Write On! – The Process: Research

In my last blog post, I talked about the Development side of our prototyping process. By far that process is a hands on, "physical", type of process in terms of product testing and creation. There's almost always something created, whether that's just a CAD file in SolidWorks or an actual product coming off a machine, we're left with something. The Research side of our prototyping process is the more esoteric side of things, and it's not a straightforward process at all. Research often feels like being dropped off in the middle of nowhere with a map and compass and being told, "okay, navigate yourself to the nearest town, call us, and we'll come get you". We might have an inkling on where we're starting from and/or where we want to end up, but the journey is a mystery. I don't have any background or training in this type of research, though my brain is hardwired to conduct and enjoy doing research, which might be one reason why I enjoy this part of my job. Even so, it's not an easy task, but let's dig into it a bit more.

Unless we already have an idea on a theme or reference point, I almost always start looking through early examples of whatever the product might be for some form of physical inspiration or even marketing inspiration. There are thousands of images of pens and pencils no longer being made; some with unique designs, interesting stories, or amusing names. There is also a wealth of expired patents for writing instruments online and many have schematics attached that show the product in various stages. It's at this point I'll also dig through my boxes of vintage pens that I have squirrelled away for additional inspiration. This process almost always leads me to remember there's almost nothing new under the sun. I might think the idea I have is now and refreshing, only to realize someone came up with it way back in 1936. That's not a bad thing, sometimes it just reiterates that what I'm thinking CAN be done and maybe it just wasn't right for the time. Other times, it's a wake up call for me to change things around. The earliest stages of this process are almost always solely focused on pen aesthetics and marketing mostly because those things jump out, and I can just copy and past images into a folder of ideas to refer to later. The next phase is a lot more in depth and not as haphazard.

It's about 50/50 on whether or not we have an idea on the functions side of the pen. If we don't already have that somewhat sketched out, that's the next area I'll focus on. I'll start researching current or even vintage filling mechanisms for fountain pens. Then looking at what pens are on the market with those filling mechanisms because this is an early way to place a product into a price point. In the case of rollerball pens, I'll look at retraction methods going over years of research on the popularity of each style while also looking at whether or not a new method has been popularized. If it's a capped pen, I'll look at capping methods and cap engineering to see if we can implement something new to us that might be more cost effective while also making a capped pen more popular. For pencils, this whole process was extremely time-consuming and largely fruitless. Pencil inserts are almost impossible to find being sold individually with the only exception at the time being Schmidt in Germany. Similarly, tracking down quality erasers being sold wholesale was impossible, so we decided to simply buy large Pentel erasers from Amazon in bulk. That illustrates the times where more research is largely pointless and can be a bigger hindrance than assistance.

Combining these two main focuses into a more fine-tuned idea is the next step, but while I'm doing that I'll be heavily involved in marketing, story-telling, and branding research. Inevitably this type of research will take the longest and be the most difficult to conduct. It will be a constant process of "Eureka...oh nope, someone used that name or already did that campaign, or is using those catchphrases." Without fail, this will be a struggle for me for months and in some cases years. It's also the most personal aspect of the research I'll be doing because I consider myself an idea person specifically where these types of topics are concerned. I can tell a story with ease, piecing together part and parcel of the tale to make things come together. I can pull from history, mythology, science, culture, or a variety of other areas to come up with a name, logo, storyline, or other process.

To go even more in depth, let's take a look at the Reaktor pens. The idea came to us to try to come up with a line of capped pens that were more entry level and basic than what we had at the time. Capped pens, really easy to use in terms of function, not a lot of moving parts to break, very stripped down anodize options, etc. I'm not sure who landed on "Reaktor", but the name for the overarching series was landed on relatively early which turned out to be more of a curse than a blessing. Separating these pens from our current lineup of pens was a big focus at this time, we wanted to attempt some form of segmentation in terms of naming, branding, and marketing; that would end up causing more work and largely being a thorn in my side. When it came time to sketch out these pens, we went from two models to four models pretty quickly which put a wrench into the naming conventions of these pens. My research focused on atomic era marketing, energy ads, and the space race, but this largely led nowhere. Using terms that were related to nuclear power seemed strange especially when many of them are used in marketing for everyday carry items. Trying out spacecraft names didn't work because many had been memorialized with pen sets in the past. Thankfully, mid-century automobiles were heavily influenced by the space race that had become a huge part of American culture. Using the name of a car that also referenced space kind of fit with the whole Reaktor idea. Plus it gave us some options for the aesthetics of the pen. The Galaxie and Starliner were birthed from this month's long quest through records and even buying physical advertisements from newspapers and magazines at the time. It also helped that the Ford Galaxie came with several "badging" identifiers for levels of trim, one being XL. Then during the second generation of the Galaxie, they segmented it further with the Starliner body style. This allowed us to have the Galaxie (small clipless pen) and Galaxie XL (longer clipped version) rollerball pens and the Starliner (small clipless) and Starliner XL (longer clipped version) fountain pens. The idea was solidified, but took us far longer than we expected, but these "issues" ended up being minor compared to the problems that would occur during material sourcing and manufacturing of the Reaktor pens. Those issues would lead directly to the Reaktor being discontinued. That story doesn't have much to do with Research, but it is one that we can cover another day when we talk about the problems a machinist faces when the material purchased ends up being unusable.

In recent years, we've also began using large-form customer and non-customer provided polling along with internal and external sales metrics and anecdotal market "gossip" from other pen makers we collect during pen shows. This is our latest effort to add more hard data to our product planning in an effort to create as viable a product as possible. It doesn't matter if we think a product is going to be popular, if there is no audience for that product then it will just sit on the shelf. Being more thoughtful and using available data and metrics is something we have the luxury of doing because we now have a decade-and-a-half as a retail business, and nearly a decades worth of surveys and polls we've conducted. It doesn't always work, but it's helped with the success rate of a new product more than just throwing new products out there was in the past.

That's a "quick" peak into the world of research that we conduct when bringing a new product to market, or really when we even look at bringing a new product to market. If you have questions about specific aspects or want some elaboration, leave a comment and we'll get back to you.