The Pen Addict 166/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	166
Title:	Too Many Brians
Release Date:	August 3rd, 2015
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	Jonathon Deans
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 166
Audio File:	Audio Episode 166
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 166
Length:	8383 min <br />1.383 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 166. Today's show is brought to you by lynda.com, where you can instantly stream thousands of courses created by industry experts, Squarespace, Build It Beautiful, and The Pen Chalet. Great deals on high-quality pens with a 100% satisfaction guarantee. My name is Myke Hurley, and I am joined, as always, by the lovely Mr. Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: How are you, sir?

Myke Hurley: I am very well, my man. How are you today?

Guest Introduction

Brad Dowdy: I am excellent, because we have an awesome guest today that I am so excited about, although I'm feeling a little inadequate because my accent game is going to be pretty weak between yours and Dr. Jonathan Deans that we have. Say hello, Dr. Deans. Hello. Hello.

Brad Dowdy: So we have the British accent, the Australian accent, and the Southern American accent, so I'm going to be way in last place on this episode. So I appreciate you coming on, Dr. Deans, and putting up with our nonsense for the next hour or so. You're wonderful to get up early in the morning in Australia and join us. No, I'm happy to be here.

Myke Hurley: What is it, like 7 a.m. or something like that for you right now?

Brad Dowdy: We're coming up to 8 a.m., yeah. Yeah, okay. Yes, so is this our longest-distance guest? It's got to be, right, Myke?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I think so. Yeah, this is a rare, spanning three continents episode. Yeah. Maybe the first one, actually, that's done that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'd have to think about it, but we'll have to get the Connected style logo for every time Dr. Deans comes on because I know, no pressure, Jonathan, but I have high hopes for this episode, and I'm already counting on you coming back because I have so much to talk to you about. You're such an interesting part of this community. That's, I think, just a wonderful thing that you do with your blog, and we're going to get into all that stuff, and we actually have a lot to get into with you. I do want to, if you don't mind, go – I have a few follow-up items we need to cover real quick, and I'll drag you in as we go through, but it should just be real quick, and then we're going to get into it all about fountain pen economics. How does that sound? That sounds good. All right, so the first thing I want to bring up is we have finally finalized the DC Pen Show Pen Addict Meetup. Boom!

Brad Dowdy: So the show runs next week, August 13th to 16th, Friday night at 7 p.m. in Seminar Room 1 will be the official Pen Addict Meetup time and place. So I've been asked for next week's podcast to go through a pen show etiquette course, if you will, for first-timers going to the pen show. So that's what we're going to do next week. We're going to talk about getting ready for the DC show, pen show etiquette for those who are new to going to a pen show, and then any pen show-related questions, y'all can hit us up, Myke, myself. Send us an email, send us a tweet with the hashtag AskTPA. So next week is going to be a pen show-focused podcast, so get your questions in for that. So I'm pretty excited. The promoter of the show has really, really given us the full hookup for what we want to do Friday night, and I'm super appreciative of that. So we will see everybody there in only about a week and a half or so. So everybody except Myke, he's not going to be there. I just wanted to mention that.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I didn't know that. I'm pleased you reminded me.

Brad Dowdy: Okay, just making sure. Just making sure.

Myke Hurley: Thank you, buddy.

Brad Dowdy: All right. So what do you have going on, Myke? You've got our dock filled up here with lots of neat stuff that I want to hear you talk about real quick.

Myke Hurley: So I bought some stickers from the Relay FM store. Yes, I also have to buy stickers, everyone. They don't get sent to me. I have to buy them like everybody else. So I bought, because we've had a few new shows recently. I haven't bought any in a while, because I also buy them and have them sent to me from the lovely NOC offices. I buy them in batches. So I bought a few new stickers and in my package was some of your lovely new spiral bound notebooks. Because the lovely Mr. Brookwicky, he sends me a little, he puts little presents in those packages for me every now and then.

Brad Dowdy: More than you know.

Myke Hurley: Yep. Wait, hang on. What? I'm just going to, actually, we're going to move past that. I don't need to know. And I have on the desk next to me one of these dot dash spiral pads, which I'm now using for my show notes for the time being. Because I'd actually, just as, I'm not kidding, the day they arrived was the day I was having to change out my arts and sciences that I usually keep next to me. And so now I have this beautiful feeling paper. It's really great feeling, this paper. It's very smooth. Good. And my mechanical pencil is taking to it nicely.

Brad Dowdy: Nice. So it's working out for you so far?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, very happy. Very happy, actually. I mean, I know that this is probably a cheating thing to do because, you know, it's you and it's me. But I actually really, really recommend these because these are really, really nice pads. You did a really good job here.

Brad Dowdy: Well, thanks. I appreciate that. We worked hard on it and I am very happy with how it turned out. So I use them all the time. And yeah, hey, I don't have to tell you how much I love them. I made them.

Myke Hurley: On a spiral bound pad, do you use the other side of the paper?

Brad Dowdy: No.

Myke Hurley: No, neither do I. And I feel like I'm wasting it. But, you know.

Brad Dowdy: Do you on your field notes?

Myke Hurley: On the arts and sciences, I do. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: What about you, Dr. Deans? Are you a front side only paper user or do you use both sides of the page?

Jonathon Deans: Lately, I've been using the back of the page.

Brad Dowdy: But this is new to me. Okay. And do you use it even with fountain pens that, you know, you might show through, bleed through? Just doesn't matter?

Jonathon Deans: Yeah. No, I'm not too fast. I think it mostly happens when I start getting towards the end of a notepad and I start to freak out because I don't have any spares.

Jonathon Deans: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hang on a minute.

Myke Hurley: You don't?

Brad Dowdy: We need to talk about this. You don't have any spares.

Jonathon Deans: We have a chain here in Australia, Officeworks, that sell Rodia. It's like a two-minute drive up the road. So I used to keep spares, but I just don't need to anymore.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. That's acceptable. I'll let you off the hook because, yeah, my closet doesn't understand the we do not keep spares philosophy.

Myke Hurley: But the good thing for me, though, with this is, you know, I've been getting a little jittery recently as I've been running low on the arts and sciences. And they're out of stock now. So I was getting a bit. I haven't got my show notes pad. But I actually think that these guys might do a good enough job for me because, I mean, I know that field notes do to Steno, but it's never been exciting enough for me to get it from field notes because it's just craft. But I like this little guy. So I will support my buddy. And maybe this will be the official show note taking paper of RelayFM.

Brad Dowdy: Wow. That would be awesome. How about that? Hey, maybe I should send them to all the hosts.

Myke Hurley: I think I'm the only person that does this.

Brad Dowdy: You're the only person that knows I even exist on our network. Let's be perfectly honest.

Myke Hurley: No, they know the pen guy.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. Yeah, that's the extent of it. The pen guy.

Brad Dowdy: All right. So you bought something else here recently?

Myke Hurley: So I received an email today from our friends at Cult Pens because I signed up to be notified when Emerald of Shivor was in stock. I don't know how to say it. So I just feel like I have to go like Super Game of Thrones on it or something. Yeah, I think that's pretty accurate. So they got it in stock. I actually think it went in stock in a few places today because our show mascot, Kanani Ranishin, let me know that. I can't remember where she said she got it from, but she received, I think it might have been the Writing Desk, which is another UK store, maybe Bureau Direct or something like that. They sent her an email and mentioned that it had come in stock there as well today. So Emerald of Shivor is now available in the UK. And I bought a bottle and I actually expect it will probably be here in the next two days. So by next week, I'll be able to give my opinions of this ink and be able to maybe compare it to what I consider to be the really, really disappointing store.

Brad Dowdy: Jonathan, what do you think about these J Herbon Goldfleck inks? Do you have any interest in these?

Jonathon Deans: I have them all and I barely use any of them.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Ink Properties

Jonathon Deans: I've got the Blue Ocean before it had the Flecks of Gold in and I really prefer that to the one with the Flecks.

Brad Dowdy: Right. That's the one. I have the Blue Ocean the same as you, Bob, a pre-Fleck Blue Ocean I have. I am going to give this Emerald a try, though. It looks pretty amazing.

Myke Hurley: I see more and more pictures of it on Instagram and it's like the amount of colors that are in this ink is what excites me. It's not even really so much the gold, but like the green combined with the gold and it looks like in some lights you get a little bit of purple in there. Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: The sheen is what got me. If it was just the greenish with gold flecks, I would probably pass. Like that's pretty much what the stormy gray is. It's just gray with gold flecks and the blue and the red are similar, although the red has a little bit more sheen. But the Emerald has so much sheen and changes the color of the ink so much. I think it's going to be nice.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. So we'll see. I mean, I don't know what it's – I don't know how it will end up. I don't know if I'm going to be happy or sad of it. I also don't even know what pen I'm going to use it with, but I'll work all that out and hopefully we'll have some feelings for next week. But yeah, I'm looking at my Instagram now and I've seen Colt Pens took a picture of it and it looks really, really great. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So I think everywhere, but the U.S. has them available at this point. Oh, really? Yeah, because Canada has them. People have been ordering them there. Our friends at Wonder Pens, hello. They've been selling it and people have been picking it up from their store. So it just hasn't hit the shelves yet in the U.S., but it'll probably be – I would assume it's going to be this week.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I'm going to put a couple of pictures in the show notes of people that are trying it out because I follow the great gourmet pens on Instagram as well. And Aziza was posting some pictures of just showing the color variation. It really, really is very exciting.

Brad Dowdy: Speaking of Aziza, we need to get her on the show. I will handle that post-haste. Yeah. All right, last thing, and then we're going to get into some economics learning. We're going to make ourselves smarter today, Michael. Yep. I need all the help I can get. You saw the Twisby mechanical pencil review. I did.

Myke Hurley: I did see that. I did see that.

Brad Dowdy: Being the mechanical pencil guru you are now, what are your thoughts on this one?

Myke Hurley: It looks interesting to me. I considered it. I was hovering over the checkout button when buying that ink today, but I ended up not going for it purely because of basically the way that you finish your review. Mm-hmm. So you're very complimentary of it. Mm-hmm. So that it's very good, and there's lots of great parts about it, but you basically compare it to the rotary, and it's like, well, there isn't that much of a difference. Mm-hmm. But it did seem really cool. I mean, it looks great. I liked what you said about the eraser being really, really good because I always find the erasers to be terrible.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it was actually kind of a shock when I first used it. I was like, wait a minute, this works.

Myke Hurley: So, yeah, I don't know. Maybe I'll try it out. I don't know, but I haven't bought it yet. I think I'm a little bit biased at the moment against Twisby. Sure. As I mentioned in the past, so maybe that's putting me off.

Brad Dowdy: Well, you're in the right episode for this conversation.

Myke Hurley: Great.

Myke Hurley: Rallying against them, even though.

Brad Dowdy: No, no, not necessarily. It's just going to be once we. Talking about them. Yeah. Once we go full Jonathan, there's going to be some Twisby conversation for sure.

Myke Hurley: But I have to say, and I do want to commend that they have the retractable option for the same. Yeah. Retractable nib or whatever you call it, tip.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I found that interesting from a pricing perspective.

Myke Hurley: Same price as the non-retractable version. I think that's cool because that is the one thing I miss, which makes me think that I should get a rotary. And I had an email from a listener. Sorry, I can't remember their name off the top of my head. And they were saying that I think it's the 800, which has the retractable tip with the stylus. And they were saying how great it actually is. The stylus is good, but the fact that they have the retractable tip and stuff is really great. But we'll see because as we mentioned before, it seems like that's out of stock for a redesign.

Brad Dowdy: Well, it's also $80 something. Yeah, I know.

Myke Hurley: But I don't know, man. Maybe I'm edging towards that point.

Brad Dowdy: All right. Cool. Good for you.

Mechanical Pencils

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I mean, this is something that I really love mechanical pencils now. And I only have two of them. Because that's the thing, right? And I've had people send me stuff. People are like, oh, you should try this out. But it's like a plastic one. And I'm not really, that's not where I am with them right now. I want like nice bodies and things like that on them. And I'm as of yet finding, as of yet been able to find like real big defining differences between them that would make me want to pick one over another. That's the thing that I'm struggling with right now. Because like with fountain pens, it's like, you know, you can choose where the nib comes from. And you can choose the nib thickness and stuff. So maybe I need to get into different lead thicknesses and from different manufacturers. I don't know. But I feel like that's maybe the next step for me.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. That sounds good. I like hearing you talk like this.

Myke Hurley: Mm-hmm. It's reinvigoration of my love.

Brad Dowdy: There we go. All right. Reinvigorate us with our friends at Linda. And then we're going to get into the good stuff here.

Myke Hurley: Cool. Today's episode of The Pen Addict is brought to you in part by our friends over at Linda.com, the online learning platform with over 3,000 on-demand video courses that can help you strengthen your business, technology, and creative skills. You can get yourself a free 10-day trial by visiting lynda.com slash penaddict. Linda.com is for people that want to solve problems. It's for people that want to get that business off the ground. It's for people that are curious about a hobby that they've always wanted to try out but have never gotten around to because they don't know where to start. It's for people that want to make things happen, who maybe want to get some new skills so they have a more attractive resume. Or maybe they want to get better in their job and they want some skills for that. Or they have a hobby like we have, podcasting and stuff like that. And they want to learn a bit about some of the software that you need to use to make a show sound great. All of this stuff is available to you at lynda.com. You can learn how to be a developer. You can learn how to be a photographer. You can learn how to put your music onto computers and how to edit it and how to publish it to the web. You can learn how to bootstrap a business. Maybe you want to learn marketing stuff, design, color, typography, illustrator, Photoshop. The list goes on and on of the both practical applications you can use but also how to use things in certain environments. Like I mentioned photography, they have courses on how to take great portrait photos as well as just how to use the software to edit them. There's so much great stuff on lynda.com that is taught by people who are absolute experts at what they do. You can stream their thousands of video courses on demand. You can learn at your own schedule, learn at your own pace. You can also learn on the go with their Android and iOS devices as well. You can create and save playlists of the courses that you want to watch because you can watch them in any order, any way that you like. And you can also save these course playlists and share them with your friends, colleagues or team members. Your lynda.com membership will give you unlimited access to training on hundreds of topics for just one flat rate. Whether you are looking to become an industry expert, you're passionate about a hobby or you just want to learn something new. I would love it if you would go and visit lynda.com slash penaddict. That's L-Y-N-D-A dot com slash penaddict because this will also help support the show. So thank you so much to lynda.com for sponsoring The Pen Addict today.

Brad Dowdy: Awesome. So you can learn a lot at lynda.com. And Myke, I think we're going to learn a lot today from Dr. Jonathan Dean. So thanks again for joining us, Jonathan. We really, really appreciate you making it work in your schedule to come on and join us today. No, I'm happy to come. So before we get into the pen stuff specifically, let's talk a little bit about your background because you and I, we've only been conversing probably, I don't know, six or nine months or so. So, you know, I'm learning a little bit about your background and, you know, you're an economics professor in Australia. So why don't you talk a little bit about like your educational background and then how that led into writing a blog that kind of crosses over, you know, your love of fountain pens and things like that as that going along with your educational work. Yeah.

Jonathon Deans: Well, my background is I'm what's called a resource and energy economist. So what I research and what I'm interested in are markets, commodity markets like coal and gas and iron ore and those sorts of things. I was doing my doctorate. They asked me to teach introductory microeconomics. Micro is my field, but I sort of got there on the first day and quickly realized that what I know isn't exactly where the students are at. They mostly know retail, they know hospitality, they don't know these big global markets. And I had to pick up my knowledge basically on those sorts of areas. And it just happened to be that I had a hobby that sort of lent itself to that really well. And so I got involved with Reddit and I think I was sharing some of the stuff I was thinking about there. And eventually that just led into becoming a blog.

Jonathon Deans: Yeah, that's pretty much the story. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so I think, you know, when I when I first saw you writing on Reddit, I think that you were having some. Your your view, I guess, if you will, of the fountain pen industry as a whole. It was very it was definitely coming from a different place than a lot of us, you know, myself included, pretty much anyone else who who was writing. You know what? What made you like start? I mean, I know you kind of alluded to the fact like you started on Reddit and people just I think were eating up like the things that you were talking about. Is that what got you into? So, you know, OK, yeah, I'm going to make this blog at pen economics dot com and we're going to talk about these things. You know, I'm not doing pen reviews like all these other jokers out there. You know, I'm going to talk about something completely different. What did what was your thought process into actually, you know, getting that domain and starting to write about this stuff?

Jonathon Deans: Well, there's good feedback on the comments. There was a lot of good conversations, but I guess one of the problems on Reddit is space. You I mean, you could write an essay on Reddit, but it's not going to get very much attention. It's hard for people to go back to read it. If people want to follow what you're writing, it's almost impossible. So I actually came up with a blog idea. It probably be about a year ago. I started a site which was WordPress or a type pad page and I was basically just creating content and putting it on there. And I had shared that with a very small audience, maybe two or three or four people just to, I guess, get comfortable with the format, get used to it. And then I think it was over the Christmas break, I ended up setting up the domain and putting together a proper website.

Jonathon Deans: And yeah, so it was sort of quietly something I've been working on in the background. But it was really just because I felt like there were things I wanted to talk about and there were conversations that I wanted to have with people. And I wanted a place where those things could happen, where people could find out about it.

Jonathon Deans: And it sort of turned into this thing where I'm in contact with so many people now who have really interesting insights or they're quite happy to send me an email and say, have you thought about this? Or what do you think about that? And some of the people, like it's pretty exciting when you get an email from someone like Brian Anderson or Brian Goulet just sort of saying, hey, you know, I really enjoy your blog. And, you know, I thought what you said about that was a bit of a different view. And so that, I guess, kept the blog going. Whereas I think in the first month or so, there wasn't a lot of feedback. And I was sort of thinking, well, what's the point? But once you get a few of those emails, it starts to make it really worthwhile.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. When it starts, it can kind of feel like you're just shouting into like a cavern. Yeah. But that is the thing. Like, that's what, you know, I always I talk about this sort of stuff a lot because people ask me these kinds of questions like to how do you kind of get noticed, that kind of thing with this type of stuff. Basically, you have to just keep doing it. And then eventually you might bump into a couple of people like Brad, for example, and then they can help like talk about your stuff in a wider place and you can make relationships. Like, it's not about being pushy, but if you do good work, like it will eventually get noticed, I suppose. But, Jonathan, there is something that I wanted to just I want to just back up a moment, if you'd allow me to do that. Yeah, sure. Would you be able to give like an overview, like a high levels to the kind of stuff you actually write about? Because I think if somebody is not familiar with your work specifically, they might not understand why it's different.

Jonathon Deans: Okay. So what I talk about really is the marketplace. So I talk about the retailers. I talk about the brands. I talk about what everybody's up to in a real business sense. So in terms of what sort of business strategies people are doing, what sort of positions they're occupying in the market or how they're competing with one another. I like to, I guess, go behind the scenes, I guess is how you might phrase it. One of the things that I like talking about, which I haven't seen anywhere else, is what's happening in terms of distribution in the fountain pen community. So the distributors are the middlemen basically between the brands who manufacture the pens and the retailers who sell them. So you've got these national level distributors and we sometimes hear about them. You might have heard of Kenro or someone like them. Sure. And, you know, they're doing work as well and they've got strategies and they've got plans in place and they're guiding the market or they're trying to affect the market in some way. And I think it's interesting looking at those sorts of things. I think you can appreciate a pen looking at it, writing with it, but you can also appreciate the marketplace by looking at a brand and sort of saying, okay, well, they've got this strategy in place and these things are part of that strategy. And so they're probably going to be going in this direction. And what does that mean for everybody else? And what does that mean for prices and for consumers or the users of pens?

Myke Hurley: Where does your information tend to come from? Because I guess, you know, one of the other areas that I kind of habit it would be, I guess, or where you'd find me is in technology stuff. And it sounds like if you were to say what you do here in the Apple space or in the Microsoft space, you would be basically labeled as an analyst, right? And I would probably see is how people would see, right? You look at the market, you look at trends, that kind of thing. And they would say like, you know, it's his analysis of the market.

Brad Dowdy: Like a Ben Thompson.

Myke Hurley: That's exactly who I'm thinking of.

Brad Dowdy: Right.

Myke Hurley: So these kinds of people, they tend to get their, they think about stuff and they get their information from suppliers or from other industry newsletters and types of things like that. So where does your, the basic information come from that enables you to think about this stuff in these ways? And I apologize if I offended you by calling you an analyst.

Jonathon Deans: No, no. I mean, to be fair, people who do economics and they move into business, they start off as business analysts. So that's the exact right term. I'd say in the beginning, a lot of my information just came from paying attention, looking around, lots of poking around different websites and sort of trying to glean what's happening in different places. Nowadays, it's a little bit easier. There's less work involved because there's a lot more information that's sort of coming to me from people.

Jonathon Deans: Particularly when a new product comes out, oftentimes I'll get an email from someone who's sort of like, have you seen this? What do you think, you know, this company's up to? And one of the resources, which sadly isn't around anymore, but used to be just fantastic, was back at FP Geeks when they had that sort of blog of press releases and product announcements. That was really useful. And it's actually a shame that that's not, that blog isn't around anymore because that was a phenomenal resource for me, but I'm sure for many other people as well.

Myke Hurley: Can you not get on like press release lists and stuff like that? I've tried.

Jonathon Deans: You try. That's, I think the fountain pen market is not as developed as other product markets. There's most of the brands and even a lot of the distributors don't really have press releases that they do. They don't have that sort of marketing setup, basically.

Myke Hurley: Sure, sure. Yeah, it's not as advanced a market as other places, basically. Not like other industries. Yeah, exactly.

Brad Dowdy: And I think you're starting to see a little bit of change there over the past maybe 12, 18 months or so. It's getting a little bit better, but it's still kind of stuck in these old roots of how business was done. Yeah, I know. You know, I think that the companies that are taking advantage of the newer technologies and things like that are getting an advantage in the market now. And, you know, that's maybe something, you know, we can touch on as we go through the show. But I want to get into some of the specifics and kind of a good jumping off point for people who are new to your blog. And that's a series that you did. It was basically, I call it the taxonomy series where you talk about different brands and, you know, you elaborate it through that. Myke, first, you want to talk about one of our good friends, one of our good favorite brands, Mr. Ron at Pen Chalet.

Pen Chalet Sponsorship

Myke Hurley: Yeah, this is a company that understands, right? Yeah. Because Pen Chalet is sponsored with us every couple of weeks. And it's because they know that by sponsoring this show, they are getting their products out in front of a great audience like the one that we have. People that want to know about this stuff, you know, because we look for these companies. We try and find them online and sometimes they can be harder. They can be hidden away. But we have Pen Chalet right here to talk to you about right now. This company is fantastic. They sell all the stuff that you're looking for. Roller balls, fountain pens, ballpoints, mechanical pencils, and so much more. They have all the brands that you love. Pelican, Lamy, Pilot, Namiki, Sailor, Kaweco, all of them. If you need it, they got it and they're an authorized dealer. They're adding new stuff all the time. New models, new pens, new brands are always coming on board at Pen Chalet. They're very fast and reliable customer service. Brad, do you remember that? I think we got that in an email or a tweet the other day. Do you remember that?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so I was actually wanting to talk about this and I didn't talk with you about it, but I was going to interject at some point. So one of our listeners had a conversation with Ron at Pen Chalet about an issue with Lamy 2000. And this kind of goes, Jonathan, with one of your posts about how you build a relationship with a vendor. That's a more recent post of yours. And how that relationship is what drives a lot of people to continue purchasing from that vendor. And what happened was Lamy shipped out a batch of 2000s where there was like almost a material mismatch from the cap to the barrel. And one of Pen Chalet's orders and one of our listeners, he received one. He went back to Ron and said, hey, this looks a little bit weird. Ron immediately.

Myke Hurley: You know, I actually think he didn't even get it. I think Ron emailed the guy.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, he stopped it. He stopped it saying, hey. Which I think is even better.

Myke Hurley: So like I had an order in and then Ron emailed him and was like, do you like this is there is a problem that's happened. Do you want me to still send this out or do you want to wait? Like it was really cool.

Brad Dowdy: Well, yeah. Ron was like, I don't want to send this out. And I've already talked to Lamy and I'm going to have a new batch in within a week. You know, I just want to tell you, you know, you're going to be delayed a week. But the reason is because I'm not happy with the product that I'm going to send you. So, you know, I, you know, if you're acceptable to this and of course the, the customer is like, well, I'm ecstatic with that because that's what, you know, I would hope a retailer like Pen Chalet would do for me as a customer. So it was a really cool, it was a really cool thing that, that took place. And we got involved with that on Twitter. And it was just really neat to see a vendor like that, you know, just kind of taking the bulls by the horns and handling problems before they become problems.

Myke Hurley: Because you know what would have been easier? Just sending it and hoping the guy didn't notice. Yep. Right. That would have been easier. But that is not what Pen Chalet believe in because they, they believe in customer service. Like they, they say it, we say it every week. They have a 100% satisfaction guarantee. They want to honor this, right? So one of the best ways they do that is by thinking about what the customer might want before they even send the product out the door. I love this company. They are so fantastic. They sell everything you're going to look for. And what I always ask you to do is if there's a pen that you hear about or a pen that you're looking for, go to Pen Chalet first and see if they have it, right? Because you're going to be able to get 10% off if you use the code Pen Addict, right? Any or any purchase at Pen Chalet, you can get 10% off if you use the code Pen Addict. Don't forget to do free shipping on orders of over $50 to your content and to the United States. They also sell internationally and they have really reasonable shipping rates there too. And of course, you'll benefit on the exchange rates that you're going to get, right? Because sometimes it's cheaper to buy things in dollars than it would be to maybe buy things in pounds or euros or maybe even Australian dollars. I don't know, Jonathan, what the exchange rate is like at the moment. I think it's probably good. It's terrible.

Brad Dowdy: Sorry.

Brad Dowdy: Hey, if anyone knows, it's The Economist.

Myke Hurley: But what you should also do, because I have a couple of deals for you this week. If you go to PenChalet.com, click the podcast link at the top of the website and enter the password Pen Addict. As well as getting your 10% off, you'll be able to get some special offers for Pen Addict listeners along with the loads of offers that they always have here when you go through to this portal. But we have this week a Pilot Custom 74 in the smoke color with a fine nib. So this model is 30% off plus the 10% coupon. So you'll be able to pick that up for $126 or the Pilot Falcon in black and with the rhodium trim with a medium nib. We have that for 25% off plus the 10% coupon, bringing that down to $121.50. So it's those specific models, but they're absolutely fantastic deals and some great pens there.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. So the last time they offered up the Custom 74, I picked up the orange one. That was the one I bought during the episode. So, you know, I'm a fan of the Custom 74 and a fan of the Falcon. I use both of those pens in heavy, heavy rotation. So, yeah, you can't really go wrong with these Pilot gold nib pens, and that's a really good price.

Myke Hurley: Thank you so much to Pen Chalet for sponsoring this week's episode.

Brad Dowdy: All right. So I want to get into this brand taxonomy. And really, it's kind of a jumping off point. I think it's kind of the entry point into what you're doing as a blog. You know, that's just my view of it. You may have a different opinion on that, and other readers might. But so why don't you give us kind of the basic intro on what you were trying to do with this. It was a series of four posts, I believe. So this intro post and three other posts. And I thought it was – I just found myself nodding my head in agreement with you as I read through the post. And then as I read through this subsequent post, which we'll get into. But why don't you give us an introduction into this brand taxonomy series that you did on the blog?

Jonathon Deans: So there's a lot of posts online about favorite brands and these are the brands I like or these are the brands I don't like. But there wasn't a lot that really talked about which brands were, I guess, really making an effort to provide value for customers in terms of putting out new products which are creative in some way or they've got something interesting and unique about them while trying to drive the price down. Some companies are really good at this. Some companies, which are fairly respected in the pen market, are not so good. So I ranked Noodlers and Twisby as the two companies which are really innovative. They're really creative in what they do and in terms of trying to provide a really good product at a lower price than what currently exists. If you look at Twisby's, I think they're priced in the US about $50, $65 for their models. I think they could easily charge $100 and a lot of people would still buy them but they have sort of embarked on a strategy where they're trying to provide it at a lower cost. Obviously, that's a business decision. They're hoping to sell more that way and they're doing that by trying to provide a better deal for buyers really. And then you've got brands which are way less competitive. So brands like Parker and Waterman, they make decent product but they're not particularly creative. They're not doing anything special or innovative or new. Most of their products are just cartridge converter pens, often steel nib pens even in the $100, $150 price range. And for any buyer in the market, particularly anyone who's new to the market, they're probably going to have heard of those brands and maybe feel a bit safer about buying the brands that they know about. Whereas there's a lot of brands where you might not have heard of them or they might not be as well known but they're certainly providing a much better value product. I was just going to say, so I tried to map out all the brands that I was familiar with into how competitive they were and I sort of broke that down into four categories from I guess most competitive to least competitive.

Brad Dowdy: Right. So two things. One, you talk constantly about the value proposition which is big in everything I try to relate to my readers because they want to know how does pin A compare to pin B in every aspect including cost and what am I going to get the most bang for my buck for. And then you took that kind of as an overall topic and then you broke down into – like you said, the three lists are disruptive which you have Noodlers and Twisby. Then you have an innovative which is – you listed Edison, Nakaya, and Visconti. And then you had competitive which is a lot of the mainline brands that we all know and love, Kaweco, Franklin Kristoff, Faber-Castell, Lamy, Pelican, just kind of right in that area. Then you have the uncompetitive brands which you just talked about. I want to talk – I want to pick out a couple of these in each of these sections and talk about them a little more. Number one, the disruption of Noodlers. Why do you think they are – they fit in that disruptive category? Because if I'm putting together this list in my head, I don't think I would have put them there. I don't know that I would have listed them period quite honestly. So I want to get your take on what you see from them.

Jonathon Deans: I think it's mostly – and remember I put this list together around the time that the Nuponset was coming out. So I was thinking a lot about them and how this was going to change the market. It hasn't really had the effect I guess I was expecting it to. But I guess they're the only manufacturer of pens nowadays who is doing serious things with trying to come up with a FlexNib pen. And I'm not convinced that the product quality is there. There's certainly a lot of stories about pens straight out of the box that won't write or won't work even with significant work done to them. But you're talking about a piston filler pen for I think they're $20 or something. Yeah, with a FlexNib. Yeah. And I think for a lot of people paying $20 even if they're not 100% sure that it works, that's still good value. And I like the creativity. I like the fact that they're willing to try and do something like that. I am actually looking at redoing the list. I think later this month there will be six months since I published that. So I was going to try and revamp it every six months or so. And I'm not sure if I would keep Noodlers at the top of that list purely looking at the pens. If we're talking about inks, I certainly think that as a brand overall they are innovative. They are very creative.

Brad Dowdy: That's a completely separate discussion which we will shoot for getting into that this episode. But that's a completely separate discussion. We're just talking from a pen perspective in this discussion. Yeah.

Jonathon Deans: Yeah. And you're right. From a pen perspective they're probably – well, they're certainly not on the same tier as Twisby or certainly not anymore I don't think. But they are creative. I do like that they've tried to do something.

Myke Hurley: One of my problems with Noodlers and I think one of the things that holds them back is I perceive that they have a pretty bad branding problem.

Jonathon Deans: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Jonathon Deans: I've done some posts on that too.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It's – I guess we can get into this a little bit now without totally getting off this taxonomy.

Myke Hurley: We're going to get like two words into this show outline you put together.

Brad Dowdy: I already told Jonathan that he's going to have to come back because there's no way I'm going to be able to cover everything that I want to talk about. So let's touch on Noodlers. Noodlers is a one-man shop, right? I mean it's Nathan Tardif. He does everything. I mean he's formulating the inks. He's not making the pens. I mean he's having someone make the pens for him. But he's the one-man design person behind getting the pen made and then getting them out to distributors and things like that. And he's the one-man person behind the ink. So why don't – Jonathan, why don't you go ahead and –

Jonathon Deans: Well, I have heard that he actually sets all the nibs himself.

Brad Dowdy: Really?

Jonathon Deans: I don't know if that's true but I have certainly read that.

Brad Dowdy: Well, I wouldn't be surprised but he's such – I don't know Nathan personally. I've never talked to him. But he is – he very much keeps to himself, right? There's not a lot of – for as long as Noodlers has been around, there's not a lot of Nathan Tardif information out there, right? Would you say?

Jonathon Deans: Yeah, he does have some YouTube videos that you can go and watch and they give you a pretty good sense of the guy. But you're right. There's not a great deal of information available publicly at least.

Innovative Brands

Brad Dowdy: All right. So let's hold the ink talk on that because we're going to touch on that separately from that. I want to get into these innovative brands because that's where I feel like I live. Like I get – you listed the three, Edison, Nakaya, Visconti. And I get a lot of enjoyment from my Edisons, my Nakaya's, and my Visconti's, although I only have one like really big Visconti.

Brad Dowdy: You're a Visconti guy, right? You have – Yeah, I've got – You're a fan of that brand?

Jonathon Deans: Yeah, they were my favorite brand. I'm sort of moving a bit more towards Mont Blanc now but I love the Visconti's. They are great pens. They have an awesome design team.

Brad Dowdy: So what separates these three brands from this – outside of this competitive realm of brands, which is a more standard traditional – although I guess Visconti is a pretty traditional brand. What makes these innovative as opposed to the competitive of your Pilots, Pelicans, Platinum, Sailors, Deltas, things like that?

Jonathon Deans: Yeah, I think the –

Brad Dowdy: What sets them apart?

Jonathon Deans: For Edison, what sets them apart is really the filling systems. As far as I know, they're the only brand where they have really a range of filling systems that you can choose from that goes beyond just cartridge converter or a piston filler. They've got the bulb filler. They've got the pump. They've got a few others.

Jonathon Deans: Personally, I just like pistons. I'm happy with those. But the fact that they're offering those and that – it's Brian, isn't it? Brian Gray. Yes, Brian Gray.

Myke Hurley: Brian Edison as I call him every single time.

Jonathon Deans: There are too many Bryans in this community, by the way. There are a lot. But yeah, what Brian Gray has done with sort of – because he's gone back to the original patents for different brands and looked at the filling systems and he's found ways to innovate on those, to improve them a little bit and then to make them something that he can consistently provide to include in his pens. And that's really creative. That's not something that really anybody else in the market is working on. And I love the fact that there's somebody working on saying, okay, this is unique. This is interesting. I think people are going to like this. I want to do it.

Brad Dowdy: Right. And Visconti steps out in a different way from Edison, but they step out with their filling systems a little bit too with the different chambers and the different filling systems to kind of seal off the ink from different sections of the pen, at least in the pens, the Viscontis that I use.

Jonathon Deans: Yeah, no, I've got an Opera Master, which is like that. And honestly, I find it more of a pain than anything else. It does kind of become that way. Yeah. But, I mean, for me, looking at the Viscontis, it's more about the design and the fact that, and the materials. So, if you look at the Homo Sapiens.

Brad Dowdy: Materials and design.

Jonathon Deans: Yeah. Except those clips. The Homo Sapiens, I think, is one of the most loved pens, I guess, on the internet, or one of the most lusted after pens. Yeah. In terms of it's got this sort of rubber, lava barrel that people just get really excited about. And when you hold it in a hand, it is phenomenally different to any other pen that's available, at least in my experience. Which Visconti was that?

Myke Hurley: I missed the brand name. The Homo Sapiens.

Jonathon Deans: The Visconti Homo Sapiens. And they've just brought out a new one, which, honestly, I'm not too excited about, but it's made out of marble. It's called the Visconti Millionaire. They're not cheap. I think they're, I saw it listed as 1,800 euros. Wow. But who else is using marble in a fountain pen?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. That would be interesting to see. I haven't laid my eyes on that one yet. But the Homo Sapiens has always been intriguing for me just because of the material and no one else really doing that.

Brad Dowdy: That style of pen, it just looks fantastic.

Brad Dowdy: Then you get into these competitive brands. And this is where the bulk of the companies land. And, you know, I think that's a completely, you know, valid way to put it. These are the brands that we probably talk about the most, that are the most well-known. But in some cases, it's because they're so large that they don't have the pure innovation of someone like an Edison who, you know, Brian's making the pens himself. Or they're smaller and they're still trying to get their footing into a wider range of pens like, say, a Franklin Kristoff, right? You know, I could see them breaking through into, like, some innovative type stuff. Yeah, I agree. So give me your feel as just this competitive group of companies as a whole and how you see this playing out in the future. Like, if you were getting ready to rewrite this, what do you see moving in or out of this group?

Jonathon Deans: One of the big surprises for me, because I have started working on this post, is Cross, who I have not previously had really any time for at all. I had, you know, I didn't really respect their product that much at all. But they've brought out these pens recently with Sailor nibs. They seem to be making a real effort. I'm liking some of the designs. I can see them having a fair bit of appeal. And that to me says that they're thinking seriously about this market. They're thinking seriously about how are we actually going to compete in this market? We want a business that's going to stay around and be successful. And I think Sailor nibs, you know, that's a really good choice. Those nibs are beloved. And I think that just the fact that they're willing to make that sort of investment in the market tells me that, you know, they're probably in the uncompetitive brands at the moment. I'd say they're almost certainly moving up to the competitive brands. And depending on what else is in the pipeline, they might even be moving up further.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I thought that was really interesting when that came out. Because I agree with you completely where I just – dismiss is a little bit too strong of a word. But there's no need to look at what Cross was offering because I have this whole list of other pens that I just know is going to be better. Yeah, yeah. But then Cross says, well, we're going to redesign this pen and we're going to use these Sailor nibs in a different way. And I'm like, that's kind of interesting. So it's going to be interesting to see what comes out of that.

Myke Hurley: So nothing's out. That's not out yet, right? I'm struggling to find anything about it online.

Brad Dowdy: It should be out.

Jonathon Deans: I think the Townsend. I've seen a few links.

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Jonathon Deans: Okay. But I think – I mean my feeling with Cross and a little bit Parker and Waterman as well, they're not pens for fountain pen people. They're pens for people who give them as graduation gifts basically. They're pens for people who aren't going to write with them themselves. And so quality of the experience isn't paramount. What's more important is it's presented nicely in a nice box and it appears to be a thoughtful, valuable gift. But if you put Sailor nib on something, that's for someone who wants a good writing experience.

Brad Dowdy: Right. I think what's consistent in the uncompetitive brand and the uncompetitive group here, which you have Aurora, Conklin, Cross, Diplomat, Estabrook, Monteverdi, Parker, Schaefer, Waterman, that's essentially all the same pen. And it's going to look nice and you're going to give it to someone and think you've bought them a really nice pen, like you said, as a gift. And it's just from a fountain pen connoisseur or fan or regular user of pens, they're going to go, eh, you know, I can get a pilot for something, you know, for cheaper and it's going to write better. And, you know, it's going to do, you know, it's going to fit my style better than just – it's almost like that whole uncompetitive group is one big generic pen. It's the same across the board. Yeah, exactly. All right. So I'm going to – I think, you know, there's a lot to read and a lot to gleam from this taxonomy, these taxonomy posts. So I think, you know, people, you know, when you're done with listening to this episode, hit these links. Go read up, read through all these posts and, you know, kind of see what Jonathan's doing here. And I think there's a lot to learn from that. Now, I want to get into one specific brand and we alluded to this before. Aside from your taxonomy series, you do a brand analysis series where you take one brand and you kind of break it down. Yeah. And, you know, in all kinds of different ways. So the one I wanted to talk about the most is Twisby only because there is – especially on Reddit, there's a huge – you either love the brand or you hate the brand and there's no middle ground. So why don't you talk – go through your brand analysis of Twisby, what you like that they're doing, what you dislike that they're doing, what problems are the problems worth the effort for purchasing these pins. So give us a little bit of your brand analysis on Twisby.

Jonathon Deans: Yeah. Well, I'll just say my background with Twisby, I've owned a few. I have had some problems, but they haven't been major problems. But as an economist looking at the market rather than just thinking about the writing experience of the pens or the quality of them, I think they're a great brand in that they've sort of come out of nowhere. They've got a product which is hugely successful regardless of whether you love it or you hate it. You have to admit that they're a big part of the market now. And I particularly like that because they're bringing in a lot of people who probably aren't traditional fountain pen people who – I think fountain pens, particularly in the 80s and 90s, were sort of seen as something for posh people. It was something – if you're wealthy, you wrote with a fountain pen. The rest of us use ballpoints. And I think that Twisby have really been successful in trying to bring in people who want something that's just a nice, pleasant rider, that's not too expensive and is a bit of fun. It's also good for people who like to tinker to pull it apart and to fiddle and to swap out nibs and that sort of thing. And they've sort of occupied this position in the market where they dominate in terms of people who have – particularly those who have maybe come in and have bought a pilot metro or a Lamy Safari. Maybe they've got some sort of entry-level shagfer or parker or something like that as well. But they want something a bit different. They want maybe a demonstrator so they can see the ink sloshing around. They want the capacity for piston filler. They want something where they can easily buy other nibs and swap them in and out. And Twisby offered that and they offered it at a really good price. So the analysis is sort of coming from there. But then looking at, well, with this new product that has recently come out, the Twisby Eco, what effect is that going to have on the rest of the business? Because the Eco is a $30 piston filling demonstrator. It's squarely aimed at people who are brand new to fountain pens and don't necessarily have any experience with other pens. So they want just a basic entry-level pen. At the moment, most people are buying a pilot metro, they're buying a Lamy Safari, and those are the best value in, say, the under $30. I think the Safari is around $30. It might be a little bit more than that. You can get them for a little cheaper in the U.S. Yeah, okay. So, yeah, those are your entry-level pens. And now Twisby are targeting that. I think they're targeting Lamy in particular. And they're trying to replace Lamy as one of the default choices for new users. So what this post was looking at was sort of saying, well, let's play this out. Let's play out this competition and see sort of what happens. And I guess one of the concepts I was trying to get through, maybe not as successfully as I hoped, was the idea of a dominant strategy, which is a concept where your strategy will be successful no matter what your competitors do. And I think I was trying to outline how Twisby sort of has the makings of a dominant strategy with regards to Lamy. There's not a lot that Lamy can do to fight off this sort of the entry of this product. If they drop price – so just to compare the two pens, the Lamy Safari, it's got swappable nibs, nibs which are actually swappable with almost all of the other Lamy pens. But other than that, it's pretty basic. It's a plastic pen. It's not a demonstrator. You've got to buy the converter separately from most retailers.

Jonathon Deans: And you're talking about around $30 there. So the Eco is priced a few dollars cheaper than that. I think it's $29 in the US. It's a much bigger capacity. It's a demonstrator, so it's see-through, which is pretty cool. And I think that if anybody – well, for the most part, somebody comparing the two would see the Eco as being much better value, even if it was at the same price. The other entry-level pen, the Metro, I think that's quite different to what Lamy and Pilot have got. There's no swappable nibs, but the nib is much finer. The nib is a much higher quality nib, though, on the Pilots. It's a cartridge converter pen as well. I don't think that Eco is going to take away many of the people who are going for something, which is a really fine-tip sort of Japanese pen. But I think – or what I was arguing in the post was that Lamy might have a bit of a problem on my hands because I think they pick up a lot of buyers who – they'll buy the Safari. And then partly because of the swappable nibs, they'll sort of end up buying a Vista, which is their demonstrator version of the Safari, or a Studio, which is the metal-bodied one. I think it's around $60 to $80. Right. People who buy the Safari tend to – oftentimes, they'll keep buying a few extra Lamy's because they can swap over the nibs and there's sort of some benefits there. And I think as far as Lamy's fountain pen business goes, they haven't had a lot of innovation in a long time. They introduce – they have limited editions which are different colors for the Safari and the Studio. They have some special inks that come out. But by and large, they're not doing anything that creative or new. I think the Lamy 2000 is a great pen, but that was released in 1966, and it hasn't changed that much since then. Right. Probably because it's a great product. But I don't know if they have the chops to really do much in the way of innovation. And when you've got a competitor that's really coming at you, you've got to be innovative to sort of protect your business. And I don't know if Lamy have those skills in-house necessarily.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's what I was kind of alluding to earlier with the bigger, well-established companies. What are they going to do to disrupt this? And how are they going to – in Lamy's particular case, how are they going to fend off someone like Twisby who is – Lamy used to own the $30 to $50 market, right? And it's – they probably still do at the moment, but it's not as much of a lock as it used to be with Twisby coming in there. But there's no one else in that market either. There's really not anything like from about $35 to almost $100. That's a huge gaping chasm there of value proposition, if you will. And Twisby owns it right now. And it would be interesting to see Lamy come up with a new design. They tweak – like you said, they tweak everything in their lineup. It seems like once a year, once every two or three years with a new color. But they're not coming out with that $40 pen that's different from the Safari AL Star and then getting on up into the little more expensive studio. They're just putting a new coat of paint on it, and at some point, I have enough coats of paint in my arsenal where I need something else. I need the new Twisby that's going to give me a piston filler and is going to be really interesting looking and things like that. So it's a huge untapped market. Twisby clearly did this on purpose to target that price point because there's nothing else there, and they completely own it and dominate it right now.

Jonathon Deans: Yeah. And I think Twisby's strategy is to be the default choice for anybody who wants to buy a pen from $30 up to maybe $80. And there's not a lot below $30 that I think people are happy even coming into the market. $30 is not a particularly high barrier to entry there.

Brad Dowdy: Right, right. And I'm interested to see how the Eco does. I don't have one yet. I'm interested in it. I'm interested to see how it does in comparison with the Safari. The Twisby's everyone's best second fountain pen just because people – like a lot of times, people are hesitant to just spend $60 if they don't have any fountain pen experience. And they have to buy a bottle of ink, and oh, it's going to get messy. And there's all these things for that very first-time buyer. So I'm interested to see how the Eco does, if it can fend off any of that commentary from first-time fountain pen users. But as far as like, okay, I bought my pilot Metropolitan. I think fountain pens are going to be a thing for me. Let me look at these Twisby 580s or whatever. And it's a really great – it ends up being a really good value and a really good writing experience.

Jonathon Deans: Yeah, and I think they do a great job of bringing people into the community and growing the community, which is just a wonderful thing.

Brad Dowdy: And so we don't totally gloss over it. Twisby has a lot of mechanical failures they have worked on over the years to fix. They – the past models, the 540, when it first came out, it had a huge number of failures in different parts of the system, mostly around the section cracking and things in the front end of the pen. They modified that into the 580. Fewer problems, people still have problems.

Brad Dowdy: And then they have the aluminum 580, which is a little bit more substantial. So I don't want to gloss over the fact that a lot of people have a lot of problems with Twisby from a durability standpoint. I personally haven't run across any problems except with my micarta. I had a feed issue. And anyone who's ever dealt with the problems knows that Twisby is super responsive. It's just that some people don't want to deal with the problems to begin with. They've paid their money. They feel like it should be good to go for a few years or whatever. And they don't want to have to go back and forth with emails with Twisby and getting new parts and things like that.

Myke Hurley: I've been at kind of all sides of this scenario. And I've had Twisby replace parts for me. But my point is now, considering the amount of failures that I've had. I mean, I've probably, between me and Idina, maybe we've owned like maybe seven or eight Twisby products. And I think four or five of them have had an issue with some description. At that point, I'm like, okay, the customer service can be really great. But I don't want to have to keep going through this. Like buying a pen, which isn't, which, you know, they're not crazy amounts of money, as you said. But they're not, you know, they're not nothing. They're kind of, I guess, mid-range, right? If you're looking at the $50, $60, $70 stuff. And yeah, they'll fix it and they'll do it really quick. And they do quick shipping on their replacement parts, all that kind of stuff. I mean, they even got me a replacement part for a pen they don't even make anymore. Which was really great of them when it was that one time. But then, you know, Idina had three of these break. And she's not doing anything crazy with them.

Myke Hurley: It's, you know, it kind of gets to the point where it's like, I don't want to have to keep going through this every single time.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, the fourth time, you're over it, right? And it's a valid complaint with Twisby. And if you go on Reddit, you will see some knockdown drag outs in the fountain pens, you know, board on Reddit about this very, very topic. And, you know, you can't discount that that's happening with this brand.

Jonathon Deans: It's worth pointing out, though, that this is something they're aware of. And part of the reason why the Eco took, like, I think it was announced two years ago that it was soon to go on sale. And I think the reason why it's taken so long is because they really want to get the quality right. Because I think they realize that the quality is what's going to determine if they're successful with this or not. If the pens are great and they're not prone to any sort of issues, they'll sell, like, hotcakes. They'll become the default choice. If they're sort of like a noodler's pen where the quality is a major concern, not a lot of people are going to buy them. And I think that's part of why they've redesigned the section. So it's all one piece now. You can't – apparently that's designed to make it stronger. So they've obviously taken that on board and they're taking that seriously. And hopefully these sorts of issues will be a thing of the past.

Myke Hurley: Because I have to say, like, I was tempted to buy two Twisby products today. New stuff, stuff that I've heard. You know, I'm interested in the Eco. I've read a great review about the Precision. And I was, like, I changed my mind because I thought they're probably just going to break again.

Jonathon Deans: And this is their big problem.

Brand Analysis

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yep. All right. So I want to – you do a lot of different brand analysis. And I'm going to put in a request for a brand – your next brand analysis topic. But I'm going to make you wait until we talk about our good friends at Squarespace.

Myke Hurley: That sounds like a great idea, Brad. This week's episode is brought to you by our friends over at Squarespace. You know, Squarespace. You can start building your website today at squarespace.com. And you want to use the code INC at checkout. It will get you 10% off. Squarespace. Build it beautiful. Squarespace give you a place to put your stuff online no matter what it might be. Maybe you want to start a blog. Maybe you want somewhere to put your artwork, you know, like a portfolio or something. Or you just want to make some galleries or some photography that you take. Maybe you've got a store that you want to set up. Maybe you have a restaurant or a business. Or maybe you have something that you want to set up for your band. Squarespace can help you do all of this. They put all of the power that you need into your hands and take away the stuff that you don't want to have to worry about. Squarespace can help you build a site that looks professionally designed no matter what your skill level is without any coding required. And they have intuitive and easy use tools that make your website look and feel exactly how you want. Squarespace has state-of-the-art technology under the hood that helps power your website. And they ensure security and stability. And because of this, they are trusted by millions of people around the world and some huge brands too. Including NotCo. You know, that's one of those great brands that you've heard of.

Brad Dowdy: Huge, huge brand. Huge brand.

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Brad Dowdy: All right. So contrary to what the chat room is saying, I don't want a brand analysis of Notco. You know, maybe give me about four or five years on that one. Maybe I'll hit you up. So what I want.

Jonathon Deans: Anything about the market at all. So you're safe for all the case markets now.

Brad Dowdy: Good. So Moleskine. I want a brand analysis of Moleskine. I think that would be super interesting.

Jonathon Deans: I think Moleskine. This is just my thoughts because I have thought about this a little in the past. And I'm not. Paper is not a market that I know as much about as pens and ink. But I think Moleskine's real strength. And I think I might have made this argument maybe on Reddit or maybe it was in an email with someone. Moleskine's strength is distribution. You can get a Moleskine anywhere. And I think for a lot of people, that's what they like. They like knowing that they can have the same notebook. They can get it on their way home from work if they run out of one or they've got easy access to them. Most of the other brands, and there are some far superior products out there, I don't see them around as often. I think there are the sorts of things where you go to a website and you order it more often than you would pick it up from a particular shop. And that's part of why they may be so successful. I know there are branded Moleskine shops now as well. I see them in the shopping centers near me, which is regional.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, Myke had one next to his old office.

Jonathon Deans: Oh, well, there you go.

Myke Hurley: Yep.

Jonathon Deans: So I started off with Moleskine's. When I first really got into Pens again, I was using Pilots with fine nibs. They worked well with the Moleskine stuff. And I was happy with them, but I'm a lot happier now. I mainly use Clairefontaine now.

Jonathon Deans: But, I mean, for most people, you can't go down the shops and just pick up a couple of those notebooks, whereas you see the Moleskine's there. Right.

Lamy Distribution

Brad Dowdy: And that's what came up in the chat room on our discussion with Twisby versus Lamy. It's, you know, Lamy destroys them in distribution channels, right? I mean, they're just available almost everywhere and even in, you know, random places, you know, where you wouldn't think, you know, like in a luggage store in the mall, you know.

Jonathon Deans: But this is the thing about having a superior product is you don't try to be everywhere at once with them. As far as Twisby is concerned, they just need a superior product and they can just start taking over one market at a time. They can start with the online market, get the product right, then start working on packaging. So maybe they can start selling it through stores. And, you know, you may start off in Taiwan and then you may start going to another few other small markets and just piece by piece picking it up. It's not a thing where you need to compete everywhere all at once with someone because Lamy don't really have anything they can do about it. It's just for Twisby. They can just take it step by step. They don't have to rush. You rush, you make mistakes with these things. You just take it slow, tweak things as you find that problems are coming up. And, yeah, it's a good strategy because it's a slow strategy because it's a deliberate strategy. I saw some people in the chat room were talking about the student pen market in Germany. That, for Twisby, is probably the last place they'll go. I'd say that they'll slowly work up to maybe releasing a product that's available in stores eventually. We might be talking years down the track. And, you know, they'll try and get it to become a popular product in, like, the United States long before they think about Germany.

Myke Hurley: And this is like that Lamy wooden pen thing, right? Is it the ABC?

Brad Dowdy: ABC. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Which is super cute.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It's a great pen. It gets great reviews.

Jonathon Deans: It has a pretty cute one as well. The Cocooner.

Brad Dowdy: I love that pen.

Jonathon Deans: The smiley face.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's a great one. I bought that pen for both of my kids. It's such a good pen because they have that nib. Their nibs are just really, really good. And for that price, it's ridiculous. So I want to talk about one more topic, and then I want to ask you a couple personal questions about what you're into. But one topic you wrote about did kind of give me a new perspective on things, and it was your post titled, How Does China Make Such Cheap Fountain Pens? And it was a really good read, and it gave me a perspective I did not have previously. So why don't you kind of give us the nuts and bolts of that post and why you thought this was important to write? Because we see this topic come up almost incessantly, and it's a market I've never dipped into at all just because I haven't found the need. But tell us about this post and how these brands from China are able to accomplish this.

Jonathon Deans: Yeah, I'm glad you enjoyed that one. And I didn't get a whole lot of feedback on it, so I wasn't sure if it sort of just disappeared into the ether or not. But I think everyone who is into fountain pens has noticed that you can get a Jin Hao or a Hero. There's another brand I'm forgetting, Bao. Yeah. Delivered for like $3. And I mean, I can't buy a pen from anywhere in the world and have the shipping cost me $3, let alone shipping and production. Right. And this wasn't something I'd ever seen discussed. I hadn't seen it come up on FPN. I hadn't seen it come up on Reddit or any of the blogs. And so it was sort of something I started digging into a bit. And I think the first point is we're assuming they can make pens that cheaply. And I simply don't believe that's the case. I think that the costs are much higher. I would estimate maybe $10, $15 per unit depending on the volumes they're making them in. I wouldn't be surprised if they were just making crazy volumes and they can get that down to $5 or $10. But certainly more than what we're paying. The only reason that we can purchase them that cheaply is because the Chinese government subsidizes manufacturing in a variety of ways. And they subsidize shipping. So it's very cheap for a Chinese producer to send their product somewhere else in the world. And so with the post, I go through some of the subsidies and how these things work for people who aren't familiar with that. But I think that the problem I have with this sort of thing is that when a government subsidizes an export product, they have to – a subsidy costs money. So they have to tax people to have the money to spend on that subsidy. So they're taxing people in China who by and large are still a developing country. I had some stats in the post about how quite a lot of China is still living on – I think 800 million people are living on less than $5 a day. So we're talking about an incredibly poor country, which is subsidizing pens for people in Western countries who are relatively well off. And I don't really get into this sort of what we call normative stuff, so opinion or value sort of posts. So I try to keep it as objective as I can. But I have a bit of a problem with that. I think that this is a bad thing, frankly. I don't think that this is something that people are aware of when they're buying these products, that what they're really doing when they buy that product is probably disadvantageous to somebody who's poor. And the benefits of having a $3 pen are frankly not that great. I've had a Jin Hao. It's not a terrible pen, but it's not a great pen either. Right. And yeah, so I just – I'm not a fan of what they're doing basically. And with that post, I wanted to communicate that. I wanted to – I didn't want to tell people what to do, but I wanted them to be more aware of what's going on so other people can make decisions about whether they're comfortable with that or not.

Myke Hurley: To play devil's advocate, and I'm sure you've considered this, is then not the idea that if people aren't buying these pens, then there might be people that don't have jobs?

Jonathon Deans: Yeah, that's a common argument for subsidies and for development support, and I do address that in the post. Okay. But those sorts of programs are often politically popular, but economically they really make people worse off overall. Okay. Some people get jobs, but other people are made worse off because they're being taxed or the jobs are just moving from one sector to another. That's a common thing with subsidies.

Myke Hurley: Right.

Jonathon Deans: So by and large, I think economists are almost universally united on this. Subsidies are a bad thing. We don't agree with them, but they're often politically popular.

Blog Review

Brad Dowdy: So this is why I love reading your blog. When I found that post, I was kind of enthralled by it just because I had no idea how these types of things work. I learn so much from reading your stuff, and I implore everyone to follow you. And just agree or disagree, you can at least pick up these bits of information that help make you make an informed decision. And that's, I think, what you're trying to do and a lot of us are trying to do. We're all in the same community and trying to make these decisions. And we can argue about Twisby and Noodlers all day long, and that's fun stuff. But learning stuff like this is really why I find your blog so fascinating. And I hope that people do disagree that they let me know.

Jonathon Deans: Because I don't know everything, and it's useful to get different points of view.

Brad Dowdy: Absolutely. I'm a big fan of the disagreement. You know, I want people to have opinions, you know, and I don't like the middle ground necessarily. You know, there's time and place for middle ground type of stuff. But, you know, I'm a big fan of having an opinion. So I think there's something valid in that. All right. So I want to get off the economic stuff, which is what you're a pro at, and wrap this up on what Dr. Jonathan Deans uses every day. You know, what are your favorite fountain pens? What are your inks? How are you using, like, your stuff? What's your favorite pens you've got going right now? Like, what are your two or three favorites that you're just really using, you know, you get a lot of enjoyment out of, that you're always going back to?

Jonathon Deans: Well, just the other day I had a new one arrive, which isn't one that's had much attention online, so I might do a review of it. I don't do reviews very often. Oh, look at you. I've done two in the past, and my Lamy 2000 review is the most read post on my blog. It was written in January. Yeah. Some weeks it gets more views than the new posts I put up.

Jonathon Deans: Go figure. Maybe I should just be writing reviews. Maybe that's my strength.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Those silly reviewers. They're all biased anyway.

Jonathon Deans: Yeah. So the new one is the Mont Blanc Heritage 1912, which is one that was never on my radar until a friend of mine, Myke Rosen, who is the Brimic on Reddit. Sure. He wanted one, and I was like, yeah, I'm not that fussed on them. And he sort of sold me on one, and now I've got one, and he hasn't got around to buying his yet. It's great, though, because it's a retractable nibbed pen, but it's also got a really soft nib. It's quite flexible. And I think as far as Mont Blanc goes, it may be the only one that they've got which is that soft. But it is just a joy to write with. It's a big, double broad.

Brad Dowdy: I love it. This is the one that you have on your Instagram with the big white snow cap on the top, right?

Jonathon Deans: And it's a tiny, tiny pen. Capped and retracted. It's the size of a Twisby Mini.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. I think this might have been the pen, Myke, that I was kind of fawning over at the Atlanta pen show. Yeah. It's a stunning-looking pen, and it retracts. And I was just like, oh, this is fantastic. And they must have had six or eight nib sizes for that one pen line, which I thought was kind of impressive.

Jonathon Deans: Yeah. They've got the full range of EF to double broad, and they've got a couple of obliques as well. They actually have a good range.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So that one has caught my eye. That's a stunning-looking pen. I'm glad you're enjoying it so far, I take it.

Jonathon Deans: Yeah. I love it. I should say it's been discontinued, though. So if you're thinking about getting one, I wouldn't think too long.

Brad Dowdy: So maybe the one I saw was what's replacing it or something like that, because it was definitely a smaller retractable pen.

Jonathon Deans: There's two of them. There's the 1912 and the 1914. The 1912 is about the size of the Mini when it's retracted and capped, but extended, it's about the size of a Pelican M800. There's another bigger one, which is basically the size of a baseball bat. Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: This is definitely on a smaller pen overall. Okay. Yeah. I'll have to look that up. I'll have to look that up. So what other pens are in the heavy rotation?

Myke Hurley: Brad, the 1914, they have it in orange. Oh, really?

Jonathon Deans: Don't look at the price, though. It's a scary price. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Don't even link that to me. Because I'll probably, honestly, I'll probably see one next week. I'm sure someone will have it at DC, I would imagine. But yeah, no. I don't want to look at the price.

Jonathon Deans: So the other ones I use, I have a Montblanc 149, which is probably my most used pen. I also have a couple of Viscontis. The Homo Sapiens I carry with me, that's probably my main carry pen. Then there's another one, the Visconti Divina, which is the blue. It's got the silver stripes. It's a Visconti Mac, really great wet nibs, which are a little bit soft. And I love writing with those.

Ink Brands

Brad Dowdy: So what inks are you loading these pens up with?

Jonathon Deans: What's your favorites? I've got to blame Myke Rosen for this as well. The Bung Bops inks, which he sparked the craze on Reddit, which has now led to, I think, Vaness pens in the US sells them now and maybe somebody else. And Bung Bops have had to stop selling them internationally because all the stock is basically just going to international buyers nowadays. They're struggling to keep up. The inks are made by Sailor, but their Bung Bops Sapphire is the perfect blue. I'm not going to disagree with you there. It's pretty amazing. It's a great ink. I also love Montblanc Irish Green. Montblanc inks, by the way, are really underrated. I think a lot of people know the price of those pens and they think, oh, you know, that brand isn't for me. The inks are, I think, $18, $20 a bottle, and they're really good inks. In terms of quality, they flow well, lots of shading, easy to maintain.

Jonathon Deans: I think they're probably the most underrated ink brand in the market. And Irish Green is just a great shade. If it's wet, it's sort of, it's quite a dark green, but then you get these hints of a brighter green in the shading. It's beautiful.

Brad Dowdy: I've had very good luck with their limited inks. I think JFK is one of my all-time favorite inks. I've had less enjoyment with their stock inks like Toffee Brown and Midnight Blue, but maybe I need to branch out a little bit more from those two. I mean, they're certainly, they're wonderful performers. They're just not for my personal taste. But like the JFK may be my number one overall ink. It's right up there with Shinkai for me, which is well known to be my favorite ink.

Jonathon Deans: Yeah. Well, if you like greens, check out the Irish Green. I think you'll like it.

Brad Dowdy: I'll have to check that out. And we're going to have to check out more of your work at Fountain Pen Economics. I mean, I think we're just scratching the surface. And I knew this episode was going to be this way. And there's so much more I want to ask you. And there's so many more things we can dig into. I hope you enjoyed it today. And I hope you will consider joining us again sometime soon. I think it's, I think the listeners are going to be clamoring for it after they hear this episode. Yeah, this has been a lot of fun. Well, good. Well, good. We are, we are certainly appreciate you coming on. Why don't you real quick tell everyone where they can find you online, you know, where you like to communicate the most. And we'll go with that.

Jonathon Deans: The blog's at peneconomics.com. There's links there to the Twitter account and the Instagram account. The Instagram is my favorite. There's such a great community of people on there. And Reddit, I'm drjd16 on there. I'm on there most of the time. Or you can just email me, peneconomics at outlook.com. Yeah. Can I do a quick shout out? Is that cool? Please. All right. Well, I want to give a shout out to Myke and Brian Anderson. Brian Anderson has been an amazing supporter of the blog. He's just always available to have a chat or for me to bounce ideas off. But also my partner, Lisa, it's our anniversary this week. And she is, she's an economist as well. She's at a conference in Hong Kong. She is a big supporter of me doing this. And frankly, she is enormously patient with putting up with my pen nonsense. And I know she'll be listening to this.

Brad Dowdy: So I just want to say thank you to her for everything she does to help. Well, tell her to bring you back a sweet anniversary present from Hong Kong. You know, stop in one of the pen shops there.

Jonathon Deans: She sent me a photo of a bag from the Mont Blanc boutique. So it's going to be a long wait until I get to see that.

Brad Dowdy: That's awesome. That's awesome. And I second your commentary on Mr. Anderson. He's one of the good guys in this business. And I appreciate everything he does, him and Lisa do for this community. And I will hope to give them a big hug when I see them next week in D.C. They're legitimately awesome.

Brad Dowdy: All right. All right, Jonathan. We appreciate it. And we will be doing this again very, very soon, I feel. And I should just go ahead and start making show notes now for the next time I have you on. Because I didn't even get to everything I wanted to talk about today. So we appreciate you.

Jonathon Deans: Just have one or two topics and we'll just use that as our jumping off point.

Brad Dowdy: That's right. That's how we do our best work, isn't it, Myke?

Jonathon Deans: Yep.

Myke Hurley: Flying by the seat of our pants.

Brad Dowdy: All right. So fly us on out of here, mate.

Myke Hurley: Talking about the show notes, there's a ton today. Loads of great posts and pens and inks and stuff. And you can find those online at relay.fm slash penaddict slash 166. Or you can find them in your podcast client of choice. They should be in there if you're listening in an app on one of the various platforms available. But you can go and find them on the web. If not, if you want to find Brad's work online, he's over at penaddict.com. And you can also find him. He's penaddict on Instagram. Dowdyism on Twitter. D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M on Twitter. I'm at imike, I-M-Y-K-E on Twitter and Instagram. And thanks again to our sponsors this week, Squarespace, Pen Chalet and Linda. If you enjoy this show, go and check them out because it helps support what we do here. But most of all, thank you for listening. Thank you both for joining me. Brad to you as always. And Jonathan, thank you for your great input today. And I really look forward to having you on again in the future.

Jonathon Deans: Also, thanks for having me.

Myke Hurley: Until then, goodbye, everybody.

Jonathon Deans: Goodbye. See ya.