The Pen Addict 605/transcript

Hello, welcome to a very serious episode of the Pen Addict Podcast, Business Edition. This episode is brought to you by Factor and Squarespace. I am one of your correspondents, Mike Hurley, and I'm joined by a journalist and reporter on the ground, Brad Dowdy. Hello, Brad Dowdy. Hello, Mike Hurley.

Coming to you live outside of Lamy headquarters in Heidelberg, Germany. How are you doing today? This is coming in from The Wire, February 28th, 2024, five minutes after we stopped recording last week's episode. Mitsubishi Pencil Co. Ltd., founded in Japan in 1887, and the company behind the well-known Uni brand, is taking over C.

Joseph Lamy GmbH and the Lamy brand. The family-owned company Lamy underwent a complex process to look for a buyer who could lead the company, founded in 1930 by C. Joseph or Josef Lamy, into the future with expertise, experience, and love for the Lamy brand, along with a commitment to Germany as a business location.

The process has today been successfully concluded of all shares in the company now sold. The annual turnover of Mitsubishi Pencil is several times that of the company of Lamy. I will add my own part and say I don't think that that final sentence was worth it. I feel like it was just a flex.

I thought they were just flexing on Lamy, but nevertheless. That's the mic drop portion of the press release. Yeah. Yes. That was the do you know who I am. How dare you even question us.

I mean, to be fair, that was written by Lamy, but also it probably wasn't. You know what I mean? That was published by Lamy, but there's no way that something like that is written. Anyway, we're ignoring the point of this.

So basically, just after we finished recording last week. Literally minutes. Mitsubishi Pencil. You weren't joking. Who you will mostly know for Uniball, right? That's how I mostly know them. Because when I see Mitsubishi, I think of the car company, right?

Like I don't think of. Unrelated. They're completely unrelated. Which is hilarious. So it's, what is the Mitsubishi car company? It's Mitsubishi General or something like that? I forget. There's a different name.

It's just a name though, right? So like this is just like Western brain where I'm like, oh, it can't be one thing. That's just a name. But yeah, so Mitsubishi Pencil, who obviously their biggest product is the uni range of products.

Yeah. I feel like maybe at least the most internationally recognized is that. They have acquired Lami. So they have bought Lami, the whole thing, the whole kit and caboodle. They acquired 100% of Lami.

And as it says here, they're going to be, it looks like they will be operating it as an independent brand inside of Mitsubishi. Because they're going to be keeping them in Germany and stuff like that. You know, you've got to assume that, I mean, maybe you have more information about this, but what you've got to assume is you are acquiring a lot of really good assets.

You have designers, you have manufacturing capability and like the whole worldwide network of sales representatives all now within Mitsubishi. I think that's the number one takeaway from this purchase. I can't think of a more complimentary purchase from current product line matching between two different companies that there's not a lot of overlap.

They really don't overlap, which is wild, but they really kind of don't, right? They kind of don't, but they're both beloved companies with very high standings, very sought after products and different ways about going about things, right? Mitsubishi is the much larger company of the two, as they said in their mic drop statement.

So just a couple of quick numbers that I was able to ascertain. That like last year's, let's see, I think this is 2023 Mitsubishi revenue was around 500 million US dollars. That's just total revenue. Looked like a $66 million profit as best as I can tell.

Lamy's 2022 revenue was 82 million, right? Jesus. So Mitsubishi. Wow, that's a big difference. Yeah. And what's funny in the, so Lamy's a private company. So the information is very difficult to come by, right?

And Mitsubishi is a publicly traded company. I literally went to like the Financial Times Mitsubishi page and got those numbers. Lamy, you're kind of looking at Google searches that people have dug up and kind of sort of found these things. So like I found a number from 2020 from Lamy that their annual revenue was 130 million.

And then a few years later, 82 million, which I find interesting, but I'm not going to put like 100% validation on those numbers, right? Because they're not publicly released. So yeah, Mitsubishi is a big company. The one thing I wanted to find out was what else does Mitsubishi have in their product range that we're not aware of, right?

So like when we talk about, like I mentioned in the past, like Sailor, right? They had like a robotics division, right? Does, you know, what other company? And then the company that bought them plus has, you know, basically an office supply division.

Things that we may not be completely familiar with that is bringing in revenue for these companies. I think we literally know every product that Mitsubishi makes through their uni product line. I was digging and digging. I was like, I feel like I'm missing something uni.

What am I missing? And it was literally just all the uni ball products, all the Posca products, you know, the Mitsubishi pencil lineup. It was, there was no surprises to be found. I mean, uni are incredibly dominant in office supply, which does tell me like, to me, it makes sense that they have the kind of the profit that they do, which is like, I don't know, around like 11%, which is not huge, right?

They don't actually don't seem to have like a massive profit margin. Or maybe they have a big margin, but not a profit margin, because I assume they are a high volume business, right? Yeah, you have to be. And that's their, that is their business, where I feel like Lamy like to have their products in the same places, like in the same stores.

But you don't see like packets and packets of Lamy pens inside of businesses, but you do uni ball pens. Right. It's all, they're both sell pens, but they're in completely different categories. I think it's probably like the easy way to put it. And you're selling to a different market, you know, uni selling a lot of bulk, right?

Lamy selling a lot of individual, right? So again, I think it's a great, almost like a collaboration, even though. One of the ways that I genuinely think this is a fantastic pairing is because uni ball is the beginning of a lot of people to understand that they like a way a pen feels.

A very natural next step is Lamy. I feel like we've all been on that journey. That was my journey. Yeah, it was mine.

Like I was like, that pen looks cool. It's a Lamy Safari, right? And I got one of those. Like I think that that is, and so putting those two things together and maybe trying to investigate synergies that these companies can have, like that would be great.

I mean, my hope is that like they really do kind of just keep Lamy as Lamy. Like, and they don't let people off stuff like that. Like I'm sure there will be a little bit of it, but my hope is that they do really just like focus on like, look, we just want your products and your experience and we're going to kind of let you do your thing.

That's my hope. Yeah. So this is a big synergy acquisition for sure, especially based on the other comments in the press release. One chart I found when I was looking at Mitsubishi's revenue, I found a 20-20 sales ratio from Japan versus overseas. Their sales ratio. What do you think that split is?

So Uniball sells in Japan versus rest of the world. What do you think that split is? Oh, I'm going to say 30% Japan. Yeah. It's 50-50. 50-50. Yeah. So this. Oh, there's so much they could do.

Oh boy. So this makes it look. This makes the acquisition look go. Oh yes, this makes very much sense because what is Lamy good at? They're very good at international sales.

The international sales channels. They have 200 retail stores internationally. You have the boutique shops. So this is a very good leverage situation from Mitsubishi's market.

So I was kind of surprised that 50% of their revenue was Japan. Is this the biggest company acquisition in the history of the stationary product world? Oh, I have no idea. I feel like it's got to be though, right?

The sailor one was pretty big, but there's just a lot of ancillary items to that that doesn't necessarily relate to what we do with from the stationary. Like what was the name of that company that bought them? Yeah. Where that felt more, I don't know, we would like these assets, please.

And this feels more like, oh, we're going to turn ourselves into like a juggernaut. Right. To me, I don't know why I feel that way. I think it's maybe just because these are two international brands joining up where Plus really was more of a, it was like a collection of brands anyway.

Right. And so it felt like, oh, we want another one to add to our portfolio where Mitsubishi, this is what they do. They make pens and pencils. Like that's what they do. And now they're buying another company that that is what they do.

Yeah. I'm like, I find this stuff pretty exciting. Like I find it really interesting. I do hope that this strengthens Lamy. Same. Which is what we've been talking about for, I don't know, like two years now.

Like that we want more from them because we believe they have it in them. Yeah. Well, we're going to get to that in a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to see some writing on the wall here. They have so much talent and skill.

Yes. They maybe could do with a little additional help. They could go, they need a pair of eyes on the outside of the building is what we'll find out here in a little bit. I don't want to overlook the one highlighted bit on this press release. And this is so, I sent you a release from a PR site press release because it had a little bit more, but this is on Lamy's site too.

And it's also in bold, in bold type on there. Focus on the internalization and expansion of digital writing. So this caught, caught my eye and a lot of people's eye that this was the, the bold call out in the press release. And I just find that super interesting because I don't think there's any winners in the digital writing space.

And I, you know, 10 years ago, I thought we were 10 years away from having like a good quality digital writing, analog writing crossover. And I think that has not come to fruition whatsoever. And so I don't know what this necessarily means, but I thought it was an interesting call out.

I don't know if it means anything, Brad. Maybe it's just words. Maybe it's just PR words. Because the rest of the paragraph that is underneath that heading doesn't say anything more than that.

Exactly. And it never expands on that. This to me feels like, here's a thing that we'll say to the stock market. Right. Because people that don't understand what our products are, what they're going to want is for us to like, how will you defeat technology? Right. But like, look, they might have a second product.

Right. Because Lamy do one of these digital pen things, right? Yeah. Maybe there'll now be a Mitsubishi one, like, but they're not going to go anywhere because the technology, it doesn't make any sense. Like, you know, I will stand by this. Like, at this point, the best digital writing experiences are created by the companies that make the product you're writing on.

Right. So whether you're using an Apple Pencil, a Galaxy S Pen, or like the Microsoft stylus thing, that's always going to be best. Like, if you want to do digital notes so bad, get an iPad and write on it with a pencil. Like, other than that, like, just write in whatever pen you want and then just scan it.

Like, we're leapfrogging this now. Like, machine learning and AI is going to leapfrog the abilities of creating one of these, like, Moleskine products, right? Right. Because you'll just take a picture and the models will be good enough that it will be able to turn that into whatever you want it to be.

So I hope they know that. Yeah. We'll see. We'll see. And yet the last point I want to bring up is something you've already alluded to. I don't see much change happening on the Lamy side of the ledger. Right. From a product base.

Lamy has a very solid product base. Lamy has impeccable designers working for them. - I do think we're going to get the benefits in, like, the supply chain and the sales channels and things like that. But, like, are we going to see something new? Like, when are we going to see, like, the difference, you know, that, hey, now we know this product is released.

Now we know Mitsubishi has their hands on the machinery. And coming out with this, not soon, if ever. Right. I think this is just a very complimentary thing. You know, I don't think all of a sudden we're going to start to see orange Lamy 2000s appearing on the market because that's what everyone wants.

You know, if we do see something, I think it'll be like a completely new product line. I think the classics are going to stay. They're there for a reason. And that goes for the Mitsubishi side of the ledger, too.

Like, everything uni. I mean, they're obviously doing really, really well with their product lineups. So, yeah, it's interesting. This seems good. Like, some of these buyout things seem weird and sketchy. Yeah, I'm pretty positive about this whole thing.

But I do think we're not going to see a lot of change, at least for years. But it's exciting stuff. It's good stuff. Not as exciting as Lamy Dark Lilac in the New York Times, apparently. It'll never end. It'll never end. Let's take a break and we'll hopefully put to bed Dark Lilac forever.

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All right, we've got our shout out of the week, Mike. Shout out of the week. So before we do that, I have a call out for you. I don't think you got this feedback, but you were so quiet on last week's shout out of the week jingle that I got email saying Mike did not say shout out of the week.

Oh, I did it. It was just very, very quiet. So I think you owe us a second one to make up for. Shout out of the week.

How about that? There you go. So shout out of the week, stationary pizza. I'm pretty sure I've shared Ivan's blog with y'all on shout out of the week before, but I just like saying stationary pizza for one. Number two, this is the most unique stationary blog because there are no pictures on this blog and I kind of love it.

So I've known Ivan for a long time and he just he literally just writes down his thoughts about the stationary he's using and then publish them. It's all text, no pictures, and it's kind of great. Like the Mont Blanc royal blue, you know, entry is like, you know, it's just literally his thoughts.

Hey, I ordered this ink. It's really cheap. I like the color. It's not anything amazing. I got a lot of blues and that are much worse than this.

Boom. It's great. It's just over and over. You'll you'll appreciate that. He just did a post on the theme system, how he uses the theme system. But he does a lot of journaling.

So there's always kinds of journaling entries and here how I use this, how I use that. So if you're not following stationary pizza, you should also the name is officially stationary and then the pizza emoji. So you don't even and the URL is stationary dot pizza, which like how do you not love that?

How do you not love every minute of that? Why is there adult pizza domain option? Yeah, that's a good one. I guess, you know, the delivery lobby wanted one of their own top level domain.

It's not like Domino's is like go to Domino's.pizza. They're not doing that. I mean, sure, they have it, but they're not telling you about it, are they? Yeah. Who knows? Who knows? Y'all have to check into that.

But yeah, it's good stuff. So there you go. All right. From the what is dead may never die category, I have to talk about Lamy Dark Lilac again for two reasons. The second of which is that there was a New York Times article, which, you know, that's when all of the family members start coming out of the woodwork.

It's like, did you see this? Like, you know, people know that I write about pens, but then this is the one that gets sent to me. Like people know that I play pickleball. Also, yes, I have seen, you know, the the nudist colony pickleball clips, like the ones that make like the jump outside into the normal world.

Like, yes, I have seen this article. So the Dark Lilac in the New York Times, I think was funny. I think it was really great. This just to me, like TikTok should be illegal.

That's what I think. This is only here because somebody saw it on TikTok. Yeah, yeah. And I want to give a shout out to Aiden, who was the kind of the lead commentator from the stationary world. And he's awesome. I've got to hang out with him at the San Francisco Penn Show.

He's interviewed me before. Super, super cool person. This is the TikTok that was sent to me that I mentioned on the last episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was sent to me via a mutual friend.

Yep, yep. So I start, I never got the TikToks, but I got the New York Times article plenty. So anyway, go check that out. It's a fun read. It's very short. Just saying, hey, this is what a mess.

You know, what a mess this was. And, you know, fountain pen people are obsessive. And like, not really, but it was kind of funny. But given that news, the real news, of course, doesn't come from the New York Times.

It comes from our friend behind the fountain pen memes. The real journalism happens on fountain pen memes. And I'm completely serious. Like, I could not be more serious in this statement.

So fountain pen memes was able to coordinate a phone call with the sales, European sales director, Mr. Gordon Thiem. I don't know if I'm saying that correctly, but who works directly for Lamy. So we'll put a link in the show notes. You can go check the interview.

But there is a hugely, hugely telling part of this interview, which if you have listened to this podcast for any length of time, we'll make, we'll make you shake your head and go, wow, it was really true. So Mr. Thiem did confirm, you know, the reason why the colors are different.

But then we get to the journalism part of this. And fountain pen memes asked, what prompted the re-release? I'm aware that Lamy has never had re-released the limited edition ink. Did you do it because it's a sought after ink?

So that was the question. Here's the response. We knew it is a sought after color. And then fountain pen memes added. So were you aware that it's a fan favorite?

Mr. Thiem says, no. We are aware that it's a sought after ink color, which was missing from the T52 product lineup. That's the stock lineup. We had a blue, a red, and a green, but a dark lilac color was missing.

So we decided to reintroduce that color. Mike, they had no clue. No. This is exactly what I've been saying for like three weeks. Yeah. This is the whole reason why I had hashtag hire me Lamy, because they literally have no idea.

But I mean, this comes back to, I mean, yeah, sure, they should hire you as long as you keep doing the show. But like, from my perspective, it's like, I just don't think it, they didn't know because it didn't matter to them. I also agree with that. It matters to us.

Yeah, I agree with that. I do agree with that. And like, so they just feel like, oh, we know people like this purple color, right? Yeah. So we're just going to do that again.

That's exactly right. Because you know what's going to happen now though, Brad? We don't have a purple. Let's do that one again. There's going to be now a selection of people who love the new one.

Oh, sure. Because it just doesn't, you know. Yeah. Wild. Exactly. And that's why I was like over talking about it, because it really doesn't matter. It's not that big a deal. But we do like all our little niche hobby and all these things that make us have fun little stories about this.

But yeah, it should come to no surprise that Lamy had no idea what the community thought of the original Dark Lilac ink and that it was like a secondary market. I think Lisa makes a good point in the live chat saying they don't seem to emphasize inks much in general.

No names in the bottles or boxes. And that is to me like reflected in the fact that this ink lineup is called T52. Like, what is that? What does that even mean?

But like that's the ink lineup name. Like they're not like we're not going to be drafting Lamy inks. Right. Right. Like we did the Hiroshizukus. This is for them.

The ink lineup is like we should do that because we sell pens. Right. Which is like so like looking at me, obviously very different. But we work with Studio Neat on having the Mark 1 with the Cortex logo on it because we sell notebooks. So we should at least have a pen.

And I'm sure you have similar things in Spoke. You're like, well, we want to do this. So we should at least also do this. Right. Because these things kind of go together and so people could come and buy everything they needed just from our one-stop shop kind of thing.

So I think that's what Lamy is doing with their ink lineup by and large. They literally is like, hey, we don't have a purple. Let's do that one we did several years ago. And just like this whole outside world concept.

It was just like, yeah, okay. Knock yourself out. So go check out. There's a bunch of other Q&A from Fountain Pen memes. And it's really telling, really interesting stuff.

So go check out this post. There's a bunch more questions in there. Do you think that this whole Dark Lilac thing weakened Lamy to the point that Mitsubishi was able to come in? You know, like they were just waiting on the...

Do you think that Fountain Pen memes is actually operated by Uniball? Like by someone at Mitsubishi is operating Fountain Pen memes? It's an inside job? I think Lamy's lack of awareness to the popularity of Dark Lilac is why they got sold to Lamy.

To Mitsubishi. Yeah, to Mitsubishi, if we're being perfectly honest here. Their lack of awareness to the community as a whole is probably why they got sold. I know I keep hopping on this, but like do you think Lamy would be benefited by paying as much attention to this part of the community?

Or do you think that they could end up going down too many rabbit holes if they did? I think they would benefit. I don't think it's a question. Because they seem to be one of the more structurally sound companies to begin with.

Right. So like when you have that kind of base as a company, right, from what Lamy is, and you could do one more thing. Like, you know, hey, show your awareness to the community's love for something and lean into that. I don't think that's a real slippery slope for a company like Lamy.

I think they're large enough, stable enough to be able to do that one more thing. You know, the more reaching across the aisle thing instead of just being completely insular. So yeah, no, I don't think it would affect them long term at all. I'm making a call now. - This is the end of this conversation.

God, I hope so. This is the end of Dark Lilac. No more. I hope so. I hope so. No more. It's not. Nothing more can happen. Well, I haven't bought it yet.

I haven't bought it yet. Okay, I will allow a review because that's, you know. But no more, no more Dark Lilac saga. Yeah. I don't want to keep doing this.

I don't want to keep doing that. Surely there can't be more, right? He says. I don't know. Foreshadowing. Just go to the last slide of the fountain pen memes and where fountain pen memes ask them, does that mean Lamy Petrol is next? I enjoyed that. And I really liked the response of the Lamy representative.

He's like, no plans, but maybe we should, right? Which to me, I like that because they're taking it in their stride, right? Like, yeah. This is such a stupid thing. And I'm sure, right?

This was not great timing for them. Like, to have this New York Times article written in the same time period in which they're trying to get this acquisition done. Like, it's not great. Like, the marketing team probably was not enjoying the fact that that was happening to them, you know?

I know it's only their own doing, but like, I do feel bad for the people at Lamy that had to like handle this situation while they're also trying to handle an acquisition. Couldn't have been a good time. All I can do is sit here and shake my head.

And like, if I was at Lamy and they're going, huh, this is a thing. Like, it's like, yes, it's just the nature of how this all came about. It is a definite, clear lack of awareness. It shocks me, but it's not shocking.

Like, which is questionable for a brand to not at all understand what their customers truly want from them. It is rather peculiar. They could have just called this Lamy Purple. None of this would have happened.

You are not kidding. You are not kidding. All right, well, let's switch it up a little bit, even though we're kind of in the same category in the broader stationary market, more on the Uniball side of things. Pentel has a new product that I got my hands on and reviewed recently.

It's called the Pentel Flow Tune, which we'll get into that naming in a minute. I'm sorry. One last thing, actually, because Lisa's made a really good point. You know, don't forget a little while ago, Uni brought you in because of a community drama. So maybe they can help Lamy.

Like, genuinely, maybe they can help Lamy in this situation. That's true. Maybe Uni is more connected to the community. Like, they knew they, although to be fair, Lamy has, like, at least offered these quotes to people that are asking. Sure. But, yeah, maybe Uni is a little more connected.

I don't know. Yeah, we can revisit that experience, and we should probably put a link in the show notes to my follow-up from that. But just being in that building and getting to talk to the people who work there, it's clear they have a concept of the modern stationary world.

But then that's the broad scope. That's the $500 million in revenue scope of it. They have the people. But on the 1% super nerdery level where I come in, they're like, oh, really?

People are interested in that. And then that's – if you haven't heard this podcast, you should go listen to that because the amount of questions I got that we already talk about here was interesting to me. They're very, very curious about just, like, the small things. Do people like this?

Do people like that? So, yeah, that's a very, very good point. So, yeah. So, it's interesting stuff. All right. On to the Flow Tune.

It is a rollerball pin that Pentel – I call these store shelf pins, right? This is, like, if you go to the grocery store or the big box stationary retailer, your Targets, your Walmarts, you know, whatever shop is in your country that has just, like, the broader stationary categories where the Pilot G2 lives on the shelf.

This pin appears there. And I didn't really think anything of it other than the name is silly when I first saw it. But then I looked at the tech specs for it. And they – I guess one of the biggest categories that a lot of these companies try to work on, this is Uniball, Pilot, Pentel, Zebra type of companies, is ink formulations, right?

So, we have things like the Uniball 1R, where it's more pigmented, more saturated. Then we have the Zebra Blend, where it's, you know, a more comfortable, smoother, skip-free writing experience. So, the Flow Tunes idea is to have your water-based rollerball ink infused with oil, which sounds kind of crazy to me.

Your oil-based inks are generally ballpoint inks, right? And they have certain features that are good, certain features that are bad. And adding in infusion, oil and water, it seems like it's not going to work. I found this pin to be really enjoyable for what its intended purpose is, and that's the broader stationary market, right?

The store shelf market. That's why I categorize a lot of pins. Like in my top five list, I have a category that if you're walking through the grocery store aisle, what's the good pin on the shelf, right? It's the Pilot G2, it's the Pentel Energel, it's the Uniball 207, so things like that.

I don't know that this quite lives up to the big players in that category on the store shelf. I will say it is a pretty awesome pin. The performance of the pin is really, really good, right? It does not skip at all.

It is a very saturated, solid ink. It doesn't bleed, didn't feather. I tested this in the Studio Neat Keepbook because that's a non-coded page. It's reasonably absorbent, right?

Like fountain pens don't work great on there, and fountain pens are the closest to rollerball ends, and that fountain pen inks are water-based as well as rollerballs. So you get some of the same characteristics when you test those side by side, and it performed wonderfully on the Keepbook page.

The lines are super nice. For me, like I couldn't really use it because it's a 0.8 millimeter, and that's the finest line. They actually have a 1.0 millimeter. I'd say the 0.8 millimeter writes like a 1.0 millimeter line.

So this is something, if you have big, bold writing strokes, like this is something you want to look into. If you use standard papers and not fountain pen-friendly papers, this is something you want to look into. I tested something after the fact, which I should probably go and amend the review.

I tested it on my Tomoe River paper. So my Hobonichi five-year journal is the original Tomoe River paper. And so I picked it for my daily entry on that, and it never dried. And by never, I mean like we were into minutes dry time, and I even blotted it.

So there is a little bit of a caveat. If you use coated papers or things of that nature, this ink is not going to dry well. But for standard writing, it's pretty good. In the rollerball category, which is popularized by the Uniball Vision, the Uniball Vision Elite, the Pilot Precise V5 and V7, the Schmidt P8127 refills, and all the pens that take those.

I would take every one of those above this, right? I don't think the Flow Tune makes any difference in the category. But as a standalone product, I thought it was pretty good because some of these that come out are just really bad, right? Some of these new store shelf pens that come out are just, wow, this is terrible.

But it's not quite new and surprising and a huge hit like the Sharpie S Gel was. Like the Sharpie S Gel kind of got into the broader consciousness, right? You started to see that more in normal everyday usage from non-stationary fans. Like they picked up this pen, they found it, and bought some more of them.

I don't know that the Flow Tune is going to cross over in that way. But overall, pretty good pen, and I like at least seeing the technology aspects of it, you know, trying these new inks. Because that's, like, I don't know what else these companies are going to do differently on the store shelf other than continuing to play with ink formulations, right?

We're not seeing, like, the Pilot G2 hasn't changed in 15, 20 years at this point, and it doesn't seem like they have any intention to. So what are we going to see that's changing the market on the store shelf? And I don't think that we're going to see anything big, but we're going to see little things like this pop up here and there.

You know, is it going to be, like, the next Pilot friction that all of a sudden takes off because it has this really unique ink formulation? No. But I think if you use it and have a certain use case for this, I think you're going to like it.

The biggest con on the Flow Tune is it's not refillable, which I don't understand. Unless you're doing, like, marker pens or fineliner type pens, which the concept is already pre-built in that it's not going to be refillable. I don't know how you don't build a refillable rollerball gel or ballpoint pen on the store shelf right now.

That seems to be a huge miss in my aspect. But technically it writes well, and I like it. I could see it using it almost like a marker. Two things are weird to me.

One, that you can't, like, take the refill out and use it in something else, right? Like, it just feels like, why not just do that, as you say? But also the name is just really bad. Yeah. So this was the, I wrote that up in the article talking about the marketing of this pen.

The Flow Tune enables your ideas to float down the stream of an imagination. What does that mean? Like, these are, we don't need this pen tell. No. We don't need this.

This is a terrible name, and it's terrible marketing. But, okay, yeah, it floats across the page. Flow Tune. I mean, technically it does. Flow Tune. Technically it does. Flow Tune. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform for building your brand and growing your business online.

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And the code penaddict when you sign up for 10% off your first purchase. And to show you support for the show, our thanks to Squarespace for the continued support of this show and RelayFM. Mike, do you know when you look at our data or podcast downloads, do we have any downloads in Antarctica?

We'll come back to you on that one. Well, I got stationary. I got stationary in Antarctica, Mike. It was a lifelong goal of mine to ship to Antarctica.

I know we've had pens down in Antarctica. I've had people, you know, email me over the past years that they've brought their stationary to Antarctica. And we've had questions about using stationary in Antarctica. And as someone who ships products around the world, I've often talked about, I've shipped everywhere to all the continents, but not Antarctica.

Well, Mike, I've done it. I've shipped a product to Antarctica. And I got the pictures to prove it. How is that even possible?

It was a long process. So it was basically a friend reached out, said they're friends with this other group that bases in Antarctica. And they're there for, you know, whatever, how many months of a season that they're there for. So they gave me the address.

They coordinated, said, hey, do you want to receive, would you be up to receiving some pencils from, you know, this guy that wants me, that wants to send some pencils or pens to Antarctica. And knowing that pens wouldn't be bad. And they said, yeah, they said, yeah, we'd love, we'd love to, to get some pencils.

Here's what we'd like. You know, we need something that has a wide lead and a very grippy exterior. So, you know, you can imagine in the outdoors, you know, you can, in indoors, you can use anything in the, in the Antarctic, but outdoors, you need something that you can have a grip on.

And so we talked about it and I got with Brian at Spoke Design and we made them some Spoke Model 4 pencils with a very grippy grip we call the super groove grip. And we had some 0.9 millimeter pentail mechanisms we could use to build these, like the widest lead mechanism we have.

And we made, I don't know, three or five of these pencils and shipped them off back in September. So the fun part is I had to coordinate my shipment to land wherever it needed to go to make the bulk container to get to the Antarctic. Like there was no guarantee I was ever getting these pencils to their end destination, right?

I had to get them to make the shipment to Antarctica. And then hopefully that they were tagged right to get to the person that they needed to go to. So, yeah, it's, it was wild and they did. So I just got the pictures last week.

I asked for permission to publish these and I was granted that. And yeah, so there's a picture with one of the researchers standing out there. This is the Antarctic Search for Meteorites group that I was able to work with. And we put their initials on the pens, the ANZMET, on their, on the pencils and etched them in there and sent them off on the way.

And now we got, I have shipped stationary to Antarctica successfully. So thank you to everyone who made this happen. It was exciting, exciting stuff. I don't, I don't see any Antarctica downloads in our download pool, I'm afraid.

Okay. Well, we'll have to work on that. But if it makes you feel better, I took a look at Cortex, which is my biggest show. And in the last year we had one download in Antarctica. Nice. Of course, all of the episodes.

So it's not an impossible thing, but very unlikely. So yeah, so I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who made that happen. It was really wild. Really excited about that.

That's such a strange and cool thing to do. But what a process. Yeah, it was something. So I'll have to go check the tracking because I checked the tracking for months, right?

And you just kind of like give up. It's just out there, right? And then I got the pictures like, oh, it arrived. I was like, unbelievable, unbelievable stuff.

So, all right, Mike, we have a choice. Okay. We can do bracket season. It's officially bracket season, you know, March Madness here in the US. Brackets come out or we can hit up Ask TPA.

So one of these we're doing next week and one of these we're doing today. Let's hold the bracket for next week. I've got a couple of Ask TPA questions I would like to talk about this week. Let's do it. So Bill wrote in to say, I loved the Pilot Iroshizuku draft.

Can you explain the difference, though, between Iroshizuku and Pilot's Namiki inks? I'm new to the hobby and the community, so I'm curious if there's differences. Super great question. So Pilot has a set of core inks, core fountain pen inks, like we were talking about the Lamy inks before.

They're basically their house inks, their standards. So Pilot has blue, black, red, purple. There's a couple of their very basic inks. And then Pilot has their luxury brand called Namiki, where they actually use the same ink as their stock Pilot blue and stock Pilot black, but put them in the fancy Namiki ink pots.

It is no difference if you buy a bottle of Pilot black or if you buy a bottle of Namiki black. They are the exact same inks. And then, so those are your base core inks that the brand sells. Then Iroshizuku is considered their premium ink.

Maybe not necessarily in performance, but in character and style, right? These are their step up. Hey, you like Pilot blue? Cool. Check out these different blues we make as part of this Iroshizuku ink lineup.

You can get a brighter one. You can get one with more character in it. You can get a lighter blue, things of that nature. So all good quality inks.

And you'll find in this industry, a lot of companies will have a core ink lineup that is their basics. Like Sailor will have Sailor blue, Sailor black, and then they'll do some more experimental or premium lineups of inks where they expand on their color palettes and characteristics of the ink.

So, but just in Pilot ink versus Namiki, Namiki only has blue and black, I believe. I could be wrong on that. They're the exact same as Pilot blue and black. So if you're buying the Namiki inks, you're buying them for the bottle, which I have definitely done before because they're rad.

I mean, I have found for me, Iroshizuku, like the reason I like it is it's very, very fast drying. Like it's one of the things, like it's one of the properties of that ink that I enjoy and it makes it kind of stand out a little bit. And so just real quick, the Iroshizuku lineup will not have the base colors because those are already colored.

Like there's not a Iroshizuku blue. If you're looking at blues and the Iroshizuku lineup, it's going to be very different. And even the black, I don't think is as black as Pilot's black. So the Takasumi, I don't, it's a very black ink.

I think Pilot black ink, I would just go for that if I was looking for a black. Matt says, I'm considering a few different pens to celebrate a job promotion. Most of my pen usage at work is note taking. So I'm looking at quick to deploy pens like the Decimo, the FC Model 20 and the Otto Hut 03.

Any recommendations for pens in this category or price range? Those are three really good recommendations. So just to categorize these, the Decimo is retractable. Like it's the best retractable front pen, you know, either this or the vanishing point, depending on your preference for barrel diameter, Decimos being thinner, vanishing points being a little bit wider, exact same type of mechanism and knock system.

I love those for, you're not going to get a quicker deployment than that. The other pens Matt lists, the FC Model 20, it is a slip cap pen, right? So it's just like a friction fit. Even though it's an acrylic barrel, it's just friction fit on there and it gets on there pretty well.

There's no, it's not loose and you can just pop it off. You don't have to thread the pen. So it looks like Matt's looking for like snap caps, which is what the Otto Hut 03 is. It's hard to think of other pens outside of these three, because I think these are three good.

I think the FC Model 20 would be my last choice because the fit of that cap gets on there pretty good, like shockingly well. So it's definitely, it might sometimes be a two hand deployment, right? Which you can get the Decimo and even the Otto Hut 03, a one handed uncapping or deployment pen.

I don't think you're going to get anything faster than a Decimo or vanishing point. So that's where I would look, you know, for, for a, a non threaded, non threaded pen. So I'm in the Decimo vanishing point. If I'm looking at this category, then secondarily, I'd like the Otto Hut 03.

And then maybe you could look at the Y studio brassing fountain pen, which is a very particular pen. It's just something I really like. It's kind of like a snap magnet cap on there. So that's another one that would work pretty well.

But yeah, I would actually eliminate the model 20 from this list. Just in my experience, that's got a little more stick to itiveness than the other ones. It'll be a little bit slower to deploy. And Phil writes in to say, I love the idea of carrying pocket notebooks with me everywhere, but I have a problem.

I wear them out faster than I use them. So like they get destroyed basically. I'm assuming Phil saying I end up duct taping or stapling the covers back on. Am I unique in this?

Do others just take that as a sign to use a new note pocket notebook and retire the old one? I love this question. We've actually had this one. We're a little bit late on some of these STPAs.

This one's I've been wanting to answer this one for a while because I think it's an amazing question. You're not unique in this. And I think you duct tape and staple and do glue, thread, stitch, whatever you do until you use the last page of that book because the stories will only get better the more destroyed the notebook is.

I do not take it as a sign or nor do I think others take it as a sign to start using a new notebook and retire the old one. I say you get every last coffee stain, water destroyed, duct tape, glue, sticker, washi bit out of that because the story of that notebook is only going to get better.

So enjoy your notebook destruction. Own it. Love it. And I think you'll be better off in the long run for it. Don't retire it. Use it. Use it until you can no longer use it anymore. What I would maybe add to this is maybe get a notebook cover.

Yeah. I'm just laughing because I'm like, yeah, destroy it. And Mike's like, just put a cover on it. I'm like, yeah, that's a pretty good idea. Put a cover on it.

But yes. I support the idea of using it, but maybe Phil is finding it frustrating that the notebooks are getting destroyed based on his lifestyle. And so like a lot of brands that make pocket notebooks, I think for this reason, create covers. Like there's, you know, field notes make a really nice leather one.

Like I would consider using something like that if this is a frustration. If you just want to check if you stand out from the crowd, don't worry about it. Live your life. Like stand out from the crowd even more by like, as Brad said, like sticking duct tape all over the thing.

But if you find it frustrating, you get a pocket notebook cover. Yeah. Mike's totally right in this. There are most of the brands that do sell pocket notebooks will sell something that matches it. And if you can find something that you like, I'd say good for that too.

There was a Brad Dowdy at one point in his life who would have told you about the product that he made, makes to cover your notebook with, but that doesn't happen anymore. So now he's like, oh, just tape it, you know. I do. Tape it up. Tape it up.

I don't have any. The NotCo fodder stack was our great. I found an old leather prototype of those the other day. Man. Pretty wild. That was the one that opened up, right?

No. So there was just like a top bound slide in, like almost like a pocket protector style notebook cover. Didn't you have one that used to open? Oh, yeah. We've had several. We've had like the Hightower, which is just a general open one. And then you have something like the Seed, which is more like a journal based zip cover.

I remember the Seed. Yeah. Yeah. But no, the Hightower had like a slot, like a slide in spot. And then you could hold three pins with it. It wasn't really good for like a back pocket thing or something like that.

The fodder stack would work in the pockets. That's what I was thinking of, though, the Hightower, because the Hightower used to remind me of like the wallets you have when you're a kid. Yes, exactly. They are very much like the Velcro style nylon wallets. Exactly right. Just great.

Good design. I miss those days, man. Good stuff, man. Good stuff. You never know what might be up my sleeves. You never know. You never know. If you'd like to send in some questions or some follow up for a future episode, please go to penaddictfeedback.com where you can do that.

If you want to catch Brad online, go to penaddict.com. Maybe if you live in Antarctica, go to spokedesign.com. If you want to catch Brad streaming, he was over at twitch.tv slash penaddict. And he's at penaddict on social media.

I'm at imyke. And you can find the products that I make over at cortexbrand.com. Thank you to Squarespace and Factor for the support of this episode. But as always, thanks to Fountain Pen Memes and you. Until next time, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.