The Pen Addict 655/transcript

• From Relay, this is The Pen Addict, episode number 655. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace, Enigma Stationery, and ExpressVPN. My name is Brad Dowdy, and I'm joined today by Dan Wiersch of Enigma Pens. How's it going, Dan? It's going great, Brad. How are you? Good, good. And I already have to admit a failure. I'm 0 for 2 on the Non-Myke podcasts with asking my guest, hey, am I pronouncing your name correctly? So between Aziza and you, I was like, how am I doing? Did I do okay? You were, I would say, I'd give you a passing grade. It's worse. It's a little easier than it looks. Yeah, it's literally on my list to confirm with the guests. I know you well, right? I know Aziza well. We never say each other's names out loud, right? Especially last names. So my apologies to you. None necessary. Very used to it. I'm turning 45 in a few weeks, so I've been hearing every version of that name for as long as I can remember. Yes, yes. Love it. So maybe the third time's a charm. Maybe whoever's going to be joining me next week, I will ask ahead of time so I do a better job. But anyway, thank you for being here. This is pretty cool. If y'all are familiar with Enigma Stationery, yes, this is that Dan from Enigma Stationery. So can you give us a little bit of intro? Because this is probably the first time we've had a sponsor on the episode where they're actually sponsoring the episode. So it's pretty cool. Yeah, it's a little weird and we'll let the ad sit by itself later. But yeah, I've actually been a listener of the show. I can't claim to be a listener since literally episode one, but I did find you all way back in the pre-5x5. It was early days. So I've been along for the ride for a really long time just as a stationery fan and met you and Myke at the 2019 SF Penn show when I was still just shopping. And that was me and the family all, like I say to people today, on the other side of the table than we are where it shows now. So, but yeah, it kind of evolved from there. And then I guess it's been two years ago that we started doing some ads with you all. That was an exciting thing for us to be able to support the show that we're big fans of. Oh, please. And yeah, that's a little bit of the journey. Yeah. So it's funny, our relationships with our friends these days, a lot of times start online and we may not, we've known each other online for years and years and years and, you know, it took us a while to meet for the first time. But then these, these relationships just get better and stronger because like we, we know each other's backgrounds. We've been able to talk to each other for a long time. And, and now I get to see like all of a sudden, Hey, you and your family are running a stationery shop, which believe me, we are very much going to get into because I have a lot of questions about that. But, but if you'll allow me, there's a little bit of news of the week we need to talk about one, which filled my inbox almost immediately when it happened, giving my level of passion, I guess you could call it for the Lamy Safari. So number one, we're going to talk a lot about you, your personal usage, your stationery. Are you a Lamy Safari user fan, anything like that? So I would definitely not call myself a fan. I'm not, I'm not a, I'm not like anti Lamy. Sure. But, uh, but I think we own, I was checking, uh, when, when you sent me show notes, uh, I think we own two safaris in our house. Okay. And I don't think either one of them really gets any use. Totally fair. Like I, I'm not on an Island, but you know, there's definitely probably like some moats and things around. Like a lot of people do not like the Safari for very, very good reasons. Like as simple as, Hey, this is really ugly or that grip doesn't work for me or the nib is too wide. There's a billion reasons to not. And that's where I'm at the, like, I very much appreciate it from a design standpoint. I love clean lines, modern design. Like it's the classic nature of the design. Uh, so when we started collecting, it was like, well, I have to buy one of these. Plus it's also very affordable as an entry level pin. But yeah, for me personally, the grip is an issue. Like it does. Yeah. The, the, the triangular nature of the, of the group just doesn't, doesn't work for me. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. So yeah, the design is brilliant. It's unchanged for what, 40 years almost. And it's just great. So this is around the time of year where Lamy will announce their special edition or limited edition colors for the Safari and the all-star lineups. You know, it's usually that late February, early March, we're getting in the announcements and the pictures of what all these looks like. And it's a big deal for me. Like we literally have a podcast about pens. Like, of course, I'm going to talk about this. And it's, you know, I always have to state my opinion on these things and, you know, whatever. Like, it's just a fun thing for me because I love the pen so much and the brand. And this one, so this one's called the Lamy Safari Scarlet popped up on my screen. I was like, if this is the new limited edition, it's not going to go well on the podcast. Because this is basically, to me, this color, scarlet, number one, it's not scarlet. But that's neither here nor there for purposes of my rant here. This color looks like a mistake color that they just like produced on accident from the black, from the blueberry and the blackberry and all these colors they've been doing. And the violet, Lamy Violet, it's like all of those colors. It was like they did a bad run and this was one of the colors that came out for me. Like, oh, that's not really the blackberry that we were going for. Or that's not the, you know, the violet we were going for. So they just made it into a stock run. And for that, I'm pretty happy with it, right? As a matte stock Lamy Safari in a weird color, I'm in. You know, it's got the black hardware. It's got the matte finish. They do more glossy finishes in the Safari, like the stock offerings. Now, I love this as it is for the regular lineup. If this came in, if this came in the limited edition lineup, I'd have a, I'd be telling a lot different story. So let me get you into this on this question. What color is scarlet?
• Well, for me, scarlet would be a, like a crimson, a deep red. I think, like, I think Harvard crimson. And I think, yeah, like blood red kind of, that's the, where I would go with kind of scarlet. Yeah. Adam, like you could get away with like bright cherry red and someone called it scarlet. You'd go, oh, okay. Like, I get it. Like, maybe that's not the exact scarlet that I want. I want more maroon, more of a darker color. But yeah, scarlet is like, it's got to have more red in it. And this is a very, it's a very purple pin. Well, you're, you're an F1, like Ferrari, right? Like that's, yeah. Scarlet. Yeah, totally. So yeah, that's fantastic. But like, this is, it's, it's funny. Like, being who I am and in my stance on these things, this gets like a full pass from me. This is just like one of those things like Sailor would do where, you know, you just, you know, make a bunch of colors, see what sticks. I'm just glad it's a regular product lineup. And for that, it's perfect. So good job, Lamy, I guess. I don't know when this came about in the, in the order of the purchases with the Mitsubishi ownership of the company. This could have been a, you know, before or after, who knows. But I'm glad it's in the stock lineup and they didn't try to, you know, work some limited edition magic with it. So Brad says, thank you, Lamy, for not burning the limited edition. Yeah. On this one. That's exactly right. Because we are all, as Lamy Safari fans are scarred from the years of green and chartreuse and, and Apple run that they went on a while ago, where it was like three or four years in a row of some yellow or green pen that all look the same. So yeah, like I, I still have memories from that. So Lamy, I, I'm still available for hire after this one. I still believe in you. So, uh, well, we'll, we'll accept Scarlet. I think that's where, where I'm at now. This is acceptable.

Discussion of the TV show "Severance"

• Let's talk about TV, Dan. Um, I have a very interesting subject that was absolutely going to be talked on this show, talked about on this show. So I'm a fan of Apple TV's severance show. Uh, turns out you are too.
• And we'll, we'll try to avoid as much spoilers as we can for the most recent episode. This was season two, episode seven. Um, I didn't write down the name and I'm not going to pretend to, I'm not going to pull that one out of thin air because there's no way I will get that right. Um, in the pronunciation, I can't even pronounce your name right. Um, no, I agree. I would, I would also ruin the pronunciation of this episode. So I'm not even going to go to episode seven is good enough. So I'm not even going to go look it up. Um, but we'll, I'll put a link in the show notes. But what happened is, is what happens at a lot of TV shows, all of a sudden it'll just be the most, you know, innocuous, non stationery related type of show. And then someone will break out a pen or a piece of paper or an ink. And then all of a sudden it's like, what are they using? What, what is that? What is what's going on? So what did you think? So you told me before the show that you just recently watched this episode. What did you think when you saw, um, a fountain pen come out in this episode? So I, I had, uh, and I'm also a big, like no spoilers, especially for a show like this, where there's so many great reveals throughout the show. Uh, but I think we can safely talk specifically about this pen, uh, without it. I had seen your notes that apparently there was a fountain, but like, uh, like, so like just the slightest bit of chatter that, Hey, there's going to be a fountain pen at this episode. And we were, we were one episode behind. So we had not yet watched episode six and then we, and seven dropped. And then I heard this little bit about fountain pen. So I said, okay, uh, clearly we need to watch these two episodes and we watch, this is a show we watch as a family. All three of us are into it. And so we watched them last night. And, uh, so I knew that there was going to be a scene that a fountain pen was in, but I had no idea what scene or who or whatever. And we'll leave the character part out of it and leave it anonymous. But, uh, um, I saw a little bit where, where somebody, I think you, your note to me said the guess online is that it's a watcher, uh, a Rushi pen. And I was like, Oh, well, I hope it is because we have one of those. And, um, cause it would let me like pause and do direct comparison. Right. And I wholly agree with that, that guess online because, um, we don't have the exact color that was in the episode. We have a red one, whereas I think it was a green one in the, uh, in the episode, but it is absolutely the watcher dream pen, uh, true Rushi version. Yeah.
• It looks like the, the black version. So I'll, I'll put a link in the show notes to, to my friend, friend of the show, uh, Cheryl Lindo Jones, who wrote this post, um, about a fountain pen being in severance. And they were going through their thought process as they saw this pen doing exactly what Dan and I are doing right now is trying to figure out what it was. They first thought it was a platinum, a Zumo, which was like a good shape guess. But the pen, uh, the Zumo actually has some contour in the barrel. And the more you saw the pen, the pen was never in crystal clear view, right? You couldn't see nib stamping. You couldn't see just full barrel clarity. Uh, the threading was, you know, it was just never like a primary focus in the shot, despite like closeups of handwriting, uh, aggressive handwriting, mind you. So, uh, that, that was a whole talking very aggressive. Yes.
• It was a very disturbingly aggressive. I was going to say for a fountain pen user, very painful to watch if you're a fountain pen user, but I digress a little bit in trying to sort this pen out. But Cheryl did some great screen grabs. And then of all people, I looked at the update. I was, I was still following this along and trying to see what it was. So my first, my first inclination was this was like a large, a large Ebonite pen, um, like, uh, one of the Enzo pens, uh, even like on this launcher shape, large traditional cigar shape. But a couple of telling points, which makes you think that it's probably the launcher. And I would certainly lean this way is the threading looks slightly different, uh, than say like a, uh, Nakaya threading where a lot of the Nakaya threadings, not all of them are a rush sheet as well. Where in the launcher, they're not so there, or they're a rush sheet in black, not in the color of the pen. Um, so it takes on a different tone, right? And Cheryl has some great screenshots here and it kind of looks like the section of that pen and the general shape, but it could be a generic shape, right? It's a pretty, it's not basic at all. It's a large pen. It's a little bit shiny, like, which makes you think it's got some Arushi. So I think y'all are right. I think, I think you're on it. And, you know, given your description, like we don't have all the details. Maybe this is one of those times where I should just email somebody. Let me see if I can figure out how, how to get in touch with somebody to say, Hey, what pen is this? Um, I think if it was a platinum, um, Azumo, um, I think our, our friends at luxury brands would be on that already. Don't you? Yeah. It sure seems like they would. Yeah. Somebody would be out there taking credit for it. Right. But it's having not the, not that I've ever worked in television or movies, but like, you know, being a big fan and watching enough behind the scenes stuff and seeing interviews with production designers, the prop folks, they're so often just finding what's available. Um, and kind of meeting the, uh, you know, the, the needs of the, of the script with just whatever they can put their hands on. It seems much more likely that it wasn't any kind of, uh, purposeful, you know, product placement or anything like that. Yeah. They literally just like, Oh, this, we need a pen. That's this color to match like the mood of the scene or whatever. So, uh, yeah, they probably just went and found it, but yeah, I, I took my own screenshots, uh, just this morning as a matter of fact, uh, cause I had to do my own side by side as best I could. And you're right. It's, it's rarely in focus. Uh, but I did manage to get one shot where it's laying on the table, um, in front of the person using it, uh, and they, they've set it down. And so you get the kind of the perfect profile of the uncapped pen body and yeah, it's the, the threads are the giveaway because, and even among the watchers like in the, in the dream pen, they have an ebonite version that the, where the threads actually look different. Okay. Um, and then, and then this one, it's a very much, it's, it's, it looks like a pretty good, uh, pretty good match. And I saw a Reddit post too, where somebody was speculating, oh, that's probably just like a gin how like a, like they, they got like a really cheap pen. And, and, but the moment you look at a picture of those, like the whole section is black. Yeah. Um, as opposed to this one where it's not. So. Yeah. Yeah. So this is, this is always a highlight to, to try to sort this out, especially when it's unclear. And, you know, I've had the great fortune of, you know, working with people who have supplied, you know, stationery to do films and TV and, and had to answer some questions around that. And this is, this would be great if I could figure out how the, the, it could just be random. Like you said, you know, maybe they just, I don't know. It's kind of hard to just pick up a launcher. Um, you know, a Rushi, but so like, maybe it was someone's pen that they had. And, you know, they're, they're, you never know with severance, but in this particular scene, it did seem dated, like say maybe like 50 years ago or something like that. I don't know. Like just the idea, but that doesn't really necessarily mean that it was from that timeframe. Well, so much of the show is in this look of kind of mid-century modern and all of that. The, um, I, I could see a scenario where somebody went to a pen shop and said, okay, we need a pen that looks a certain way. Uh, because they knew they were going to do closeups on the, on the handwriting and all that. So, um, that it would have been worth their time to say, okay, yeah, this classic cigar profile is right. Let's go with this one. Yeah. It's a, it's, and it's definitely, uh, I would say it's definitely a YOWO nib in it. Uh, there is a closeup where you can see the kind of the, the, the new YOWO design that doesn't have all the scroll work on it. And they might've swapped it out just to, uh, for the person to abuse it, not my pen, not my pen.
• I mean, I'm glad it wasn't the 18 karat gold nib that's in my, uh, launcher pen. Let's put it that way. So if y'all have any more feedback or we get any more clarity on this, I'll send it, send it my way. Relay pen addict feedback, um, dot com, uh, at relay dot relay, excuse me, pen addict feedback.com. Uh, I get that, uh, all mixed up with our new, newer URL, or you can just email me. Hello at pen act.com. I'd love to hear what y'all think. And if we know definitively and who put this pen in their hands, uh, we will definitely let you know, but, uh, keep the theories coming. Um, yeah, you should use the, uh, you should use the relay connection to Jason Snell to get the Apple PR, uh, question in. Oh, we can try the official channel, right? We can a hundred percent. Like, I'm not joking. I wouldn't be sending off. I would be sending off a specific email. Like I don't have a person, but I know enough people to where I think I could get around the block and get, there's a chance, you know, a 1% chance. It wouldn't just be, uh, you know, firing something off into the ether. I think, uh, we, we might can come up with something. So we'll see. Speaking of coming up with something, if you have any ideas, one place to put them out on the internet is with our good friends over at Squarespace. So this episode of the pen addict is brought to you by Squarespace. This is 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 anything. Your products, services, and even the content you create. Squarespace has everything you need all in one place, all on your terms. With Squarespace, you can make, uh, make the most of design intelligence. Comes with two decades of industry leading design expertise. Those two decades, I think I've been around for most of them. Um, and it makes my website look great. They use cutting edge AI technology to unlock your strongest creative potential. Design intelligence empowers anyone to build a beautiful, more personalized website tailored to their unique needs and craft a bespoke digital identity to use across one's entire online presence. They also allow you to collect payments easily with Squarespace invoicing. So from my perspective, I could set up not only like a retail shop, I could set up a paid newsletter. I could send invoices on products or any type of client work that I was doing. So you can spend more time focusing on growing your business, invoicing clients, invoicing clients, and getting paid for your services. This, uh, this turns leads into clients with proposals, estimates, and contracts, plus simplify your workflow and manage your service business all on one platform. And their SEO tools are great, right? I use this every time I post. I really don't have to do too much to integrate them with my website. So because every Squarespace website is optimized to be indexed with meta descriptions, auto-generated sitemap, and more. So you show up more often to more people in global search engine results. Now, Dan and I didn't plan this, and I only realized this, I don't know, maybe in the last month, just randomly. Enigma Stationery runs on Squarespace. Do you mind giving a little bit of your experience using Squarespace as a commerce platform?

Personal endorsement of Squarespace and its role in Enigma Stationery

• I'd be happy to. And in fact, yeah, I would absolutely volunteer to provide a little personal endorsement. Because, uh, yeah, not only does Squarespace sponsor this show, uh, but they're literally, yeah, they're powering enigmastationery.com. And, um, and I've used the platform kind of like you going back, you know, basically their, their whole existence. I had a lot of personal sites and other things as well. But, uh, when it came time, we, we started Enigma real small with just a couple of items and we, and we kind of transitioned through some other providers and quickly outgrew them as we expanded the assortment. And I said, well, why, why am I trying so hard? I know Squarespace. I've used it before for other things. Let's move to that. We did that a little over two years ago and, uh, it's been fantastic. So we've got, uh, you know, we, we've got a huge amount of items in, in inventory on our website and what you just described in the kind of the official ad read around the SEO integration and all that. Um, the fact that I was able to go in and connect to Google merchant services behind the scenes and it automatically pushes the entire contents of our shop directly to Google's shopping search engine. And we have found, especially over the last year or so, more and more of our, our traffic is coming directly from Google searches. So, and we're right in there with all the big players, uh, all the folks who are much, much larger than us and have deeper marketing pockets and all that. And we spend $0 on, on, you know, paid search. And yet we're consistently getting, especially on some of our harder to find items, um, that we're importing or maybe they're out of stock everywhere else. Like we're getting a lot of that directly from, uh, Google searches specifically because of that integration. So it's, uh, it's been fantastic and, uh, and, and we, we will continue to be with them for, uh, the foreseeable future. It's, uh, it's also quite affordable compared to some of the other, uh, very e-commerce focused options that are out there. Yeah. And you're saving your time and your money by having that SEO integration, right? You're paying for it in your, you know, monthly fees or whatever to Squarespace, but that's so minuscule compared to what you would spend on like an SEO. Um, you know, person or your time, you know, spending, you know, two hours or four hours a week, you know, making sure that your, your SEO is on point, especially for a very niche, uh, website that's selling like some very specific products. Right. And it's, it's all done automatically. Squarespace does a great job. So you can head over to squarespace.com and sign up for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash pen addict to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at squarespace.com slash pen addict and get 10% off your first purchase. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of this show and all of relay. Thanks Squarespace. Yeah. Thank you. Like I, I was not expecting this. You volunteered. Uh, it was, I literally just realized like not long ago, that's like, Oh, this is a Squarespace site. That's pretty cool. So, all right, let's get into your stationery life. Um, and I mean, you know, writing, I'm a very stationery person, but I'm also very stationery person. Um, when did you start getting into stationery at all? Like at some point I would think, you know, now that you own a stationery business, you maybe had some early inklings that you like this stuff.
• Absolutely. I think, you know, sometimes you get to points in life and I, and I, and I think I mentioned earlier, like here I am about to turn 45. Right. And so middle age is a time when you start reflecting on like how you got here and, and, and what's, what's to come and all that. And when I think back about stationery specifically, it's, it seems obvious that we ended up starting the shop because, because it feels like I've been on the path to that since I can remember. Like I can remember being an elementary student, uh, you know, so fourth, fifth grade and having extremely specific opinions about what tools I wanted to use, what kind of notepads, what kind of pens, uh, you know, you know, what kind of, you know, handwriting, uh, you know, this pen with this extra fine nib is what I want for the tiny little block letters that I want to write. Um, I mean, yeah. And, and my, uh, my mom was an office manager for various medical offices for a long, long time in my, in my childhood. And, uh, and so I spent a lot of time shopping for office supplies with her, uh, when she would, she would usually do that like in the evening. And so I'd tag along and I, I developed these, you know, very specific opinions about, Oh, well, yes, it has to be this, you know, this uniball, uh, not this, you know, not some random big pen. Now I've since, I have an appreciation now for the, the classic big crystal, but that's a whole different thing. That's an entire pot. We could just do an entire podcast on that. Absolutely. But, uh, but yeah, so I, I got, got really into, uh, you know, what I was using, what I was taking to school. Like my favorite part of the school year was always school supply shopping in August. Um, and, uh, uh, I will give you a quick, uh, uh, idea of just how into this stuff I was. Uh, I, I have a distinct memory of a period in the fifth grade when, um, I think my, my stepdad at the time must have gotten a new briefcase for his day job. And that meant the old briefcase was no longer used. And so I immediately, uh, said, I'll take it. And, um, instead of taking a backpack to school for some period of weeks in the fifth grade, you know, kids have affectations. Uh, sometimes I was the kid that brought a briefcase to school for a period of time in the fifth grade and literally like set it on my desk and unlatched it and opened it. And I had my pens and my legal pads and, um, and this is the embarrassing part that I'll go ahead and admit. I had a copy of the wall street journal because I thought that was like a very business thing. And I literally had this one copy of this daily newspaper and it stayed in there for like several, uh, several weeks.
• This is the greatest conversation ever. Like I, I am very proud of you for, for younger dance, uh, stationery game committing to the briefcase, bringing it to school. This is amazing. I, I love that so much. And as much as I'm proud of being nerdy now and not ashamed of it in any way, um, let me assure everyone who's listening as if you needed me to tell you, this was not a popular thing to do. I was definitely made fun of brutally for this. Yeah. You had no chance. This was the early nineties in Midwest United States. Uh, anti-bullying didn't exist. Uh, so I was absolutely bullied for this choice. That's all right. You owned it. You owned it. You, you, you brought that same newspaper every day. It got better. Well, I'll put it that way. It got better for sure. Do you remember any specific like stationery products? Was there a specific pen or pencil or notebook or anything that you, that you latched onto back in the day? Uh, there were definitely, I mean, yeah, everything had very specific opinions and we also, we're, we're a household that had a very limited budget. So, um, I had to sacrifice on lots of stuff to then like to, to get the trapper keeper that I wanted. The actual branded one with the cool design on it and all that I had to settle for, uh, you know, kind of store brand just about everything else. Right. And so it was, yeah, whatever, whatever notebooks were, I could be specific about, yeah, I want college rule instead of wide rule, but no, I'm, I'm getting the like 49 cent terrible spiral bound, uh, notebook from, you know, office depot or Walmart or wherever we were shopping that year. Yeah. Just getting that college ruled in that notebook though. That's a huge deal. Like that was the same thing for me is like, you know, maybe I couldn't afford like the, you know, not spending $2 on a notebook. We're going to spend, you know, 39 cents or whatever. But if I, I would search until I could find the college rule cheap enough ones to be able to get, because I just hated regular ruling to this day. Same. Yeah. Wide rule was for babies. Like, like really early on, uh, I was, I was like, no, I'm not, I'm not interested in that at all. But Uniball was definitely a big brand for me at the time. Um, that felt premium. And I probably latched onto one of those from like my mom's office. Um, and it probably like found its way into my bag and came home with me. Back at that, back in that timeframe, I mean, Uniball was, was doing really well. And like the office stationery, um, shelves and things like that. I remember you would actually be able to get Uniball products if you went to the shelf in the office or something like that, which is not really the case these days, unless you're in a very like specific, specific, you know, designery type office. That really actually cares about that. Otherwise it's just mass bulk produced. If not bringing it yourself, which it's always better to bring it yourself. Right.

Transition to Dan's day job and Enigma's business status

• Absolutely. Yeah. These days, I mean, ever since I entered as an adult, like the, the proper workforce, um, and, uh, and for those who don't realize, I do definitely still have a day job. Uh, Enigma is, uh, still, uh, I like to say flirting with profitability. Yeah. Um, you know, we, it is, it is very much, uh, still in the labor of love, uh, category from a, from a profit standpoint. But, uh, yeah, I've been bringing my own office supplies to every job I've had for the last 20 years for sure. Yeah. So that's actually what I want to ask you a little bit about is like these days, like, you know, in your regular day job, what are you using stationery wise? And are you the stationery guy in the office?
• I'm absolutely like, I will frequently connect with like a new colleague. Uh, we have the, the company I work for now, we have a, a, a tendency to when people join, they'll go around and they'll schedule a series of meet and greet meetings with a lot of different folks. And since I lead a department, um, I'm usually on that list for anybody that starts in the, in the human resources area. And so, um, what I find in those meetings is you're trying to kind of search for commonality with a, with a new colleague. Uh, I'm, I'm, I'm delighted sometimes when I find out that somebody I'll notice what like notepad they bring in and they're taking notes. I'm like, aha, I see like, this is a person that has a specific opinion as well. Yeah. Um, and so I, I definitely latch onto that, but for, for me, it's, um, and, and I promise, uh, to the listeners, this is not a plant. Brad doesn't know this, but the number one pen on my, on my, uh, like, what do I use every day is, um, it's actually the Kickstarter spoke, uh, the original spoke pen. Oh, nice. Yeah. I'm, I'm definitely going to get emails about this episode. For sure. It's going to, this is like a love fest. It's a, it's, you know, that's a mutual admiration society, but, uh, which color do you have? Red. Oh, it was, it was always red. Like the moment the Kickstarter launched, I was like, I must have this. And, and I don't know how well I even, I guess I was, I was a podcast listener at the time. So I definitely knew you and your affiliation with it. But, uh, I went back and found the Kickstarter last night to confirm like, this is where I got this pen. Right. Um, but yeah, still, uh, still carrying it today. And the, the built in fidget aspect of it with the magnet, like that's, that's been a common thing for me at the office ever since. And, uh, and I'm not a big clip pen person, but it's one that I'm glad it has the clip because the, uh, notebook cover that I use every day at work is, uh, has kind of loose pen pockets on the front. And if you put a pen that doesn't have a clip in it, it will fly directly out of it. The moment you, uh, pick it up off the desk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know exactly what you mean, where it's just kind of like floating around in there and you're just throwing things. Yeah. I, I'm, as I like to say, I'm clip agnostic. Like I, you know, some pens need a clip, some pens don't, it doesn't bother me if one does or one doesn't. It depends on the situation that I'm in and in your situation. Well, I don't want to throw the pen around the room every time I pick up the notebook. So maybe we'll have a clip on this one. Yeah. I mean, it's a little embarrassing if you're in like your boss's office or you're in like a big meeting room with some very, like you're the lowest ranked person in the room by far. You don't want to pick up your notebook and have your metal pen flying across the glass top conference room table, uh, you know, toward like the COO of the company or something. That's, uh, that's a little embarrassing. It's hard to recover from that. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Um, it might be hard to recover from what I'm about to do, but we're about to have an ad from your business on this episode right now. So another sponsor of this episode of the pen addict is Enigma stationery. Enigma stationery offers unique items made from in-house designs along with top brands and hard to find imports. And this week, Penn's desk select is back as the resident teenager of the Enigma family. 13 year old Penn is always looking for new and exciting items to share with fellow stationery lovers. Penn's desk select is their curated box of new items inspired by a theme. Penn's theme for volume two is bookish bliss, and it features items at the intersection of reading and stationery. Each box includes 20 items with a total value of over $160, but is yours for only $99. 15 boxes are available for pre-order now shipping in April. So head over to enigma stationery.com slash pen addict and use the promo code pen addict two five. That's pen addict and the number two five at checkout to receive a free gift, free U.S. shipping or discount on international shipping on orders of $50 or more. We thank Enigma stationery and Dan and the entire Enigma family for sponsoring us here at the Penn Act. How weird was that for you?
• It's definitely weird to hear it live. I certainly, since I'm a listener to the show, I always hear our ads, but it is weird to sit here and try to be quiet while you read it. So I did, you know, I talked to Dan about this. So I've always wanted Dan on the show, just to give you all a little bit of background on how this all works. And, you know, I'm comfortable having, you know, people who sponsor the show, people who send us products, whatever on the show, because I feel like we have built a very independent voice in this and we, you know, we have sponsors on this show that we believe in what they do. And to me, there's no conflict in having, you know, anyone who sponsors the show on because Dan and I are going to talk about stuff and, you know, I'm going to ask you Enigma questions and there's going to be cool stuff. But separately, Dan's also running a business and you love stationery and you found a really cool environment, hopefully in the pen act and the listenership and all the things that Enigma has brought. So I hope that's okay for everyone. And I think I feel like it is. And it's only going to get better because now I get to pick Dan's brain about Enigma. Is there anything you want to say about the ad? Like, do you want to do your Squarespace part for your own ad here and give us the good feedback? Yeah, well, I'll say this. Well, first of all, if you, Brad, have not gone to the landing page from the last time I updated it, and if you've not seen the pickleball ghost sticker, No. Okay. I'm going to bring that to your personal attention. Okay. Nice. But at any rate, about Pensdesk Select, and I know, Brad, you probably want to talk about how we figure out what items to carry and all that, so we can talk more about that later. Oh, look at the ghost. All right, I found the ghost. But inside the, I left the ad copy the same from our last read a couple of weeks ago because, one, we haven't sold out of the preorder yet, so it's still out there. But, two, we've started receiving the items for this one because that's kind of how we do it. We put the preorder out there while the items are inbound when we've figured out how many we can manage to do in a particular one. And I've got to tell you, there's some cool stuff in here. I've literally got a box under the table where we segregated out when it started arriving this past week, the items that Penn picked for this box. And they've picked some fun stuff. I think it's definitely going to be a good one for those who decide to jump in. And we love the secrecy aspect of it. That's kind of a fun part of, because you're getting stuff that we haven't listed on the store before.
• And we certainly will if there are extras or if it really resonates with people. We'll see if we can order more of it. But there's a decent chance that a good chunk of the stuff in this box will maybe never be on the store. So it might be the only way to get it. And we love that fun part. I love it. I love it. So last call on the ad, y'all head over to enigmastationery.com slash Penn Addict and use the code Penn Addict 25. All right. So let's talk business here for a second.

Origins of the family stationery shop

• What possessed you and your family to open a stationery shop? Well, I think for us it was, and I mentioned earlier, you know, looking back and thinking, oh, we've kind of always been on this road. It sort of makes sense. And that's certainly not just for me personally. It's that realizing that the three of us, myself, my spouse, Michelle, and then our kiddo Penn, and yes, their name actually is Penn. This isn't like a made up thing for the business. Nope. Their name was Penn before we had the business.
• That we all love stationery and we all have different kind of specialties or parts of the hobby that we're more interested in. And then there's also a lot of overlap. But the realization that we all had that shared love of it, I've kind of wanted to have some kind of family business for a really long time. So there's an entrepreneurial kind of spirit in part of my family that I've worked in. My dad's owned and operated pharmacy when I was a teenager. And so there's been these aspects of retail and running your own business that have always kind of been there. And so it's always been in the back of my head, even though I've spent the last 25 years working for other people. And in many cases, for many of those years, including now, working for very large publicly traded companies. But at the same time, most of that time has been working for big retail companies. So I've certainly developed a lot of opinions about retail. And so has Michelle, because Michelle had a similar work experience. But before she decided to leave the corporate life and focus on raising Penn when Penn was young. And then we always kind of felt like there'd be a point at which she would either want to go back to the jobby job, day job kind of thing. Or, oh, wait, why don't we, you know, as the kiddo is older now and doesn't need as much attention all throughout the day, every day. Like, this is a, it's an opportunity to do something that we can build for ourselves. And, and the idea is to build something that can kind of be, you know, a transition point for me one day to, you know, when, when I can, when, when it is fully profitable and sustaining and, and I'm ready to leave the, the fun of the, of the corporate life. Which anybody who has experienced that or is currently experiencing that, you know what I'm talking about. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Very much so. Very much so. And so, yeah, that's kind of, and it was a thing where we were, it was definitely a COVID, early COVID, you know, we're all sitting around the house, not going anywhere, doing a lot of online shopping for pens and other things that thought, you know, maybe this is something we could do. And that started with the pouring of blanks and, um, as just a hobby and, and that sort of, it all grew from there. Yeah. So when you, so what, what year did it actually open? So we, uh, 2021 is when we started, it was spring of 21. So just about four years ago, as we speak now. Okay. Okay. Um, is when we started selling blanks and then about six to nine months later is when we started kind of broadening into a, kind of a, a broader stationery offering. I'm always fascinated with blank makers, uh, because it scares me. I'm a chicken. Um, and it requires lots of, uh, lots of, uh, math and science and risk and moving parts and pressure and things like that. How did, how did that happen? Was that just like, uh, uh, like this is our, this is our shutdown hobby and, uh, we're going to, we're going to make some blanks. Is that, is that how that started? It was a hundred percent that we, uh, you know, we're, we're very crafty. We love to just about everything we get interested in. We tend to go way down the rabbit hole with. And, uh, and the easiest example is we went from, um, wanting to, you know, buy whole bean coffee, uh, and, and grind it fresh to mint for many years. Now we, we roast our own coffee beans now because we went kind of all the way down the way to get the best coffee is to buy green coffee beans and roast them yourself. Um, and so like now that's just kind of a thing we do and don't even think about it. Um, that's, uh, and so that's kind of our nature. And so that when we were getting into pens and in 2019, when we saw you at the SF pen show and went to the live show and all that, and then met lots of pen people bought a lot of our kind of first, uh, some of our more expensive pens for the first time. Um, coming out of that and we were then around the time we're sitting around in early 2020, uh, it was, well, what if we like, Hey, we like these small makers that are out there, you know, they're, they're hobbyists or they're, you know, they're making a handful of pens a month in their garage or whatever. Um, how, what, what if we could get like, not just commission a pen, but what could it make it truly unique? And, and we said, Oh, well, what if we like figured out how to pour our own blanks? And then, then it was a material that, that we made so nobody else could make it. And we could just get a pen for our own collection that no one could ever have that. That sounds cool. Hmm. And, uh, Jonathan Brooks, who's a just absolute delight and a, a blessing to the community overall. Um, he did that video with, uh, fig boot and where they, where he was just basically like, here's how I pour blanks. And he was so forthcoming with, you know, kind of the process and the, the, you know, what components he was using. And, and we all have our little secrets about exactly what like dyes and micas and things we use, but he was so forthcoming with the, like, yeah, here's what resin I use. Here's the molds. Here's the, you know, all that. It was, it really was kind of everything we needed other than the pressure pot, uh, which came at Christmas, uh, 2020. Um, and, uh, so yeah, in January of 21, we, we started just kind of goofing around and it was really for ourselves. And then when we got our blanks in the hands of some makers, the feedback, and we were really just like, Hey, did we do it right? Uh, cause I didn't have a lathe, um, or the, and anywhere close to the talent to even like try to see if, uh, they were full of bubbles or whatever else. And, uh, and the feedback was, yeah, um, Hey, I would, you know, buy these. Nice. And so, so we said, Oh, well maybe we should do that. We're not going anywhere.
• That's amazing. That's amazing. So how did, how did that morph into, all right, we're making blanks and, and like, what else can we do? Do we have like ideas for, you know, more stationery we can get into, into like, you know, what we're seeing now when people go to enigmastationery.com, you know, they see a really fun, amazing curated wide selection of, of stationery. And that, that initial thought was, Hey, let's make some blanks. And, you know, maybe some people like them. So how did we, how did we get, uh, get towards today from, from that point? Well, I mentioned that, uh, you know, one of the things that had us thinking just for ourselves was this fascination with kind of small makers. And so the, the conversation right away when we were, cause that was clearly our, our primary customer when we were selling just blanks. Uh, we're, we're makers. We did have some enthusiasts who were like, Oh, I want to buy your blank and then go take it to a maker. But it was mostly makers that were, that were buying from us. And, um, and so it was, well, how could we, what's a way to expand this in, in a way that kind of highlights, highlights what we're doing and what they're doing. And that got us thinking about the idea of doing like special edition pens where we make a dozen blanks, send them to them. They make a dozen pens. And, and then that's, it's a thing that only exists, you know, that time. And, you know, this ephemeral quality of it, and they would add something that's kind of just ours that, uh, would give people a reason to want to shop with us. And, you know, the, kind of the, that aspect of it, because anybody, like we're not going to be able to compete with a jet pens or, you know, something like that, where they've got a whole staff of people and, and, you know, more capital to carry inventory and that kind of stuff. So we, we quickly focused on like, well, can we do this in a way that is really from our perspective? So kind of the, um, our viewpoint to the stationery world. And so that's, and when we started to figure out that we could directly import products from overseas and, and do, um, you know, stuff like that, that let us start building out the shop in a way where it's like, well, here's things we're actually using that we love that we want to make sure other people who love this stuff know about it. And so that's kind of where it, where it continued to expand from. And that's the way I always, you know, love to, love to hear is like, well, like it's what I like and it's what I'm looking for. And maybe other people like it too. Like I've said that, you know, pretty much my whole career, because, you know, this is a, this is an odd business that we're in. Like when you, when you say these things out loud, you know, amongst, you know, you know, maybe your coworkers at your day job, it's, you'll, you get the side eye or it was like, what, what did, what did you just say? But in, you know, this realm, in the stationery realm, we're obviously all super passionate about it. We love, I know I'm speaking for myself here. I love seeing what vendors and retailers come up with that surprises me. I still have, I still get enjoyment from myself thinking about the time that you sponsored the show and I found the cat sarcophagus on your, on your webpage. I still think about this all the time because this shouldn't happen. And this is exactly what I want, right? Like that's the way I think about a lot of our businesses and our friends that are making stationery or writing about stationery is like, it's really cool to see what other people come up with. And I think that's something y'all do very, very well at Enigma. So who is mostly responsible for finding the stuff at Enigma these days? So it sounds like a cop-out, but it's truly all three of us. Like we, I think that's fair. I think some people, some people are like, yeah, yeah, it's a family business. Sure. But like one of you is doing all the work, right? So I'm going to vouch for you right here. Like I have met all three of you. I know you all, I've seen you at pen shows. I absolutely believe that's the case. Um, when you say it's definitely like between all three of us. Yeah. Well, and anybody who has, you know, so I'm, I'm definitely the, uh, I call myself a secret introvert because I, I, I sometimes appear to be extroverted, but I'm, I'm, I'm not. Um, but at the same time I'm more talkative than, than pen or Michelle. Uh, but anybody who has, there's something special about a pen show. Anybody who's come up to our table at a show and shown interest in a product and pen was standing nearby, uh, they find out real quick, just how deep the subject matter expertise go with a pen. And Michelle's the same way. Like we each, you know, for the products that we're, that, that we kind of bring to the table and we each, you know, we, we're going, we go to overseas, you know, we go to big companies, you know, us distributors of large brands. But the thing we've really spent more and more energy on is finding small makers and not just pen makers, but people who are designing stickers, they're making, um, you know, greeting cards, they're doing, you know, like, you know, magnetic bookmarks to, uh, you know, with, with funny sayings on them, like, you know, all the, and, and mummy cat, uh, blind boxes, you know, like, and, and so, yeah, this, this stuff, like in our, our first filter is like, am I excited? About this personally. And so, yeah, pretty much everything that's on the shop is something that one of us is probably really into. Yeah. And that makes it really hard to say no. That's, I imagine that part of managing retail is like, when do we stop? I, I like everything at some point I would like to sell it too. That's a super, super big challenge for all of us. Yeah. Well, and our number one, you know, filter on, I'll zero in on like the imported stuff. So we imported a lot of stuff directly from Japan and there's some, there's some cool, you know, avenues that enable that. Um, it's a little harder with the tariff activity that's happening in the U S right now, but, uh, we'll weather that storm with all our fellow competitors. Yep. Um, but the number one filter we have is like, can we sell this at a price? People will buy that we will actually make some amount of money on it. Cause, um, cause we can't just, you know, be a nonprofit. Right. Right. And put all the work into, you know, to sell it at no markup. And so, uh, so yeah, we have, we have kind of some, you know, standard formulas where we'll, you know, cause all the time we spot stuff on the Japanese site that we do a lot of shopping on and, and, uh, we'll be, one of us will be like, this is amazing. And we're like, oh my gosh, I agree. Oh wait, that run it through the formula. Can we sell that for $60? Oh no, nobody's going to pay $60 for that. So, okay, well that's a cool item, but that's not a good idea. Not for us. And so, and the realities of selling online and what's it going to cost to ship that? Cause we do flat rate shipping for our standard, uh, shipping. So we can't afford to, you know, eat $10 on a, on the shipping for an order that only made us $5, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Shipping notebooks is great. Everybody.
• Yeah. Anybody who, uh, anybody who wants to, uh, really get us on a one is when you do standard shipping and you buy a whole bunch of notebooks. It's my favorite. Uh, I can, I can tell you that it's probably going to come to you via UPS ground if you're in the U S and we're going to lose money on it.
• So yeah, like I, I just find even probably is probably more accurate. Oh, totally. Totally. But yeah, it's, uh, shipping's a fun game. We all get to play. It's so enjoyable. It doesn't keep me up at night at all. Well, you, you, at least for the most part are shipping lightweight things. It's true. Since, since you are no longer in the paper, the big stacks of paper business. Yep. Um, you know, that's, uh, the pens aren't too bad. Even when we had not go in, even though we had paper products, if we're selling cases, like, yeah, I'm, I'm rarely cracking eight ounces on anything. And like people who ship a lot know that like four ounces and eight ounces are like these huge breaking points. And, you know, like we're, we're, we're in, we're okay as far as things go, but things get loose real quick. And then you start seeing numbers that don't add up and you're like, wow, that's crazy. I feel for Myke on that. Like I adore the sidekick notebook. I literally use one every day. Um, but yeah, the, the shipping aspect of that and you add an international, like, I mean, I know they've got, they've got help from, uh, the folks that, uh, um, cotton bureau that are, uh, fulfilling, but, but yeah, it's, it's a, it's a tough game. And so many customers are just like, um, they've been fooled by all the companies that go ahead and just lose money on, on quote unquote free shipping. Right. Right. Um, but anybody who took a college econ class knows that there's no such thing as a free lunch and that applies to shipping as well. Yep. Yep. Um, boy, we can have, there's another podcast for us. We have so far, we have Vic crystal podcast and we have shipping podcast. Although I've threatened Myke with a shipping pod, a shipping and logistics podcast before. So yeah, lots to say on that. So let me get to our last sponsor for this week's episode, because I have more, uh, Enigma questions. I want to, um, to ask and, and see what else you have up your sleeves over there. But let me talk about our good friends over at express VPN. So this episode of the pen act is brought to you by express VPN in the real world. If you're looking for privacy, you close the door, but online we'll leave doors open everywhere. We go using the internet without express VPN is like never closing doors behind you because all of your traffic flows through their servers. Internet service providers, including mobile network providers know every single website you visit. And in the U S ISPs are legally allowed to sell that information to advertisers. So express VPN reroutes a hundred percent of your traffic through secure encrypted servers. So your ISP can't see your browsing history. There are loads of reasons to choose express VPN. It hides your IP address, which makes it extremely difficult for third parties to track your online activity. It's easy to use. Just fire up the app and click one button to get protected. And it works on all devices, phones, laptops, tablets, and more. So you can stay private on the go. It's easy to see why it's rated number one by top tech reviewers like CNET and the verge. So I've used express VPN for years. I've been traveling already to LA and Philadelphia this year in 2025. Express VPNs on my phone, my laptop, my tablet. When I'm in the airport, express VPNs on. When I'm in the hotel, express VPNs on. It just makes me feel protected and private when I'm heading out on the road. So you too can protect your online privacy by visiting expressvpn.com slash penaddict. That's expressvpn.com slash penaddict. And you can get an extra three months of Express VPN for free. So head to expressvpn.com slash penaddict. Our thanks to Express VPN for their support of this show and all of Relay. So we were talking about sourcing right there. And you have a storefront and you're doing a lot of work on retail. I'm just wondering how much time you spend sourcing products, right? Like I know how much time you're spending like putting together a product listing and taking product photography and writing copy. Like it's not your full-time job, but it kind of is at the same time because I know how much it takes. But just in sourcing, like are y'all doing something probably every day trying to find new fun items? There's this like background process that I feel like is always running for all three of us where we're kind of thinking about what we might need to go find or something we saw that we want to go back to. But we definitely don't track how much, you know, Myke wouldn't like this and CGP Grey definitely wouldn't like this. But I'm anti-time tracking for this particular work because it would be so depressing to know exactly the massive amount of time we spend out there searching and sourcing products because we have such a huge diverse group of suppliers with way like massive variance in the level of technology involved. Some where it's like, if you want to order this pen, send me an email with like which ones you want. And others where it's, I mean, there are literally ones who would prefer that we faxed something in, but I'm not doing that in 2025. So, yeah, the quality of their websites and all that wide variance. So, yeah, that's that adds a lot of time in. But we actually spent a lot of time with one of us screen sharing to our big screen TV and the three of us sitting on the couch and looking at like filling a card up at a particular source or something like that. Or one of us saying like, hey, I've got some I found some cool stuff. Let me show it to you. So we use the screen share function on our various devices a lot to do that all together. So there are frequently evenings where it's like, OK, we've watched that episode of Severance. Now let's spend 45 minutes looking at website X, not literally X, website ABC.com to look at products.
• It's just so cool. Like the whole family's involved in this. It's like I'm just sitting here smiling when you're saying, hey, we screen share on the TV. We look at products. It's like, that's so cool. I just I love hearing that. And like the results show like y'all have like really good taste and really fun ideas and and just picking out all the products. So it's it's always fun to see. We challenge each other in like a very positive way, too. Like it's like good natured ribbing on like you like that. That's terrible. Nobody's going to buy that, you know. Oh, yeah. Yes.
• There ever did. Does someone ever win? Do y'all ever like pick out like three stickers or three washi and whoever whoever sold the most? They're the winner of the we definitely have memories for whose idea things were. So when we sell out of something or when something just sits on the shelf and we have to, you know, mark it down and and, you know, put it in the clearance shop to get it out the door or stick it in a lucky box, which is that is a thing that happens sometimes.

Experiences and reflections on attending pen shows

• There's yeah, we definitely remember, you know, and take credit for our wins and and give each other a good good hard time. Exactly. Exactly. The ones that are wins. Exactly. So you've done a few pen shows over the last few years. How has that been for Enigma? Because I'm starting to see more shops that are more I just call them stationery shops like you. You're not like a pen vendor, like solely a pen vendor or a pen maker, or you're not in the what a lot of stationery users would call the traditional retail mode where you have like all the pen brands and all the inks and things like that. You have a good mixture of everything. So how have pen shows been for you over these past few years? Yeah, for us, it's they've been great. First of all, like it's, you know, even the part of it that's just, you know, meeting new customers. We've no matter what event we do, whether it's a pen show, we do some other we've done some other kind of in-person events here in the Bay Area. And every time we do an event, we see the orders that come into the website, you know, two, three months following an event. And we can see the where we're shipping to and know that, oh, I bet this person found it, even if they don't fill out the little form when they put the order in. We know that that's how we acquired that customer is because they became aware of us at that event. And then, of course, we have some amazing, you know, folks who come back over and over again. And Michelle will love it if I say shout out to Ken in Sacramento because he's a repeat orderer and a great supporter.
• And so we notice that. And, you know, Michelle, it's usually Michelle who's filling the orders and dropping them off. And she writes a handwritten note on every order we send out. And so, you know, we love appreciating those repeaters. But, yeah, we get a lot of them at a pen show to begin with. And for us, the challenge with any in-person show for us is what do we take? What do we not take? Because we can only fit even that. So last year at SF and we're going to have the exact same spot this year. So it's like four tables. We're in kind of an alcove in the hallway. We had a lot of fun merchandising it last year. So we jumped on it to get the same spot again this year. But even in that big space, we're only going to be able to bring, I'd say, two to three hundred items. Mm-hmm. You know, and that's all the little, like, you know, sticker sheets and big plush and blind boxes and fountain pens. But that's, you know, that's 15% of what we have. So we spend a month before a show like SF in our workshop. And we have a separate space that we lease that's a warehouse and slash office kind of studio space. And so we will literally mark out on the floor and set up tables and say, okay, what fits? Yeah. And kind of narrow it down and what's going to be relevant to people at a show. And it's been real fun as people who like to go to shows ourselves. Like, how can we kind of complement what we think people are going to see at other tables around the show? And, yeah, that's been, I mean, we sell more in the three days of the SF Penn Show than any other time of the year for sure. So it's a huge show for us. We're so fortunate to have it right here in our backyard. Shout out to the volunteer team that does all the work to put it on every year. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great show. It's no wonder. It's a lot of people's favorite show in the U.S. And on that, you know, Penn Show calendar. So it's definitely a highlight. And I'm glad it's worked out really, really well for y'all. Y'all had a great layout last year with, you know, a mixture of space and openness. And then you can, you know, you're allowed to get a little bit vertical. You know, like you're not just selling pens that need to be spread out on a table for everyone to see all the pens. You can, you know, you're stationery and stickers and washi. You can get a little bit vertical. So I don't know. I thought y'all had a really good layout last year. It was super, super fun. So what's next? Like, you know, I have to ask this question, right? Like you've been doing this for, what, going on four years now? And, you know, you're seeing some growth. You know, you say you're not profitable. And like, you know, I understand how that goes for sure. And it's your side gig. But like, you know, what do you want to see from Enigma going forward? What does the family want to see from Enigma going forward? Yeah, well, and it's, you know, wanting to answer that question. We, about a month ago, did something for the first time. We had a strategy retreat. Oh, nice. So we actually went out of town, booked a night in a hotel in a town we'd never been to about an hour and a half from the house. And literally went and got the big flip chart pad from Staples, like I would do at one of my day job strategy meetings. And we spent about six hours broken up into kind of two long sessions in our hotel room with the flip chart pad. You know, the, I highly recommend, by the way, the 3M sticky note flip chart pad. It's a classic. Nice. So brought that some skills from my corporate world into our business and said, hey, let's break it down. You know, what are our objectives for the year? Let's review sales and traffic to the website and, you know, the results of our marketing over the last couple of years. And yeah, we, we did this deep dive, which I think especially Penn was very skeptical about spending this amount of time. Sure. And, and focus doing this. But we did have some fun too. I created a photo scavenger hunt that, that we all went on.
• Me and Chad GPT cooked that up. That was, that was a fun break in the middle of the strategy session. But we came out of it with some really clear, like more focused than we've ever been on what are we, where are we going to put our energy this year? Because for us, the hardest part about it is we, I talked about curating the items on the site, but curating what we put our time into. Sure. Because that's our most finite resource as much as capital is, can be challenging for a small business. It's absolutely the, where can we put our time? And so we, we came out with some really great ideas on some new exclusives that we, some items we want to go create, some collaborations that we're very interested in that we're already pursuing that'll hopefully bear fruit, you know, in about six months time. And, and how we want to go deeper on our assortment that really focuses on, I mentioned those small creators a lot. So, so we're really, you know, going even, even more kind of in on that aspect of it where you might not see us like we don't carry, you know, Lamy. That's not because we don't like Lamy. It's just because, well, one, I don't know who the distributor is and we're not going to be able to compete on price with all the other folks with Lamy anyway. So, um, instead of putting energy into that and carrying a bunch of inventory that everybody else has, we'll, we'll find, you know, a dozen new makers like our, our folks at the wolf shop that make the Renaissance style art prints with the cats. In very like finding makers like that, like, that's what we're going to put a lot of more energy into this year. Um, and also, um, relaunching some, some social that we've kind of been neglecting. So, um, I I've, our YouTube channel has been kind of dormant for about, about 18 months. And, uh, and I just, the, the microphone I'm using to talk to you and the camera that's above the desk that is not on because I am not camera ready as we're talking. Um, that it's mostly a top down view of the desk. I'm not as brave as you to be on, uh, have my face, but we'll be, uh, we'll be kind of relaunching, uh, some live streaming on YouTube and, uh, doing that, uh, probably just the next month or so. And so that's, that's where a lot of the energy is going to go this year. Yeah. It's, it, it's been really fun to watch, especially, you know, knowing you as I, as I have, you know, for years online prior to Enigma Stationery and just, you know, talking stationery. You know, exchanging messages and then seeing like you and the family get involved in something like super fun and, you know, really cool in this community. And, you know, the support y'all lend to, to everyone in the community and hopefully there's support you're receiving back from the community helps this, you know, Enigma Stationery keep moving forward and keep growing and keep getting, you know, more cat sarcophaguses for me to, to have fun with. Like it's, there's, there's nothing more that I want these days than had to have fun with my stationery because, you know, we, we, we need that escape and Enigma provides one of the best, you know, for, for my money in, in the, in the business. So Dan, I really appreciate you and Michelle and Penn for everything that y'all do. Um, this has been really, really fun. Any, any last shout outs you need to give before I let you go? Um, well, I should say that, uh, the, the aforementioned Penn's desk select the, the box, that's a direct result of that strategy retreat. So Penn had been nice, you know, not focusing on picking a theme for box number two, cause we did box number one, uh, last year. And what we did was we spent some dedicated time coming up with, uh, helping Penn brainstorm like a dozen themes. And we actually have a schedule now for those boxes to come out regularly for the next, uh, uh, probably going to do three before the end of this year. So, uh, so those will be, you know, having, being more purposeful about that. And then I'm already working on ink vent 2025.

Announcement of Inkvent 2025 plans

• I literally wrote a note, uh, about ink vent 2025. That's all I'm going to say. Yeah. And, uh, and I'll, I'll commit, uh, publicly to this for the first time we've been doing ink vent for a few years. In fact, ink vent 2025 for enigma is going to be the first time that everybody who buys the set is going to get the exact same set of inks. Um, and we've, we've had to kind of piece together somewhere around a dozen different sets. We've, we've had inks that everybody gets out of 25 inks. We've had probably a dozen of those where everybody gets the same ones on a certain day. Um, but then for the rest of the month, it's been, um, just however many samples we can get out of the handful of bottles of a particular ink we've got, but I'm sourcing them further in advance this year. That one's kind of more my project than, uh, um, than, than Penn and Michelle. And so, uh, I'm, I'm getting enough of everything we're going to feature to, uh, to make sure that all 50 sets can have the same 25 inks. So that's, I'm excited about that. Cause I think it'll enable people to, you know, share more about what they're seeing as they open and sample and all that kind of stuff. I'm smiling along with you right now because, you know, we're at the first second of March and like, you have to lock in your ink pen like right now, like you need to know what you're doing. And it's like, I feel that in my bones. It was like, yes, we are planning for December right now. Oh yeah. I've got, I think I've got eight or 10 slots pretty much figured out. Yeah. And, uh, and it'll, it'll get harder as we go because it'll be, we like to have a mix of colors and brands and all that. For sure. So for sure. I can only imagine what the spreadsheet looks for that or the notebook or, or however you're tracking that that's gotta be. Well, let me tell you with the sets labeled a through K, uh, in last year, the year before, um, it was an ugly spreadsheet.
• All right. Well, Dan, I really, really appreciate you. Uh, this has been an awesome episode. Best of luck to you, Michelle and Penn with Enigma. Where, where are we going to see you on the road next? Is it San Francisco, the, the next show for y'all? Yeah, it is. Uh, you know, as, as Penn requested a couple of years ago, Hey, can we not spend every vacation doing, uh, uh, work? Yes. Fair. Um, and I said, you know what, that's excellent feedback and, uh, you know, life, uh, work-life balance advice from a, at that time, a 10 or 11 year old. So, so yeah, we've, we've kind of scaled back the in-person, uh, plans and, uh, yeah, we'll be at SF in August. That'll be, and it's a Labor Day weekend this year, which every, every so many years, you know, that last weekend of August is also a Labor Day weekend. So, so hope to see maybe more people this year who can, who can make that work with it being a, being a long holiday weekend. Yeah. Well, it'll, it'll be amazing as always. San Francisco is a great show. I'm probably not going to be there this year. I'm not going to say definitively, but, uh, it's looking like my schedule is not going to work out for it this year, but I know I will see you soon. See the rest of the family soon. Um, and that's it for this week's episode of the pen addict podcast. Thank you to all our sponsors, Squarespace, Enigma, stationery, express VPN. Thanks to all of our listeners. And thanks to Dan, especially for joining me this week until next week. Say goodbye, Dan. Goodbye, Dan.