Editing The Pen Addict 262/transcript (section)

== KWZ Inks ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So, I had this opportunity that came to me, I don't know, a couple of months ago. Actually, sooner than, more recent than you would think to get published in a magazine. But I had an opportunity to be, have a small little feature in a Japanese stationery magazine. The store is called Shumibun, I believe. And they do a magazine, a quarterly magazine. And friend of the show and friend of mine and friend of the community, Bruce Eamon, who is on Twitter at ThinkOnPaperCo. He is big in Japan himself. He's the one who we've shared before where he's done stationery podcasts in Japan. He's fluent in Japanese. He grew up, you know, in that area. And traveled around and traveled around and is over and back over in Japan, you know, several times a year. And he's big into the stationery industry over there. So, he has a lot of contacts. And this magazine asked him, he's like, hey, we want to do an article on you being Bruce about why he loves Japanese stationery. And he's like, you know, I've got this friend that's really into Japanese stationery. And according to Bruce, they were like, really? There's people in the US that are into Japanese stationery? They were like, really? They were like, kind of dumbfounded. That how big of a thing Japanese stationery is. At least the way he was wording it and the way they were talking to him, I thought it was interesting that they were like, kind of shocked. So, they ended up putting together an article with four not native Japanese Japanese pen fans. And that's what ended up publishing in the article. And I didn't know when it was going to come out, but I have the full spread of my page that we'll link in the show notes. And it's got me, Bruce, and then two other people from the article. So, we have the full two-page spread on there that you can download and check it out. It's really neat. They asked for, you know, just kind of what I was into. I'll have to actually pull up and see what the text was. But they asked for some pictures of my Japanese pens. So, there's some of my photographs that I've taken of my sailors. You know, Sailor King of Pens and the Sailor Pro Gear and the Sailor Pink Love. And then the Pilot Custom Heritage 912 that had the Mackie artwork on. And then a sample of my writing with the Platinum 3776 niece. And then they just kind of said, you know, where I'm from, what I enjoy, my favorite pens, things like that. So, I'll have to post the translation on the pen addict of the information that I put out there. But Bruce is on the left-hand side of the page. I'm on the right-hand side of the page. And then there's two others on there as well. And actually, Conrad, who's in there, when you pull up this article and see it, that's Conrad from KWZ Inc. So, he's big in Japan as well. So, he has a whole different article just on the KWZ Inks.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Let's see where the KWZ comes from now. Yes, yes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, that is Conrad Zorowski from Poland. And that is Mr. KWZ Inks. So, he's in there as well. It was just a really neat opportunity. And Bruce was funny. He's like, they asked me for this and they need it in like three days. Like, they need it now because they're getting ready to go to Publisher and they want to do this. I'm like, no problem. I can make this happen because this is a cool opportunity I didn't want to pass up.

'''Myke Hurley:''' My favorite thing when I saw the image is like my thought of you showing off the pens that you have. You're like, I see. I know what I'm talking about. I got, look at all these bung box pens I have.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And they were, they actually came back to Bruce. They were like, wow. And they were like, he's really into it, right? And so, it was just kind of funny hearing Bruce translate their thoughts of number one, people like this exist. And number two, wow, that's some pretty cool stuff. So, it was just fun. And, you know, I had a good time doing it. And Bruce was a saint for asking me and, you know, corralling all the information on a very, very tight turnaround schedule. So, I'm glad to see that it came to pass and it looks fantastic. So, yeah, very cool. That's really awesome. That's really, really great. I need to get a hard copy of it. So, I'm going to have to work on that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, man. I was just spending a few moments like looking around and trying to work out how to get a copy. And it does not seem easy. I did find like, it was funny. It was when I was like looking at it and I found like a sample of a digital version, which I was just clicking around. And when I got to like the reader page, you have to click backwards, right? Right. It just broke my brain for a second. Like, you start on page one and go left.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, the arrow points to the left.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I was like, oh, yeah, now I get it. Yeah. Silly me. So, I want to do more. Bruce is like, it came out great. Now, your next step is to make a trip to Japan.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, we'll have to effort that one day. One day. I would love if we could go together. Oh, wouldn't that be incredible? Yeah. That would be really, really awesome if we could do that one day. One day. That's like grand plan level three or something.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. That's like the 10-year anniversary.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, wouldn't that be amazing?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Even five years. I mean, we passed that, right? Well, yeah. We passed that. So, 10 years. I mean, five years was a walk in the park. So, we can get to 10. Right. We can get to 10. No problem. Talk about a walk in the park.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, our good friends at Lamy have apparently decided that the Black Amber is doing so well, the Lamy 2000 Special Edition, that they're actually reverse course and are allowing retailers to discount it now. How much of a trash fire is this at this point?

'''Myke Hurley:''' At this point, I feel like I'm kind of grabbing the popcorn on watching a car crash. Like, that's how it feels right now. It's just like, well, let's see how this one plays out, right? Like, it's just like a slow motion moving accident that's occurring. Not that Lamy are in trouble, but just watching this unfold has been so inevitable, but yet they couldn't really seem to understand it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, do you have your popcorn handy?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, I sure do.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Lamy is redoing their distributor process. I don't know what that entails, but the U.S. distributor is no longer the U.S. distributor, and I think this is happening worldwide. So, something's going on, and I don't know what. So, they're changing distributor. Well, yeah, but I don't know what that means. Are they bringing it all back in-house? Are they hiring someone else? But all I know is the U.S. distributor is no longer the U.S. distributor of Lamy. So, and it's not just them, right? It's a worldwide thing that's happening with many distributors, or no longer distributors, and no one knows what that means. No one knows what's going on with Lamy. Lamy, they're just so weird right now. It's kind of unfathomable. They're just doing just, every week it's something weird. Lamy's done a weird thing, and it's been like this for, what, at least a year now, if not a little bit more, where they're just continuing to be weird, and I just don't, it's certainly not the end of it. You know, when you have a big worldwide distributor change, something's up, I would think, but I don't, what's up, I don't know. That part, I don't know, but we'll see. But yeah, if you ever, if you ever wanted the Lamy 2000 Black Amber, you can now get it at a pretty large discount. So what is that? That's like 40% off, maybe? Something like that. Something like that. And, you know, I know the Goulais had been pushing for them to discount it. They were never able to get Lamy to agree to a discount, so they said, fine, we'll do it ourselves. We'll just give away a Lamy 2000 standard pin with this pin, because we can't move, we can't sell it. So, you know, Lamy's now allowed for that discount, but, you know, it just goes back to the decision-making process in the beginning. Like, having such a special pin and failing so miserably on the design of it, it kind of stinks, because this could have been a massive win for them, and it's just now going down as a huge failure.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The idea of them changing their distributor thing isn't necessarily a bad idea, right? Like, it's just interesting. Like, I think when we're talking about this, it's like, oh, here's a thing that is happening, which will have ramifications of some kind to one of the largest pen brands. Like, it could be a good thing. Like, for all we know, a lot of the weirdness that we've been seeing is coming because of the U.S. distributor in some way, right? Like, we don't, you know, I don't know how much I know about that, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, and I don't know any more than I've said, you know, so I don't know any more than that. So, yeah, who knows? Who knows? But it's just, you know, just wait until tomorrow, and it'll be something else. So, it'll be, this is a great topic to bring up the wiki right now, because you can thread these Lamy business discussions in the Pen Addict Wiki, which we'll provide the link for in the show notes and at the end of this blog, at the end of this podcast. Yes, I didn't, I didn't write this podcast. I'm talking, so it's not a blog. It was fun to watch you go through that little moment there, though. Well, somehow I caught it, and I'm really not sure how, because I don't catch a lot of things.