In this episode Brad and Myke discuss a recent article about the Kickstarter pen phenomenon and an interesting pen project that is currently in the funding stage. Brad also gets his first real Sailor and engages Myke in a conversation on how to improve the big box retail experience.
Links and Show Notes
In this episode Brad and Myke discuss a recent article about the Kickstarter pen phenomenon and an interesting pen project that is currently in the funding stage. Brad also gets his first real Sailor and engages Myke in a conversation on how to improve the big box retail experience.
Links for this episode:
Sponsored by Squarespace (use code TALLYHO for 10% off)
Hello and welcome to episode 63 of The Panantic Podcast, a weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, and the analog tools that you love so dearly. My name is Mike Hurley and I am joined today by a man that if he was a crowdfunded project would be supported by millions and millions of people, it's Mr. Brad daddy. I break all kinds of Kickstarter records right? Every single one there has ever been. Cool, be double fine and who else's and beat the pebble beat everybody so yeah I've got that going for me which is nice. So how are you today sir? I'm frazzled. I say that knowing that but I didn't mean to lead you into the state that you're in so yeah we should we should talk about some some pens and some things like that to kind of get you off the ledge right? Yes that would be a great idea. All right so we saw an article come up this weekend on Tech Crunch on Sunday by John Biggs and our good friend honor Reinert from the Will Appointed Desk, kind of a really nice quote in it and it was from it was the article was about why pens are popular on Kickstarter and what it means for crowd funders and John is John's always been kind of a pin fan. I've worked with him a couple times when I was at Jet Pen so he kind of he at least has an idea of what he's talking about unlike you know someone that's just picking up the topic for the first time and trying to extrapolate pens and Kickstarter and what all that means so he at least has a basis of an idea to write an article like this and I thought I mean it wasn't anything you know new or novel in the article he was just basically trying to figure out why pens do so well on Kickstarter and um I mean his basic point is well you know the the fans the fans are rabid it's not going to cost you too much and you're not going to get crushed if something happens you know to the to the project because you're not generally not spending a lot of money up front right there's not a lot of um there's not a huge risk on the consumers part to take part in some of these Kickstarter projects for pens and you know the reason why they're so popular which is what honest quotes were about is you know how people like myself and you and really just anyone in any office any setting any home working setting you know uses the pens that they use on a daily basis that they've you know gotten from staples or Walmart or whatever and they they're not using the regular old big ballpoint and they found a good pin they like like a pilot g2 or a pilot v5 or something like that and they want to I guess customizing isn't the right word but they want to make something make it more special to them and that's why these pen projects have been so cool I think they make these take these pens that we all like and use on a daily basis and give them give us something nice to to put around that pin refill that we like so much and something different something special and you know I think that's that's been the majority of the success for all these these kickstarter kickstarter projects and um you know I think John's right in the article saying that you know you're most likely not going to get burnt on a pen project although there's been there's been some that have not been funded um there haven't been too many that have just completely gone up in flames there's been some notorious projects that have been hugely hugely delayed and things like that um but nothing that's just really where the guy's vanished or you know someone's run off with the money there might be one or two notes nothing I've been involved in um what do you think about the kickstarter and the whole pin thing and and why you buy you know why why are you interested in backing some of this stuff on kickstarter mike well I guess there are there is some pretty interesting stuff that comes out of the kickstarter world you know um I mean you look at the retract which is up to like eighty five thousand dollars now which is amazing um but you know you get some really cool ideas that come out of people wanting to create pens through the kickstarter route um but then there are pitfalls like I'm still waiting on that pen that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago um I know of people that are getting them now but I don't seem to be having much luck mine still hasn't arrived I have no idea why um the ways yeah it seems that way it seems that way but a lot of it is because you know they're trying to make the best product that they can which I can simplify as well I think um you know I'm happy to receive it late if it means I'm going to get something excellent rather than them rushing it and be getting something poor but I think it's just because people have ideas but they're not a huge company um and then because they're not a huge company I don't have anybody to answer to so they can create something that they really want to make and they can charge whatever price they want for it and if people are willing to buy it we'll get made I think it's kind of cool I like it right and I think one of the things that um Cara's and pins like the retract and render K have done I think they're they've got the price point figured out I think you know just like the starting pin under $50 that's a good that's a good price point you know it's going to be hard for a lot of people um well I won't speak for a lot of people I'll speak for me but to back up in that's you know around a hundred dollars from a manufacturer or someone I haven't you know seen their work before or or you know at least have a pretty safe feeling about but you know for 40 or 50 dollars I'm willing to take that chance um whereas you know for the other projects you know if you've seen some like they've been around a hundred hundred or so dollars that's a that's a little more that's a bigger pain point if something goes wrong you know for me and I imagine for a lot of people so I appreciate the fact that you can go on Kickstarter you can find a machine pin made by you know a group of guys in a machine shop by hand and you know hit pretty much hand on all the parts themselves and you can get that for under $50 I mean that's that's pretty good I mean that's a that's a pretty good deal um and I think that's why these these pins like the retracting the rent or K and you know all the other ones that have have done so well the premier pin and the ti pin and and and things like that so yeah it uh it scratches that itch that we have and you know we're willing to you know guys like us and people that listen to the podcast um we're willing to own more than one pin too so we're uh we're filling the coffers there at at Kickstarter for sure with these pin projects so I think it's pretty cool and you know it was it was nice to see this article on TechCrunch and I got a link in it and um so I was happy about that and Anna did a great job on her quote so she was excited about that she had she'd reached out to me when uh when John was reaching out to her she's like what do I do do I should I talk to him and I'm like yeah go for it so it was cool it was cool it's good to see and speaking of Kickstarter before I saw before that article came about um my friend on twitter who sang from Australia sent me a link to another Kickstarter project that I hadn't seen and I'm gonna butcher this name because it's a German name and we'll have to get um our German pronunciation guru um to to record this and send it to us but it's the learns tiffed it's that's that where we're going with learns tiffed I would say learn steefed learn steefed so it's learn steefed the first pin that vibrates when you make a mistake how does it so I've read through this this is a really really long and in-depth project page um it's pretty ambitious it's basically you know it's got a little um it's got a little CPU board in there in the pen and the pen is then the it runs like a I don't know like a Linux software module that can learn your handwriting and I guess eventually tell you when you're making mistakes either I don't know in penmanship style and or in spelling um it's it's pretty extreme um I kind of don't know what to make of this I'm kind of scared by it this is the now this on the other hand this is a project that like we're just talking about John Biggs's article where most of these pins are straightforward and safe this looks pretty risky this is kind of a high-risk type of situation um number one it's very expensive um I think the base model is 99 pounds so what we're talking like 150 dollars that's in the ballpark I think um they're also looking to get 120,000 pounds for their goal and they're only at 18 right now with 23 days to go so it's it's got a long way to go I think they may not get there I don't think they'll make that yeah but um you see what this is meant to do though yeah it's supposed to be a trainer for kids essentially um to where if they make a mistake it will vibrate and let them know that they've made a mistake um someone will have to tell them you know it's I guess it's a two-person deal someone the if the kids writing and it makes a mistake and he doesn't know what the mistake is that doesn't really help him unless someone can point that out to him so someone would have to be sitting there with the child to you know as they as the child studies and and rights which I guess it's it's pretty normal I mean I sit with my kids while they do their homework but I don't know I don't want to say I don't get it I get it but I don't understand why someone necessarily would want this it seems I'm not convinced it works yeah yeah I I'm trying to find the word for that but yeah I guess that's just as simple as this I'm not convinced that it would be the accuracy would be there to get enough out of it um to to justify the price so I mean I'm not saying that the liars are just this kind of thing seems unbelievable like it just seems like it's I just can't believe how something like this could exist right so on that basis I'm not willing to put a hundred pounds down right to receive something that may not work I this is something that I would want to see work in the flesh personally for an extent for a period of time or have a review or an account from someone I trust and know to tell me that this works because this seems like it's too good to be true right this seems yeah and they're really aggressive right out the gate um it seems like there's a lot of work to do this seems like this would be a project that would take you know 12 months to wrap up because they're doing you know um doing phone apps um you know applications for school opening up to developers it's it's super aggressive um they're thinking big there's no doubt about that but it's I'd be pretty scared to back a project like this just because it does it does seem unbelievable I would have to see this product um up front now they compare it a little bit to the live scribe which I'm not that familiar with but that was a kind of a it was a handwriting recognition pin I guess to use the proper live scribe paper or the pad that it they came with you know you could get your hand written handwriting read digitally but it wasn't correcting errors and this this pen saying it's going to correct your errors um based on the whatever algorithms are bit on this built on this board um yeah I don't know like I mean again I'm sure that they've done some research and could disprove this but I don't know if that's how you'd learn yeah like it's like electric shock treatment that's what it reminds me of like I know it's just a vibration but it's like this cognitive behavioral therapy stuff I mean I guess that's what they're kind of basing this on right you're familiar with CBT now I believe it I'm I'm gonna check I'm getting this right cognitive behavioral therapy is and I think that the if I'm getting this right um there will be based on commation of cognitive measurement I'm reading Wikipedia right now yeah this is un-genius this is the next episode of un-genius yeah maybe this is probably not even cognitive behavioral therapy but if that's what I'm thinking of people can tell me whatever it is that I'm thinking of where you like and there's a as a friends scene where I think Phoebe shows a picture of Rachel to Ross and then slaps him in the side of the head yeah that's kind of what I'm thinking of yeah it's just the mouse like the the mouse you know open in the door to get the cheese and getting shocked you know exactly yeah yeah so yeah no it's it's it's kind of an odd thing but uh I wouldn't even pointed this out but it I thought it was pretty interesting to at least discuss because it's kind of mind-boggling at how it works and that it that it would be successful on Kickstarter just because they're asking for a pretty large commitment um I don't know we'll see I'll keep tracking it I haven't watched the videos yet I've read through the through the um through the project page which is really large so I mean you need them a while to read through everything and I'm still wasn't convinced so I'm gonna watch the videos and see if I change my mind but uh yeah I just I wanted to to point this one out because it seemed pretty interesting and I'd love to get some feedback if anyone else has some experience in in this in this area so um let us know for sure now on to now on to fun things like uh like spending my money so I spent some money this weekend Mike excellent and it was a random it was a random thing you know it was part of uh kind of keeping that pin wish lists you know to always have things in the back your head and I'm not a big ebay guy and you know I bought you know the whole time we were talking about field notes um on ebay I think I bought one thing you know in months and um but I do have some searches for different pins that I like and just kind of see get some ideas you know for what prices go for and things like that and every now and then you run into something that uh really really um is up your alley and I that happened to me this weekend just randomly looking on ebay I've always wanted um one of the pins at the top of my wish list when I went to the Atlanta pin show was a sailor that actually gave us I think maybe our best show title ever which was episode 49 of the pin addict um a sailor is at the top of my wish list um that's one of my personal favorites but I've used my friend Thomas's sailors and I love the nibs on them the gold nibs are you know they're super super smooth very fine very precise um and I stumbled on one on ebay it was a clear Sapporo demonstrator with an extra fine nib and that's everything that I want in a pin I like the demonstrators I like the 14 karat gold nib um and I like the extra fine nib and I ended up paying $91 which I felt was not quite a steal but pretty much a steal um you know just on the regular US sites it goes for about 150 dollars 160 dollars in that range um on the Japanese sites it goes for about 120 plus shipping so I got it for 91 dollars plus like another 250 in shipping and would you believe I I won the auction on sunday and the pin is in my hand right now Wow I was I was not expecting to have it on this show but I wanted to talk about it because I know that I've talked about what's the number one pin on my wish list and actually the number one pin is the sailor pro gear which is the big boy compared to the one that I bought um but I couldn't pass this up like I've talked before when I bought my pilot custom heritage if I can get a Japanese pin with a 14 karat gold nib for 100 I'm I'm buying that 100% of the time and that's what happened here so I was happy to get it and I will have a a more full report on it but um in the 10 minutes I spent with it before this podcast it's it's living up to the hype of um to what my expectations were of it um it's really great looking um it's this clear demonstrator we'll have a link to it in the show notes um the nib is very very smooth it's very very fine and I learned from Thomas um actually you know right before the show the nib on sailor is marked h dash ef um I didn't notice that when I was testing out other pen other sailor pins I thought they just said ef on the side but the h is for hard just like a lot of pins have a s e f or a s f for soft I haven't seen any that were specifically flagged hard and that's something I like that I found out that I like in pens I like a nail hard nib so I think this pen is going to be a big big part of my daily rotation I'm I'm liking a lot so far in the few minutes that I have it it's living up to the expectations that I have I got it for a great price which I certainly not going to complain about that and um yeah hopefully we will receive review see it reviewed on uh on penantic.com before too too long but I mean I've got a long list of fountain pens that I need to get reviewed don't I you certainly do I'm getting way behind on that that that takes some time for me to to write up those reviews and put those together because I want to give you know more than just um superficial type of information you know that the fountain pens more so than you know just a gel ink pen that you need I need to spend more time with them get a get a really good feel for them and how they work on different papers and different inks and things like that to write up but I mean I I will reviews and people get on me all the time the lommie 2000 review I I've owed that for like a year yeah um I will follow up on the vanishing point um I haven't reviewed the pelican that I got you know I got I have lots of reviews that I need to do so they will be coming soon I'm going to work on that but you know I try to I try to post at least two reviews a week and even just doing one fountain pen review takes so much time for me um that I tend to put those off a little more than the other ones that I can I can handle a little bit more quickly but they will be coming soon especially the the lommie 2000 I'm not going to do that's going to be the the next kind of big fountain pen review I do but I haven't really started it yet but I get more questions about that pen than anything and plus I want to do that because it's gonna um it might be it might be the number one slot but we'll see we'll see it's uh it's a good pen and I get asked about it all the time the vanishing point and the lommie 2000 those seem to be um a really good step up for a lot of people so they're looking always looking for information about those so I want to be able to provide it uh and provide a link to it um eventually like I did the vanishing point because that's still one of the most popular posts on the blog of the vanishing point then I'm sure the lommie 2000 will if I will ever get off my behind and do it so why don't you get off your behind and do something for us uh this episode mike and let's talk about our fine sponsor I'm pretty sure we can do that that always sounds like a good idea to me Brad this episode is brought to you by Squarespace the only one platform that makes it easy to create your own website for a free trial and 10 percent off go to squarespace.com and use the code tally hoe squarespace they're constantly updating their platform with new features new designs and fantastic support they have beautiful designs for you to start with and tons of style options for you to adjust so you can really make your own space online squarespace takes care of hosting seo and even make sure that your site looks fantastic on any device it's incredibly easy to use but if you need any help they have amazing support a fantastic award-winning support team that works 24 hours a day seven days a week and while you're over at squarespace.com make sure you check out their new home page too it's got some fantastic videos that are really beautiful and show you how squarespace fits absolutely everyone differently there's some great examples there make sure you cycle through and get some ideas on how to create a beautiful website as I mentioned earlier you can go to squarespace.com to find out more but you can also sign up for a free trial there no credit card required and if you decide to purchase squarespace starts at just eight dollars a month and includes a free domain name if you sign up for one year and don't forget that you will get 10 percent off and you will help support the panatic podcast by using the offer code tally hoe so go check out squarespace everything that you need to make an amazing website all right tally hoe tally hoe yeah thank you very much squarespace all right goodness excuse me you're right over there I had that I had that whole whole read to get that out in the whole time where to drop it on you right when we're ready to start talking about something else sorry that just came I don't know where you are totally unforgiven yes thank you I appreciate that um one of the recurring themes that I tend to latch onto on this podcast and on the blog sometimes more more frequently on the podcast I think um is the state of the pen retail industry and when I say that I mean the physical stores you know the brick and mortar you know going to staples office max you know whatever your local office supply retailer is and even you know the Walmart and targets and in other you know general stores of the world and I talk about how there's you know lack of innovation in those spaces um you know what are some of the things that they do wrong I in my opinion what are some of the things that could be done better and I noticed I found an article um on a stock analysis website this is about a month ago I found this article um I and I was actually in the ink links uh post I do on Saturday so some of you may have seen it and I do apologize because this article is actually um behind a I guess it's behind a registration wall I don't know if it's behind a paywall or not but you don't have to go and register it just to read it there's a uh there's enough just on the front page of it just to kind of in the snippet of it to just kind of get the gist of it but the title of the article is staples talking about the company this is coming just remember this is coming from a stock analyst type of um perception so the title is called staples doomed by amazon or by young people and I thought that was a pretty they did a good job on the title because they drug me in and let me read just a little bit of it and kind of give you an idea of where the author is coming on what's the challenges staples has and you know what they're up against so it says a co-worker easily 20 years my junior stopped by my desk the other day to borrow my stapler which was sitting next to a tape dispenser amid piles of paper and it occurred to me the other desk in the office all with young people sitting behind them don't look like this um those and he he's just you know referring to himself he's kind of the old school guy but all that you know the young people don't have these kind of things handy like a stapler like you know myself would um anywhere he relates some of the pricing between staples saying that the uniball gel grip pens they're 1799 per dozen at staples but 1399 on amazon and even 1099 on new egg.com so staples has a sphere pricing vulnerability he says what it offers is breadth of merchandise if say you're the office manager and don't want to google every item you're ordering in some 1500 stores in the u.s for convenience sake for office managers the changing nature of work suggests that demand for traditional office supplies may wane the younger people i work with just don't buy paper tablets copy your paper binder clips yellow post it notes yellow hiders highlighters and all the other paper related items that feel the owls it's staples stores so i disagree with this say that again i disagree yes so you i guess we've never talked about this specifically but i'm thinking you work in a larger office environment than i do i work in an office environment but it's it's smaller i'm wagering that you work around more people with more of these type of office supplies and things like that what did you want to say about that well my i think my first issue with this i mean i haven't read the whole article but he's opening point of this is that somebody has come to borrow his stapler therefore meaning that person still needs a stapler and he's saying that he has a tape dispenser and etc but that's maybe because he's worked here at this place for longer or has at least been working for longer so he's aware of the types of things that he may need like i have a stapler i use my stapler once every few months right but just because i know that i need it does that make sense yes yeah no because i'm the same way i agree and i also have selotape as we call it brand i have it in my desk but i can't remember the last time that i used it because i've used it in the past i just find that the premise of the fact that somebody came to borrow his stapler which would have made him think this person hasn't got a stapler doesn't necessarily suggest to me that young people don't need staplers because what he's proving as a young person does need a stapler right um and i just well yes there is a change in industry these days which does mean that things like i don't know highlighters and paper may be used less in some industries but in my industry they used every day because i work in a industry which is very paper heavy i just i just think there are shifts that change these things but i don't i find that his premise for which he's written this article seems to be a little bit flawed to me um and i feel that i don't think it's young people either like is he saying that every single person of his age in his office and maybe you can speak to this as well bred is adequately to our standards stationary supplied yeah i would think the younger people actually more adequately supplied than then probably the older people who don't care who are so ingrained and just used to grabbing the the big ballpoint out of office supply cabinet and you know the the the ampad legal pad or stenopad um and not give any consideration about the tools that they use where the younger people i would think in my opinion would care about that stuff more even though they're not going to be the ones buying the bulk quantity and that that's actually my hang up about the article is the business the staples business model of the bulk purchase i do think that's going away well i think it's the change in all of these sorts of business models with the issue being is it's moving to online like if you look at um blockbuster um we have hmb in the uk with some massive music retailer that's gone bust like twice the video game industry what it is is it's taking retail and the retail is being like cannibalized and eaten alive by the online sales channels because it's cheaper so this isn't saying that all the pen industry is doomed right it's it's more that the old guard is going away right and that's what i that's what i think in you know i i mean i they're probably not willing to do it but you know i think there's changes that could be made in these types of retailers that i would love to see you know i of course would love to see more niche sections in these retailers instead of just the mass you know i always complain about you go in you know you go into staples today and you go into staples six months from now and it's the exact same picture i mean you take the photograph and it's the same products on there all the time there's never anything new um you know it's the same four packs eight packs twelve packs of pens you know that you know people aren't you if you're not an office supply manager which is what this article's saying you know that's that seems to be the biggest customer that's buying in bulk well if you're not that person you don't want to buy all this these quantities you want to test out some smaller stuff or one or two pens at a time instead of six or eight and you know i think people would spend more you know if they had a little bit of different setup and one of the ideas i had was um you know it hit me when i was opening a package from jet pins one day and i freaked i don't even remember the name of the marker um the marker i bought but it's it's not the only one i get a lot a lot of the pins i get that are Japanese come packaged individually but like in a single package like with a hanger spot that would go on like a pegboard in a store so why can't there be a section in staples that's just loaded up with individual pens you know on a pegboard that are individually packaged for people to test out and for you know to buy individually i would argue that i would buy more in pens if i could buy six individual varied pens in a pack of six pens you know they can charge me more for that individual pen instead of charging me you know um ten dollars for six a six pack of pens they could charge me you know fourteen dollars for six individual pens and i'd be more i would be more than happy to pay that because i would get more variety but it seems like in the u.s i put i posted this out on twitter and got some good responses i said with this what individual pen packaging like this work on us retailer store shelves and we'll have a link in the show notes for the picture that i shared and ask the question about it's basically just you know a single pen in a single hanging package but it was a zebra pen um do you think mike that would work in a retail situation a big box retailer situation like a staples or just some huge store i think i think an more interesting question for me moving away from how they're packaged but just sold individually for a decent price i think that i think that there could potentially be some benefit some merit in that i mean i think if you were to say to me you know if you gave me the keys to staples and said fix this problem the way that you think what i would do is i would start selling i would shrink the stores down significantly right um i would start selling more products like this so not you know obviously some import stuff would be nice but probably not even necessarily import stuff but just some cool product that are maybe more individual um and and selling things by color and stuff like that um so yeah you have a bunch of single black pans blue pans green pans you know like a bunch of different type and then i would beef up their online bulk order process and bring the cost down by making the bulk order all online and make you know and then i'd like sort of discounts along that one on that route but if it was possible you know i mean jet pans managed to do it you know cold pans managed to do it to sell import materials for a cheap price so i'm sure that a company like staples could arrange with japanese retailers to do something like this if they were willing to do it um because i really do think that the average person is more willing to try out fun little things if they look appealing and if they see a bunch of really cool looking pans of those are bright colors that they might be willing to give one a go yeah i think there's no doubt and that's exactly what i would like to see i don't understand why a company like pilot doesn't take a very inexpensive pin that is a very good quality pin like the uniball sino rt or the rt1 which is the new model which is even better it already comes in you know 10 or 12 colors they generally offer you know a three pack of black a three pack of blue and then maybe a three pack of one black one blue one red and that is that's if you're lucky i mean normally it's just a three pack of black i mean you have to be lucky to get those other two things um they're generally impossible to find i don't see why there's not an individual purple or an individual green or an individual orange that you know if they're selling this three pack for five dollars they could sell the individual pins for two dollars two fifty it's a higher margin i mean i know the packaging would cost there's some packaging cost individually in there and there's some shelf space considerations i don't think they're that great to where um it would be a deterrent and i just there's just so much more they could do to make the in-store experience better for consumers that aren't office managers and like you say these people that are if they're selling to office managers these are the people that need to be buying online and they're buying online anyway they're ordering from you know their online catalogs they're not going to the stores and picking up you know getting a shopping cart and dumping you know 10 dozen pins in their shopping cart and i mean i guess maybe a few people here and there but these people are ordering online like you say so in the stores they obviously need to be shrunk down um they can keep the the same pins they already have but i don't see why there's not a dedicated space to even the most basic pins like the rt and having you know these individual colors for people to try i don't i guess i don't understand why that can't happen that's that's what i've never been able to understand um you know i'm not a business person you know i don't run any of these companies but you know that's that's the kind of things that get me would get me into the store more where i'm i'm to the point now where i don't need to go to staples right none of us do people that listen to the pin addict i mean they go you know randomly here and there but they're not we're all not running off the staples and talking about the all the new cool stuff we got at staples right i think once in a blue moon you'll get some new pin you know like like the acrobat finally hit the shelves this year which we knew was coming that was a good you know good thing but man it's the the the turnover or the turn of new products on the us and i guess worldwide office supply store shelves is just tragic and it it burns me up to no end that you know other people aren't getting in getting to have all the fun that we are just because they don't know when they could go try some you would think it would be easy for them to try something and get them hooked on you know a new kind of pin or a new color or things like that i don't know this is something i've never understood from the get-go and which that's why i started the blog because i couldn't find the pins that i wanted here in the us and and not a lot has changed there's been a few changes um getting the pilot gtexi on the shelf and things like that but it's been minimal at best and it seems like a secondary thought for all these companies which you know i guess doesn't surprise me i mean they're in the they're in the business to make money and we're in the business to find uh cool fun niche items that we like so i guess uh never the never the two shall meet but uh i sure would like to see some middle ground i mean we can just keep enjoying it i mean there's a kind of a part of me where i'm like it would be cool if these places did this stuff but i then wouldn't want my little retailers to go out business you know yeah no i agree with that too and you know i and i don't i don't think it would really affect them at all because these the people that would be buying it wouldn't be buying at these retailers anyway and it then might open even more people up to looking for these sorts of things that's what i'm saying yeah i mean there's just so many people that don't know um and don't have this stuff available to them and um they're missing out they're missing out on the fun they're missing this podcast mike and that's a travesty oh man what is their problem what are they thinking i don't know but we should deal with it and that's what we're doing one week at a time one week at a time one pin at a time uh one listener at a time and uh we're gonna get uh get the good pins and paper in your hands and um and and hopefully have give you a a more enjoyable writing experience um what we do but uh i didn't rant too bad today but uh it's something i'd been thinking about um thinking about for a while just kind of doing this individual packaging type of thing um i actually had some people that thought you know that that it probably wouldn't work in their situations and i can i can understand that too it's um there was some good conversation on both sides of the the discussion it was a good discussion um that we had on twitter and i'll that we'll have all the links in the show notes and um yeah i think that i think that's a wrap made if we want to talk about uh where we can find us and find these great show notes that i keep uh keep referring to and and credit to you i tweeted out last week um i don't know if you saw it or not but uh props to you for putting together such a comprehensive show note listing that's what's what i'm here to do my friend yeah after our episode last week with honor i went i had to go look up something that we talked about and i went and looked and it's like mike had all these links in that we talked about as we were going i was like wow that was impressive so uh i gave you some some some twitter props uh last week so good job by you that's another one of the good things when we've got a guest is i can concentrate i'm just listening and getting the links together so yeah i was impressed you did it we do have something new though this week brand what which people can find over on the show notes page is at five by five dot tv slash pen addict slash 63 and that's new artwork oh yeah that's right gosh i almost forgot about that so uh the our fantastic designer at five by five jury rfil who is at sensible world on twitter if you want to thank him for the awesome work as coo has adapted the great work that aran did um aramaki um with the pen addict logo and he's made it five by five if i'd so five by five you know we will have our we have like a an overarching style for the how the the artwork looks and jory's done a great job so you can see it um at five by five dot tv slash pen addict hopefully your podcast app of choice has updated it unfortunately some are really bad with image caching so for example insta cast has not updated it for me it's it's a shame and there it kind of isn't really anything you can do somewhat if you sort of re-subscribe to the show so if you delete the show and re-subscribe it will show up but some it can be a bit a bit dodgy but you can go and marvel at the five by five tv slash pen addict page to see the great new art yeah it came up fantastic really happy with it it's one of the ones where the more i look at it the more i love it that's exactly right i thought the same thing so there you go you can go find that and if you want to catch up with Brad online he is over at pen addict.com and is at dowdy d-o-w-d-y on twitter no that's on app.net and he is dowdy ism d-o-w-d-y-s-m on twitter i am i Mike i-m-y-k-e thanks for all of the feedback and the tips and just the general love that you send over to us it really does make make break recording the show even more fun to know how much you guys are involved and enjoy it and we love to get that sort of stuff so thanks for doing that as always and Brad we'll be back next week will we not we will be back next week so thanks again for listening thank you mr dowdy for joining me all right thank you mr early for allowing me to join you and thanks to all of you for joining us while we were joining each hour so until next time bye bye bye bye [BLANK_AUDIO]
