The Pen Addict 622/transcript

Relay FM 10th Anniversary

• Welcome to The Pen Addict episode 622. Today's show is brought to you by Pen Chalet and Squarespace. My name is Myke Hurley. I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi, Brad. Hey, Myke. How's it going? Good. We're in July now. It's a pretty important month around here. Yeah. A little bit busy later this month, Relay FM, 10th anniversary. Are you ready? Like, I haven't really checked in with you on this.
• At the moment, I feel pretty good. Like, I've had times where I've not felt so good. Definitely. Right now, I feel pretty good. I feel good about the show. What I'm not prepared for is everyone coming to London. Like, I haven't got anything prepared for anybody, but I feel like there's only so many things that I'm able to handle. Yeah, you don't. And so, I've decided to put the majority of my efforts into the 1,000 people coming to see us at London's historic Hackney Empire, you know? Exactly. Like, I'm going to be there. You literally don't need to do anything for me, right? Like, I'm going to be there. I'm going to be taking in some museums, find some stationary shops. We're going to hang out. You know, we have, like, one evening planned to hang out. And, like, yeah, like, you literally need to not worry about me. And I hope that comes across for all of us. Well, I mean, the thing is, unlike most people that are coming, I haven't seen you in five years. Has it really been since the wedding? No, no, no. Well, kind of, would have been, like... That was five years, right? Yeah, yeah, but the last time I saw you was the fifth anniversary show and then the San Francisco Penn show. Oh, sure. Sure, sure, sure. Well, I'm pretty sure everybody else I've seen along the way at different... Well, at least the majority of people I've seen along the way. Because you'll get a pretty big influx at, like, WWDC, like, the time you went there. So, okay, okay. All right. Interesting. Cool. You know, I'm looking forward to that. That's going to be a long hug. Someone's going to have to pull us apart. Like, our... Do you remember our first Atlanta International Airport hug? Of course I do. Our very first meeting? Yeah, that was cool. Yeah, of course I do. That was cool. I look forward to it. Long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Reunited and it feels so good. It's going to be just a couple of weeks. So, I reunited with the Penn Addict shop this week, Myke. You sure did. You sure did. I didn't realize that. So, this is going to be a long, rambly segment. We're going to talk about all the new things I've made, which is very uncomfortable for me to talk about. But I'm going to do it because I'm pretty excited. I was thinking... So, this last year, so 2023, I'll have to go back and look at my theme. But it was basically, like, the year of collaborations or, you know, the year of ideas or something. Where it's like, I'm going to do all these things and get all these collaborations done with all these people that I've been wanting to make. And I'm pretty sure in 2023, I did zero. I think the last collaboration product I did was my Bennu 15th anniversary pin, which was 2022.

Pen Addict Shop Projects

• So, my shop, you know, I've had some things come through. You know, I did the Opus 88. That was before the Bennu. That was a really good one. And the Caran D'Ache 849. And, you know, I keep the Pen Addict shop mostly for collaboration stuff, right? I don't keep, like, a running stock of stuff. Like, I do a project and the project goes up. You know, there's some long-term items like Robert Oster Fire on Fire Inc. Or the Musgrave No. 1 pencils. Like, I just keep those in stock. Those are great products. But the big collaborations that take a lot of time and effort and money to come up with, like, I skipped pretty much all of 2023. And so, I got into 2024 and tried to kind of make a list, right? I made a list in my notebook, as one does. I was like, these are all the ideas I have. I just brain-dumped all the ideas. And one specific idea, well, two of these ideas, I had been holding onto for a long, long time. Like, literal years. And those are both live in the shop. And the first one is the Retro 51 Pen. And the second one is the Ebbets Field Flannel Hat.
• Those are fun projects to put on.
• So, I want to talk about them a little bit. Because I've gotten some questions, some feedback, some interest in, especially the pen, right, collaboration. Because if it's one of those things I've had in my pocket, I want to say three to four years. Like, I have this idea, right? I'm a sneakerhead, right? And a lot of people know this if you follow me on Instagram. I post a little bit of sneaker content out there. But, like, I like sneakers. I like design. I like uniqueness and all kinds of things like that. And I had this idea. Well, there's this sneaker designer named Virgil Abloh, who has passed away a couple years ago. Young guy. I think he was late 30s, early 40s. Passed to cancer. But he's a superstar, right? If you're into fashion or design or streetwear, like you say Virgil Abloh. And that's, like, you know, top of the heap, right? Like, he's very well known. But he did where he kind of broke out from his own company, Off-White, was with a collaboration with Nike called The Ten.
• And I want to say this was, like, 2017-ish. And he came out with this really kind of unstructured design philosophy that kind of broke things down to the basics, but in a very unique, very unique way. And he would do weird things, like, where a Nike Air pocket would be in a shoe, right? Like, they're known for their Nike Air soles. He would put, like, Air on the side of the shoe. Or the shoelaces say shoelaces on them. And I like, like, you know, it's one of those very big discussion points, right? I would always think of it. I don't know if this is the right way, but I would always think of Abloh's style in this way. This wasn't the only thing that he did. But when he would do this, which I think I'm probably jumping ahead in your story a little bit, which was, like, Off-White was the brand that he created as well as working as a creative director at other brands. But I always kind of found Off-White's, the work that he did to be quite ironic. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Kind of what he was going for. But that created a style of its own, which is kind of incredible, really. Yeah, and for some reason, it really stuck with people when there's a chance that these could have been just completely panned, right? Yeah. They could have been just completely like, oh, what is this guy doing? These are ridiculous. And one of the other design elements is for some reason, and I still don't know the exact reason why, he added zip ties to a lot of products. And that's just something that I thought was fascinating. And I've always loved this design and, you know, just the ideas behind it. So I've always wanted to do something like that. But I was worried, could I do it in a pen and make it work? Because, like, the basic idea is just let me make a very, very simple pen that just says pen on it. And, you know, like, I found the font that he used. It's Helvetica Noia. I don't know if it's pronounced new or Noia.

Helvetica Noia Bold and Typography

• You know, I think this is one of these things where everybody has their own way of saying that you must say it. Yeah. So let's just go with Noia because it sounds fun. Yeah. Yeah. Helvetica Noia Bold. So I found, like, you can go find, like, you know, all this information online. So I was like, let me get this font. And I have to, if I'm going to do this, like, that's too basic to just make a pen with a pen on it. You know, I could just do a Bic, like my loaner pen, you know, Bic, and just put pen on it and be done with it. But I really wanted to incorporate the zip tie, which that's what held me off for this so long is that it's risky, right? Like, are people going to like this or are people going to get it or are people going to understand? Because, like, the zip tie was a pretty, especially if your shoes became pretty synonymous with the design style of Off-White, right? Right, right. So I reached out to my friends at Retro 51. I finally got the nerve to ask them, right? I was, my only, the only thing holding me back was my confidence, right? So I just, one day I said, I had written it down in my notebook and sat there for months. And, you know, one day I said, you know what? I'm just going to write them an email and lay out my concept. And I wrote out this whole concept and gave them samples and links and everything to check out. And here's what I want. And, like, what I want is really simple, but here's the important pieces. And they came back with a couple of questions. Like, let me just clarify, like, this, this, and this. And it was like, yeah, let's go. So, you know, Retro said, well, let me start working with the factory and figure out the zip tie thing. Because we can handle everything else. Let's figure out the zip tie. And I was like, oh, by the way, on the zip tie, can it be serialized to match the number on the pin as well? Oh, I didn't know you. I didn't get that, Paul. Yeah, because, like, I just have the artist proof pictures up because they took such good pictures. But the zip tie is serialized to match the serial number. So it's a limited edition of 500. Like, a lot of people are familiar with Retro 51 and their limited editions. They're all numbered, like, around the band where the twist is, right? So, like, I pulled a pin. I need to put a better picture of it up on, like, Instagram and on the product page. But it says, like, 488 out of 500. Well, the zip tie also says 488 out of 500 on there. So it came out so good. They were super excited to do this. You know, I'm working with Richard over there, who a lot of people know. He's been there for I don't even know how long, forever. You know, previous iterations of the company, current iterations of the company. He's the design guru. And working with him has always been amazing. And he really helped out a bunch in this because I was asking him to do something a little bit weird, right? We had to figure out the packaging, right? Okay, we've solved the zip tie. Can we put it in a box, a tube? How is this going to fit? How are we going to package this? What are the choices we have to make? All these little elements that keep it in the Retro 51 family to where you know it's a Retro 51, but get across the design and story that I wanted to tell with the product. Yeah. And everyone be happy in the end, right? Because they have to be happy with the product, right, to put their name on it. You know, I have to be happy with the product to put my name on it. And dialing all that in from, you know, two different peoples is not always easy. And I think it worked. You know, that's the best thing I can say is I'm thrilled with how it turned out. Now, whether other people, you know, consumers think, you know, it worked, that's to be determined. But I will say for an addition of 500, I've sold half of them in two days. Yeah, I think you're good, Brad. I feel pretty solid about that.
• I feel okay. I'm happy with how it started. So, yeah, I've sold almost exactly half. I checked right before the show just so I could say where we're at. And it's like literally within a few single digits of half being sold. So, yeah, I am happy. People, the interesting thing for this wasn't as much the sales, but is kind of what the feedback was going to be. Because I'm asking people who may not know what I'm going for here to like buy into an idea. And obviously not everyone's going to do that. But the people who got it, I feel like the feedback has been better than I even anticipated. Just in a, oh, this is cool. I like what you did here. Whether they buy it or not, I don't, I mean, I obviously care in the end. But like just that people get it and that it was executed well makes me very happy. Right? So, that's, this was a challenge for me like mentally to like, I don't want to say stretch my design chops. Because technically it's a simple design. But as a concept, it was very difficult for me to like push the buttons to go forward with a design like this. If that makes any sense at all. It's more complicated. I guess, you know, considering that this is an homage to Abloh, I don't think you mentioned it yet. You're making a donation to a fund that's in his name, right? Yes. So, every, these last few Retro 51 projects I've done, I always, I've started making donations to different charities. Like if I work with an artist, like I work with my friend Susan Lenz, like I wanted to donate. Like I paid her for the artwork, like a full, like it's important for me. Like I take care of every, my partners that I work with in this. So, like with Susan, like not only did I pay her like full freight for the design work, I said, hey, tell me, I would like to make a donation to a charity of your choosing. And she did. I think we did Electric Frontier Foundation with Susan. And then, so I was like, yeah, I'm going to make this a thing. So, Virgil Abloh has a scholarship fund to help, you know, get students into fashion industry, right? Especially, you know, black African-American students around the world, get them, they're footing into the fashion industry because he became like a superstar. Like he was already, you know, his, you know, presence was felt from off-white. But then when he passed, you know, far too young from cancer, he was the, I think the lead men's designer for Louis Vuitton, right? I think he was creative director. Creative director for Louis Vuitton. Like it was just like a, just a superstar in this world. So, yeah, I wanted to give something back to these, when I do projects like this, I want to make sure I give something back as well. So, I'm donating $1,000 from the sales of this pen to the Virgil Abloh Postmodern Scholarship Fund, which I've linked on the product page when you're looking into this. And now, that's where you can see all the pictures of this. If like none of what I'm saying is making any sense, you can go look at the pictures and you go like, oh, yeah, that's ridiculous. Or you go, oh, yeah, I get it. Like it's one of those, it's one of those things. So, yeah. I'm happy. I think you should be very proud of the execution of this product. Like this hinged on execution for it to work. Right. And for it to be respected and for it to be successful. I mean, you know, similarly to just what we were talking about with Off-White in the first place, right? That like the execution of Virgil's work was what sold it. And I think for you to make this pen work, you had to execute well and you have executed well. So, yeah. I think you should be proud of it. Yeah. Yeah, I am. And it was funny. It's like as we're going through the process, you know, with Retro and, you know, you look at like Retro's catalog and like all the weird wild stuff they make. Like so I would lay it out and they'd be like, okay, and do you want this? No. And how about no? Like this is it. Like it's we have to keep it this way for these reasons. And in the end, they're like, yeah, this is good. Like this is good. This is how we go. So, yeah, that was a fun one. Um, so, yeah, I'm glad we got it out there into the world. Um, I'm forever indebted to Retro 51 and their help getting these projects done, helping promote it. Um, they do a lot of support, uh, for that and they really, really come through. Um, which is why I enjoy working with them. And it's been several years since I've done a project for them. Um, because I had this in, in my back pocket and I just had to get the nerve to, uh, to do it. So, uh, I'm glad I did. The other project was much simpler, um, other than the cost, right? But this was one of those things where I knew going into it, like I'm getting a premium product and it's going to cost a premium price. And that's the Ebbets Fields flannel, uh, baseball cap that I made. I've been wanting to do a hat for a while, but I didn't want to just do any hat. And Ebbets actually has a pretty open collaborative process where you can just reach out to them with your idea and you can get pretty quick feedback and get into the queue pretty quick for some designs and get a prototype made. And I'll be danged if they just didn't nail everything that I wanted in this hat. Again, it's simple, right? It's a black hat. Uh, importantly, it's wool. This is a very hot hat. So I don't want people to, uh, very hot hat. I don't want people to, um, misconstrue that, you know, you might be on the lake in the summertime in a black wool hat and think that you're going to have a good time. You're probably not. So be aware, but this is what they do, right? Like I wanted them to do what they do well and what they're known for. So I have a couple of other hats, um, I've worn, uh, of theirs for years. And this is like the pinnacle of baseball hat quality for me. So it's a very expensive hat in the end, which it makes it $78 in the end. But my goodness, I'm so happy with how this turned out. Um, they nailed the patch. So they, they customize the, they build the whole patch that goes on the front. So it's a felt patch that they have to stitch design layout and stitch. And like from the jump, they just like crushed it. So I I'm really happy with this turnout. I will, how this turned out. I'm going to get a lot of wear out of this and, uh, I hope people dig it. Like this is something I could have done anything for a hat, but I wanted to make this one kind of special and just like make it jump off the page. And yeah, the price jumps off the page too, but that's okay. Like this I'm okay with, like, I'm completely fine with the price of this because, um, what they made was perfect. So I'm very, very happy with it. So yeah, check it out.

Podcast Sponsorship and Promotions

• All right, let's take a break. There's some more stuff. Big, what a big commercial Brad we've got here. Like big business Brad. Big capitalism boy over here. Yes, let's go. Big business Brad, uh, taking advantage of his podcast to sell his goods. Well, this is how it works. If you want to take a short stop in between capitalism for more capitalism, you should go support our friends over at pen chalet because they have the products you want from the favorite brands. Whether you want something new from sailor or caveco, whether you want something from retro 51, Pelican, Monteverde and more, you should always be going to pen chalet because they have all of the products that you're looking for along with accessories and maybe some things you didn't even know you wanted. But pen chalet has got it. They're always adding new products to the site. So you'll find something new every time you visit. And they believe in giving the best deals that they can. They have specials every two weeks and they believe in fast and reliable customer service. Pen chalet has low prices on high quality products and they offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee. They sell internationally with great shipping rates. But if you're in the US, they do free shipping on orders of over $75. So go to penchalet.com, P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com slash penaddict to get 10% of anything at penchalet and see this week's exclusive offers for listeners of this show.
• I have to stop being hyperbolic about the great deals that they offer. But this one is really an outlier recently. It's got so much new stuff that I can't even, we're not going to be able to get to all of it because it starts with ink, which I'm always, I'm always interested to see what inks they put up for sale on this page at a discount. There are some really cool Visconti inks, some Narwhal inks. One of the Colorverse ink sets, which you have to scroll pretty far down, is the Trailblazer in Space sets, which is like one of the two, the one, the big bottle, large bottle sets. And these are like the wild colors that were very, very popular. They're, they're crazy cool. And they're on sale. One of my all time favorite products has never appeared on this list. In fact, I'm not going to lie. I didn't know they carried it. The Caran d'Ache Fix Pencil. Y'all have heard me talk about this product for years. Caran d'Ache has not really leaned into this much recently. I will call them out for that, but they've made some cool designs in the past, but you can get the stock version. They have a two millimeter. It's a, it's a clutch pencil basically, but it's one of my favorite products out on the market. They have a two millimeter version and a three millimeter version. Those are the core sizes. I'm a two millimeter fan and they're, you rarely get a CDA stuff on sale. So getting the clutch pencil and either the two or the three millimeter is pretty cool. Then on top of that, they have the Lamy Pure fountain pen, which is a nice smaller barrel, aluminum barrel, um, fountain pen. It's kind of in between like a safari and a studio. Like if you combine those a little bit, it's kind of got a aluminum barrel and then like a black Ridge grip section with the traditional Lamy steel nib. Then they have a bunch of Narwhal, uh, some of their, uh, special editions are a really, really good price. So the rhinoceros, the, uh, forsythia, the gradient Arushi. Um, and then I, I'm not even, I, I haven't made it to the end yet, Myke. So I'm gonna have to let y'all go figure out what else is on here because it's unbelievable. Oh, there's man. Okay. Nevermind. Y'all go look. It's a good list.
• Pensula.com slash pen addict is where you can go to find that list. Our thanks to Penn Chalet for their continued support of this show and Relay FM. All right, Myke, we have our shout out of the week. Shout out of the week. The Locovore NYC. So some of you may have heard of this, but you may not have. But if you're following the, uh, the travels of our friend, Caroline Weaver, formerly of CW Pencil Enterprise in New York, they have been, um, you know, they started working on a newsletter after the shop closed and they transitioned over to the Locovore guide, which was a great, you know, NYC focused, um, shopping guide, you know, shopping events, you know, all the cool stuff in and around town. And like I've said it before in Caroline, I trust. So if there's anyone, I don't know who else you could imagine giving you tips about their hometown, especially one as big as NYC. And now Caroline has opened up a physical shop. So the Locovore variety store, you can now go visit and find a lot of these products that she talks about, um, including a couple of sneaky, sneaky stationary items in there. So she's, she's never going to give up the pencils. I'm pretty sure. Um, so go say hi to Caroline, go follow the Locovore, go subscribe to the newsletter. Uh, she's the best and y'all should go check out all of her work. And, uh, yeah, if you're in NYC, definitely give them a visit. Yeah. I'm very happy to see Caroline back in the retail business. Yep. Yeah. She is, uh, extremely talented and, uh, you can just tell, like you go look at this as like, Oh, this person has it. Yeah. Yeah. This is what she does. This is, this is in Caroline's DNA and it, and it looks, uh, it looks super. So, uh, good luck and congratulations, Caroline. And, you know, maybe when I'm in NYC, I don't know what kind of time I'm going to have, but, uh, might have to try to make a, make a run over and see what I can find over at the Locovore. So I am not done with the, uh, madness at the pen addict shop. I don't have these products live yet because I really didn't consider the podcast schedule when I thought about this, but it was really more of, Hey, I need to get all these products in, but I need to get them, you know, product photography, product listings, all the backend stuff. And I had to make sure everything arrived safe and sound, but I wanted to get them out in a similar timeframe as the retro 51 and the Ebbets field flannel hat. And first up is, uh, my own model or my own pattern of the Rickshaw Sinclair model R. So you'll be able to see these probably by the time you get the podcast in your feed at penaddict.com slash shop. They should be live, uh, Wednesday afternoon, U S Eastern time. Um, so this is an orange sailcloth with a white grid, like a four millimeter white grid. It looks amazing. Um, it's very orange, very pen, pen addict, and it has a gray plush interior and the three pen slots on one side and one notebook slot on the opposite side and black zippers. And it's, it's a really, really cool look. I've shared it on my Instagram before because I got the prototype in, um, I can probably find a link to put in the show notes for the Sinclair model R that is going live. Um, I'm also doing my first collaboration with Heinz Penco. Um, so I'm calling this pen the break of dawn because of the color scheme. It's a very, I don't consider it necessarily rainbow color scheme, but it is kind of an all the colors color scheme. I think the material was based off a, uh, starting at resins called spring mist. So it's basically like a morning rainbowy do all the colors type of pen. And the most important thing about this pen is this is a small pen. So they, um, I, I didn't have a definitive, uh, idea on what fountain pen I wanted to do this year. But when I went to the Atlanta pen show and saw Jim and Francisco and Elise, they had a model called the Toschen Stift. And it is a pocket pen that's German for pocket pen. Yes. Uh, thank you. Um, so it's a pocket pen size. It's a little bit bigger than like a Kaweco sport. And I'll have some comparison pictures when this product goes live on the shop this afternoon, but it's small pen, uh, killer material. You can eye dropper it. I've eye droppered mine. It has a purple electroplated steel nib. It looks killer. Like I am very happy with how this, uh, came out. So it'll take, you know, your short international cartridges or the mini converter. It'll ship with the mini converter. It also ships with a Rickshaw single pen sleeve, uh, which is super cool. And it features like the, uh, the purple nib color that we did. And, uh, it came out, it came out great. So Heinz did a bang up job on this pen. I can't wait for everyone to see it. And I'll have a bunch of nib, um, size options all the way. Extra fine to 1.5 millimeter stub. And oddly enough, they're doing a double broad now. So I got a few of those as well. So people like the small pens with the big nibs, uh, you know, you, you've come to the right place. So we're going to get them all out there. I think everyone, I think people are going to like this pen, the material, you know, everyone likes the bright swirly acrylics and like they nailed this one and I love it. And, um, yeah, like I'm already using mine. I've, uh, I dropped it with Robert Oster fire on fire, which Myke, that leads me to an experimental release. I don't think I've really done this before on the Panatic shop. So I've made Robert Oster fire on fire for years. So it's the orange ink collaboration. I've done with Robert Oster, uh, inks out of Australia.

New Ink Launch and Community Feedback

• And, um, it's great. It's like, I love that ink. It's been proven to be very popular, uh, in the community. And this, yeah. So now Myke, uh, this came out of a pretty much an inside joke on the Twitch stream. Well, if we have fire on fire, what if we added shimmer to it and called it fire on fire on fire? Um, so, so I am launching a small test run of a shimmer ink, which, uh, takes fire on fire and add shimmer to it. It's a red. So the challenge, as I learned talking with Robert, as he was making this formulation with an orange ink and we wanted to add something fiery to it. So red shimmer, it's hard to get a visual separation between the orange base and a red shimmer. So he basically took three different shades of shimmer, found the right mixture to give us kind of like a copper golden. I don't know. It's, it looks different in different lighting. It came out wild. Um, it's really cool. So I'm, I'm looking forward to what people think about this and then we'll see, I'm going to get some feedback on this and then I'll see if I'll, you know, make another batch and sell it, keep it permanently in the shop, which already looking at the feedback, I've shared some samples of it before. Um, you know, just letting people take a look at it. Uh, feedback's been good. So, you know, maybe we can, uh, I'm probably counting on doing at least us keeping a small batch of this on stock, but you know, maybe it might go in and out more than like fire on fire, which I know I can, I can buy hundreds of and keep them on hand. This, uh, a little more tentative with the shimmer inks because that's not everyone's jam. And this is a very shimmery ink. So Robert Oster's shaken shimmy series. This is a very heavily covered, uh, shimmering, right? You're not just getting a little glitter here, a little glitter there. You're getting, you're getting a full dosage of your shimmer. Uh, color wise is slightly different, right? It's, it's, it's new here to it more reddish. Yeah. A little more reddish. And I, to me, when it dries, the shimmer gives it almost like a copper look, right? So it's, uh, it's pretty neat looking. So, uh, but it's funny, like in a lot of these inks, you can see like the base color go down before the shimmer, before it dries and the shimmer really hits. I was like, Oh yeah, this really is fire, fire on fire underneath. And then it changes completely by the time it dries and the shimmer, uh, shimmer breaks out. So I'm interested to see what people think about this. And, um, it's kind of one of those, like I said, it's a test run and we'll go from there. So again, all this stuff, probably by the time you hear this, uh, this afternoon, they'll be live, um, on the Panonic shop.
• I have a, I have a lot of shipping in my future, Myke. Yeah. I'm calling this the, uh, the summer of shipping is what I'm about to embark on. So, um, you know, I, I appreciate everyone who's supported me and checked out all these goods and, uh, shipping starts on Monday. So I have one little, little last getaway this weekend, uh, before I am knee deep into the shipping department. I have all the supplies. I have everything organized. I'm set to hit the ground running come Monday and, um, we'll, uh, we'll get everything, get everything rolling. So, uh, I'm looking forward to it. Yeah. All I'll say is like, you know, we don't, we don't really do podcast much. We don't ask for a podcast membership for the show or anything like that. So what I will ask is support Brad and support the stuff that he does and by going and checking out these products, it would mean a lot to him and it would mean a lot to me if you did that for him. So. Yeah. And if I'll, I'll make one last pitch, um, Panatic members get 25% off all these goods. So if you're a member of the Panatic website, you get the wonderful newsletter. If you're even interested in one of these products, like you're going to be made good, like immediately because some of this stuff's expensive, right? As we've already discussed. Um, so yeah, like that's one of the benefits of being a member of the Panatic podcast, which you can find it. Panatic.com slash members. So not the podcast. Not what you just said. Not the podcast. Cause I was thinking not the podcast as I say that because we do get that confused. So yeah, this is the Panatic membership, which is different from a Relay FM membership. So thank you, Myke. No worries. And Sport Relay FM also. I think I, I confused you, I think by bringing that up. It was in my head. Yeah. Because I know how many emails we get. Yeah. It happens. It happens. It happens. It happens. It's just going to happen. It's just going to happen. All right. Continue to take me on my tour of commerce, but this time somewhere else. I'm very curious what you think about the Bungu Box, King of Pen, Fujiyama Blue. As a sailor fan, a Bungu Box fan, and a King of Pen fan. Thoughts?
• Okay. So is all we have right now, this image that you put in our show notes? No. I was literally going to find that. Cause I found that before. Yeah.
• In the, in the pre-roll, but I will get you the, the very next image in their feed has. Oh, I see. The full, the full thing. So yes, I grabbed actually the wrong image when I was creating this and I didn't go back to, to follow up. So what do you think? I, I like it. I'm happy. It's not more than that.
• Yeah. I'm kind of the same way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I, I will say I love it. Like I don't, I'm not going to buy it. Like I don't need it, but the, the cool, here's what I think is cool. Not, not just the looks. I think the looks are amazing. Like this is going to sell extremely well. Should do. Yeah. Yeah. But what they've done is they've run the entire gamut of sailor sizes in the Fujiyama blue colorway. That's pretty cool, man. So there's a pro, there's a pro gear, which is the one that I have. There's a Rialo and now there's a king of pen. So you can, so I don't guess there's a slim. So maybe it's not the gamut or there's definitely not a mini. If they bought, if they did a mini, I would probably get that.

Fujiyama Blue Series Popularity

• But this has been like the path they've been on with this Fujiyama blue series. I wonder if it's one of the most popular series because when I bought my pro gear, it was like the third run. And each time they do a run, they changed the finial art a little bit and that's how you can differentiate them. But that's how popular this series has been. And so this is like their quote is a popular series of ours will be released in its supreme form. And I think that's pretty cool how they kind of lean into like the king of pen is the pinnacle of this Fujiyama blue series that we're doing. And that's what I appreciate the most out of this is that they've built this little series out of this product. And I'm glad I have one. I love my pro gear because it has a metal grip section. And that leads me into a correction when we were talking about, hey, how many Bungu box pens do we have, Myke? And I said a couple episodes ago that I think I had five and I was recounting them all. And I actually have seven. Um, and now that I say that out loud, I'm wondering if I'm leaving one off. So, um, I forgot my pilot vanishing point energia, which is a very orange marbly, really great looking one. And then somehow I completely forgot the pilot eight 23 and Fujiyama blue. So that's kind of related to this series, but in a different, uh, obviously a pilot pen instead of a sailor, but I didn't even count that one. So yeah, I have at least seven. So, um, pretty, pretty crazy, uh, the amount of pens that, uh, I have of Bungu box that take up space in my collection. So pretty cool. Love this stuff. So I, uh, I, I like the Fujiyama blue and, uh, I don't know, I'll take a look at it. If they have any left in San Francisco, still probably won't buy it. Um, uh, but I hope to see them in San Francisco and get a look at this one because I, I love the blue, like the deep translucent blues are some of my favorite sailors. And, um, yeah, as Myke, I own two of them already. So this is, this is pretty great.
• Yeah. I, I would like, I would really like a King of Bungu box, King of pen. Just this one is very nice looking, but it isn't what I'm looking for from them, which is to have things be a little bit more out there or like mismatched, you know, like, um, like cap and body cut and all that kind of stuff. So, but very, very nice. And I, I do really, really like that. They've had one design that they've taken through all of the available models. I think that that's just fun to do. Yeah, exactly. That's what really stood out to me the most about this whole thing. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all in one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand, you can stand out with a beautiful website, engage with your audience and sell your products, services, even the content that you create. Squarespace has everything you need all in one place. You can start a completely personalized website with their new guided design system, Squarespace Blueprint. You choose from professionally curated layout and styling options to build a unique online presence from the ground up, tailored to your brand or business and optimized for every device, and then easily launch your website and get discovered fast of a suite of integrated optimized SEO tools. So you show up more often in searches to more people growing the way that you want. We were talking a lot about the, uh, pen addict shop a little bit ago. Well, that is a Squarespace store. So it's a functionality Brad has been able to enable on his website, which is a Squarespace website, and he can just sell things. It's very easy to do that. Right, Brad? Yeah, super easy. And it integrates well with like your shipping platforms and it syncs perfectly. It's easy for me to build out. Like I told Myke, I was building out the Heinz pen, um, shop page right before we, um, got on the podcast today. And it allows me to put in all the inventory. I can separate them out by nib size. I put in the shipping weights. Like it's, it's, it's a full scale, um, commerce platform and it works flawlessly for me. What I like about Squarespace in general is the way that you can stage things out. So like you start with a blog and then if you want to sell something, you can add store to your blog that you don't have to do that at first. Right? Like, but you can add these things in the same as like Squarespace email campaigns. So if you have a website, if you have a store and you're like, this is going great and you want people to sign up to find out more about your products by email, you've got another marketing tool option now with Squarespace email campaigns. You can also integrate flexible payment systems. You can make checkout seamless for your customers as simple, but powerful payment tools. You can accept credit cards, PayPal and Apple pay. And in eligible countries offer customers the option to buy now and pay later with after pay and clear pay. So go to squarespace.com and you can sign up for a free trial. You can build your entire website and then when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash pen addict and you'll save 10% of your first purchase of a website or domain. That is squarespace.com slash pen addict. And when you decide to sign up, you'll get 10% of your first purchase and show your support for the show. Our thanks to Squarespace for the continued support of this show and all of RelayFM. So this next topic I missed when it first came out, which is not a surprise giving Instagram's algorithm, which is a full podcast of its own. But my friend Jacob at Fude Fan tagged me in one of his posts. So the post was like five weeks ago and he tagged me like a week ago because we had talked about on the show how like Lamy's popularity in Japan. Right. So Jacob lives in Japan is, you know, has all the details about the Japanese stationary market. So he had put up a post flipping through a magazine called Shumi no Bungabako, which every year takes a poll from their readers to vote for their favorite pen. And his comment was two German pens are always in the top three. So for take a look at the 2023 list, Myke, of the pen of the year, I am just shocked, but I think I kind of get it like in the end. Number one is the Pelican M1000, which I, okay. And in the context, y'all need to go look at this link because in the context of the rest of this, it makes sense. At the same time, it doesn't as we'll get down, down the list here to the number three, but number two is the Mont Blanc 149, right? I think it's the M800. It's the Pelican M800. Oh, M800. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. I was looking at it wrong. So the M800, which is probably the best main line Pelican, honestly, the 1000 is a little bit too big, my bad. And then the Mont Blanc 149. Number three, Myke, if I went Pelican M800, Mont Blanc 149. Again, this is a poll in Japan.
• How many guesses would it take for you to come up with the Caran d'Ache 849 ballpoint pen to be number three? I wouldn't. Yeah. There's no one because I also don't particularly like this pen. Right. So it would never enter my mind as being number three in any poll, let alone a poll of Japanese consumers. Yeah. And not number three. Number three ahead of number four, the Platinum 3776 is where we get our first Japanese pen. And then a pilot right after that. And then number six, sneaking in on the list, Lamy Safari. Well, the year prior, Lamy Safari was number three. Yeah. And the top two were the Pelican M800 and the Mont Blanc 149. So this makes perfect sense to me. It does. I think we come at it from the same perspective. Yes. Which is, I expect if you are a Japanese, if you are a pen addict in Japan, the Japanese pens are not interesting to you because they have been around.
• You have grown up with that. Yeah. So the German products are more exotic in the same way that for us, the Japanese products are. A hundred percent. It's a clear case of you want what you cannot have. Right. And you did not grow up with this. This was not the norm for you. Just like if you grew up in Europe and as a school child, you had Lamy's forced into your hands. You might never want to touch a Lamy Safari again in the rest of your life. Right. And you're like, Ooh, look at this sailor. Look at this Platinum or look at this pilot. Yeah. I think that's a hundred percent the case, which is fast. It's still fascinating to me. Um, the way the list shakes out. I mean, there's even like another Pelican on the list and like, it's, there's a Parker on the list. I mean, what is funny to me is I think that this is wrong. Right. You know, like, I'm like, no, no, these are good. But the 3776 for me is better than all of these. Yeah. I don't, I will actually disagree. I would take an 800 or 149 over the 3776. You know what? Except I don't have enough. Uh, um, I don't have one of these, either of those myself, the M800 over 149. So maybe I've not got enough, uh, experience of it, but, but still like if given the choice, I would go to the 3776. Yeah. And that's only because they're like three times the price or maybe four times the price of the 3776. So, which is kind of, again, shocking that there are like one and two on the list just from a price point perspective. Um, and then the 849 just pops in there. One of my friends, I got to, I got to call out my friend Ame in, in the comments, literally says, how did Karen Dash get in there? And I replied, oh, you just wait. I'm bringing you one when I see you at the stationary fest. So they're going to be there at the stationary fest. So I'm going to bring them one of my 849s. Cause I love the 849. But in, in again, like you zero out of a thousand choices, what I have ever put that number three on the list. I would have put a, I would have guessed like, I don't know. I would have guessed like Sharpies and all kinds of weird stuff before I ever got to this as number three. So yeah, there's just no way. It's a very strange inclusion to me. Like genuinely like a really, really weird inclusion in this particular list surrounded by other fountain pens. It's actually even weirder, right? Yeah. There's a top four, four out of the three of fountain pens. And one of them is the Karen Dash 849. It's like, I don't, I don't know how that happened. It's great. I love this so much. I love this. So thank you, Jacob, for tagging me in this because again, like I never saw it. Like I follow him, like I don't have any like favorites or think of whatever the Instagram calls to like, you know, you know, percolate your favorite follows up to the top of your list. Like I've never tagged anyone, but maybe I should because I miss awesome content like this from him. I thought that was, yeah, there's a, there's something, I forget what it's called. But yeah, it was, it's a fun list and I got a huge, huge kick out of this. Obviously it's spectacular, spectacular. All right. That's going to wrap it up for today's episode of the pen addict. If I can give you one call to action is to go to penaddict.com slash shop and check out Brad's wares there. He's got like a bunch of great stuff for you to go and peruse and buy something. There's something for everyone over on the pen addict shop right now. Brad is at pen addict, P-E-N-A-D-D-I-C-T on all social media. You can find him over at twitch.tv slash pen addict three times a week still.
• Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah. And you know, as long as I'm not traveling, but yeah, when I'm in, when I'm in town three times a week, next week, exciting times over on Twitch stream, we're going to be doing shipping streams, Myke. Yeah, baby. Let's go. You're going to get to watch me for hours packing boxes of pens. Thrilling stuff. Big week over on Twitch. I hope they've got an extra couple of servers online to handle the capacity. We're going to take them down.
• If you want to find me online, relay.fm and also at cortexbrand.com. I'm at imike, I-M-Y-K-E. I would like to thank Penn Chalet and Squarespace for their support of this week's episode. But most of all, thank you for listening. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.