The Pen Addict 422/transcript
| The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript | |
|---|---|
| Episode: | 422 |
| Title: | The Future is Not Fountain Pens |
| Release Date: | August 5th, 2020 |
| Hosts: | Brad Dowdy |
| Guests: | No guests this episode |
| Additional Information | |
| Official page: | Episode 422 |
| Audio File: | Audio Episode 422 |
| Podcast page: | The Pen Addict 422 |
| Length: | 5656 min <br />0.933 h <br /> minutes |
| Previous Transcript | Next Transcript |
Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 422, and today's show is brought to you by ExpressVPN. My name is Myke Hurley, and I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi, Brad.
Brad Dowdy: Hey, Myke Hurley, how are you doing today?
Myke Hurley: Fine. I'm doing fine, my friend. Fine and dandy.
Brad Dowdy: Good, good. I'm doing pretty fine, too. Do you ever have one of those weeks, like we have our good weeks and bad weeks, like getting things done? I have been checklist-crossing-off-master this week so far. You're having a good one. Yeah, I'm feeling pretty good about it. Those are few and far between, right? Usually the checklist is blown up at like 9.01 Monday morning, the checklist is shot. But I'm checklisting appropriately this week, Myke, and I'm feeling good about it.
Myke Hurley: I've had a weird task list this week where I feel like I've had lots of things on the list. I've been doing things every day, but the list isn't going down, and I'm not sure why.
Pen Shipments
Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm. Well, one of the things on my list, and maybe unfortunately for some listeners, it's going to be at the top of the list for the next several podcasts, is we've got to give an update on the Big Pen Addict Kickstarter campaign, right? Which is really, I'm just pretty much calling it the Retro 51 campaign now, because that's what it ended up being. But as everyone knows, I got the pens in. The posters are shipping to me, which you saw the link for those, right? So those look great from Skylab Letterpress, and I'll have those today or tomorrow. Once I get those, I want to appropriately measure them for packaging, right? Because it's a poster and a pen, so I want to use a tube where I can roll the poster and put the pen in the middle. That seems like the most efficient way to ship these. But I have to order like 1,000 units of packaging, so I'm very nervous about getting that correct, because if I make a mistake with envelopes, I can reuse envelopes. I'm not going to be reusing tubes anytime soon, I don't think. So this is all happening soon. So I went ahead and sent out the shipping survey from Kickstarter yesterday. So anyone listening, if you happen to catch this and are a supporter of our recent Pen Addict Kickstarter campaign, and you haven't already filled out your survey, please go check your email or log into Kickstarter. If you log into Kickstarter, they'll pop up an alert and say, Hey, there's one survey ready for you to fill out. Go fill out that information. So when I get these packing tubes in in the next week or so, I can start shipping these out. Myke, are you getting excited for these to be out in the wild?
Myke Hurley: I'll be even more excited if you 100% commit on this show to send me mine within some kind of due time.
Brad Dowdy: Okay. I will send yours. Let's see what's today. I will send yours out in the first batch that I ship.
Myke Hurley: That's very kind of you.
Brad Dowdy: So that will be like, you're not special.
Myke Hurley: No, even what that means is I will get it early or everybody else is going to get them in like nine years. Because that's how it tends to be of shipping things to me. That's what you do.
Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah, that's true. That's true. So, yeah. And like, I don't know, before the end of the month, you should have it hopefully. That's awesome. I'm super excited. I can't commit to earlier than that just if I don't know when the packaging is going to arrive. But I checked all the inventory for the packaging and I was looking through packaging sizes. That's one of the most boring things on my checklist is, hey, let's go shop for tubes. And you wouldn't believe the fun I had yesterday. Do I go craft paper or white? Ooh, these red ones are fancy, but they're more expensive. So, you know, whatever. It was a good day. But they all look in stock. So, whenever I place an order for my thousand tubes that the UPS driver is going to be mad at me about.
Brad Dowdy: Well, I don't think it'll take very long. So, there you go. That was a lot about nothing, Myke. So, we should do a show.
Myke Hurley: I wonder if the UPS guy will be more upset with the thousand tubes or the thousand pens. Because I guess the tubes, there's just, it's a lot of mass. But the pens is weight, right?
Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So, I do wonder about that. Because they are so light. All the packing supply boxes are so light. But I imagine if it's a busy run that it would take up so much space in the truck, it could be a problem. Right? To where they couldn't fit other people's packaging.
Myke Hurley: Surely you would have, like, a personal relationship with your delivery people at this point. Oh, I do. I do. Yeah. I do.
Brad Dowdy: They're very nice. Yeah. I'll get them to take the heavier packages. It's like when the Retro 51s come, I get them to drive them around to the shipping department instead of, like, the front door. And they're cool with that.
Kaweco Collabs
Myke Hurley: So, you've got some new releases in here. Lots of collabs, as the kids call them.
Brad Dowdy: Collabs. We're going to talk about collabs. That's, like, my biggest topic on this is how to collab correctly. But the first one, I got emailed by Kaweco. I got marketed to, Myke, in an email that landed in my inbox just from Kaweco. Just their regular normal email. And they sent this collab with a graffiti artist, a street artist named Ombre. Which, who, I'm not art. I'm very much into, like, the street art and art type of scene. But I was not familiar with Ombre at all. And this set is, like, right up my alley. Like, it's a really cool, cool set. And, you know, it's got the Ombre logo on there. Like, you know, his tag. And, you know, I thought that was kind of cool for Kaweco to set this whole thing up. You know, it seemed like a very good, very good, unique collaboration.
Brad Dowdy: What's interesting about it is, as soon as I pulled up the link, I was like, oh, it's a pen and a pencil set. And it's only 99 euros. I was like, that seems pretty reasonable for, like, a limited edition type of collab. And, you know, pricing-wise, it looked good. And then, like, I was a little bit confused, honestly, at the price. I was like, that seems cheap. And then I realized that the pen is not a fountain pen. Which they do a very poor job. I spent very, very many minutes trying to sort out what I'm actually purchasing. Because I didn't end up purchasing this. Because I don't have the pencil. You know, I like my 2mm pencil. Like my Caran d'Ache fix pencil. Those types of wide, kind of like a sketch pencil. So, I was definitely into that. I was like, wow, this pen. What is this pen? Because they never uncap the pen on any of the marketing shots. And there's, like, three pictures of the pen. And it's all just the barrel. Well, it's a gel refill. So, it's like one of the ballpoint rollerball AL sport gels. But it's still the aluminum barrel. It's still the metal barrel. But without the fountain pen nib, it'll have the roller gel. Which I don't think I have a gel refill for this. I know you're not a Cafeco guy.
Myke Hurley: So, what comes in the... Because I'm looking at a picture here on a company called Studio Pens. Because the official Cafeco website, it just says, sorry, no picture. Which kind of seems a little weird.
Brad Dowdy: That wasn't there like that yesterday.
Myke Hurley: There's two pens in this package?
Brad Dowdy: It's a pen and a pencil. So, it's a 2mm pencil. Oh, so that's a pencil. The long skinny is the pencil. And then the standard sport shape is the pen. But it has a gel tip. But they already make those for a ballpoint. They make a ballpoint sport. I don't think I've ever bought or seen a gel roller. So, I don't even know what refill is going to be in this. If it's just like a D1. They use D1 refills for like their Lilyputs. And I think maybe the standard sports are D1s also. But I'm very curious at what this is. Maybe I have missed this over all my years I've been following Kaweco. But I've never seen a gel refill option before. So, I've ordered this. Number one, I don't have that pencil style. Number two, I don't have this pen style. And number three, I love the style of the collaboration period.
Myke Hurley: I don't understand Kaweco. I just don't understand them, Brad. I don't get it. Yeah, why? I didn't know they had a gel version of what clearly looks like a fountain pen.
Brad Dowdy: Yeah, me neither.
Myke Hurley: Or like even a non-fountain pen version of the sport. I don't even know if I knew that existed.
Brad Dowdy: Well, they've made the pencil in a sport model before. Like, don't look at that pencil. Don't look at that pencil in this. That's not what I'm talking about. In the regular sport, the regular, you know, $20, $25 sport, you can get a mechanical pencil version with a click on the back.
Myke Hurley: Huh. Yeah, but at least that would look different, though, because it had a click on the back.
Brad Dowdy: Yeah.
Myke Hurley: You know? Yeah. Who knows? I don't get Kaweco. Less and less. I do.
Brad Dowdy: I get them, and I love them, Myke. I love them with all my heart. But I think this is a neat set, especially for the price. I thought it was a pretty cool price for, you know, two products that I don't have, which is pretty rare for me and Kaweco. Like, I have neither of these products, and it's just kind of cool. So I'm all for it. I have ordered that. So just if other people are interested in this. I did order mine directly from Kaweco. So it was, you know, I ended up paying like $20 in shipping from Germany. But I got a little bit of the VAT back. I think my price was around €89 and then €20 shipping. So with all that conversions, it ended up being like $130. It was, it's expensive. There's no doubt. But I still thought for what you get is a pretty fair price. Next product, Myke, I want to talk about. So that was the Ombre and Kaweco edition. The next one is Misubi and Le Reyes overgrowth. What do you think about this, Myke? I probably have more say about this, but yeah. It's pretty amazing.
Myke Hurley: Yeah, it looks beautiful.
Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so what Daryl at Misubi has done is had Le Reyes essentially paint or draw or put her artwork on the inside cover of these very, very unique fabric cloth diaries that, you know, Misubi makes some really, really cool stuff. I've seen this diary type of pattern before. I think it's Portuguese fabric, Peruvian, Peruvian fabric. And it's just this really beautiful black and cream pattern on the outside. And five of these went to Le for artwork. And they are then selling these five books via a lottery system, which we'll have a link in the show notes.
Myke Hurley: So I think I maybe misunderstood this at first. I thought that the entire journals had artwork in them, but it's just one page?
Brad Dowdy: I think. I was trying to read for clarification, but it's really made so you use the journal, right? So, you know, it's still a 200-something page journal. You're only going to, number one, you're going to want to use it. And number two, Le is not going to paint 200, not going to paint what essentially 1,000 pages of artwork and only charge, you know, like these are $435, which is massively expensive. But 100% of the profits are going to charity. They're going to an autism charity, which is just wonderful. Autism Resource Center in Singapore. So, you know, this is a very expensive notebook. But what it is, it's a piece of art and a way to support charity and a way to support two people. I'm super fans of, you know, Daryl and Leigh. I obviously, I think the world of them. So this is a really neat project. So what you do, I haven't put in for the lottery yet. I can't decide on this. Like, because my biggest hang-up was I would like to buy it and support it and have it as a piece of art. But that kind of goes, I think I would have a hard time using it. Right. Right? Like, I have to commit to using the things that I buy. So I've looked at the lottery. You can go in and pick, like, the five different artworks. Like, you can, like, favor it. Like, you can just, like, apply to bid or apply to get picked for one specific artwork or you can pick them all. You know, whatever you want to do. It's a really neat way they set it up. And it's like, number one, I don't know if I could pick. Like, okay, I maybe have two favorites out of the five, but they're all pretty great. But if I got it, I would have to use it. I would just have to use it, and I don't know if I can commit to that. But so I'm like, I've gone back and forth on whether I'm going to, like, submit for the lottery. But it ends in a few days. That's why I wanted to put this out there and let people look at it. And even if you, you know, this is a very, very expensive product, you know. So, but I just wanted people to be aware of Misubi, be aware of Le Reyes and her artwork, and look at the cool things that they do. You know, even if this is something that's, like, so way out of your price range, that's cool. Like, this is a special project, you know, to support a charity and to, you know, just shine a light on these two makers that I love. So I think it's pretty cool.
Collaboration Naming
Brad Dowdy: My real question, my real question, Myke, is with these two new releases, what is the proper way to denote a collaboration between two brands or two people? So these are both X's, right? So, ombre, lowercase x, Kaweco. Misubi, lowercase x, Le Reyes. I think about this way too much, probably way more than the normal person, because I get to see a lot of collaborations, right? You get to see a lot of collaborations. And they all seem to do it differently. These just happen to both be lowercase X's, but why isn't it an uppercase X? What about the plus sign, Myke? Like, should it be an ampersand because I'm saying it's Misubi and Le Reyes anyway? Like, I'm not saying Misubi x Le Reyes, right? Should it be an ampersand? What is, this is something I think about. What if I come out with a project with, you know, I've done Franklin Kristoff. Let's say I've done Franklin Kristoff pins. I usually just call it, you know, the pin addict Franklin Kristoff. I don't say pin addict x Franklin Kristoff or pin addict slash Franklin Kristoff. What is the proper collaboration format?
Myke Hurley: Well, I can't tell you that I know the answer to that question. But I can tell you that what I do is I use the little x.
Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm.
Myke Hurley: Right? And that kind of works for me, right? Like, I feel like that's pretty good. I don't know why people use that because as well, like, I've always seen that as like, by, you know, like two by four or whatever. Right. So when I would first see it, it'd be like Misubi by Le Reyes, which I guess kind of makes sense.
Brad Dowdy: Mm, that makes sense. Okay. That's something I didn't consider. Okay.
Myke Hurley: Hombre by Kaweco. Like, I guess it depends. Maybe it actually makes a, you know what? I bet it, that's how it started. Like something by someone. But, you know, obviously if you do it that way, you have to be very careful about the ordering. Like, for example, if I made a special edition knock case, you know, it'd be like knock x Myke Hurley, like knock by Myke Hurley. You did it your way around. That wouldn't make any sense, would it? Right. So you'd have, if that's what people mean, if that's where it comes from, then it's important the way you do it. But now I just think that little x just means these are two companies or two individuals that are collaborating in some way. But I think that that's the, like the, the agreed upon way of doing it.
Brad Dowdy: Okay. I like your idea of Misubi by Le Reyes, at least thinking of it that way, because you can't, it's my, my real question is, it's my real question is, this looks great in imagery and typeset and font. But to say it out loud is confusing, right? Misubi x Le Reyes, Misubi by Le Reyes, Misubi and Le Reyes. So I spend way too much time thinking about this, because then you have brands that aren't a collaborative brand name like Inc. and Volt, but it's a plus sign. Right. So even though those are different types of, a different type of situation, you know, I, that's just another one of those. How do you use these types of things correctly? And which order do you put them in? And, and, you know, I, this is what everyone signed up for when they, when they decided to download the Pen Huttick podcast, right? Like this conversation.
Myke Hurley: Well, I mean, it's some element of this always.
Brad Dowdy: But I would have never thought about this if these were separately, but when I saw these formatted exactly the same, these two products that we just talked about, I was like, there must be something to this. Maybe this is the correct way of doing it. So I don't know. Oh boy. I know what people did sign up for when they signed up to listen to this podcast. Hand sanitizer talk, Myke.
Myke Hurley: I think you have a very warped view of the show today.
Brad Dowdy: Well, maybe my brain is warped and that's what the show is about.
Myke Hurley: Very possible.
Hand Sanitizer
Brad Dowdy: Because I want to talk about hand sanitizer and how Sailor has actually made a statement on this. So this is the first pen company that I've seen make a statement about using, you know, we're all living in the COVID times and we're all being very diligent about, you know, keeping our hands clean and not passing germs and things like this. And then I saw our friend Jacob from the Tokyo Inklings podcast on Twitter sent out a link from Sailor where they discussed that, hey, if you have hand sanitizer and you're going to grab your pen, you might see some discoloration issues on our acrylic barrels and they're warning you against, not against using, you know, hand sanitizers, but number one, you don't want to clean your pens with any type of hand sanitizer, any type of alcohol or any type of solvent, anything like that.
Myke Hurley: And I guess don't, don't use the pens if your hands have not absorbed the sanitizer yet. Right. So like, right. You don't want to go immediately pick it up.
Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yeah. So you don't want to make that, that move right from like, okay, I'm back at my desk, hit the hand sanitizer, grab the pen to start writing. And a couple of people actually responded to Jacob saying, yeah, I saw this. Like someone said they had a platinum curion us where they just use their hand sanitizer. And now they've kind of like clouded up the barrel has gotten cloudy where that hand sanitizer met the barrel of the acrylic. So I thought this was interesting. I think we all kind of assumed that could be the thing, right? Like you wouldn't normally do that or, but we're into contact with so much more, you know, cleaning products nowadays that I thought it was interesting that a company actually came out and said, Hey, you need to be careful with this. So I actually, I, I translated the PDF, which is unfortunate, unfortunate PDF naming Myke on this one by sailor on. Um, so it's the notice it's, uh, on sailors PR page. It's just a PDF and it has the date. They released the page underscore crack dot PDF. So this is a crack dot PDF and, um, a little bit, a little bit unfortunate, I guess. Yeah. Pen cracks. Right. Right. But they could have, you know, I, that one wasn't lost in translation. Like that's the file name when you download the file, but it's saying, um, just saying. And in short, they say the immediate usage of your pen after using a disinfecting product, you should, you should be wary of that. And I thought that was good of them to actually put that in writing, uh, despite the PDF name. So there you go.
Myke Hurley: I hadn't, no, I had not considered this like, like a thing that I needed to think about, but I guess it makes sense. It's alcohol, right? Like it's gonna, it's gonna eat away at stuff. That's why we put it on our hands.
Brad Dowdy: Right. And I, the, the way I was thinking about this is someone like myself, I rarely leave the house. So that's when I would be using hand sanitizer more. Like when I get into, like, if I go to the post office, you know, I'm using it as soon as I get back in the car, but then I'm driving home and it's a little bit before I'm using a pen right after. I'm not going from like hand sanitizer to pen in any immediate sense. So I haven't seen any problems, but I thought this was good to point out.
Myke Hurley: All right. Should we take a break?
Brad Dowdy: Yes.
Myke Hurley: People need it after those two topics. It's brought to you by ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN lets you access the internet as if you're from a different country. Loads of different streaming services have shows and movies available depending on where you are. And with ExpressVPN, you can unlock thousands of new shows and movies from streaming libraries around the globe. Like, for example, I have in the past used ExpressVPN to let me see things on Japanese Netflix. I am a Netflix subscriber, but different countries have different content and you're able to jump around and see different things. It's also really useful if you're in a place like Europe, for example. There are some newspaper websites in different countries in the world that never decided to go for GDPR compliance. So they just shut you out. Like, I will just close you down. They just say like, hey, I'm from America. You can read the article. There are hundreds of VPNs out there, but ExpressVPN is so fast, you can stream everything in HD quality with zero buffering. And it's available on every device, phones, laptops, tablets, even your TV. ExpressVPN works with many streaming services. So you can use it to access content from BBC iPlayer, YouTube, Netflix, many, many more. You can choose from almost 100 different countries. Super simple to use. Just fire up the ExpressVPN app, change your location, hit connect, and then refresh the page. And the show or movie that you want to watch is going to appear magically. Just keep this one between us. It's a little secret, huh? If you use this link right now, expressvpn.com slash penaddict, you can get an extra three months of ExpressVPN for free. That's expressvpn.com slash penaddict for an extra three months of ExpressVPN for free when you sign up. Our thanks to ExpressVPN for the support of this show and RelayFM.
Brad Dowdy: So, yeah, I'm an ExpressVPN customer like we've talked about for as long as they've been sponsoring the show. And, you know, when my renewal came up, I was like, well, I'm not traveling. And I, of course, live on it when I'm traveling and I'm just not getting out of the house these days. And then I thought exactly about those things. Like, well, actually, I do. It does come in handy when I need to access some other things, some other media especially. I was like, okay, renew. So, yeah, it worked out well.
Myke Hurley: Easy peasy.
Future Pens
Brad Dowdy: Easy peasy. We got a couple of many topics I want to discuss in this first one kind of ties into what we were just talking about. So this came in via Pulp and Pen last week. What are your visions for pen shows in the future in the context of all the events of 2020? Physical versus virtual? More diversity both with the audience and products? Focus on smaller makers? What does the ideal pen show look like and how can our community make it happen? So a lot to take in in that question. Do you have any, like, initial thoughts? Because this isn't just how we're going to handle the pandemic. This is how are we going to handle, you know, the pandemic? How are we going to support, you know, underrepresented makers? You know, how are we going to support small makers? You know, and what can we do to make this experience our ideal experience? So, yeah. Do you have any thoughts on that?
Myke Hurley: Well, there's a couple. I have many thoughts, of course. Yes. There's a couple of things, though, that I think are important to note. Like, there are not silver bullets. Like, it is actually impossible to do all of these things, right? You can't do them all in one thing. You can't, you know, make it more diverse with audience and products, focus on smaller makers, and make it the ideal pen show. Those three things don't, I don't know if they really can all exist at once. Do you know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Because to try and get more people, you need to have larger makers. You can't just have small makers because you need to have, like, big ticket items to draw people in. You know, like, if you can say, like, oh, we've, you know, like, it's almost like the DC pen show, right? Where, like, they have everyone. So, of course, you're going to want to be there. Yeah, so, like, I get the thinking and the merit behind this question of, like, all of these things need to be addressed. And I agree that all of these things do need to be addressed. But I don't think we need to focus on trying to address them all at the exact same time. We can do these things in different ways. One of the things that I think is really important, and I've already mentioned on previous episodes of the show, is that I think we should see online pen shows becoming more of a thing in the intervening time. And that would be a great way for small makers to participate because, you know, you could do it with much lower, if any, fees, right? Because you wouldn't need tables and no one would need to rent out a space. So, like, all of the fees would be way smaller, right? Because no one's going to hire a hotel room, so you haven't got that upfront cost. And you could have this, like, online pen show. You know, you could do things. You could have, like, classes via Zoom. There's so many things that can be done here. And I think that that's a great way of being able to open it up for many more people to attend something like this, even from people all over the world attending. And so that would definitely lower the barrier of entry for people. And you can have small makers there. You know, I think the thing that we need to consider and, like, we really need to think about is, like, what if there's never another pen show now? Like, or if the only pen shows that exist after this are the massive ones? Because the individuals that were organizing the smaller shows just don't see it as viable as a thing for them to focus on anymore because there might not be a pen show for a year. So I really think that somebody needs to take the reins of creating some kind of online thing and getting buy-in from a lot of companies. I think that that's the first thing that needs to occur before anything can happen. Because if we're all just thinking, like, oh, I can't wait for the next pen show, like, you've got the wrong thought.
Brad Dowdy: I pretty much agree across the board with everything you've said there. In the before times, I don't know if I've ever said this out loud or in any show or stream or anything before, but in the before times, I was thinking about how can I help with the diversity problem we see at shows and shine a light on more diverse vendors and smaller vendors. And I always, like, one of my little dream scenarios was that I could start a nonprofit that was strictly there to fund travel for smaller makers to shows. And, you know, that never got off the ground because that's a really hard puzzle to solve and how do you, just in a lot of ways, right? Like, how do you manage that and make sure you're doing it right? But I think we're starting to see some of the other shows, some of the pen shows that existed before, starting to take a more local path and having a focus on area vendors that the larger pen community may not be aware of that, you know, are doing good things in the community where these shows are at that don't have the broad scope of these, you know, national or in some cases, international companies, brands, vendors, retailers, things like that. So that's good. Like, I still, there's obviously a ton of work to be able to do there. And if we ever do get back to pen shows, you know, that's something I'd like to focus on, seeing how we can help, you know, underrepresented people have, you know, the ability to sell at these shows and have their wear seen by a wider audience that we can all benefit from. And then, but that's assuming, like you said, pen shows come back like they used to be. And I think there is, and we've talked about this before, I think there is a path to an online type of pen show that doesn't come without massive amounts of work and risk and, you know, effort to pull something like that off. But I think it could be done, and I think, I wouldn't be surprised if there's people working on this. You know, I've never heard of anything or, you know, I'm not involved in anything, certainly. But there has to be people thinking about this, just those who travel a lot, who rely on these shows for parts of their income or looking at other ways to virtually have a pen show. And how big can something like that get? Like, how can we come together as a group to put something on like that? I see that happening maybe even before I'm comfortable traveling to a pen show again. We'll see, you know, it's definitely out there. So, you know, this is a big question, and that's why I kind of wanted to discuss it, even though we don't have any answers or maybe any way to have answers. But I can see a lot of things happening that could kind of push the pen show part of our hobby and our community forward in the future. So, you know, we'll see. We'll see. We're going to have a – we've got a lot of time to think about this. You know, I think, you know, next year will we see like one or two big virtual pen shows. I could see the Tokyo pen show group pulling something like this off. Maybe the San Francisco pen show group could pull something like this off, you know. That list is short who I think could pull something off right now, but I would love to see it happen, and I would certainly participate.
Myke Hurley: As we stand at this point, it's getting for me to be a thing of like I don't even think it would be nice if this happened. I think it needs to.
Brad Dowdy: Oh, yes.
Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I think we're beyond like – yeah, that would be cool. I was like, no, I think this is probably going to need to happen for a lot of different reasons, right? So, yeah, I see what you're saying.
Myke Hurley: And I mean really like for people's businesses to be able to continue in a way that they want, you know.
Ask TPA
Brad Dowdy: Right. Exactly. All right. Next mini topic, then we'll get into some Ask TPA and catch up on all the ones that we still owe people. This is from K9 Plays. You brought up before how fountain pens have the most variety. I guess it's talking to me. Is this due to them being older, or is there something intrinsic to fountain pens that makes them more customizable? Do you think a company like Retro would be able to thrive in the future, or is the future fountains? This is, again, there's a lot to take into this question, which is why I asked for this type of question.
Brad Dowdy: I want to be very explicit on the record in this answer that the future is not fountain pens. I want to be very clear on that. Fountain pens will never get past a niche market, in my opinion. That doesn't mean it can't be a huge market, and that doesn't mean there's not going to be continued innovation and interest in the fountain pen market. It's just never going to surpass, it's never going to be the number one writing market, ever. It's just not. There's too many variables that prevent the access to fountain pens becoming the number one type of writing instrument.
Brad Dowdy: Do you have anything to say just on that specific statement? I just wanted to kind of take that in the beginning.
Myke Hurley: Yeah, I don't know why the future would be fountain pens. I don't think it is. I mean, I think that there are more opportunities for people making fountain pens than there's ever been, but it's never going to, the fountain pens are never going to become like the big answer. You know what I mean? It's a luxury good, not a necessity. It's a luxury good. There is a barrier to entry. They're difficult. They're messy. They're complex. It's not the future. I mean, I think we are currently in the fountain pens present. The future of like, oh, there can be a resurgence has happened. We're there. That's what it is now. Mm-hmm. And I think it'll continue. Continue as is. Yes. Not continue to increase.
Brad Dowdy: Right. Yeah. And I think we'll continue to see what we're seeing right now. I don't think we're at a plateau. I think we could still peak a little bit more, but that plateau is going to run out. I mean, I mean that in a positive way. The plateau is going to continue to stay high. Like, I think the fountain pens are, you know, very unique, provide something very unique, which is the first part of this question that I'll get to. Yeah. And I don't think it's going to go down, but there is a ceiling that fountain pens will hit to where you can't ever say the future is fountain pens. Right. So, but I do say they are the most customizable because of the writing style options, the personal style options, and the, just the uniqueness of that writing experience. You can't go by from a store shelf or just grab off of Amazon, you know, the next time you make an order, there are ways to make your experience better. Whether you're looking to improve your handwriting, like for me, I can, I like to write really tiny or write, like to write really blocky. Well, traditional gel, rollerball, ballpoint pens don't always fit those needs. Some fountain pens do. I can also buy a pen that fits my style. And let me just circle back to what I just said. No one needs a fountain pen. These are luxury items. These are, you know, if you own a fountain pen, you've decided to say, Hey, I care about my writing and want to try something different and unique, but you're also making a style statement too. Like, I don't want to get that lost in the shuffle and I don't want it to sound pretentious, but we care about the things we use. We like fountain pens because they're pretty or they look cool or they're a material I like, or I can throw it in my backpack and not have to worry about, you know, it scratching up. You know, like if you buy metal fountain pens, you know, you can support art and small makers and, you know, vendors that, you know, do things differently than, you know, other, you know, big box retailers and things like that. So that's where like you get into the customization of fountain pens. It's not just the writing experience while we all like fountain pens so much. That's definitely a huge part of it, but it's part of the other part of it is I can express myself in my style, right? I get, it's like choosing a shirt or a pair of sneakers. You know, for me, the pen goes in that category as well. Oh, this one's orange. It looks awesome. It's what I want. It kind of reminds me of this, you know, things like that. So that's what I'm talking about. Customizable. I'm not always talking about writing experience.
Brad Dowdy: So the final piece of this question is, do you think a company like retro would be able to thrive in the future? I don't see why not. I don't have an answer for after all these months of us knowing that retro is theoretically closing down next month, supposedly, right? We haven't really followed up on that.
Myke Hurley: I would love to know what the deal is going on there. But I mean, there's nothing to suggest that anything's changed.
Brad Dowdy: Yeah.
Brad Dowdy: I still don't know who is going to pick up the mantle in the exact same fashion that they did. They had something very, very, you don't think it's unique, but it's extremely unique, mainly because of the high level of execution that they are able to put into these products, right? And that's harder to deliver than just delivering products themselves, right? They execute flawlessly, in my opinion. And I haven't seen really anyone else attempt that. Not that other people can't do it, but I haven't seen those attempts yet to say, oh, this, you know, Acme or Karen Dash or anyone has like really nailed like what the stories Retro 51 is trying to tell with each individual product. So, you know, I think we can see another company like that thrive. I don't see why not. But that would be a hard act to follow. This is one you want to be the guy after the guy, right? So, but the guy after the guy, after the guy. So, you don't, I don't know that you want to go first right after Retro. Someone else is, you kind of want to wait and see and see if, you know, how, how to execute on, on that. So I did get an interesting email this morning, Myke, from our good friend, Mary. She said, what if Retro 51 made one final last hurrah release and it was the Willy Wonka golden ticket and if you found it, you got to take over the company.
Myke Hurley: I think we've made this joke.
Mary: Have we? We might have. I think so. When we're talking about the fish, the fish golden tickets.
Myke Hurley: But nevertheless, if we haven't, that's, it's very funny. I like that a lot. I love that so much.
Brad Dowdy: That is how it should be. So, yeah. So we'll see if there, I don't know, maybe there's a 10,000 issue release coming up of pens and one of those is a golden ticket.
Myke Hurley: So I kind of got it.
Brad Dowdy: Oh my gosh. So, yeah, I love these questions. You know, a lot of Ask TPAs are the same format, but I kind of break them out a little bit to these broader questions, have these little mini topics, which I love. So keep sending that type of stuff in and you can tag them, Ask TPA, and I'll still get them in the form or you can email them to me. But yeah, I love these kind of bigger picture questions where we can just kind of riff on these things. You know, we don't have all the answers. We have some things we'd like to see. We know what we want this community to be and know what we want out of like the stationary community or the stationary business in a broader sense. But I like, you know, kind of thinking about these things. So, yeah, it's very cool.
Myke Hurley: Speaking about big questions, we also have some small questions in the form of hashtag Ask TPA. First question this week comes from Tim. Tim wants to know, am I making this up or sometime in the last few years? Was there a semi-exclusive 1911 that had like a mosaic tile pattern on it? I'm sure you talked about it on the show, but can't find images anywhere.
Brad Dowdy: Can I tell you how much I love this question? You can. Just like that someone's putting in the thought process because this is me. Tim, I'm speaking to you as someone who does this exact thing. Am I making this up or was there this product that did this? And a lot of times we have discovered that, yeah, there was this product that did this. And that's the exact case in this, in what Tim's talking about. Do you recall this before you clicked on the link? Did you know what Tim was talking about? Because I knew immediately.
Myke Hurley: I know because I regretted that I never bought one of these.
Brad Dowdy: So, Sailor did a series of King of Pen years and years and years ago called the Mosaic. And they spell it in a very interesting way. M-O-Z-A-I-Q-U-E. Mosaic.
Brad Dowdy: And the story goes, so I have one of the original King of Pen mosaics. That's how I pronounce them, just like mosaic, like M-O-S-A-I-C, like a tile table. But anyway, that's neither here nor there. I don't know the proper pronunciation, which is not a shock to anyone who's ever listened to this show. And the story goes that Sailor found X amount of material in rod form from that King of Pen project sitting in the warehouse. And decided to make a series, a small run of the 1911 model, which is the smaller version of the King of Pen, in these four mosaic patterns. And that's what this is. So, we'll put a link in the show note for you, Tim. I took a picture of one and sent to Myke one of the red, I think, was it red mosaic? Yeah. So, the red mosaic I sent to Myke when I saw it at a pen show, took a picture. And they're really neat. And I thought you went out of your way to get one of those, but apparently not, huh?
Myke Hurley: I think there was one of these things that happens to me every now and again where, like, I got really close and then got cold feet. Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah.
Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And it was also a matter of not all materials were available in equal quantity, right? Like, the green one, which is what I have for the King of Pen, I think there was hardly any of those. But there was, like, a lot of the brown ones. And the red one I got to see in person looked spectacular. But, like, this was a quick, quick, small launch, and they went away fast. But that is, you are not making it up, Tim. And I hope this helps.
Paper Performance
Myke Hurley: Next one comes from GottsToGo1406. From this week's podcast and discussion of Tomoe Ripper Paper, I came away with a question. What do you think is the best paper for fountain pens and standard pen use? Like you, I use both all the time. What is the best one-stop shop paper-wise? You know what, Brad? I actually want to pause on this question for a second because I just want to extol continued frustration for trying to find paper to make products from. That is a GD nightmare, Brad Dowdy.
Brad Dowdy: I can tell by the change in tone of your voice, either online on this show or offline when we talk, the level of frustration you currently have. And a new long-running frustration, I guess I should say, on the challenges of making things. Michael, I don't know if you know this, making things is difficult.
Myke Hurley: No kidding. Like why is some paper like, oh, it's great. Oh, but then when you use a fine nib, it's almost like the ink has dried up. Yeah. Have you come across this before?
Brad Dowdy: Sure. Sure. Yeah. I mean, you could have the same paper side by side and act differently. That's why this Ask TPA question is evergreen. We could have this exact question from Gotts2Go1407 next week, and I might even have a different answer, right? It is that hard of a question to answer for reasons like you're experiencing.
Myke Hurley: And like I've got to draw a line somewhere, right?
Brad Dowdy: But the problem is you're never comfortable drawing that line in permanent marker.
Myke Hurley: No, as well because – so like, all right, peek behind the curtain. By the way, theme system journals are available right now. Yeah, I wonder what we're talking about. There is an amount, not a lot, like an amount of the first edition available, and I am currently working on the second edition and kind of changing some stuff up. One of those things is the source of manufacture. The other thing is Myke kind of rebuilding the thing from the ground up on his own. And the thing that I am struggling with the most right now is to find a paper to go in this notebook because I don't have access to this exact same product that the book was made out of before, so I'm trying to find a paper for it. And I keep finding – like I've had a couple of different samples now, and it's like this is great for this, this, and it sucks for this. It's great. It sucks for this, but it's good for this and this. And trying to find the right line to draw is difficult because I'm changing it, right? So like I'm pretty confident that people are going to say like I will have an element that people go, I really liked the paper before. I don't like it anymore. And I have to be willing to accept that. But at the moment, I don't think I've found the paper that I personally want to use. That's the line that I think I'm going to draw is when I find the paper that I like, that's what I'll go with. But at the moment, I don't know if I've gotten there.
Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's hard. And I go through this. People who make things go through this. And it's how many questions you want to take without being completely confident in your answer, right? So that's the line you're trying to find is where is my confidence level in the product I'm asking people to spend money on and that I'm personally investing my dollars in to sell to other people, right? So you have to think about those things in like here's the feedback, my anticipated feedback if I choose to go with this product. Am I comfortable with this? And that generally takes a long time to go to figure out. And then there's never 100% level of confidence in that decision.
Brad Dowdy: So I should answer Gotsuko's question now. Yeah. And see, I've had all this time to think of the answer. And I said, if we asked me this question next week, it might be different. I think it's Midori. And I will tell you my only hang up with Midori is the paper is a little bit ivory creamy to me. It's a little yellow. But it's really good for fountain pens, gel pens, ballpoint pens and pencils and markers. I use all of those with Midori. That's my most used paper these days, I'd say, because it does handle whatever I want to throw at it. And I throw all the things at it. Like I'm not strictly a fountain pen user. I wish it was a whiter paper or a lighter cream color. It's a little bit yellow for my taste. Like if I had something to change about it, it would be that. But Morimon is that lighter color, closer to white paper. But it doesn't come in as nice of formats as Midori.
Notebook Brands
Brad Dowdy: Kikuyo is another one. Kikuyo does get to the white paper background. But has even less formats that I like than Midori and Morimon. If you're catching a theme here, it's that they're all Japanese papers. Life would be at the top of this list. But they're the yellowest page out of all of them. So I use them the least. So it's a yellower page than even Midori. But the quality and the layouts and the format are good. So if all of these companies could get together and come out with the ultimate notebook, I would appreciate that. But they all have their own taste. I think Midori is it right now. If you want something that's pretty accessible, Leuchterm comes close to being best for all things. Its only flaw is heavily inky fountain pens, right? If you're throwing a lot of ink on the page with a medium, broad nib and a lot of ink, it doesn't do great with that. It does great with standard smaller writing nibs for Leuchterm because it handles all the other pens well. So, you know, this is, like I said, we could do this. We could make this a permanent entry into Ask TPA because it's a really, really difficult question to answer. Because there's so many little, tiny, particular things that make a huge difference in what paper is right for any one single individual person. Yeah.
Mary: Myke's having flashbacks right now. He's under the desk. He's curled up in a ball going, paper, paper.
Myke Hurley: Let's do one last question. See if we can lighten the mood before we finish today's episode. Greg Co. 3 asks, what property do you think it is that makes one nib write a clean line and another write a woolly line on the same paper with the same ink? Shape, flex, flow, or something else? I'm trying to figure out if it's something that can be fixed or changed. What's a woolly line?
Brad Dowdy: Feather.
Myke Hurley: Ah, okay.
Brad Dowdy: You know, when you get a little runner off to the side. So, just to give you, like, you know, a quick flashback. Greg Co. says the same paper, but as you know, the same paper could be different. Stop that. But in general, let's just say, let's say the same paper is all consistent with the same ink. So, there are several different things. The nib shape design is a very particular manufacturing process that has to be really, really tight. And we see, even from same brand, same nib size, same nib material, inconsistencies between those. You don't want to have that experience, but it's kind of part and parcel to being a fountain pen user. One TWSBI extra fine steel nib could write differently than the other TWSBI extra fine steel nib. Because the tine placement is a measurement off that you cannot see with a 10x loop, right? It just happened. Like, one tine could be longer than the other ones, and you just, you can't see it. I would like to say, like, there's a perfect way to get the same experience every single time. Um, the fact is, the best you can do to get consistency is make sure your pen is clean. Like, super clean. Like, take out the nib, take out the feed. Make sure the ink is allowed to flow properly. Um, floss between the tines to make sure, like, there's no paper fibers getting stuck in there. That's, when I see, when I know a pen that I've used for quite a while and have had consistent performance with it, and then all of a sudden it's acting weird, I almost always clean out between the tines because there's something microscopic in there that I can't see that's making the ink spread wider on the page or make the ink flow more inconsistent on the page than it would if I do that. So, it tends to be cleaning, for me, that gets the most consistency. But sometimes there's just some microscopic flaw in the nib that sometimes you can get out with just, like, a little 12,000 grit sandpaper. You know, run a little circles on that. Try to smooth it out and even out the flow. So, um, other than that, you know, it's just something, like, if it's a pen you really love and really care about, you just might want to get someone else to look at it like a nibmeister. So, you know, that's probably the last resort, you know. But I would just, my answer is to lean on cleanliness of the nib, make sure the ink can flow properly, and then start looking at the physical properties of the nib and make sure everything is built as it should be to give you a consistent line.
Brad Dowdy: That paper's going to get you, man. It really is. I'm feeling you over there. I felt that deep down in my heart that, that, uh...
Myke Hurley: Honestly, it's the manufacturer who I'm working with that I feel sorry for at this point.
Myke Hurley: Because it's like, make me a sample. Okay, did it. Don't like it. Give me another one, you know. But, you know, look, if we can, if we can work it out, if we can find something, I will order a lot of notebooks, but we just got to get there. Yep. Just got to get there.
Brad Dowdy: That's why you keep working at it.
Myke Hurley: So you can go to cortexmarch.com. At the moment, we have some theme system journals available. It's the current edition. And just to state, like, just for the record, the second edition, it's not completely upending everything. Layout's basically the same. I've changed some stuff. I don't want to get into the changes just yet, because things can still change. But it's mostly, like, just some tweaks, really. But if you want to get one, get one now, because after this current stock, I don't know when I'm going to have more, because my plan will be to, honestly, at this point, to just keep working on getting a second edition. Like, I can't imagine that I will order any more of the first editions to be produced. So if you enjoy journaling with the theme system journal, it might be prudent to get one or two now before they sell out again.
Myke Hurley: All right. If you want to find show notes for this week's episode, go to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 422. If you want to find Brad online, he's at penaddict.com. You can find Brad. He is at dowdyism on Twitter and penaddict on Instagram. And at 10 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the Eastern Time Zone, Brad is over at twitch.tv slash penaddict where he streams live. We have lots of fun stuff. Have you got anything fun going on tomorrow?
Brad Dowdy: I really don't. So this has been a light week for content on Twitch, even though I still show up and do it every day. If you want to, like, really get every... Yeah, scheduled, scheduled, scheduled. If you want to get your socks knocked off, come and watch me address envelopes on Thursday. Super cool.
Myke Hurley: Sounds fantastic.
Brad Dowdy: I just sold it hardcore, didn't I?
Myke Hurley: You really did. It's just a superb job there. Thanks to ExpressVPN for their support of this show. And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Brad.
Brad Dowdy: Goodbye, Brad.