Editing The Pen Addict 655/transcript (section)

== 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 Pen 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, Pen 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 Pen 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 Pen 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 Pen's desk select the, the box, that's a direct result of that strategy retreat. So Pen 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 Pen 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.