small queue, but we're talking like 20-minute queues, 15-minute queues to go through the table, see what you like, buy it and move on. And people were much, much, the flows were much better the next two days.
• One of the interesting things is that the show runners posted and shared the actual traffic numbers, which fountain pen shows, I wish they would do. They won't. I guess there's no reason to. But this was such a highly attended event, and they did experience some like traffic issues, like some flow issues. They did put out the numbers. So on Wednesday, day one, 1,554 people through the door. Day two, 1,585. That was Thursday. And then Friday was 1,782. Thursday and Friday, you heard almost no complaints about the crowd size. Yes, the show floor was busy. Like, yes, that might not be your thing if you're walking through these crowds all day. But you could get to the things you wanted to do within a reasonable time frame. Reasonable expectations, right? Did they make changes?
• I think they just managed the inside a little bit better. They didn't move the tables, right? They didn't relocate the tables, which that would have been too much of a mess. We're actually going to talk about something related to that here in a second.
• I think that would have been too confusing at the time and too much to ask. But they could have relocated a couple tables, split up the pressure point that ended up being created around that area. But to see the actual headcount increase every day, but the flow and pressure of the day work better, that's just because everyone wanted to get in there early Wednesday. Right? Yeah. So, like, how do you solve for that, right? So, that's something I'm sure they're going to be thinking about, right? Like, I mean, I have ideas. Like, we have ideas on how to solve this. I feel like we've experienced it, right? Which is, like, you have a different ticket type for the first day and you limit it. Exactly.
• Exactly. So, like, you could do VIP hours. Yeah. Now, do you want to charge people more money for extra access? Like, it feels a little bit creepy. It doesn't. But you know what? It's fine. People want that. It's absolutely fine. Yeah. People will take 9 to 11. I'm also, I don't want to extend vendor hours. They work enough, right? Like, the vendors don't want to be there from 9 to 7. But I'm just saying, you have to figure out a way to relieve that early morning pressure in, like, special access. Special paid access, I'm sorry to say. We'll relieve some of that pressure. That's not what you should do.
• I, yeah, I mean, I don't like saying that. But, like, it's, I wouldn't have a problem if they said, hey, VIP ticket is this. And you get an extra hour ahead. And it literally just relieves some of the pressure from crowds. You could do time tickets, which I'm pretty against. But, like, the Tokyo Pen Show does this, where you basically buy a morning ticket or an afternoon ticket. And if you're there in the morning, guess what? You get kicked out in the middle of the day. I, that's pretty aggressive. Like, I don't know that I would like that. I guess, technically, you could buy both halves of the day. I don't know how that works. I don't think that's the answer for a show like this. For me, I kind of feel like if you're going to do anything like this, you have to make it a monetary system. Like, I know people don't like that. But I just, I don't understand any. To me, that's the only way you would do it. If you're going to put, like, time on it, then you make people pay different rates to get different times. And it's also, like, a first come, first serve for that, too. Like, I feel like that is the only real way of doing it. But maybe, you know, maybe it's just my preferences. Yeah. So, I mean, it was, you know, 500, 5,000 people through, you know, in total. Like, it's pretty crazy. So, there's obviously a demand for this, right? And being your first time doing this, I thought overall it was pretty good. But I'm not also, again, I'm not the person that had to stand in line for two hours, walk in the door, want to go see cute things from Japan, and then wait in another line. And I would have been pretty hot. But when you hear it, it's like, this sounds like exactly the problem that happens to someone on their first time of doing something like this. Like, none of this, to me, really sounds like stuff where you should be like, oh, how could they not have thought, or whatever. Like, you really don't know what that's going to be like until it happens. And now it's happened. You could be like, all right, I'll improve it in these ways. But I think it's, hindsight is amazing, you know? Hindsight is an incredible thing.
• I can't, I don't necessarily imagine, I can see a scenario, I should say, where they know how many tickets they've sold, but they don't think everyone's going to show up at the same time. Right. But they did, you know? Right, yeah. Like, how do you know, right? So, how do you solve for that? I don't know that you can. Like, it's this really, really difficult balancing act to try to figure out. So, that was the big issue. Tiny issues, you know, I think there could be more, like, water around the floor. Right. Like, I'm used to pen shows having, like, you know, the water jug type things, like, you know, in the corners of the room and just allowing people to, you know, fill that up. You could find water and, like, it wasn't, like, difficult.
• I didn't think the food offerings were pretty lacking. Like, they just had, like, sodas and chips and things like that for purchase.
• I'd like to see a little bit more. The tea vendor was nice. I did partake in the tea vendor. But, like, right outside the door, there was, like, a little small coffee shop. I took advantage of that. And then, you know, if you left the floor to get lunch, you could find some places, like, right on the same block or within a block or two walk. So, it wasn't bad. But I would like to just see. Like, I drink water constantly at these shows because I'm talking a lot. And I don't want to get dehydrated and sometimes I'm not eating, but I will drink a lot of water constantly.
• I would like to see, and this may be a little unfair because I don't ask this for pen shows, but given how the first day went and how the weather was and how the lines were, I would almost like to see, like, some type of communications page with, like, live current updates on the website. Now, that takes someone to run that, right? They have a beautiful website that's going to go in the pros section. So, why not have, like, a status page almost? Say, hey, it looks like the line's about two hours right now, so you may want to think about coming later. Or just have a more general space for updates. There weren't a lot of active updates that people could get feedback on.
• But on the pros side, which I'll talk about later, there were volunteers everywhere. Like, so, I'll talk about it in a second. Last thing is maybe the relaxation Muji area. I would like to see that moved away from the actual show floor to where you actually do have some quiet space. But, like, these are all, like, super minor. Like, that's just, those are not, like, deal breakers. A couple things out of there. Control.
• Weather. Like, we had horrible weather. So, people were already frustrated because of the weather, right?
• And then there was a train line. Like, the closest train line was closed. Like, I, like, that, you can't put that on stationary fest, right? Oh, let's not run it these days, right? So, there was frustration. People had frustrations getting there. It's like, well, there's just some things that are out of your control. So, yeah. Yeah.
• So, like, if those are my biggest complaints, I think it went pretty well. I guarantee, like, others will have, like, a more, you know, a different experience than what I have. And those experiences are valid, too, right? Like, if you will never go back again because these lines were egregious, like, I would not blame you. Like, one second. So, let me hit a few of the pros before we talk about some of the vendors.
• The vendor variety was spectacular. Like, this is one of the coolest shows I've ever been to as far as we had, you know, traditional fountain pen distributors like Kenra Industries, Kohl's of London, who does Visconti. Lamy was there. Robert Oster sent a representative just to do ink samples. They weren't even selling, you know, things like that. But then we had all kinds of journalers and creatives there. That's where I spent most of my time. I think if I did this again, or if they do it again, I don't know 100% that they're going to do this again. I would spend a day taking classes. The amount and type of classes that they offered were very cool. Like, some of the fountain pen shows are starting to go along these lines. Like, San Francisco does a really good job with variety. They had some really neat classes. Some of my friends were involved in classes either teaching or helping. And I didn't see them hardly, like, the entire show. Just because they were booked. These classes were booked solid all day, every day. I mentioned it already, but the volunteers were freaking amazing. So, huge shout out to the entire staff that volunteered their time. They were everywhere. And all you had to do, I saw people just asking questions all the time. Some of them got roped into the line management, right? Which was not in the plan originally. They pivoted, and they would have, like, two people on each line, like, going to Coffee Monsters and going to Cute Things in Japan. And they, like, worked it. And they, like, adjusted on the fly. And they made the best out of, like, what was a really tough situation. I've never seen a volunteer staff as good as I've seen at this show. It stood out that much that I need to shout out the volunteers for this show.
• The location was great. You know, it's Brooklyn, right? It's cool. It was easily walkable when it wasn't raining.
• I thought their show website was great. They had a physical program that everyone got when they went into the show with, like, a map and, like, vendor information. So, like, all of that stuff was, like, really dialed in really well. So, I thought they just did a really good job, you know, in the prep and setup and informational parts of the show. A lot of it was there. So, yeah, it's good stuff. All right. This episode is also brought to you by our friends over at Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just getting started or you're managing a growing brand, you can stand out from the crowd of a beautiful website with Squarespace. You can engage directly with your audience and sell your products, services, or even the content that you create because Squarespace has got everything you need all in one place. It is so easy to get started with Squarespace's new guided design system, Squarespace Blueprint. You get to choose from one of their professionally curated layout options with styling tools to build a unique online presence from the ground up, tailored to your brand or business, and optimized for every device. And they've made it even easier than ever before to get started with Blueprint. And then you can launch your website and get discovered fast at their suite of integrated, optimized SEO tools. So, you're showing up more often in searches to more people and growing the way that you want to. You know, we were talking about websites earlier. And some companies we wished had better websites. They should just get a Squarespace website. They make it so easy. They have all of the tools that you're looking for. They make it easy to choose the way that you want it to look and to put the content in the way that you want. You can do it from the web. You can do it from their apps. It's super simple. But then they have all of the tools that you can use and, like, bring in to grow. Like, for example, Squarespace email campaigns where you can make outreach automatic with fantastic email marketing tools, sophisticated email marketing tools that let you engage with your community, drive sales, and simplify your audience management. You can use your brand or business color, like the colors and the styling options that you like kind of the same way. You can just choose templates like you do with building the website. But then you can also create custom segments and send targeted campaigns with built-in analytics to measure the impact of every send. This is really advanced stuff, and it is included with every Squarespace site. You can integrate flexible payments to make checkouts seamless for your customers if you offer a store with simple, powerful payment tools. You can accept credit cards, PayPal, and Apple Pay. And in eligible countries, offer customers the option to buy now and pay later with Afterpay and Clearpay. So go to squarespace.com and you can sign up for a free trial today. When you're ready to launch your website, go to squarespace.com slash penaddict and you will save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That is squarespace.com slash penaddict when you decide to sign up and you'll get 10% off your first purchase and show your support for the show. A thanks to Squarespace for the support of this show and all of Relay.
• All right, Myke, we have our shout out of the week. Shout out of the week. And this is going to lead into my vendor talk. And I want to start off with the Coffee Monsters Co. So apparently a lot of y'all are familiar with the Coffee Monsters Co. Helen, who runs Coffee Monsters, has been doing this for a while. And I got to learn about her and her work through my interview prep. So she was going to be one of the interviews that I had up on the stage. And we had to cancel her interview because she could not get away from the table, Myke. This was the most popular table, I think, there. This was one of the queues that never stopped queuing. And I didn't blame her for one second. She felt like super guilty that she didn't back out of this. I mean, that she couldn't do this. But I was like, hey, like I literally sat there and watched. Business to be done, man. Like that she is such a big deal. And I came away so impressed. I'm rarely like starstruck, especially from someone who I only learned about about two weeks ago. But her presence, like she's got it, man. Like she is the real deal. She is so sweet, so fun, super shy, very hardworking, and just loves what she does. And seeing her interact with her customers and fans who just adore her was one of my biggest takeaways. Like I am now in, I am a Coffee Monster, Myke. Like I am all in on what Helen is creating. And I got to talk to her for just a very few minutes as no one probably got more than like 30 seconds with her. Because she was that busy the entire week. But I am now following everything she does. And I'm just fascinated with her story. So I'm going to be keeping an eye out for her. She's a big deal in the journaling space. And this will not be the last you hear from her from me. And like she doesn't need me to prop her up. She's already a superstar. But like I'm in. Like count me in. I have seen the Coffee Monsters and I am drinking it up. So yeah, it's good stuff. This is like journaling stickers and stuff like that? Yep. That's what they make? Yeah. So what has, and this is a longer episode and maybe, I don't know, we can touch on it next week. So like my thinking around this type of creative work for my personal use is beginning to change. And this was kind of the light I needed shined. Not just Helen and the Coffee Monsters, but just this general concept. So that's a whole segment on another show. I could spend 30 minutes going down this path. So we'll table that. But I can guarantee we're going to be talking about this general idea of journaling content. I know this is something near and dear to your heart as well. You know, like with the theme system and just like having these analog tools. So there's more conversations to have from some of the takeaways I had at Stationery Fest. So I'm going to be exploring that here pretty soon. So other surprises.
• And I will definitely leave someone out here. So, you know, feel free to send us some feedback at who you want me to shout out. But I'm just going to talk about a few of the things that either surprised me, that were new to me, or that I bought at the show. So first up is Hachimanjia, which is a Japanese bookstore that I had never heard of. And I kind of heard the name people talking about, like, you know, maybe like a sailor fountain pen from there or something like that. But I really didn't have any context for what this shop was. But they've been around for a while and they've really leaned into the specialized stationery being made for store exclusives, right? They have store exclusive sailor pens, shocker, store exclusive inks, store exclusive notebooks, store exclusive, like everything. Store exclusive everything, right? Like I bought these life notebooks that I did not need. But of course I was going to buy because they were only available at their store. Right? And I already love life notebooks and the colors. Like I'll put the links in the show notes to these notebooks and it's like a $12 or $15 notebook. But just the color and the design and the store exclusiveness, I was like, yes, one of each, please.
• You know, I just bought some random stuff from them, but almost all of it was like store exclusive stuff. And I had just no concept of this store beforehand. And they're someone that I'm going to be paying very, very close attention to going forward just because of the people and the companies they work with to do some of these exclusives.
• Kakamori was an amazing vendor that I obviously knew some about. But getting to interview Takuma, the owner of Kakamori as one of my interviews and then getting to spend time with him at his table. The joy that comes out of these, some of these vendors is contagious. And I could not get enough of him or Kakamori or everything that they were doing. I picked up a, what's called a glass ink muddler from them, which is something that I've been wanting. And I tried and tried and tried to find a picture of this. And I haven't taken any pictures of my stuff yet. I tried to find a link online to their glass ink muddler. But what it is, it's basically like a cocktail stirrer, Myke, you know, like a shorter glass cocktail stirrer with a little mini spoon on the end. So it's got like a little scoop on the end. But then the backside of it's rounded. So you can like spread, so you can like almost scoop the ink out and get a little bit of a puddle of ink on there, put it on the page, and then spread it around with like the backside of the spoon, if you will. But it's tiny. So I'll take a picture of that and share it. But that was one of the highlights was spending time with Takuma. I could not be more impressed. Y'all should just go to Kakamori's online store and read their history. I could have interviewed him for an hour. Easy. Like one of my favorites from the day. Rose Studio 2019.
• I've seen her work at the DC Pen Show. Some friends of mine have bought some of her pens before. And what she does is basically started out hand painting Kaweco Sports, right? And super fine detail artwork on these sports. And I know a bunch of friends have gotten them. And it was great to finally get to meet her at this show. And I picked up one of the Kaweco Sports. That was the only pen I bought.
• Was a white Kaweco Sport with like some flower and just beautiful, colorful artwork on it. So I was very excited about that. Again, not ink. I literally unpacked all this stuff yesterday. That's how behind I am.
• Hanabi Glass Studio. I didn't buy anything from them. But it was great to get to meet them in person because I've heard so much.
• Their glass work.
• Be careful going to this site.
• It's one of those hide your wallet type of situations. I did not buy one. These are like works of art. They're very expensive. But I will end up with one of these one day. I'll just have to save up and pick out. Like there's no way I could have picked one out. Because they might have had like 50 pens on the table. And every one of them was as good as the one next to it. It was unbelievable the quality of work that I was seeing at this table. And it was great to finally meet Lucas there. And see some of these pens in person. They truly knocked my socks off. You know who else was at the show, Myke? Who? Lennon Toolbar. Lennon Toolbar. So this is the first time I've seen them in person. Brought a bunch of inks. Had a great little display where you could just kind of go through the catalog. And unfortunately, I went to them too late on Thursday. I would look through the catalog. Look through the swatch book and say, do you have this one? He'd be like, nope. And then I'd say, do you have this one? And he'd look around and go, nope. So I did end up with a couple inks that I liked. But I would have ended up with more. I promise you. Because they do some really cool stuff. So Pouch Studio. I want to give them a special shout out and link in the show notes. I love zines. This was issue one of Pouch, a new magazine for stationary lovers. It's really cool. I bought this issue. And I've already prepaid for issue two and three, I think, which come out next year. I'm all the way in on journaling zines. And I just wanted y'all to see this because I think it might really check a lot of boxes for a lot of you. This is like a magazine level zine, right? This isn't like your Xerox copy zine. This is like legit. And Victoria was super cool to meet. And I hope to hear a lot more from her in the future. And I'll be talking and sharing about this for sure. Who is Ming was one of my favorite artists to see in action there. I didn't get to actually meet him because he literally sat there from open on Wednesday to close on Friday doing caricatures. So what you would do is think it was $15 and he would take like a four by six card. You would queue up. There was always a line for this.
• And you'd walk up and either him or one of the people working with him would take a picture of you like a like a selfie or like a headshot picture. And with a iPhone, usually sometimes they had a camera out. A traditional camera. And he would put the camera back down on the table, grab his card, and do like a line art sketch of you in like five minutes. Hand it over to you. And it's like boom. Literally the entire show he was doing this. It was fascinating to watch. So I'm going to dig in more to who is Ming. Maybe learn who is Ming. Who is Ming? Yeah. I picked up, you know, some buttons. Like they did some like New York, you know, designs and, you know, pins and buttons and key chains and stickers. So I bought a bunch of that stuff. So this was really an eye-opening event for me. I had an insane amount of fun. And the makers that were there from the smallest of small bedroom makers to some of the larger fountain pen distributors that I'm familiar with. That range was kind of perfect, right? It was the perfect kind of match of a lot of everything. It wasn't even a little of everything. Like people were represented all over. Different types of artwork. Different types of creativity. Different types of products. Like I could not be more in on the variants of the exhibitor list at this show. So hopefully, and I don't know this for a fact, and I only got to talk to Daisy and Neil so much. Who knows if this will happen again? I hope it does. I think the majority of people hope it does. You know, there's obviously some things after a completely blowout first year that need to be worked on. But I mean, gosh, it was super impressive to pull off what they did. And for it to be so successful and have such good feedback, despite being things obviously they need to work on. So shout out to the whole team who ran this. Like I was thoroughly impressed. So it was great. And I'm sure I'll be talking more about it and what I got there and the people I met and the stories I want to tell from it.
• Very, very cool. Very cool. If you want to find some links in the show notes to some of the stuff we discussed, you can always find them in your podcast app of choice. So you can go to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 627. Brad, thank you so much for going through all of that. I know there was a lot there and it was exciting. I'm happy you were the man on the ground as always, you know? Yeah, it was good stuff. Like I have a lot more to say. Like I feel like I'm just scratching the surface or just getting started on this. But it was an important event. I will go out on limbs to say that. And I mean that in a very personal way to me. Like I got a lot from it personally. Good. If you want to find Brad online, you can go to penaddict.com, spokedesign.com, twitch.tv slash penaddict. I put a link in the show notes too to your YouTube video where you show off the haul, which was from your Twitch stream. Brad is at penaddict online. I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E. You can find my work at cortexbrown.com and here on relay.fm. Thank you so much to Squarespace and Pen Chalet for their support of this week's episode. But most of all, thank you for listening. Until next time, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.