The Pen Addict 427/transcript
| The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript | |
|---|---|
| Episode: | 427 |
| Title: | Nobonichi |
| Release Date: | September 9th, 2020 |
| Hosts: | Brad Dowdy |
| Guests: | No guests this episode |
| Additional Information | |
| Official page: | Episode 427 |
| Audio File: | Audio Episode 427 |
| Podcast page: | The Pen Addict 427 |
| Length: | 5656 min <br />0.933 h <br /> minutes |
| Previous Transcript | Next Transcript |
Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict episode 427. Today's show is brought to you by the fine folk over at Pen Chalet and ExpressVPN. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by Mr. Brad Dowdy. Hi, Brad. Hey, Myke, that's a lot of podcast numbers, 427 of them. Keeps going up every week, doesn't it? That's crazy how that happens. I was thinking recently that it is still a surprise to me that we managed to pull one of these off every single week without trouble. I'm having more trouble, and I have more trouble this week with trying to come up with stuff to talk about on my tech shows than we have had. Or, well, you put together pretty much all the document today, which I have.
Brad Dowdy: Yeah, like you were literally no help this week.
Myke Hurley: Absolutely, zero, none. Which maybe we'll get to later on why that is a thing. Why I am zero to none help at the moment. But it's great that this, it's just great for me that this show continues to put itself together most weeks.
Partnership Roles
Brad Dowdy: Yeah, and actually, and we've kind of talked about how we put it together before. I generally, I take the lead on all of it. And if I'm good, I'm good. If I need help, I say, hey, Myke, I need help. And then we just, you just handle it. And then like, it's done. And we're really good about that every week. Sometimes it's done.
Myke Hurley: You do the partnership. You do the before the show, and I do the after the show. Yeah. You know? Yeah, and sometimes it's done days ahead of time. Sometimes it's done minutes ahead of time. But it always gets done, right? We always deliver. Speaking of delivering, Brad. Oh, look at you. Look at you. I've been seeing the Retro 51 celebrations start to appear in the wild. People have been sending pictures. Like, even in my fair country, I've seen someone with them.
Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah. So, we're shipped as of yesterday. I have dropped off at the post office through backer number 650. That means I have about 200 more to go, which I should be able to get done before the weekend. That's my plan. So, wrap that up. I want to make a comment just real quick because I'm getting a lot of questions about the USPS right now. It's a little bit of a show right now to send a package to the US mail. They're having some difficulties. And so, that affects these shipments, which, you know, they're my shipment provider for this campaign. And what's happening is we're getting a lot of early scans or a lot of prep scans people are seeing in their tracking and then not getting a scan for days and days and days. And then the package will just show up the next day kind of thing. So, I'm getting emails. Every email I've gotten that's explained this scenario, the package has eventually showed up in like a day or two. They're like, it's been seven days. It hasn't moved. It hasn't scanned. And then I'll get an email the next day say, it's here. So, it's been consistently poor, but the packages are showing up. I haven't had anything lost yet. You know, cross his fingers. You know, it happens. There's, you know, that's why I have extra pens and things like that. But don't panic if the tracking isn't updating as you would normally expect it to. We're unfortunately not in normal times with the USPS and it is affecting things like package tracking and delivery. So, things are delayed. Things are not tracking appropriately. And just be patient. So far, so good on actual deliveries. And we'll just keep monitoring it. So, thank you all for your patience. And we'll have this thing wrapped up here in another week or so. And then I'll spend the rest of my life tracking down like the 30 addresses I need from people that didn't respond to the survey. So, if that's you, please email me or contact me via Kickstarter. I would like to get you your pen so I don't have to sit here and hold it through eternity. Oh, speaking of which, speaking of holding pens to eternity, Myke. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Myke Hurley: I grabbed your stuff. It's all together. Like, it's in one place in the shipping area. So, I just have to box your stuff up. Wow.
Brad Dowdy: It's like, that means it's close. It's just moved. Ish. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's gathered. It's in the gathered state. Okay. Right by my shipping desk. And then I'll probably just like, I get so focused on the other 200 packages I have to ship. And I'm like, sweet, got them done. Then I'll go to the post office and like, oops, I forgot that one.
Brad Dowdy: What happened? What happened, Myke?
Myke Hurley: You'll get there, my friend. You're going to get there. I believe in you.
Brad Dowdy: I will get there.
Myke Hurley: Nice work, though.
Listener Feedback
Brad Dowdy: Thank you. Feeling good about it. Everyone's liking the pen. That's what makes me happy.
Myke Hurley: Yeah, it looks great. The poster looks amazing, too.
Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I will say, and I don't do this very often. I think I'm going to do it a lot, this show in particular. And we'll say why in a minute. We did a really good job with this pen, the design and the poster and everything that went with it. We executed our vision very, very well with the help of Retro 51 and their design team. I am very proud of how this turned out. And like, I always am, but I usually don't. I'm usually not like, hey, look how good I am. Let's pat me on the back. We did a really good job between the design and the letterpress printing of Skylab Letterpress on the poster. Like, the whole package is just, we crushed it. I am very happy with how this has came to be and how it was executed. Yes. So, props to me.
Myke Hurley: Sure. No, really, though. You did a good job. Everyone's happy with it. No, no. And this should be.
Brad Dowdy: No, no. It's props to all of us. Like, legit. We did a good job on this one. Very happy.
Myke Hurley: All right. So, what else have we got coming up today? Podcast-a-thon time. Yes. So, we are in September. So, that means you can join Relay FM in support of St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital. Because September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Childhood cancer remains the leading cause of death by disease for children under the age of 15. Children undergoing treatment for cancer and other life-threatening diseases often need transfusions, physical and cognitive therapy. But patients at St. Jude, they are not charged a dime. And this is because of the wonderful donations from people like you. Your gift can help St. Jude provide the very best care and treatment for patients without charge. Go to stjude.org slash relay today and you can help save St. Jude's kids. Once again, that is stjude.org slash relay to donate now. St. Jude is an incredible medical institution. It's an incredible hospital that takes care of these patients. But it's also a research hospital. So, the work that is done at St. Jude is shared across the world for other people to learn from and to benefit from. So, it really is a place that deserves your time, your money, and your attention. Once again, that's stjude.org slash relay. We've been doing a bunch of streams. Twitch.tv slash relay.fm. We've been doing streams throughout the month and you can watch some on the page there. One that might be of interest to listeners of this show. So, tomorrow. So, Thursday the 10th of September at 11 a.m. Eastern time. I'm going to be doing a stream on twitch.tv slash relay.fm where I'm going to be showing off my keyboard collection and doing some show and tell and kind of talking about what I've learned about the keyboard hobby. So, but that is also that twitch page. You want to follow it so you will get notifications because on Friday the 18th, next Friday, we're going to be doing the six-hour podcast-a-thon for St. Jude from 2 to 8 p.m. Eastern time. We've got a ton of fantastic things lined up. Do not miss it.
Brad Dowdy: Ooh, sounds awesome. It's going to be great. And you're streaming tomorrow. I will be streaming before that. So, we will raid you. Yeah, boy. When you start and we'll all come over and watch.
Myke Hurley: Thank you.
Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that'll be fun. That'll be fun.
Brad Dowdy: We did something pretty cool for the pen addict to raise money for St. Jude. Yes. Yes. Specifically, our good friend Jonathan Brooks at Carolina Pen Company donated something pretty cool for us to raffle off. And to help raise money for the kids. For those who are not completely dialed into, you know, everything that we do here and, you know, following us all over the internet. Jonathan attempted to make an Arushi Lamy Safari for me as a kind of weird one-off, let's see if we can do this project. Which turned into making three pens. One for me, one for Myke, one for Anna. And then a fourth pen that he said, hey, do something with this. Whatever you want to do. Do it. Keep it. Like, which I would never do. Keep it. Donate it. Give it away. Whatever. I said, okay, well, let me hold it and we'll think about what to do. And then as, you know, time got closer to our big September Relay FM charity drive for St. Jude, it was pretty obvious that we could raffle off this pen. The Arushi Lamy Safari. We'll have pictures in the show notes. And raise money for the kids. And I couldn't be more excited with the feedback we've gotten so far. So this just went live last night. We'll have a link to it in the show notes to go see the details of what you need to do to sign up for this raffle. But the short version is it's $10 per raffle ticket. And you donate that money directly to St. Jude through the Tiltify platform.
Myke Hurley: Stjude.org slash relay. You donate that.
Brad Dowdy: And you send me a receipt. You know, email me the receipt. All the details are in there. In the post, how to, you know, which email address to send it to. You know, all of that good stuff. Myke, the response has been fantastic so far. Great. We are going to run this through, I think I said it's September 21st, which is a Monday. And then that Wednesday I'll have, we're not going to do it live on the podcast, pull the winners. But I will be able to announce the winners on Wednesday. I'll have them drawn and picked by then because it'll just take me a minute once it's over to organize everything. Get everyone in the spreadsheet for all of their entries to the raffle and then pick out the winner. So we do have the Rushi Lamy Safari made by Mr. Brooks is the grand prize. And then I have four other small prizes of a Pen Addict Caran d'Ache 849 ballpoint with one of the Kikuyo sketchnote notebooks or sketchbook notebooks with the Pen Addict, the gold stamp foil logo on there stamped on there. So I got four sets of those that I'm giving away. A little Pen Addict writing kit for four other raffle winners. So what do you think? Like, what do you think about this pen? You talk about the pen. I talked about the program. You haven't seen this pen in person, but I shared some pictures with it. But what are your thoughts on this?
Myke Hurley: So I really, I really do like this pen a lot. Again, I've said like, I think for me personally, my blue one that I got was my favorite. But I think we all felt that about our individual pens, which shows, again, just not only how talented Jonathan is, but how like astute he is. But this is an absolutely stunning pen. Like you will not find, what I would tell you is if you are the person that wins this Rushi Safari, you will have a pen that literally nobody else does on the planet, nor could they even if they wanted to. Right. This is a true one off item. Right. Like no one's going to make one of these again. I don't even think Jonathan's going to do it again. He seemed very hesitant to want to go through this process again. So you're looking at a beautiful, very classy brown and black exterior. And it almost is like, you know, that effect that you get when you see oil and water. That's kind of what it looks like a bit, especially because I believe there's some Raden flakes in the pen as well to give it a bit of extra shine. This really is something incredibly special that can be yours if you're lucky enough to win the raffle. But the only way that you're going to be able to win that raffle is by going to stjude.org slash relay, donating, and then emailing your donation receipt to stjudeatpenaddict.com. But again, if you want to read all the details before you do this, just to make sure you've got them all on lock, and I'll put the link in the show notes. It'll be very clear. If you don't know where the show notes are, they're at relay.fm slash penaddict slash 427 is the place to go for that. But it is worth, I will just like state on the show, if you have donated before today, thank you. But the donations for the raffle have to have been from today onwards. So if you have donated, fantastic. Why don't you donate again? Yep, absolutely. And we had to do that, do it that way for the raffle. That just had to be a point. Yeah. Because as well, look, we're trying to raise money here, right? The point of this is to add more money into the campaign, right? Like that's the goal with this.
Brad Dowdy: Yeah. We hope you are doing it to raise money for the kids, and then maybe, you know, there might be a pin in it later or something, maybe, if your name gets picked.
Myke Hurley: Yeah, your primary reason for donating the money should be to support St. Jude. Yep. Because you want to do that, you should want to do that, and you can't do that. And then a secondary benefit is you may be lucky enough to win the Urushi Safari.
Podcast-a-thon Announcement
Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So one last comment on the pin. You're right about its appearance. Like it looks like stunning, this black and brown Urushi. Then it's like, wait a minute, what are all these hits of Rodden all over? It's like secret Rodden all over the pin. It's kind of fascinating to look at because you can not notice it at first, and then once you see it, you see it everywhere. It's pretty cool. It's really, really well done. So great job by Mr. Brooks, as always.
Myke Hurley: Thank you both for making this happen. Both of you and Jonathan. I really appreciate it.
Brad Dowdy: Oh, I had the easy part.
Myke Hurley: For now, you're going to be the one pulling together all the edges at the end.
Brad Dowdy: I don't know. It still took him like a year to make these pins. Very true. And he was, I won't say he hated every moment, but it was far from easy to execute this.
Myke Hurley: All right. This episode is brought to you in part by our friends over at Pen Chalet. They are the company that have the products you are looking for from the brands you love and trust. Whether you're looking for a new rollerball or you want a new pen holder, maybe you want a carrying case or a fountain pen. Maybe you're looking for a converter. Maybe you want a mechanical pencil. It doesn't matter what you're looking for. Pen Chalet have got it. And they offer the best prices and the best customer service around. Super fast, super reliable. And they're always doing great discounts as well. Twice a month, you'll find a bunch of wonderful discounts over at Pen Chalet. But as you know, pen addict listeners benefit from being able to save 10% at any time at Pen Chalet. And I'm going to tell you how in just a moment. Pen Chalet also have limited edition pens and they have all the accessories that you're going to need as well to really kit you out with your favorite stuff to fill your stationary hobby. They have free shipping on orders of over $50 in the United States. They also sell internationally and they have great shipping rates as well. I have purchased from Pen Chalet many times and have had things sent to me over here in the UK. And I can attest to two things. One, their shipping was very fast. That was before the postal service issues. And then two, when we were having, I had a pen sent from them recently and I was wondering where it was. And I contacted their customer service and they responded super quick. And they were super great. And they gave me the information that I was looking for. So I can attest to both of those things being true. Pen Chalet has low prices and high quality pens and a 100% satisfaction guarantee. If you go to PennChalet.com, P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com, click on the podcast link at the top of the website and enter the password PennAddict. This is where you will get the 10% code that you need to save 10% off at any time at Pen Chalet on anything. And also to find details on this week's special offers. Brad, what is grabbing your attention?
Brad Dowdy: So the big special offer right at the top, all of the Estabrook Nook pen cases, the new ones that are in the navy and red colorway and the new snap kind of folio design are all now available for purchase and 10% off. On top of that, one of the more popular Bennu fountain pens. I don't know if you've seen some of the reviews I've done or Sarah has done for Bennu fountain pens recently, Myke, and how kind of impressed I have been with them. Even though I was very, you know, curious if I was going to like them when they first launched. They've turned into a company that everyone really, really enjoys. They're kind of wild and weird and wacky designs. These are not your normal fountain pens. So they have the Bennu tattoo fountain pen, which is one of the more popular styles on sale. And then, Myke, as I scrolled, I never made it to the bottom while you were talking, by the way. So there's a lot of things. There is a sneaky Pelican M200 special edition from a couple years ago. Whoa, come on. So that was a sneaky little find in there.
Myke Hurley: If you have ever thought, oh, man, I don't own a Pelican. I would love to get one. You should get this one because that price is absolutely fantastic. Fantastic price.
Brad Dowdy: It's really good. Great looking pen. And yeah, really great stuff as always. Big list.
Myke Hurley: There's a great price on a Platinum 3776 down there too. Yep. Like a superb price. Oh, my God. That's a good price. Look, you know where you're going to go to get these prices, right? Go to penshalla.com and click that link at the top of the website. Enter the password pen addict and these special deals are available to you. Our thanks to Penshalla for the continued support of this show and Relay FM. My favorite kind of topic on this show is when I get to put my good friend, Mr. Brad Dowdy, through the ring. I put you in the hot seat, ask you a bunch of questions. Because there's been some huge news over at NOC that I want to talk to you about. It's something I've known about for a little bit. We've been talking about it. Do you want to give the kind of the top line? Yeah, the big flyover.
Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I'll give it a flyover. So basically, like if anyone's been following me or the podcast or NOC, you know that we haven't had much new inventory come through over the past year plus. And I've talked about it several times. I've talked about it on this show about how when we went into retail, we pretty much overbought inventory and dug ourselves a very, very big hole that kind of limited our flexibility in being able to order.
Myke Hurley: Like you kind of made a big bet, which was good. But that yes, it then ended up locking up the wheels too much so that you couldn't really do anything else.
Brad Dowdy: It was good. I would do it again. But it turned out not to be correct. Right. Like, I don't know that I would ever say it was bad. It was just it didn't work out as intended. So we've been playing catch up basically ever since. And, you know, over the past like 12 to 16, 18 months, you know, it's kind of been that way. Just kind of, you know, slow, slow rolling. Not a lot of new products. You know, not a lot of hype around the brand. And just because we were just kind of had our hands tied. So we're getting to the point where we're just, you know, selling, selling what we currently have and, you know, paying down, paying down our bills and doing all that kind of stuff. And, you know, not getting paid for, you know, anything we do at NOC, which we haven't been for ages and ages anyway. It kind of got to a point where like it wasn't going.
NOC Business Update
Brad Dowdy: It was going well, but we were getting to a point where I thought it was going to slow down a little bit. But I've also felt at the same time that we're close enough to where I could see like very quickly down the line, like turning this around to be able to make more products. But the problem is when I guess we had the company set up in a way that, you know, I was unable to put my own money into it, which is the end game that I was trying to get to is to put some of my own money into it, write a check. But the way our business was set up, I'm really not allowed to do that in, you know, the type of organization that we had set up. So I work with Jeff and Jeff and I have been talking about this and I was like, here's what I would like to do. Let me know your thoughts. And the end goal would be that I would take ownership of the company as a whole where we were a 50-50 partnership before. And that would allow me to put in some of my own money. We've never taken any investors, any outside investors, no, you know, no loans or anything like that. We've all just kind of done it ourselves. And here's, and like I explained to him, here's why I want to do it and kind of laid it out, you know, dollars and cents wise to where we could get the company actually moving forward again. Like we really haven't been moving forward for a while. We've been fine and we exist, right? But we haven't been moving forward. Yeah. So yeah.
Myke Hurley: In the sense that there haven't been new styles of cases, either in like material or overall like physical design for a bit. Yeah.
Brad Dowdy: Or even new colors of popular cases. Yeah. Right. So Jeff was super agreeable to that. You know, we had a real good conversation about it. And so as of like August 1st, I own the company and Jeff is essentially a contractor now. So like when we do new designs or if we need any like design work, artwork, graphic design, you know, labels, pretty much everything that he's, that he's done for us in the past, like he'll do it and be able to get paid for it. Right. So none of us, we haven't gotten paid a dollar and it's probably been like 18 months, which is fine. Um, but like I'm to the point now where I can see like, okay, if I can do a little bit and put a little bit of my own money in here, I can ramp this back up and get us going on the right track again. And so that's the plan. And we've done that. So that allows me to go in and launch this new Kickstarter, which will help even further. Which is not today. That's just, it's not today.
Myke Hurley: Yeah. That's coming.
Brad Dowdy: It's coming, but only like a week from now. Oh, really? Great. Yeah. Like, um, we'll launch a Kickstarter for Black Wax Canvas, Brasstowns, and Sinclair's, which people have been asking for for years. Um, since we kind of teased them, I don't know, about three or four years ago, we just made like 50 of them, um, just by hand. So this is going to allow us to kind of make a case that is something new for everyone that everyone's been asking for. And use the funds to not only make that case, but to get other cases made for our standard inventory. Like we have, I have purchase orders sitting out there, um, or two different lookout case colors. Um, the fodder stack, which people have been asking for, for years. We have a pencil case design that we, that has done very well for us. That's a, going to be a new, a new design, new color. So it's basically kind of like a double whammy of inventory in this Kickstarter is what this Kickstarter is going to allow. So it's kind of like not co version three. Now it's like, this is like the 3.0 version. We've done a lot of things over a lot of years and, uh, you think we'd know what we're doing by now. And we do as far as case design and products go, but business is hard and, you know, we keep trying to make the right decisions at the right time and do right by our customers. Um, but most importantly, we just want to keep making good products and we always will. Like we just, I really, really believe in the product and in the brand. So I'm just going to lean into it. And fortunately now I'm able to, um, invest some of my money into it to push it along a little bit faster. And, um, we'll go from there. Like I'm very, very bullish on the future and I'm ready to, uh, kind of put my money where my mouth is.
Myke Hurley: So like, you know, I think these things can be difficult for people if they understand the brand is the two of you. Right. Um, and you know, it's important to note that like Jeff is going to continue to pretty much do all of the things that he did before. But with the main changes being like one, the man gets some money for it because the fact that you two have had some outstanding bills that needed to be paid meant that there was no money coming out of the company. Uh, but that you kind of will be, uh, the person kind of leading as completely now. Um, but yeah, so like Jeff will be involved, but just, you know, like imagine if he is just like the head designer, right? Right. And that's, that's kind of the way that it's going to move going forward because, you know, I think knock is, is at the moment more of a thing for you, right? Like that's, which is why you want to do it, but it would have required, uh, I believe like an equal investment from the two of you financially. Right. Like, and, and it's, you know, it's, it's obviously up to Jeff if he wanted to do that or not, but it seems like the better option for the two of you right now is the route that you've decided to take.
Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And we're both very content with that. Very happy with that. And, you know, Jeff's, you know, got his full-time job and he's got his wife and he's got young kids and he's like, cool, you, you go do that. And then when we need to make stuff, I'll be involved. I'm like, cool. You're happy with that. And he's like, yeah. So it's pretty much exactly the same, um, except on the, the paperwork side of things. And that just gives me the flexibility to handle all the backend stuff, like quickly, efficiently make a decision and, and go for it. And then when it comes time to like making products, me and Jeff collaborate. So pretty much kind of like we've been doing it before. This just allows that, that true flexibility that, um, I want to get knock back to, you know, like the high ground where I believe we belong. Like I, it's just when, but when you're not, when you're in our business and you're not releasing at least, you know, a couple of products a year, you're falling behind and like, that's okay.
Myke Hurley: Like forgotten. Right.
Brad Dowdy: Right. And like, it's okay. Like we're never going to be, you know, world beaters and every store in the world type of thing, but we want to be making things that make our customers happy, you know, more often because our customers are generally like of the super fan variety, which is, that's a hard thing to build from scratch.
Myke Hurley: You know, you have a kind of a customer base that would really love to give you money, but your side of the deal is you need to create products for them to buy. Then you're just going to keep buying. You don't, you don't have a disposable product, right? Like people buy it and they keep it and then they use it, but they will buy new models if you will give it to them. But if you're not coming up with the new models and the reason, you know, like, again, like this is very like inside baseball, but that's what we're doing today. Like the reason that there hasn't been new products is because you couldn't make them because you have bills at your manufacturer that had to get paid because of the retail cases and stuff like that. So it's like, it's not for the lack of trying, but there's been this log jam and my, my, I expect that the money that you've now put into the business plus the combination of the Kickstarter campaign will clear that log jam, right?
Brad Dowdy: That would be a very accurate statement for me not having given you any specifics.
Myke Hurley: Yeah.
Brad Dowdy: Which is great. That's where we need to be. And this will allow me to run the business differently in the future as opposed to, I can be, I want to be able to pay for products on order, not pay for products on credit through the manufacturer.
Myke Hurley: Right. Right. So you're paying when paying with the money, right? So you're not paying and then hoping you'll sell them all.
Brad Dowdy: Yep. And then when, God, this is really inside baseball. Then when I don't have to worry about any type of pay out, right? There's no payroll. No one's getting paid. Anyway, I'm just running the business in the best way possible because in the future, maybe there's something that comes out of it or something, but like not anytime soon. And I can do that. But I'm able to withstand that as an individual owner better than if we had a partnership or multiple people own it or investors, right? I just have that freedom to say, I don't have to get paid from this for years as long as we can just keep making awesome stuff and not lose money, right? Just keep turning that money into more products and then we'll be back in good shape in no time. And that's my firm belief of what's about to happen.
Myke Hurley: And, you know, I guess that you're at a point now where, which has not always been the case, but there has been the case more recently, I guess, that NOC has not needed to be a part of your income because you're more diversified.
Brad Dowdy: Right.
Myke Hurley: So, but what that gives you as a freedom now is the idea of like, if NOC doesn't, if NOC isn't needed to be a profit center, then it can become a product generation company where you keep reinvesting the money that the company makes into more things the company can make and then you expand it. So then when, then you can get to the point where you're like, now I can enjoy the fruit of my labor, but like you're building to that point again. And so it's a good time, but to say it's been, it's been difficult because you've been jammed and it's like a chicken and egg situation. And the only way to get out of it was money had to come from somewhere. And it's just worked out that for the both of you, this is the best way to do things.
Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. So, um, I'm excited about what's to come and, you know, Jeff and I have already been talking about new cases we can launch, you know, once we get past this, like initial, like this Kickstarter, like what's going to, what's 2021 to look going to look like. And we've already been discussing those things. So it feels good to be back in like some type of NOC workflow again, which has been a long
Myke Hurley: time coming. So it's the Kickstarter campaign, right? That's the next thing.
Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I'm shooting for a launch, um, next Tuesday. You never know how those go with Kickstarter, right? You know, as far as approvals and things like that, like we're in the pretty, I always say we're in the good queue to where I just push the button and they say, yep, you're free to go, but you never know until you actually push the button. So, you know, we'll see. I, I, it's, I'm, that's my plan is next Tuesday. We'll get this, uh, loaded up. We'll have some awesome new cases available and we'll have a little bit of a story about why I'm choosing Kickstarter for this, as opposed to doing a direct pre-sale, pre-sale. So, um, we can, uh, talk about in the future.
Myke Hurley: Yep. Well, congratulations to you both on another, um, movement in the company that you created.
Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I'm just lucky to have a partner like Jeff who, who gets it. Like he's really one of the best in the business at being able to make things and being able to take ideas out of my head and put them into a physical product. And like, that is like having someone like that in my life and just being a totally cool person on top of that is I'm very, very lucky.
Myke Hurley: Yeah, definitely.
Myke Hurley: Okay. This episode is also brought to you by Express VPN. There are tons of VPNs out there and you've probably heard of some of them. You may have even used one of them before, but as a reason I use Express VPN and the reason we have them as a sponsor too, because they're really good. And here's why. Express VPN doesn't log your data. Other VPNs may make money from selling data to ad companies. Express VPN developed a technology called trusted server that makes it impossible for their servers to log any of your info because it's all stored in RAM. Second is speed. Many VPNs slow your connection down or make your device sluggish. Whenever I've used Express VPN, my internet speeds are blazing fast. So much so that I can stream HD quality videos with zero lag from servers that are thousands of miles away. Like if I'm in the UK and I change my connection to America, I can still stream in HD quality. The last thing that really sets Express VPN apart from other VPNs is how easy it is to use. You don't have to input or program anything. You just fire up the app, click one button and you're connected. Super easy. Your grandparents could use it, right? Maybe you have an amazing grandparent that understands that he used technology, but most people don't. And I'm sure they could understand Express VPN. Wired, The Verge, CNET, and many other tech publications have rated Express VPN the number one. I've used Express VPN for years now. Whenever I'm on a Wi-Fi network that I'm unsure of or there isn't one that I control, I use Express VPN just for a peace of mind. But even on my own Wi-Fi, I've used it to be able to access content from other places in the world, which is a great, great benefit. Protect yourself right now with the VPN that I use and trust. Go to expressvpn.com slash penaddict and get an extra three months free on a one-year package. That's expressvpn.com slash penaddict. Check it out today. One last time, expressvpn.com slash penaddict to learn more. A thanks to Express VPN for their support of this show and Relay FM.
Hobonichi Season Overview
Brad Dowdy: All right, let's get into some new product talk this week, Myke. I actually wanted to talk about Hobonichi season last week, but we just ran out of time. We had plenty to talk about, so I shifted it over to this week. Can you believe it's already that time of year? I call it Hobonichi season because they have such a big launch, big impressive launch, even though it's like once you hit September, it's planner season for the following year. But I just go with Hobonichi season because it's such a big deal, right?
Brad Dowdy: And so this year, I'm going no Hobonichi, which...
Myke Hurley: No Hobonichi, you could say. No Hobonichi. It's a no Hobonichi year. Last year, I went for weeks just to...
Brad Dowdy: Because I knew I wasn't using... I've used the Techo. I've used the Cousin. These are amazing products. There's a reason why this is so popular is because these products are really, really good. But, you know, you have to decide do they work for you and how you work. And, you know, I've realized that the Hobonichi... The best Hobonichi, the most popular Hobonichi setups don't work for me. And then something like the Weeks, which is actually a layout I like.
Myke Hurley: Oh my God, they have an Elmo one this time, Brad.
Brad Dowdy: So this is what we're going to talk about. We're not going to dig too much into the Hobonichi, but you're doing exactly one thing that I wanted you to do is I wanted you to look at the covers because those seem to be one of the most popular things.
Myke Hurley: I love the covers.
Brad Dowdy: But I wanted to talk about just how much Hobonichi is putting into their website every year. It's so much. Because these are complex. This is a shockingly complex product that should be very simple, right? Like you think, I need a planner. Let me buy the planner. And then you go to Hobonichi's site and you're overwhelmed.
Myke Hurley: Yeah, it's like, okay, we have six planners. Wait, what? Yeah, no, there are six planners. And there's different sizes of some of them. There's multiple ones in the same size. Pick one. It's very confusing. It's a big thing. But as you say, I think, I agree, they do a lot of work in trying to break it down. They have graphs, charts, and FAQs, right? Like they really do, I think, as best a job that they can. Yeah. Yeah.
Brad Dowdy: And it's also because Hobonichi season usually involves, like you found out, buying covers. So like you don't just get your planner, you get an accessory with it. What accessories fit this planner? So you have your six planners. You know, does this accessory fit that planner? Does that accessory fit this planner? And on and on and on. So there's...
Myke Hurley: There's multiple accessories too. It's not just the covers.
Brad Dowdy: So we're actually going to link in the show notes to the buying guide page, which is one gigantic chart style page that will take you into like the places you need to go. It includes images on layouts because not all notebook layouts are the same. And it tells you like what you get, what cases fit that, what's the descriptor, you know, for this and things like that. And, you know, it has a little Q&A of like, what should I do if this is my first one? What if I want a light one or a big one? You know, how does, you know, what's the best for this type of work? So it's kind of involved, but this is why they've become so popular, right? They have all of these options. They're super high quality and, you know, they're great to use their Tomoe River paper, which do we know what paper we're getting? Again, I have to say this every time now, at least for probably all of next year, what paper are we getting in the Tomoe River? Is it going to matter? Hopefully not. But, you know, just all kinds of things like that. So I wanted to point out on the, I think the, what do they call this one? The day free model, which they launched, I don't know, a year or two ago. They haven't had this forever. I was just scrolling down. I was like, well, maybe I'll try something this year. And what the day free one is, is basically your small calendar pages in the front and then an open notebook in the back. So it's got like your two page per day calendar, right? Like you'll see a full month on a spread. And then like the back 170 pages are just grid page notebooks. Like that's a kind of a cool option. It's more of a planner type calendar. And I don't know. I keep thinking maybe I should do that. But I'm not, I'm not going to do it. I'm very much in. No Bonichi. I'm going No Bonichi. But they did a, what did they do here? So they have this. So I just, I didn't go through all the pages. But this one caught me. And this is why I love Hobonichi and why a lot of other people love Hobonichi. So on their day free notebook, they have, they go through all of the features, right? Here's the features. And then they have a section at the bottom. It says new in 2021. We've made the following changes in the 2021 edition. You ready, Myke?
Myke Hurley: Okay.
Brad Dowdy: The flip book comic changed to Aki Kondo's Dancing Fox. The secret line moved slightly to the left. The pages are now numbered.
Brad Dowdy: Basic posture techniques.
Brad Dowdy: Enjoy your tech show with letter art. Where is this, Brad? I need to see this. There's like 15 of these things in here. And it's just glorious that this is the care that they put into it. And, you know, I, like I said, I've, I could have spent hours going through all of these other pages. I'm putting it in the doc right now. Okay. But just to see that those are the things that they care about tells me that they just really care about their product as a whole. Right? We're changing the Fox comic in your flip, in your flip pages. Don't worry, everyone. Like, I, like that's important to them. And that's why people love them so much because.
Myke Hurley: The fonts used in the titles have changed. They're cute.
Brad Dowdy: They're cute. They're fun. Yeah. And they're infinitely useful. Like they do. They execute what they set out to execute while being fun, whimsical, and just flat out cool. It's very personal. You can get some very unique things. Like you said, there's fuzzy Elmo covers. There's fuzzy Cookie Monster covers. And a lot of this stuff, Myke, it sells out. Like Hobonichi launch day is a big deal. It's like, you know, some tech launch day, like Apple launch day for you. Like, can you get the one you want on day one? Like some people don't and they get ticked off. And I was like, man, I didn't get the cover that I wanted. Like, it's a big deal. So for those who are not familiar with Hobonichi, at least go poke around and look and see what, um, what people are talking about because it's, it's really fun. They do a great job. And then we'll go quiet, you know, like, you know, January or February, we won't talk about, you know, the Hobonichi planners any more than boom. Hobonichi, uh, season comes right back around again at the end of August and beginning of September. It's never ending cycle, but the, uh, the covers look great this year. I gotta admit.
Myke Hurley: I like that they keep adding in other, um, like properties like Sesame Street or whatever. It reminds me of Moleskine. But what I like about that is like, it's, it's like the Moleskine model, but with a good product, like a genuine, like really good product.
Brad Dowdy: That's completely fair. That's completely fair. Yeah. Like they've expanded on all of the mother covers, which I also like.
Myke Hurley: I like that. They, they're not doing it to the cover of the book. Right. They never do. Meaning that you only get it at one time. Like you buy a cover that you put the book in, which means that you can use it next year too, if you love it. Yes. And I, I really, I really appreciate that because they would, you know, they would maybe make more money the other way around. I don't know if they would, but I believe, I would also believe though, that their customers are more loyal to them because of choices like that that are made.
Brad Dowdy: Absolutely. Like I have a, a, a reader or listener and I can't remember their name, but I, I know what their Hobonichi looks like because they've sent me pictures and I've had to ask about the cover and they're like, Oh yeah, it's this one from 2013. And like, that's just the one that they use every year. Right. It's just what you do. So they've, they've done a great job. So I, I will never get tired of talking about Hobonichi, even if I'm not necessarily using one today. I just love what they are and what they do. They're great.
Myke Hurley: Yeah.
Brad Dowdy: All right. Pilot doesn't always get the same love for me as much as I love Pilot. But you know what my stance is and how I think they're just not quite tweaking the formula enough on a regular basis for my liking. Like now Pilot doesn't care what I think. They don't care that I want like the rainbow of colors and the Pilot custom 912 because I think it's a smart idea because it's the direct competition to sailor and platinum's most popular lines. But Hey, what do I know? I just want, I just want what I want and I'm not going to get it and that's fine. But every now and then Pilot will surprise with just some random color one-off in a random product lineup. Like last year it was the 91. I don't know if it's the 91 or the 74. I think it was the 91. They did an orange barrel and a blue barrel just randomly. Hey, here's orange barrel and blue barrel. This year it's a purple barrel in the Pilot Falcon, which is an awesome pen. And it traditionally hasn't had a great barrel, right? It's just a resin barrel. They do have a upgraded one. That's an aluminum barrel. That's actually quite nice. But I love the Falcon nib so much that I actually got Jonathan Brooks to make me a barrel for it because, you know, it's just a basic black plastic barrel. And they have a red one now. I think they introduced a few years ago and now they have a really cool purple one. And this makes me happy, like super happy. Like I want to see this. And at the same time, I just want to yell. I just want to yell at Pilot say, can we do more of this, please? Like, can we do five of these? Right. It's one random color and one random product lineup per year seems to like get the color barrel treatment. And then we were talking about this on stream and, you know, I've always been banging on the 912 series as the one that could do the most with color, but they'll probably never do it because it's just kind of their classic businessy lineup. But then we got to talking and thinking about what about the Pilot Elite, which is their pocket pen that's super fun, super great. It's the perfect platform. And then a friend shared a link in the chat room and said, yeah, Pilot has made a bunch of colors of the Pilot Elite in the past. And look at this link, Myke.
Myke Hurley: I looked at this today. This is sailor level of customization. Yeah.
Brad Dowdy: This is like, there's Pilot Elites in here that look like practically like airbrushed aluminum. They're like, you know, bright blues and pinks and purples and oranges. And they've done all of this in the past. Like none of these are recent other than like the only recent ones are black, black, white and burgundy, I think are the recent colors. But I look at this image and I'm like, yes, Pilot, can we release three of these a year for the next decade? Can we just have one product lineup that's fun and playful and whimsical? That's not, that's, you know, mid price or higher end, right? Right. You know, they do a great job with the Kakuno, which I love and the Prera and all the, and the Metropolitan. I love all those pens. They're great. And the Vanishing Point, the Vanishing Point gets a ton of love. Can we get this across some of the, another product lineup? And, or why aren't we getting this? And I don't know, maybe, you know, their numbers say, hey, these don't sell if we do that. But I don't know. I love seeing the new Purple Falcon. If you don't have a Falcon, I highly recommend that. It's not a flex nib. Don't go in there thinking you're going to have some like massive calligraphic handwriting style. The minute you use it, it's going to take, it takes some getting used to. It's more of a soft flex than like a real flex nib. I hate to buy a Falcon. A lot of people do. I got mine, I got mine modified right after I bought it to use as a writing pen. So I only use mine for writing and it's glorious. I absolutely love it. It's one of my favorite nibs to write with, but it is by no means a flex nib. You should not go into it thinking of it, which is why someone like you would not like it because it's just not going to work with your handwriting style, right? It's a specific nib. I definitely admit that, but I'm glad to see this purple barrel on this and I keep waiting for a big surprise from Pilot and I just keep getting my hopes up that, you know, maybe we'll get the 912 one day. That would be my number one choice, but the Pilot Elite, I thought would be a great idea if we could get some whimsy into the Pilot lineup.
Myke Hurley: But it's weird really to see such a bold color as this purple. It's like quite a bright, vivid purple. And that's like it. Other than that, they have the blue and the black and sometimes you can get a red one. Yeah.
Brad Dowdy: That's what I'm saying. It's weird. It's just like, let's do one. And I'm like, that's it. And it's not even that they just do one, like make the decision. Okay, if you're going to do purple, let's do it in all of those mid-range gold nib price points. Let's do it in the, you know, the 74, the 91, you know, the 912 and all of these kind of let's do purple and one purple in all of these. But I don't know. It's just, it's weird. It's weird. I don't understand it. Because then I look at like our next topic, Myke, is the Caran d'Ache Claim Your Style new edition. And they came out last year with this wild, funky Caran d'Ache 849. You know, I already love the 849. I'm making my own 849, which will be on sale soon. And, you know, Caran d'Ache is an older, established, classical pen company, right? They could sit there and make the Ecuador all day long and they'd be just fine. But they see this market. Now the price point's different. Like this is, you know, a $40 pen, not, you know, $150 pen like the Falcon. And, but this is, you look at this pen and you don't think, if you didn't know what the 849 was, you know, just by looks like, you know, a lot of us do because it's a classic design. And you would never, Caran d'Ache would never be on your short list of the manufacturer of this style of pen, right? And that's what I want, that's what I want to see from Pilot one day is, okay, you don't have to go as far as claim your style, which what Caran d'Ache does for this is basically colorize every single part individually on the 849 ballpoint from the barrel color to the clip color, to the knot color, to the imprints. You know, they can use several different colors to, to make up a pen. And I bought one last year, one of the six, they released six colors last year, six, brand new colors this year. And every, it was hard to not buy every single one of them last year. And it's the same this year. They just do a really good job. It's so wild. With customizing and making these colors that you wouldn't think would normally go together. Like there's a bright blue barrel, bright red clip, and then purple anodized knock on a pen.
Myke Hurley: Oh, there's a baby blue body with a gold clip and a bright pink nib. A bright pink knock, I should say.
Brad Dowdy: I mean, claim your style, Myke. Is that the one you're claiming?
Myke Hurley: I love the Paul Smith ones.
Brad Dowdy: Yes. The Paul Smith ones they've done for a while. I think this is the best one that they've done. Like with the stripe, the full, the stripes around the barrel. They've done solid colors and some other things in the past. The stripes around the barrel is good.
Myke Hurley: Because the Paul Smith stripe is great. This is like a pen that I've always thought I would like to own it, but I've never bought it for myself. Because I probably wouldn't use it that much. But I really just like, I would have it to just look at it.
Paul Smith Pens
Brad Dowdy: Well, you might have an orange one coming your way in a certain package I need to send you. So just hang tight. Hang tight.
Myke Hurley: Who knows? Who knows? Yeah. Right? Yeah. Who knows?
Brad Dowdy: You never know, Myke. But yeah, these are great. Like this last year, I bought the, like the baby blue one that you see this year. There was a green one with a gold clip and a pink knock. Like that's the one I bought last year. This year, I'll probably buy the pink one with the blue clip and the black knock. It's just kind of cool.
Myke Hurley: I mean, I don't know if this is possible. If you could kind of like mix a match, if you bought a couple, can you get pieces off them? Can you get the clip off?
Brad Dowdy: Yes. You can get the clip and the knock off because it just unscrews because that's where the refill goes. So you could swap those.
Myke Hurley: So you could swap it. I mean, it's even more you're claiming your style, isn't it? Right. Right. Smash me about. I like the yellow one. I like the yellow body, but I don't like the clip on the yellow one.
Brad Dowdy: Yeah. But I just, you know, it's hard for me to not compare Caran d'Ache and what they do and what their status is as a brand and then look at Pilot.
Myke Hurley: And like, I know it's not fair of me to say to Pilot, why don't you do this? Why don't you do the same thing? Very different brands. But, but, but, but, but it would, I would say that like they may not be as equally comparable, but there are a lot of Japanese classic pen brands that are comparable with Pilot that are doing way closer to what Caran d'Ache is doing here. Totally. Pilot is leaving a lot on the table. Yeah.
Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I guess that's all. I just love Pilot so much, but they don't give us anything to talk about like all these other companies do. I think that's my, my main takeaway, which, you know, they don't have to, like they're doing, they're doing perfectly fine without making Brad his pink fountain pen. Like they're going to live, Myke, I'm pretty sure. But, you know, I still can, I can still hope for it. Right.
Myke Hurley: A boy can dream. A boy can dream. So next week's episode, I'm, I'm going to be taking the week off because next week, next week was already a pretty busy week for me with the podcast on on the 18th. But then Apple popped in and was like, oh, hey, would you like an Apple event next week as well? So due to various many, many, many projects and time constraints, Brad is going to take over the hosting duties next week and bring a guest in for the show.
Brad Dowdy: My favorite texts are Myke panic texts because I know and you know that I'm going to handle it. But I have an opportunity to like turn the screws a little bit. And I don't, I generally don't take that opportunity because I can tell the stress in your, in your texts. You know, I can read, I read them in Myke's stressed voice. So I don't mess with you. But boy, I really have an opportunity and I'm, I'm leaving a little bit on the table there. You know, speaking of which, so yeah, you know, I, I, I'm glad to do it. I don't know who, I don't know who next week's guest is going to be, which is always a thrill for me. And, but I got ideas, I got ideas. And as always, we will have a, a great episode. And once I do know who I will be having on, I will let the, let the listeners know via Twitter, most likely. So we can take some questions for whoever I grab. Cause I always want to, I want to always have some listener interaction when, when I have a guest on. So I look forward to when you're not here, Myke.
Myke Hurley: If you want to find links and notes about this week's episode, including more information about the raffle for the Urushi Safari, if you donate to St. Jude, go to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 427. You can find Brad on Twitch on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10 a.m. Eastern at twitch.tv slash penaddict. You should go there and find more about that. And you can watch wonderful stuff that Brad is broadcasting to the world twice a week. Go to penaddict.com and knock.co, spokedesign.com as well. Go to all of those websites, look at them, see what's there, maybe buy some stuff. Brad is at dowdyism on Twitter and penaddict on Instagram. We're going to have to do a spinoff show at some point where it's just me talking about all the things you're doing. You're very, very busy, Brad. You've got a lot of irons and a lot of fires. It's good to be busy.
Brad Dowdy: It's good to be busy.
Myke Hurley: And I am that. I'm at imike, I-M-Y-K-E. Thanks to Pencholay and ExpressVPN for their support of this episode. Brad will be back next time. I'll be back in two weeks. Until then, say goodbye, Brad.
Brad Dowdy: Goodbye, Brad.