Editing The Pen Addict 131/transcript (section)

== Site Update ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So this scaling, Brian, came to a head in the past several weeks, and you went through an enormous, enormous site update. So why don't you tell us the reasons why now is the time to go through this huge upgrade at Goulet Pens and get the site to where you want it and some of the challenges that you've hit in making this huge update.

'''Brian Goulet:''' Sure. Happy to talk about that because this is something that's affected a lot of people recently, and there's been some very passionate discussion out there in social media about our website change. You know, first thing I want to say is that I did not intentionally want to make anyone's life harder. That is an unintended consequence of just change in general. You know, we've been working on this website build for a year and a half, and this isn't just a website update. This was a whole new platform, all new architecture, all new developers, and this is literally a new platform too. What happened was we had our old site hosted on Volusion, which has about 50,000 e-commerce stores, and we were one of the bigger ones. We worked our kind of climbed our way up, and we had really kind of maxed out like every capability that that site had, and, you know, we did not have a mobile store. We could not upgrade our review system. You know, there was just no responsive design. There was just a lot of limitations that we were starting to hit as we wanted to grow. There was no opportunity to do native apps in the future. You know, we were hitting walls, and so even though the site was pretty great for where we were, you know, a couple of weeks ago, we realized that we were never going to be able to take it further on the existing site. Right. So what happened was Volusion has a new platform on their – it's their enterprise-level platform. It's called Mozu, and I guess I'm giving them a free plug right now. They'll be happy about that. But it's for the big dogs, you know what I mean? And we are like one of the small ones on the site. Like they launched a site a couple weeks before ours that has 500,000 products. You know, like that's an e-commerce store, you know, and so really we're the fourth store to launch on their platform. And what happened was they saw what we did on Volusion, and they saw how we did our recurring billing system with InkDrop. They saw the custom tools that we built with the Nibnook and Pen Plaza, and they saw, you know, the Swab Shop and how we were programming things, and we were doing so many workarounds that were never originally intended. And, you know, that code is like 10 or 12 years old on their site. You know, you have 50,000 stores on there. You're not just going to change that overnight. You know what I mean? So like in order for us to get kind of the changes that we wanted to go, we knew that we were going to have to move at some point somewhere. So we've been, you know, trying out, you know, trials of Magento and Shopify and Spree. And just we've been doing all this stuff for years on kind of behind the scenes, and nothing was really better. There were like trade-offs, like some things were better, other things were more painful than Volusion, and nothing was really better. But what happened was Mozu came to us and they said, hey, look, you guys have been rocking it on Volusion. We've got this opportunity for you to be an early adopter on our new platform. And what that means is you're going to be a little bit like astronauts. You know, it's going to be a little bit painful as we work out the kinks, but here's where we're going to be able to set you up in the future. And so it's OpenAPI, and there's all kinds of amazing things. Like basically whatever we want to do in the future, we'll be able to do because of the way the architecture is built on this site. Now, that said, it's still an amazingly complex site. And there's a lot, a lot that is involved in a website migration and an e-commerce website migration at that. I think you probably have a fairly tech-savvy audience here, so they can appreciate where I'm coming from with this. Anybody who's in web development, you know that crap just goes wrong. Like you cannot foresee some of the complications that happen. And like we had so many things that we had were perfect in our testing environment. As soon as we got to production, random crap started breaking all over the place. And it was like, what is it? Like, where is this coming from? And so like we got a team of developers that are working almost around the clock that are trying to fix these bugs. And, you know, Rachel and I are kind of running ourselves ragged a little bit at this point just to try to get as many things fixed as possible. And it's, the thing that's complicated about it is it's not just one problem. You know, it's, if you're using this browser on this device and you have an account that is so old and you transferred over something from your old wish list, this weird random thing is going to happen. You know what I mean? So it's like, that's what happens. And it's like left and right. So like every single issue that comes up, it's like, all right, what browser are you using? And you got to like be a detective every single time until you can see a pattern and kind of see. And then we can tell our developers like, okay, this is the issue, the pattern that we're seeing. And they're like, okay, okay, okay. And they can go into the code and fix these random things. You know what I mean? And it's like, that's what's going on behind the scenes. So like, honestly, it's a bit of a miracle that like the internet works at all. You know what I mean? And like, that's kind of the big secret for like anybody who does development is like the internet is fragile. It really is. But to have an e-commerce site that we, you know, we were able to migrate all of our existing customer information. So you're like your order history and all that stuff. That's like half the migration right there. You know, and then we've got, you know, 3,000 products. We've got about 30,000 images that we had to move over. We integrated the blog into the website as well, which was a whole other thing. So it's like, you know, it's an amazingly complex dance that we're doing. And the fact that we got some bugs and stuff, like, it's been really stressful because I know it's coming at like the worst time for people to, right before the holidays too. Originally, our launch date was in June. And it got pushed out and pushed out and pushed out and pushed out. That's why we didn't announce that we had a new site coming until it was like eminent because it was like we did not want to be that company that said, hey, we're developing a new website. Oh, wait, next month. Oh, wait, next month. Oh, wait, next month. You know, so we intentionally kept it secret for this whole time until we like had to cancel InkDrop and stop the recurring program because we had to, you know, basically change everything about it for the new site. And it was like it was to the point where like we couldn't keep it secret anymore because, you know, people would be left in the dark about InkDrop. So that's kind of like where we are now is we're working on these bugs. Like seriously, stuff is getting fixed every day. We are handling those things. We love getting the feedback. It's hard to get the feedback, but we love getting it, you know. And, you know, that's something that we are trying desperately to work through right now. But the reason for it, kind of the overall purpose behind the whole site move, it wasn't because we had like some competitor that's on our heels that we're worried about. It wasn't because we're greedy and we just want to be huge. Really, it's because, you know, the kind of the spirit of what we created our site in the first place was to just me and Rachel, we have ideas, we have gifts, we are really passionate for our fountain pen community and just we're really into this stuff. We have things that we still want to do. We have ideas. We want to take it further. Not because we want to run a bigger company or we want to get recognized for anything. You know, I don't even care about that stuff. For me, it's just I want to do the best that I can do with what I've been given. That's kind of like my overall life philosophy, right? Stewardship. So for me, this website was an opportunity that came about that I knew was kind of a once in a lifetime thing. And I knew it was going to be hard and I knew some people wouldn't understand it. And it saddens me that these issues, you know, I know we're losing customers for life over some of these issues. But I hope that we've deposited enough into the trust bank, as I call it, so that people are not going to leave forever. They'll see that this is a temporary thing. And right now we're making some withdrawals out of that trust bank. We've been building it up for five years. I've been putting out videos for five years, trying every single customer interaction to add value to their lives. You know, and yes, I get rewarded with that when people buy from my store. That's how I stay in business. But from this point forward, it's more about trying to help people, trying to further fountain pens. And, you know, realizing that, like, I'm not just some guy in his bedroom anymore. Like, people actually listen to what I say. And I have to be very intentional about some of the moves that I make. You know, just because, you know, there are people that look up to my situation. And I don't take that lightly at all. So the website was an opportunity for us to move forward for the next five years so that five years from now we can have conversations on this podcast again on episode 3511. Right. Or whatever. For sure. And we can say, man, do you remember how crazy it was five years ago when you changed your website in the middle of the 2014 holiday season? That was insane. But look at what's come of it now. And, you know, some of the things that we've got now, like even some of the wins that we have right now, we have a review system that I'm so excited about because it's a review system that we were able to customize on like a per product basis. So for ink, you can go in, when you review an ink, you can talk about the water resistance. You can talk about the flow. You can talk about the dry time. Those are all things that you can review. So my grandiose vision is to make it an even better resource for the fountain pen community in general to be able to share each other's knowledge and benefit from other people who've experienced these products and have something to weigh in on. You know, product reviews are extremely important. But what's a four-star rating on a bottle of ink? You know, you don't really know. But when you can rate the water resistance and you got 100 reviews of water resistance, you can say, yeah, you know what? The manufacturer doesn't say it's water resistant, but it is. Because 100 people that are using it say it is. You know, I'm limited in my resources. I'm one guy. I can't review 600 inks. But the whole fountain pen community can. And if I can build an environment that can allow people to share that information in one place, that is pretty powerful. And that's the kind of things that I'm thinking about in the next five years is building the kind of the community and giving them one place. And it's very convenient that it's one place where they can buy my products, right? That's, again, I'm not trying to make that a secret. Like, I have no ulterior motive here. I keep my company running when people buy from my store. Right. That's the kind of, like, relationship that I have here is, like, you know, I will provide you the best experience I possibly can. And you, if you think that it's worth it, buy my products at my store. But even still, you can read my reviews and you can go buy it on Amazon if you want to, you know? It doesn't, like, thrill me when that happens, but I'm realistic. Sure. That stuff happens all the time, you know? Sure. But that's okay because I believe in humanity, I believe in people, and I believe that when I put myself out there personally and people see, like, how much I care and that it's me, that it's, you know, and that I have a team of 24 people here that all care as much as I do about this stuff. You know, that's something that I think transcends just a low price, you know, which seems to be the algorithm that everybody's kind of working towards in, you know, the e-commerce searches. It's not always about low price. It's, you know, it's about value. And even if I can't be the most rock-bottom price, if I can add the most value, then I give people a reason to support me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I couldn't believe in that philosophy more. And, you know, I appreciate the openness and honesty about the difficulties, you know, with the site upgrade. And actually, we talked a week or so ago, and I'm like, you sure you don't want to push this back a little bit? And you're like, no, we just, it's not going to change, so we should just do it. And, you know, you were super, super great about that. So, and I totally believe in the trust bank philosophy, too. I'm a big believer in that. And I think certainly over the years, you have, you have built up more than enough credits in the trust bank for people to understand that, you know, this type of change is inevitable. And it's only going to make things better in the long run.

'''Brian Goulet:''' That's, that's what I'm shooting for, man.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Yep. So I'm going to get you out, get you out of here on one little, one little fun topic. And, and we'll call it a wrap because this has been an awesome conversation and we could go on for another hour or two. But I want to, I want to get your, I want to get Brian Goulet's favorite pen and favorite ink. You're going, you're going home tonight. You're going to write a letter to, to your kids when they graduate high school and you want to make it, you know, this great looking letter. And you were going to have a, you want to enjoy the, the, the process of using an awesome pen to write it with and a great ink that, you know, is, is going to look great on the page. So what pen and ink, just one, one of each. Oh, that's your favorite right now.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You're making me stick to one. Oh God. Yeah. One pen and one, you're just, you're just going to write this one letter. And when you get home tonight and it's going to be very important. So what pen and ink are you taking home with you?

'''Brian Goulet:''' Oh my gosh, man. You're killing me. Just so you know, just so you know, I carry about 15 pens on me everywhere I go. Like I just can't. Yeah. You know, it's just, I have like hundreds of pens in my personal collection and I just, I'm hopelessly addicted. Like it's, it's the worst and the best working in my position as I am. Cause like, I just got in like the Pilot Custom 912s today and with like all these crazy nibs. And I'm like, dang it. Like, which one am I going to want? Like, you know, it's like, it's like a foregone conclusion. Like I have to have one of these pens myself. So it's, you know, I'm constantly changing out pens. I'm constantly changing out ink and stuff like that because I love the discovery. You know, for me, it's still fresh. It's still new. I've been doing it for five years, but I still love every new thing that comes through here. You know? Yeah. That's the truth. Yeah. I actually have, I don't know when this podcast is going to publish. I just shot a video today. That's like this ridiculous video because we have so many new products that landed at once. I couldn't, I literally couldn't shoot a video on each one separately. So I shot, I called it like a new product extravaganza or whatever. And it's 12 new products that we're launching in a week, like epic things like red pilot falcons and custom nine 12s and the TWSBI 580 all in orange and, you know, the TWSBI red and green and this Invincia deluxe stainless steel that we had. Like, it's like epic bomb dropping things that are like so hitting so close together right at the holidays. I was like, all right, I'm just going to get all done in one video. Boom. You know? So that was fun. Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent. I don't know why I talked about that, but. That's all right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Because you were talking about you can't narrow it down. There's too much good stuff.

'''Brian Goulet:''' Well, okay, no, I'm not going to. That's a, that's a, that's a cop out answer. Okay. So, I mean, I've talked a lot before. My loyal, my loyal fans will know exactly what I'm about to say. The pen would have to be my blue Pilot Custom 74 with a medium nib. Um, I just, you know, it's not, it's, it's weird. Cause like that pen for, as an all encompassing pen is not my favorite. Like there's other pens that I like the design a lot better or the weight or whatever. But the way that that pen writes and the fact that I've been using it religiously for like four years now, I just, it means so much to me. It's, it's been through so much with me. I wrote many of my early thank you notes on those Goulet pens orders personally with that pen. So it's like, to me, pretty much no matter what else comes out, that pen will, will always kind of have a special place in my heart. But if it wasn't that one, it would be like the next new pen that I'm looking at. Right. Cause like I get so excited about whatever it is. Um, and then the ink would, would easily have to be Noodler's Liberty's Elysium. Um, um, that is a shameless plug because it's an exclusive ink that I helped design with Nathan Tardif. Um, I have a very special relationship with Nathan Tardif. He's the, the, the one man behind Noodler's ink. Um, he is an incredible human being and love him or hate him, which a lot of people do both. Uh, he is an incredible man. And I, uh, the, the fountain pen world would not be what it is without Nathan Tardif. There's no question about that. Um, but I had the opportunity to design this ink with him. What I wanted was a Goulet blue ink that is permanent. And, uh, we ended up not being able to get it to be a hundred percent permanent. So we had to settle for like partially bulletproof, but you know what? I'll take it. Um, we did through a few, several formulations. There was a little drama around that too, but we settled on. Yeah, I remember. Yeah. You remember that. That was a couple of years ago, but we settled on the current formulation, which is the best one that we could find based on physics. Right. Right. And, uh, so it's, it's a Goulet blue permanent ink. I signed like my house deed in that ink, you know, like in my will, like I've signed those things in that ink. And, um, and it's, it's a Patrick Henry themed ink. You know, Nathan's a big history buff. I live like, you know, a 10 minute drive from the birthplace of Patrick Henry. You know, I'm a big Virginia history kind of, you know, I'm not a big history buff, but like I super appreciate it. You know what I mean? Big George Washington fan, Patrick Henry, all that. So to have that theme tied around that with the Goulet blue, with the relationship with Nathan Tardif, plus the fact that it's just a really awesome ink, um, that hands down, like that combination blue custom 74 with Liberty's Elysium. That's perfect.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's perfect. I like it. I like it a lot. So, and it's good. I mean, that's, that's meaningful stuff and that, and that's what it's all about. You know, these, these pins and inks that, you know, you may carry around 15 pins, but they, you know, a lot of it is like really meaningful and you can remember times when you were using these pins and, you know, you remember what you signed with this ink and things like that. So that's, that's really great. So exactly, exactly. Very good. Well, Brian, I, I can't thank you enough for the time you took out of an extremely busy schedule to, uh, to join me and Myke today. And I know the, uh, the fans of the show have been clamoring for it for a while. And, um, I feel like we just scratched the surface still. And, um, we could, we could, we will definitely have to do this again down the line and, uh, kind of pick up from where we left off and talk about all kinds of different things. So we appreciate you coming on today. Thank you so much, man.

'''Brian Goulet:''' Thank you.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Totally.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Happy to do it anytime.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Where can people, uh, keep up with what you're up to?

'''Brian Goulet:''' Well, gosh, uh, gulet pens.com is my website. Um, it's also got my blog on there. Technically the blog is blog.guletpens.com, but it's all lumped into kind of the same place. Um, I post a lot of stuff. Um, I've done close to 1100 blog posts at this point, so you can read it to your heart's content. So all my videos are embedded on the blog there too. But you can also check out my YouTube channel. Um, you can look up the Goulet Pen Company on YouTube and find my channel there with hundreds of videos. Um, I'm also available on Twitter, uh, at guletpens on Twitter or on personally. Uh, I have a different handle, uh, Brian Goulet underscore. Somebody else got Brian Goulet without the underscore. And they don't even tweet. Anyway, a little rant. Um, uh, we're on Instagram. We're on Pinterest. We're on, you know, Fountain Pen Network. We're on Reddit. We're on, I'm leaving stuff out, Facebook. I mean, just look us up, Goulet Pen Company. You can see us from our media page. We link to all that stuff on our website. Um, lots of different ways to get in touch with us.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And if you'd like to get in touch with me and Brad, I'm on Twitter. I'm at imike, I-M-Y-K-E. And Brad is at dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. And of course, Brad writes the fantastic penaddict.com. If you'd like to find the show notes for this week's episode, which has loads of great links as to all the stuff that we've spoken about today, go to relay.fm slash penaddict slash one three one. Thanks again to our sponsors this week, Linda, Karis Customs, and Hover. And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad. And you can say goodbye too, Mr. Goulet.

'''Brian Goulet:''' Goodbye too, Mr. Goulet. I had to do it, Brad did it.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]