Scribe

Where is your mechanical pencil now, boy?

Good.

Bless you.

Danke. So what is a zuchbringer?

Sure. I am feeling a little under the weather today. It's kind of cold out, and I was outside all day yesterday, so I'm actually just drinking a green tea today. It's a really good one. It's made by Rishi. It's called Jade Cloud, and it's just a really super kind of simple green tea. It's really good, but it's nice and warm, so no whiskey or anything added to that, but actually, I don't know, is there anything, any alcohol that would go well with green tea? I can't think of anything.

Really?

Seriously.

So they tell me. I don't drink myself, but word on

Yeah. Huh. I'll have to try that out. I mix coffee and alcohol a lot, but never, never with T. And today I'm writing with an auto point, all American jumbo mechanical pencil, which I'll talk a little bit about what the reason why I have one of these little in my fresh points, but I'm writing in my field notes, Night sky notebook. Just kind of doing show notes and things like that. So about halfway through that thing. So, yeah, that is my tools today.

I don't think so. Okay.

This bottle is really cool looking.

yep.

Is that where that Johnson City Gold came from?

Which was horribly disgusting.

I have a friend who's really into soda and he had that and he would just drink it and I'm like. So I took a sip and it just tasted like it was like a malt beverage without the alcohol. I mean, that's what it is. Yeah, exactly.

Some shady guy in the parking lot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They're not easy.

I think the condensed milk would be okay because it would cut the whiskey out a little bit.

You need a page on the website of just our various drinks, like the podcaster and the state of Franklin and the coffee.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We can't talk about Wolpecks with Charles. Also make him cry or probably just really angry because

Yeah.

Sure.

J for Johnny. Yeah. The first thing I should mention would be the T shirts. They, they have shipped just Friday, I think. And as of this writing, as of when it comes out, hopefully many of you will have gotten them by now. I believe that many of them are preparing to be delivered on Monday. So I'm really excited. I've never, I've seen the quality. Patrick Roan sent me one of his teespring T shirts from the cramped when they had their campaign, and that is of really good quality, but that was one color against a dark fabric, so ours is three colors. So I'm, I'll be interested to know what the quality is like because I, I'm hoping, and I'm planning on it being very good, but it'll be, you know, I, I, I have not seen any preview copies of this, so I'm getting at the same time everybody else is. So, so yeah, that's, that's super exciting. Did you guys both get the, the light blue one? Did, did you get like the dark one at all?

That's cool. Yeah, so I'm getting that. And my wife got the ladies fit one that's a little bit darker of a blue, so that'll be interesting to see. Speaking of swag like that, Istvan. And I'm sure Istvan, I'm not pronouncing your name correctly, so I apologize. He's one of our listeners in Hungary and he's on the Facebook group. Really interesting guy. He posts a lot of. He's very active in the group. He created some fan art for the pencil army. Various iterations of this kind of emblem have had. He's adapted some of the pencils from that vector pack he had a big thing at the top that says the pencil army and then a big kind of motto that says we are erasable, which I actually kind of like because, you know, you don't want to. If you're in an army, you don't want to be erasable. And he actually went through and found a Latin of we came, we sharpened, we. What was it? What was it, guys? We came, we wrote, we sharpened.

Yeah. And some other iterations had that on there, which is pretty fantastic. So Istvan went out and found somebody to turn that into a patch. I think it's going to be Velcro backed. And he is kind of taking commitments for it over on the Facebook group. So if you're interested in signing up for that. I think he's trying to get. I think maybe they're like $12 and it's going to try to get it down to 10, depending on how many people want to get one. Pretty small, small quantities. But yeah, if you want something like this, I want to get this and put it on my safari jacket. I have. I have an old Cabela safari jacket that I wear in kind of like the, the fall and the spring weather and I think that would look badass on there. So, yeah, come. Come check out Facebook and get in touch with Istvan.

Yeah, I don't know. We. We pencil people are apparently fairly anarchist and pacifist. So I think trying to organize anybody into an army, especially into ranks, gonna be hard.

Yeah. We can all just make up our own titles. Another thing I was going to mention is Retro51, who is a maker of a fountain pens of pencil, mechanical pencils of pens. They were kind enough to send us all mechanical pencils. And even though we're not usually mechanical pencil people will make exceptions for good ones. So I'd be interested to know, you know, since we recorded last time, you've. You guys should have received them and written with them. What did you think about them?

Yeah.

Which one did you get, Johnny?

I just, I really love the shape of them. I Actually had a mechanical pencil from before that I was using, and so they sent me a rollerball. And I mean, just all of the shape is just really pleasing and nice. They're smaller, they kind of fit. What would you say, maybe about four, four and a half inches or so?

Yeah, three and a half or four. They go really well with like a little pocket notebook, like a word or a field notes or something.

Yeah.

Yeah. How about you, Tim?

Can you throw it and have it stick into a wall like a ninja star?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. They. They have a lot of. For you people who use ink out there, they have a lot of really good fountain pens and rollerballs. I know that Mike Hurley really, really loves it. He. He talks about it a lot. They have a Tornado touch pen that has a stylus on the top. And the way it's shaped, it kind of looks like a little derby hat. And so. So they just went ahead and just put a mustache on it.

So.

Yeah.

So I got the. The color I got was the. It's called the Lincoln. It's kind of a brushed copper, and it's just gorgeous. I just love that brush.

That's cool. Yeah. So the next thing I was going to mention, kind of going. Going back to the Facebook group. I. I don't mean to keep bringing up the Facebook group for those of you who decided not to be on Facebook there, but there's a lot of very cool stuff happening over there. The thing that is happening right now is that they are organizing a European pencil swap. So we've talked about the US pencil swap before this. They got, oh, maybe like 12 people who are interested in this. And the first person starts off and they have a list of the addresses and they'll send maybe some extras, some of their favorite things to the second person, who will then kind of pick out some stuff that they want, add some stuff, and send it on to the third person, et cetera, et cetera, and it eventually winds its way back up to the first person. So I've seen some pictures of that. Looks like it went really well. And. And so. Oh, man, I'm going to mispronounce this name. It's a guy from Luxembourg, Gillis Kuten is what I'm going to say. He and our friend Thorsten, Steven, Owen and himself are organizing a European pencil swap, or as they say it, the first European erasable community swap a thon. They're going to start off a package with maybe some pencils, some notebooks, and looks like they need one more person in the EU or UK or, you know, somewhere over on that continent to join in. So they're gonna. They're gonna start that. That's just really cool. So if anybody listens here is not part of the Facebook group, let me know and I'll kind of hook you up with the guys who are doing this. It looks like it's a lot of fun. Did any of you guys do the Swapathon in the U.S. i didn't. Yeah. I think it was kind of organized independently and I just had a lot of, like, stuff with the podcast going on, I think. So next time they do it, I think I'll join in the final. Kind of. The last thing I was going to mention is I did a review of the new Right in the Rain mechanical pencil, and it went really well, but I did not realize that it is very, very similar to a company called autopoint, which makes mechanical pencils. And in fact, it is made by autopoint with a few differences. So the trouble is, it's also about twice as expensive as an Auto Point pencil. The Right in the Rain pencil is. So I posted that and I had a few people be like, hey, you should really be up front with people and tell them that this is made by Auto Point and you can get an identical pencil for half the price. And so I was like, whoa. I actually didn't know that. So I'm not too familiar with a lot of the mechanical pencil brands out there. So I found a reader who reached out to me and we swapped. I had an extra one of those Right in the Rain pencils and I sent it to him and he sent me an Auto Point. So it's very similar to the jumbo all American pencil. It's made in the US So he sent it to me. It looks like that maybe that this is an octagonal or a. Whatever has 10 sides. Decogonal, I'm going to say. I'm going to say that. Yeah, yeah, that sounds good. So I have that, and it is very similar to that Right in the Rain one. I do not. I have not yet compared the two of them. Hopefully this week I'll get kind of a comparative blog post going up about it. So I definitely wanted to kind of be upfront with my readers and listeners and just kind of fill everybody in about that, because I have no idea if it's the same quality or not. So we'll check it out. But I also took a little video of me. You know, I had these right in the right notebook. So I decided, you know, let's just. I'm just gonna hold these and get my wife to spray me with a hose and see if the paper lasts. So that was a. That was a fun video to make. I'll post a link to it in show notes.

Yeah, it was. We recorded and I used my iPhone that has that slow mo feature. So at the end, I just posted a slow motion clip of me just getting sprayed in the face with a hose.

Oh, yeah. Oh, that's a good idea.

No pressure. So that was my. You know, I didn't do the ice bucket challenge thing, which I feel a little guilty about, but I just. I was kind of over it by that point. So this is my answer to the ice bucket challenge. Hose in the Face paper review challenge. So that's about all I have for show notes. Tim, how about you?

And I.

I like the green one the best with that, with that brass cap.

I can't.

Yeah. By the way, the other, the other bullet pencil Kickstarter, the st. You know, we had him on the show. That one has. Was successfully funded and he is now in productions. So quick update. For those of you who are not part of that group, that original pledging

And I think they'll complement each other really well. They both have a lot of strengths and kind of things they focus on.

Yeah.

Throwing your head back and laughing.

I think that's going on the front of the show. Yeah, wait, let's get a good one for our intro.

Sorry, sorry, Jim.

That's a funny sounding pencil.

I love, love the color of your.

Yeah,

Can you stick a field notes in there and type on that?

How about you, Johnny?

Don't try to burn that in. A fire is kindling.

But.

they're Wolpex and with Stylite.

Stuck up.

They always.

Oh, real quick. They always look so like with that thing on the end of it with the eraser and with the, the sharpener. It always looks so ungainly to me. Like I don't know if they feel ungainly when you're using them, but.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Why do they cost $79? Because they're, they're made of. They're plastic, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

They have the feral and everything in them.

I have a Faber Castell round Mongol. I think maybe you sent it to me, Johnny. No, Tim. Yeah, that one's really cool.

Yeah.

I hear once you go into the archives, you never emerge. Is that correct?

Take some pencils.

It's like a tire factory.

Like when you.

And burnt pasta, they're made in Italy.

My retinas are still burning.

What's interesting is Gary, Gary Varner, who's in the group and is starting a notebook and pencil online shop. He's taken some apart and is offering single color packs. So he has everything but blue. So if, like, let's say you wanted just one, you wanted a pack of like three pink ones, he'll sell you that.

Did you do that?

That's awesome. I need to get a. I have every color but pink, so I need to get a hold of him and do that.

Yeah.

So you mentioned about how, you know, it's kind of an anti collector's edition, and there was a really interesting discussion that kind of emerged in our group when we were talking about this. Heath posted a link to. That's right when they, they sort of first announced the collection, before they announced the. What it actually looked like. You know, they were talking about how they're going to come sealed in an opaque paper envelope. And so you don't know what's in there until you actually open it up. So it kind of by nature, in order to see if you have completed your set, you are devaluing your set. So it's kind of a lose, lose situation for collectors.

And that's part of it too. This whole thing kind of depends on what the collective perception of value is. So if that's the only way you can do it. And it's understandable that it's. That you have to break it in order to see it. But then a friend of mine pointed out that it's actually the ultimate collector's edition because you're actually sort of creating a meta collection on top of that. You're going to have people who are not necessarily interested in the colors inside, but are interested in the sealed packs, knowing, of course, that the sealed packs are going to be rare because people are opening them to see what's in it. So that's, that's kind of interesting to me. After everybody, you know, has all the colors they want and all that stuff, you know, people are going to be searching for the unsealed packs and it's, it's interesting on field notes parts because, you know, people are buying, you know, more of this than they have of other sets just to make sure that they can get you know, they might be buying three or four sets in order to make sure they have a complete collection. So it's, it's not something like I originally thought in that, you know, they're sort of like thumbing their nose at the collectors or, you know, just kind of like trolling them a little bit. But they're probably actually making, making the collectors a little bit more, you know, foaming at the mouth. And of course I say this, of course, as somebody who, you know, has tried to see I'm kind of a collector or really a hoarder kind of in spite of myself. Like I'm, I'm trying to, to be good and just buying kind of what I need and just enough so I know, no, I'll use them. But some. Oh man. Who was it who posted in the group of. Maybe it was in the field nuts. Group. Group. They posted the phrase sable and it's something like our supply. Oh, I have to find this. Did you guys see this? It's an acronym. Sable.

Yeah, it's. That's right. That's right. I'm trying to think of what that acronym stands for, but go listen to the pen Edict.

Yeah. And I go through field notes pretty slowly and I'm embarrassed to say that I probably have way more field notes that I'd actually ever use, but I like to think that someday I will use them. And so I'm definitely not somebody who's going to spend, you know, hundreds of dollars on a pack of field notes. Like, you know, that grass stained green pack just went on eBay for 250 bucks. Something like that. That's just insane.

Yes, that's it. That's it. So, yeah, I think they're gorgeous. I really like the COVID My wife has had one in a purse just for a couple days now and it's already starting to show some wear. So I think it's a little bit thinner of a cover than other editions, but the colors are wonderful. I have noticed that this is the first edition that I can tell that has started putting the registered trademark on the COVID next to the field notes emblem. So it looks like it's something they're trying to do a lot more production of their brand, which for better or for worse, better for them, obviously. Yeah, that's. That's. That's interesting. But it's gorgeous colors.

Sorry.

Yeah.

And I love the. I love that they're using that same. How do you say that? Is it reticle graph? Reticle. I think so, Yeah. R E, T, I, C, L, E. It's that dot grid with the. With the cross.

Ridicule. It's the ridicule graph.

Yeah. Oh, that video is so funny.

I listened to it at work and you know, Aaron Draplin just at the end. I'm sorry. Anonymous field notes fan at the end.

So, yeah, I love that paper a lot. So I'm looking forward to having more. I have a. You know, some Night sky notebooks that. That Tim sent me. Well, you sent me one of them and I think I traded for some more of them. So I'm still. I'm still on the one that you. That you sent me, Tim. And I like that paper a lot. It's kind of the best of the best of regular graph and dot graph to me.

That's cool. That's neat.

Those are pretty awesome. Yeah.

You are. Except they're gonna be like, well, some dads buy their kids cars and you're getting me some notebooks.

College.

That's true.

And then Brad Dowdy gets it and just writes in it and gets Aaron Draplin to sign the COVID That was

Oh, yeah. That was super cool.

Yeah.

What do you guys think about the new. The XOXO Limited. Limited set. Did you see that one?

Yeah, that one's Cool. It's a. They. It looks like they just took some of the misprints or some of, like, the, you know, the edge cases and made those. The covers, which I think is fabulous. I think that's really.

The what?

Exactly. Yeah. So, yeah, those are super cool. And everybody's clamoring to get. Get a hold of one from. I'm sure that Brad is. You know, he's at XOXO Fest, and I'm sure he's gotten so many requests from people for some of those notebooks.

Yeah.

Nobody's as awesome as Brad.

Well, and you, too, dear.

Should we.

Should we talk to Charles? Yeah, get him on the horn.

Cool.

The bringer backer. I looked that up in the. In the dictionary. Couldn't find that one there.

Revivalist.

How about that?

So thanks for joining us, Charles.

Well, I'm really excited to be joining you. You guys are doing a great job with this podcast. It's been fun to listen to a number of your episodes, and thanks for having me on.

Sure. Well, our family, the Berlsheimer family, hails from. Originally from Furth near Nuremberg in Bavaria. And we began producing. The family began producing pencils in the 1850s. Daniel Berlsheimer formed a partnership with the Ilfelder family, and Berlsheimer and Ilfelder Pencil Co. Produced there in Firth, Germany, for about three to five years and then began A New York based sales company to export to the US market and eventually actually relocated within about five to seven years. Actually started pencil manufacturing in New York and founded the Eagle Pencil Company. So the Eagle Pencil Company really was run. Within a few years Daniel passed and Heinrich Berlsheimer who was my great great grandfather, he built the company up for a number of years living both. He pretty much stayed in Germany most of the time, lived there. He never moved to the US but he traveled back and forth a lot. And then when his sons came into the business, Emil and then eventually my great grandfather Philip joined the businesses in the 1880s or so. They both emigrated to the US and and ran the company for a number of years. So Eagle Pencil Company been around for a long time. It became one of what was considered around the 1900 or so what they used to call the big four companies of pencil manufacturers in the US that was Dickson and Eagle and American Pencil Company and see what would the other one have been? I'm not quite sure what the fourth would have been at that time but

I just imagine you guys just sitting around a big table like the mob bosses of Chicago just talking about pencils.

I don't know. I'm fortunate. We are fortunate to have some correspondence, some letters between Emil Berlzheimer and a manager who was a longtime like a chief operating manager for the company for 30 years or so. And the Berlsheimers would. They'd go back to Europe on their European tour and go to see their father Heinrich and things like that over the years. So everything there, you know, we didn't have the benefit of texts and emails. They were sending letters back and forth. So there's a great. We've got about 100 pages of letters over 25 years or so that we've seen that's cool. That talk a lot about the kind of things that were up with the business and things like that. As these were the reports from the. From this operations manager. So it's pretty interesting to do. But we stayed in that business right into the 20s or so and then in the mid-20s. Now we're getting three generations into the business. My grandfather was coming of age, his cousins were getting into the business and as is typical with most family businesses you tend to have some differences of opinion after a few years. It's tough to keep many businesses, family businesses together for multiple generations. So one thing led to another. My great grandfather Philip became more interested in politics. He was actually Chamberlain of New York City and ran for Congress and ran Parks Commission and ran Arts the music program in Central park actually for a number of years. But anyway, one thing led to the other and the family business interests were separated. And our side of the family sold out to our cousins who eventually changed their name from Berolsheimer to Berrell. And that's how Eagle Pencil Co. Eventually, in the 50s or so, was renamed to Beryl Corporation. And they stayed in the pencil business till the mid-1980s. And in about 1927 or so, my grandfather moved from New York to California and purchased California Cedar Products Company in 1927.

Do you think they dropped the Heimer just because of the kind of anti German sentiment around there? Around?

I don't. Yeah, I think just to be more into the. I don't know if it was anti German as much as there was some Jewish heritage for the family. So I think that was that. Most of the family, I think pretty much all converted to Christianity, but I think that was more of it more accepted in society, I guess. But anyway, so that's our side of the family, the California branch, as we call it, which really starts with my grandfather Charles, for who I'm named, basically came to California and purchased California Cedar Products Company a few years after we had sold out from Eagle. And California Cedar Products was a startup slat manufacturer at the time. In that period, from about 1908 to 1910 or so, was when the industry started to explore incense cedar that grows in California and Oregon as a substitute for eastern red cedar that was growing throughout the southeastern U.S. and so Cal Cedar came out. My grandfather came out and he was a scientist by training. He really focused on building the technical advances in wood science and wood machine, the treatment of the slats with waxes and stains and introducing quality processes and developing a quality product and visiting customers all over the world to supply the wooden slats. The wooden slats were. Are the most expensive component of most pencils generally. And traditionally, most pencil companies were pretty much vertically integrated. Some bought slats, but most actually managed sawmills and slat factories to produce their own slats. But by focusing on that and the challenge of these other businesses, many of them were starting to get into pens. They called them Steelos and things like that and diversifying their product mixes. So it became more more efficient over time for many of the traditional pencil manufacturers to kind of discontinue their slat production operations, their wood supply operations, and rely on independent suppliers like California Cedar. Hudson was actually a subsidiary of Barrel or Eagle. So that was that they produced for the Barrel Corporations for many years and also supplied other companies as well. But they were an independent operating company. And there were a number of other manufacturers starting up in California and Oregon, you know, probably over the first 25, 30 years of the century. So basically, since 27, 1927, our family has been at Cal Cedar building that business. Our primary business is the supply of wood to pencil manufacturers. My father and uncle both entered the business eventually and. And eventually I came into the business as well. We've done a lot of things over the years, but cedar has been. And the wood supply has been our core for the business, I would say, historically. And then that's kind of the history of the business leading up till the late 90s or so, when things began to change with globalization and things like that. And there's been a lot of changes in the pencil industry globally in the last 20 years or so.

So how did California Stationers pencils.com start off? Kind of before we get to the big meat of the topic, which I think would be when we talk about blackwing a little bit, the first introduction I ever had to talking about pencils on the Internet or really just being interested in good pencils was with a golden bear and a prospector and a palomino. And I had never heard of them before. I just got them through pencil things. How did you get started making those?

Well, it kind of started. It was kind of started as an experiment, I would say, in the mid-90s. The web was kind of starting to come on. We were seeing competition for cedar from other species of wood coming from Indonesia, other kinds of substitutes. A lot of times, you know, unsustainably harvested, you know, in Indonesia and other countries in this. In southeast Asia. And we had started the pencils.com website originally as what was called the incense Cedar Institute pencil pages. It was purely an informational page. Just supported some teacher student education Paths we developed on that basically were promotion for incense cedar. That basically talked about renewable resources, the qualities of wood, and the different types of woods that were being used around the world, and had some educational things on history of pencils. A lot of that content now is kind of up on pencils.com still as educational content. But that's basically what the site was for a number of years. And we started getting a lot of. We didn't really do much after about three to five years of promotions. It was an industry organization between Cal Cedar and a couple other competitors that were in the cedar business that formed an industry association to promote cedar and eventually the market as we Were seeing more competition with Chinese pencils coming in the market and other things like that. The companies actually ended up consolidating the companies buying out the other companies. And so the Incense Seedwear Institute kind of basically went away. It sat on the web as pencils.com wasn't called pencils.com. and we started getting, you know, a lot of email inquiries from teachers and people about where can they buy good pencils anymore, that they're always getting their classroom disrupted with poor quality pencils. And so we looked around at the market and we looked around at our customer base and we just decided, let's do something kind of unique and interesting. Let's. Let's see if we can produce our own brand, really as a. More of a promotion. This is about 2003 or 4 now. We were starting to get involved with manufacturing pencils ourselves because we felt that our customers around the world, many of them were making decisions about either buying wood or buying pencils, whether they were raw pencils, that they would finish or finish packaged pencils. And we saw that ultimately for a strategy of the company, we may need to be in the pencil manufacturing business to provide our customers a broader selection. So. So we created the California Republic stationers range mainly to utilize the different woods, the cedar and basswood slats that we were using at that time, and to be able to produce something to demonstrate to our customers around the world for slats that if they wanted to make. Buy pencils rather than make them, they should look at talking to us rather than going and buying from some new producer coming out of Asia, China. So that was kind of the strategy around that. And it was a way to learn to make a good quality pencil ourselves as part of. We started that process. So that's how we got into it. We picked the Palomino range, really. We just, you know, mostly we used our other customers around the world to produce for us. We did have a factory for about five years in Thailand where we were doing a lot of OEM pencils for a lot of our customers.

I was explaining to a few people on. In the Facebook group about, you know, they were like, why is this called? Like, what are. Why is there randomly like a. Like a palomino horse and a golden bear? And I explained to him about how they're all kind of different pieces of imagery from California. You know, the golden bear on the flag, a palomino horse, a prospector from the gold rush, things like that.

That was. Yeah, that they kind of went around the. Yeah, that California theming The California Wood, that was the concept. But we probably made too many different products. We actually did say we would go sell those products and we were focusing on markets where we traditionally didn't have high share of market for wood because we didn't really want to compete with our slat customers. So we were selling into Russia and India and other places like that where traditionally we didn't sell much wood to the various pencil manufacturers there. And we were starting some and just learning about the business. And so the California Republic line kind of stayed with that that way. And it really started to change when the opportunity to introduce the Blackwing came around. And it was now we're just getting so many different brands. It was getting a little confusing. We probably had too many products. And so we decided to kind of rethink the line with the launch of the Blackwing brand. And then when we. So we. That's when we co branded with Palomino because that was our most popular, highest quality product that we had in our range that we've kind of launched. I guess that was 2010, 2000. Well, no, that was Blackwing in 2000.

Oh, you're right.

The Palomino was actually we just celebrated the ninth anniversary of launching online sales just, just recently so. Or this. I guess that's this month. But Johnny was a big part of that.

Sure. I've written about this in my Timberlines blog. Back in 2010 there were a number of posts about reviving the Blackwing that kind of talked about the process. But from. From the point that we started making some traction with the Palomino product range, the high end Japanese product, early on once we started selling, first on our little ebay store and then around 2008 we converted pencils.com to an E commerce site. So that's when we first started pencils.com as an e commerce site and. But when that started happening, we started getting some traction and people started to discover Palomino and a number of people made some comparisons of that to the performance of the Blackwing pencil and started asking. We actually got a number of inquiries. Well, will you reproduce this unique Ferrule eraser set that's on the Blackwing pencil? I think that would be great on your product. We looked at it off and on for a year or two as that was going on or three, and frankly we just weren't selling a lot of pencils and looking at the minimums. And what I would have to do, where did I have to go to find that and get somebody to produce that product for us, that what we call the Ferrell racer set. It took a while to find somebody that we would feel comfortable would be a reliable supplier to make a quality product for us. And then they wouldn't produce minimums for our needs. So finally, when they agreed to do a minimum of 100,000 pieces, which is only 100,000 pencils. But at that time, compared to what we were really selling in Palomino wasn't a lot. This was more of a hobby than anything else. When we got to that point, that's when we decided to move forward. And frankly, at that time, I didn't even know the Blackwing name was available. We were thinking about calling this product the Palomino Pegasus. And I was, you know, I had picked Pegasus because of the winged horse. So I was thinking about the Palomino being a horse and the Black Wing concept, you know, here's a winged horse. So it's kind of the melding of that. And if you look up Greek mythology, the Pegasus, you know, cave flew down to this mountain and knocked loose the rocks from which the spring where all the muses would gather. So there was kind of a, you know, our, you know, the.

Of connecting the product to artistic creativity or something like that, or the genesis of artistic creativity was what, why I wanted to call it the Pegasus.

That should be the fourth. The fourth Blackwing is the Black Wing.

Yeah, I don't know, maybe that'll. Maybe that'll be a Black Wing Pegasus. Anyway, so it was during that process that we ended up with just kind of doing a search and found that the Blackwing trademark had lapsed, that Newell had not renewed it. And so we filed a claim and that's what we did. We co branded the Palomino with the Blackwing and put it together, which seems

crazy to Me, because the Blackwing still had a lot of popularity and kind of a cult following. So I can't believe they just never renewed that.

Well, I don't, you know, I think they're a big company. Yeah.

They have a lot of divisions very

focused on, you know, the reason they discontinued the product originally was simply because the machine broke. Yeah. To make the ferrules and that they didn't find, you know, that there was, you know, they were focused on mass market. So they didn't really find that this was a high volume product that they were. Had a lot of traction with. So they decided it wasn't worth fixing the machine.

Yeah.

So, you know, that's old history, but from our standpoint, what we were looking at doing as to why did we do the version that we did and not do a replica version from the beginning that was primarily focused around the fact that from my perspective, we were. I wanted. There were two objectives with this launch. One was that when we got the Blackwing name, we felt, okay, that's great, we want to honor the tradition of the Blackwing. But when I looked at the Blackwing old Blackwing pencils, we found. We actually found a range of graphite performances over time. And so, you know, the most recent production over the last 15 or 20 years being on the firmer side than the softer versions that were, you know, when you go back to the original product in the 30s or 40s being launched and things like that. So we looked at that, we didn't have access to the formulations or anything like that. So all we could do is compare to other products. And when we really compared to the product, we compared to our Palomino hb, which was our best selling item. And I said we want to differentiate that a little bit and we want to create a super smooth soft feel. Because when we have somebody who may not be as exposed to pencils who sees this unique design and hears the story of the Blackwing coming out, they'll find a. When they use it for the first time, they're going to have such a noticeable difference in most other pencils because we're going to the softer version than they might be used to. And so smooth and buttery soft, you know, in a way in that the feel for that. That product that we felt that would help us engage new people into pencils that maybe had been become mechanical pencil people or even pen people and didn't really, you know, weren't as. Weren't as connected to using pencils anymore. So we thought it was a Way maybe to get a good story for expanding interest in pencils overall. And the fact that we just didn't think we could duplicate that lead exactly. It was more to honor that. So that's why we introduced the first version, the Palomino Blackwing. With the matte black, I felt a black wing. I kind of felt a black pencil made sense.

That's still the prettiest one, I think. I think my favorite One is the 602. But I think the classic is still the, like the best looking of the. Of the new black wings.

Yeah. So, you know, it was, it was, you know, it was great. It was well received. It, you know, October 1, 2010 was our launch date and it would. I wasn't really trying to, but at some. At one point we ended up getting, you know, we sent out some samples for people to, to comment on. And then a couple people started posting. I wasn't really expecting that. And all of a sudden it started. A lot of people started talking about it and we felt like, well, let's. The feedback generally we're getting on the product is good. We should go with it. We were a little concerned about the speckling on the product with some of the gold flake on the foil on the first run. And that was one of the reasons why we kind of sent some things out to get some input on that. But I couldn't tell people that before I launched it just because I don't want to draw attention to something. I wanted to see if people noticed it on their own and commented on it.

And now that could be a collector's edition.

Yeah, it could be. Well, it is, I guess, if you still have some of those originally. Normally they're a little bit better now, but black is the hardest color pencil to print on. And you're more likely to see those kind of flecking and those kind of things on black pencils in general, especially

a matte black, I would bet.

Yeah. Yeah. So Anyway, so the 602 really came about because once we launched, a lot of the traditional fans said, Whoa, where's the 602? Why isn't the eraser pink? Where's the half the pressure, twice the speed? So we kind of looked at, started talking to our Japanese lead supplier. We started experimenting with some other lead formulations to see if we could find something that was firmer and closer to the product that had been produced that probably people who are using it for the last 20 years or so were used to getting. And so that's. So we Worked hard to get that launched within. I guess we launched the first one in October of 2010 and the next one in 2011. And then we waited a year, focusing on building our distribution a little bit more before doing the Pearl version in 20. 2013, I guess it was last year. We introduced that last spring. Spring of last year. And there we were just going for a different look and feel. The pearly finish with, you know, something more balanced in between. Some people feel one's a little firm and one's a little soft and so.

And I've talked to a lot of people who really like the Pearl the best. Like not only in kind of the way it looks, but in, you know, the way it works as well.

I like it. I use it a lot.

Yeah, cool.

Sure, sure. Well, I mean, I think that it's been a great. The web and blogs and all these social media have really been a great chance for any company. It doesn't have to be a pencil company. It could be any company or any brand or any product. It's a place to learn a lot of things and find people, people with similar interests. So much. Much so, yeah. There's always been kind of a pencil collector's society, and those kind of people do find themselves, find one another, I guess, over time. But the web is just a great enabler of a whole host of different ways of communicating and sharing experiences.

What's interesting to me, Charles, is I feel like Kelseder and pencils.com is one of the. The best kind of pencil manufacturers and retailers on social media. I think that Jetpens is pretty, pretty good as well. But you guys. You guys understand it in a way that like, you know, Dixon does not, or, you know, Mitsubishi or Tombow or any of those kind of pencil presences.

Well, and, you know, we're coming at it from a different place. You know, these are. These are great companies. You know, they're. And, you know, most all of them are customers of ours on the wood side. So these companies make fabulous, wonderful products and they've been in the market for a long time and they have these traditional distribution channels that they've built up, and those distribution channels Even since the 90s have been changing a lot just with consolidation of large. First there was the mass warehouse club, office supply clubs or the bigger art supply chains and things like that that began happening and things like that. But those companies, they have a more traditional method and the pencil industry itself, the pencil has been commoditized for so long in some ways that when global competition happened and the Chinese pencils started coming in the market, Indonesian pencils started coming in the market and started seeing a lot more production of what we call private label pencils for in house retail brands or just new marketing companies buying pencils from some third party manufacturer that aren't established in the pencil business. So there was a great deal of competitive pressure on the industry and frankly there wasn't a lot of view that a lot of marketing made a lot of sense for a lot of pencils. I mean there's some companies like Faber Castell, I mean I would consider them probably the best company out there in terms of the way they market their brand and they've been very innovative with the pencils and there's a lot of great companies out there. But I think from our standpoint, from the beginning we were faced with a challenge. We were saying, look, we're a traditional industrial wood supplier. Our real goal here is to bring awareness to the pencil. That's why we have pencils.com to educate consumers, to create more fans, to make the pencil fun again. We started looking at how were we going to do that. We couldn't afford to go out and spend a lot of money on traditional marketing channels that when we saw, you know, we came up. So we came of age at the time when all these new social media and web tools were coming, you know, coming into the forefront. So you know, I guess, you know, I just started experimenting it right you know, early on with it, you know, when, when Johnny contacted us in I guess you know, about Force Choice, he had found 4th choice website. When we had introduced Force Choice pencil some years earlier. It was the first FSC pencil. And Johnny contacted us because he had found our website, you know, just for that particular pencil where we were just trying to create awareness about FSC and force and force certification to build that interest in that kind of product range for the marketplace. Johnny contacts us and says, I'm starting this blog to review pencils called Pencil Revolution. I'd like to use your Force Choice pencil to review first. So that was the first review he did. And you were like get out of

here you crazy person.

And I said sure. Well, we sent him some product. And all of a sudden we started getting orders. So, you know, it was kind of a. There was a direct feedback from that. It was great. And I think about that time pretty soon. I can't remember one of those. Johnny, what was it? What was the site that posted about? Just the word pencils or something like that and that with a link to your website. I can't remember what it was. And all of a sudden your. Your viewership or just a ton of people started coming to the pencil revolution. And. And so we got a. We got a little bit of hit from that. So I sent, you know, I sent him copies of the rest of the California pencil range. And he liked the Palomino pencil and said, boy, where can I get this? And I said, well, in Russia, short trip, he said. So he said, well, you know, if you have someplace online to sell it, you know, I'll do a story about it. So I, in about two days, put together an eBay store and put about 14 or 15 of our California, you know, Republic pencils up on the ebay store. And. And Johnny posted an article on, you know, our little review of the Palomino, the orange and blue HBS or something like that, I guess it was. And that's where it started. That's how. That's how we got all started. And so we engaged right away with those tools. Tools. And I had. I had been thinking about doing a blog of my own, so I actually started mine, you know, kind of in that time frame. Although I'm not, you know, I'm not doing a lot. I'm not doing reviews. I tend to talk, you know, I'm very long winded, as you could tell. So I write, you know, in his work.

I remember.

Yeah, you may have to do some of that here.

I don't know. Well, and you used to have this. This guy who ran your Twitter feed for a while, who's pretty amazing back in 2011 at Pencils.

He's pretty cool. Yeah.

You know, and you were. I mean, that's when we. When we. I guess. When did you start? It was with us from like 2000. Late 2011.

Well, late. Late 2010. Yeah, late 2010 to. And I worked full time for just a few months and then freelance for a few months after that.

Yeah. But, yeah, that was there.

You were there for the first two pencils.

Yeah, that was a lot of fun.

Yeah, we loved having you on our team.

Cool. What? Okay. So I guess I'll Cut this out a little bit because I think I paused too much. 3404. I take kind of live edit notes as I go. So one of the questions we have, Charles, is just as somebody who's seen a lot of pencils and just is very discerning, what. What makes a great pencil, not just a good pencil, but a really great pencil. Just kind of, you know, the characteristics of each of the different components in your view?

Well, I mean, you can answer that question technically as, you know, quality of the raw materials, the quality of the craftsmanship and. And things like that. Ultimately, each pencil is being used by the end user for a particular purpose. And there's so many different things that people may be using pencils for, and there's so much subjectivity to those things that I would say a lot of that deficient, that definition of what a great pencil, what makes a great pencil is really going to be different for so many different people. But certainly it's from our standpoint, ultimately, the material that you're depositing on the paper, whether it's a graphite pencil or an artist coloring pencil or aquarelle or a lip liner for lipstick or lip liner pencils or eyebrow pencils, things like that, those are all products that use woodcase pencils. From our standpoint, all those things, it's the core that's the material that's being deposited. You know, it starts with that. The wood technically is really just a casing, but in a way, it has a big. The way it couples with the core is important. And to a lot of areas of performance, from standpoint of the finishing, the sharpenability, the ability to have a nice smooth finish, both from a wood machining technical standpoint and from a lacquering, an imprinting standpoint. Of course, cost is always an important factor, but in terms of what, you know, I think consistent quality of craftsmanship that really thinks about the end use of that product is extremely important. And beyond that, you know, there's a lot of reputations that get built over time that people attach to the brand. So it's. There's been a lot of new innovative products and things like, I mean, triangular pencils. They're fairly common now, and they were experimented with 100 years ago, but they really weren't much in the market until about 15, 20 years ago. That's when a lot more people started doing triangular pencils. Now you came up. Faber Castell has this great grip pencil that kind of innovated the areas of new tactile type areas. There's Lyra has its grooves. Stabilo has another product that are all set to help person or a child hold the pencil correctly. Ergonomics has become a big part of that. So I think it has a lot to do with really the intended. Ultimately the intended use. I mean, if you're an artist and you're using a colored pencil as your medium, light fastness is course a really important thing. You don't want the color to fade over time on your piece of art if it's displayed in some way. So that's a big area that a number of the large, the great brands like Derwent and Faber and Caran d' Ache and all these companies have really done a lot of work on improving lightfastness and performance and just the textures of their materials. It's crazy. With the cosmetic company, there's thousands of different formulations. It's crazy.

Can you explain a little bit what light fastness is?

Light fastness. So. So, I mean, if you. Even if you take an ink pen, for example, right, and you write on a piece of paper and you expose it to light over time, maybe it's. Maybe it's something that's on, you know, maybe it's a piece of art hanging on the wall. UV light will degrade that ink, that pigment, whether it's a ink or whether it's some other material. So that is something that some of the color pencil manufacturers focus a lot on in differentiating their product, because the artists, the best artists, want to make sure their art lasts. I've seen old letters written in pen that I can't read. I've seen graphite pencils that are 100 years old, graphite letters that are 100 years old that read the same today as they did 100 years ago.

Go on, Tim. Sorry.

So I think that Tim had kind of the best question that I didn't even think of to ask Charles, just to kind of wrap things up. Well, I'll let Tim ask the question because it's A pretty great one, I think.

Ultimately, I'd say I believe that perfection is a. Perfection is a goal that we all strive to achieve and I think continue to strive to achieve. So I don't think we've reached perfection. I think that, you know, it's only. It's limited only by your imagination, creativity and ability to execute on new ideas and concepts. And I would say that for a time, I would say there's been a lot more innovation in the pencil business actually probably in the last 10 to 15 years than there probably was for the 20 or 25 years before that. And part of that's just been the fact that the world's changed so much. And traditionally there were maybe 100 different companies around the world manufacturing pencils,

we exclude the Chinese market, which wasn't really an accessible market to the rest of the world or a number of countries where they had closed markets. But when you looked at kind of the global industry, there were maybe 100 pencil manufacturers and many of them had been around for generations and generations. And as the world started to open up and we started to see more investment in Asia, and this is a story for many products, not just pencils, but those things created a sense of change and a need to stay relevant. And I think any company today needs to continue to innovate in order to just to survive in the marketplace. And so I think perfection is something, is a goal that we strive for. And I think there's many probably ways to perfect performance of pencils. I can't say what they all are today. We have some of our own ideas about our own products that we like to do in the future. But, you know, by no means do I think, you know, can we can, you know, have we reached the limits of what can make a great pencil. It takes a lot of thought about how it's being used and who the, who the customer is and things like that. Of course, it's a very competitive market. So, so what you can spend on developing a new product relative to the market size and the potential and your ability to get it into the product the market, there may or may not be a return on investment for it. So we're still, you know, this is a new business for us. You know, we've been making pencils now or marketing pencils. We don't even for five years we produced our own pencils in our tie facility but we closed that down and sold it back to our one of our customers in the industry. And we use the experience and knowledge and know how of our customers around the world to make space specific products for the given design or need of a product that we want and partner with those customers that are using our wood for their own pencils. And so I think there's a lot of ability to do some things. I think you look at technology and the interplay between technology and analog and digital and you've already seen some things recently with some other products where Staedtler, for example, has their product as a stylus type pencil that also is a, you know, their Wopex product. So I think there's a lot of different things.

And what is that called? V pencil?

Yep. Yeah, I guess they decided to call it the pencil.

A little presumptuous but you know, we

actually called the Blackwing V pencil in a campaign in one of our first campaigns back in late 2011, I think so.

We have some thoughts about what we're doing. We have some, we have some plans. I'm not going to give anything away right now, so this will never air.

You can tell us.

No, we do. We do have some ideas. We have, we have several things and you know, I, I've seen a lot of, you know, we get a lot of input. I follow the group and there's a lot of good ideas that comes. I asked for input for new Pencils.com products recently on erasable Facebook group and a lot of people put some ads, put some thoughts down. That was really nice of everybody to participate with that. And I think we've already added some of the new generals items and some other things over the next few weeks and months from our existing customers. But we have some ideas for some Blackwing pension products. Of course. We just launched the new notebook with the slate and so we're excited about that. We're getting some good response with that. And we thought about some accessory items as well as a couple of pencils. But, you know, we're not trying to be. You know, there's already great companies out there that are. Got a lot of wide range of pencils. So we're not trying to be all things to all people with our brands. We can't be. We're just. Just too small. This is like a.

You know, I think people don't realize there's what, four people who work there, five people.

Well, in marketing, I don't know. We've got. Our team is growing. Yeah. We're actually going to be moving into some new offices in the next six months. Really?

That's cool.

Offices and warehouse.

Still in Stockton or are you moving into.

Yeah.

Cool. You're not moving onto the boat?

No, this is.

This is one of the coolest things. The. The sister company Duraflame to California Cedar. Their offices are all on a ferry that used to shuttle people across the bay. So just on a little outlet off of a river in Stockton. It's really, really cool.

Even Florida, it doesn't have a workable engine anymore. It just goes up and down with the tides.

Just paddle.

So, Charles, I know that you talked a little bit about the slate and some of the black wings, but anything else, anything coming up that you really want to push or promote while you're here?

Well, I just. First, I want to thank you guys for all that you guys do for talking and sharing about pencils and notebooks. And I know the three of you together, building this group has been really fun to watch. And I'm. It's great. There's a bunch of engaged people. I appreciate all the. Seeing all the comments and engagement by everybody. So it's nice to see, you know, that there's a group of people out there that, that care about the products they're using when it comes to pencils and. And so, you know, I do. I do, you know, watch and participate when I can, and I do listen to those ideas. That doesn't mean we get things out all the time, you know, but, you know, some of those things take a year or two to think through, through and decide whether we're really going to do it, whether there's a real market for some of those ideas. But I think I like listening to the market and trying to respond to the market and appreciate what you guys are doing.

I think one of the amazing things about that group is I think just the fact that we have people like you on there, people who are making the things that everybody's talking about, the Black Wings, the Notebooks, that's a great thing about, you know, this Facebook group and just about social media in general is, you know, they have a. They have a direct ear to you, so. And thank you for participating. That's. That's huge to have you on there.

Well, I'm, I was happy to do it and glad that you asked.

And I need to send an invite to Baron Fabric Von Costell and get him on there.

Count. Tony Count.

Count, not Baron. Yeah.

Gross. Von Faber Costell. Yes.

Yeah, maybe he'd do it.

I don't know.

I was reading that, that profile of him that I linked to a. And I just never realized he looks like Christopher Plummer. Like, I can just imagine him just sitting around and like, I don't know, he just looks like a, like a movie count.

He's a good man. He's a very smart man about what, you know, what they've done with the company. I really admire Faber Castell as a company in our industry, as a customer and, you know, they make us better as a supplier. They're, they're extremely dedicated to quality. And, you know, these days with all consumer goods, there's more and more regulatory issues that we're all dealing with in industry, from, you know, consumer product safety issues to environmental standards to all kinds of different things. And, you know, the great brands out there, they're all being leaders in the industry associations addressing how the industries need to address and adapt to those changes and work with the regulatory environment. And it makes it harder for smaller companies, actually, because the compliance costs get tougher and tougher.

Yeah,

great.

Sure, sure. Well, okay. Me personally or you're talking about the company we had, Cal Cedar. Cal Cedar, of course, is our California Cedar Products company, is our corporate, and that's our calcedar.com there you can really get a basic information about our three, what I call our three business units, the slat business, the Palomino Brands unit, which carries our branded range, and then pencils.com, which is our consumer channel. In terms of blogs, I have my blog the timberlines.com well it's not. Well, it's actually Timberlines at Blogspot app. I haven't changed, I haven't migrated that but you can link to it from calcetar.com we have some changes coming up. We've had some issues late with the Cal Cedar website but it'll be. You should be able to find the links to that. We have Pencils blog which features pencil artists of the week every week and just talks about the new products that we have and just types of share fun things about pencils in a different way. We don't do a lot of product reviews per se. We leave that to you guys. And we actually do have a new website called blackwing602.com which is our new fan site. I don't know if you guys have seen it yet for the Blackwing brand and it's really showing off the creativity of the users of the product and it's a place to tell stories about the use of Blackwing. We're doing a lot in the music arena with Blackwing and actually have founded a non profit foundation, Blackwing foundation which is focused on K through 12 Arts and music education. So a portion of all the proceeds from Blackwing products that are purchased go into the foundation every year and we are partnering with some great organizations to put some great stuff together out there. And it's been a personal goal or passion of mine to support arts and music education for a long time and my wife and I have made the commitment to put both our personal funds into it as well as an allocation of product from that. Of course, pencils.com you can find, you know, our products and great products from a lot of our customers. I would say we probably could should be adding a lot more products to try to make it easier to find some of these harder to find products. As you said, there's some good companies like Jetpens out there and things like that that are doing a good job as well bringing a lot of products to the market. And so it's great to see that. I really, you know. And@pencils.com, we also have our own. We have. We do a component of what we do that just supports gifts in kind and pencils to education initiatives. In fact, we just did something locally in our town to support education in our own hometown. But we partner with a few different organization. Kids in need foundation is a lot of the pencil industry and writing instrument school supply industries supports that organization and they provide school supplies by grants to schools and we kind of give through them and a couple other international organizations as well.

That's cool.

So just trying to make pencils fun again, I guess, as we say now. Kind of our new. I guess if you'd say, if you look at the picture, the business overall, kind of. What's the mission of Cal Cedar? The way I think of it now is we're really kind of focused on empowering great success stories about pencils from anywhere from the tree to the final nub, from the use of it all the way back up to the wood supply where we work.

That's very cool.

I am. No, sorry. I'm Andy Welfle. You can find me on woodclinch.com or on Twitter at A W E L F as in Frank Le or oodclinched.

No, it's all right.

Oh, I hope. I hope it was interesting. So thanks for having me.