17

Aug

Write On! – Leaving Room to Experiment 

Write On, Made in the USA, Made in America

As I wrap up this mini-series on prototyping, I think the elephant in the room is evident at this point; sometimes you just need to leave some room to experiment. The prototyping process can't be written in stone, not completely. This is especially true for smaller companies who value the ideas of everyone involved and can often be less rigid when it comes to design, marketing, product diversification, etc. Several of our most recent products wouldn't exist if we hadn't listened to everyone in the room. The Vertex fountain pen was an idea that I didn't know would work, but when I explained it, Bill was pretty sure he could make everything I really wanted to see happen. Everyday Karas and the basik rollerball pen came about because Josh wanted to experiment with our new Swiss lathes, and I thought it would be better to experiment with a separate website to market and sell a more stripped-down, budget-friendly product line. Obviously, experimentation isn't always the goal and can be a distraction, but if the freedom to experiment is completely removed, things begin to get a stale that's especially true where creativity is concerned.

Many will debate the need for creativity when it comes to designing, building, marketing, and sustaining a company that specializes in writing instruments and accessories. There hasn't been a lot of innovation where pens, pencils, and paper products are concerned. Non-pen people often say, "Why spend so much money on a pen when I can just grab one from the bank or my mom's house? They all write the same anyway." On the surface that's a pretty honest statement, and while we can debate whether "they all write the same" that's really splitting hairs. However, allowing creativity to have a "seat at the table" keeps products fresh and exciting even when we're talking about something as boring as a pen. As a manufacturer, creativity may be more important than we're willing to acknowledge because our core consumer is, generally speaking, a creative person. People who buy more than one pen or use pens often tend to be creating things with said pen, even if it's just creating a catalog of their memories. And while very analytical jobs that simply require list making, cataloging, or document signing can be completed by a person who doesn't think of themselves as a "creative individual", that doesn't mean those people aren't also desirous or capable of engaging in creativity that would be realized via the pen. For us, experimentation and creativity go hand-in-hand and have allowed us to have a much better view of our limitations and abilities, largely in a successful way.

To illustrate this, I'll use the basik rollerball pen and Everyday Karas as an example, mostly because they are fresh in my mind. The concept behind a fully-machined $29 rollerball pen that isn't outsourced seems like it makes a lot of sense in 2025. There has been a noticeable retraction in the writing instrument market over the last several years, so finding the ability to launch a more budget-friendly option would seem like a universal idea across the board. We've been trying to accomplish this since 2017 when the writing instrument market was BOOMING. We've experimented numerous times since then with ideas and products and a few of those even went into manufacturing and were released. If we hadn't kept experimenting, even after we'd failed so many times with this idea, we'd never have landed on the basik rollerball pen. I can't speak for other pen manufacturers that are "like us", but I do see their products, ads, and marketing techniques. They're all priced very similar, they're all drawing form the same design "bucket" that machined writing instruments come from, there's a homogeneity even when you take into account the brands that outsource manufacturing overseas. What most of them lack is the desire or ability to experiment. I'll almost never claim we were doing anything "first". We WERE among the first to launch successful Kickstarter campaigns and fulfill those products. We were the one of the first US machine shop to incorporate a fountain pen on the scale we did that was made in-house. We are the first US machined pen manufacturer to bring to market an affordable, fully-machined pen with 100% transparency, and a lifetime warranty. Period. Full stop. No one else has done that in the modern era. And the ONLY reason we were able to do that is because, Bill Karas allows and fosters a culture of experimentation, creativity, and listening to everyone's ideas. Everyday Karas and the basik rollerball pen was a team effort. Sure our team might be REALLY small, but it took the whole team to pull that off, and we're still working on it.

Even with the success we've had with experiments like the Vertex, basik, and the Modal; we're not done yet. We've moved into a new area of experimentation with some current products and testing new materials on those products. We're experimenting with some of our oldest products, like we always do, in an attempt to see if they need an "update". I have an entire notebook full of ideas to experiment with, heck, this blog and the Shop Talk Sunday newsletter is an ongoing experiment. I'm grateful for the freedom to experiment and try new things, it's allowed me to stay fresh even after a decade of working at this job. No two days are the same. I'm tackling new problems and finding new solutions at every turn. I wouldn't be able to do that if we didn't leave room for experimentation. And I realize that I'm likely to fail more often than I succeed, but at least I get to try.

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