This transcript was generated from an audio file by AI, and may contain inaccuracies.
Transcript
The people spoke, we heard what they wanted and it definitely, definitely seemed like a, pardon the pun, a natural fit.
Hello and welcome to episode 114 of the erasable podcast. We're extremely excited for our special guest today, somebody whose career I followed and ever since he started at this company, Alexander Poyer, the brand manager from Blackwing. Yes, that Blackwing is here with us and we're going to talk about the new Blackwing 811 which was released earlier today at the time of this recording. Hey Alex, how are you?
I'm doing well, man. How are you guys doing?
Very good. We're, we're super excited. I feel like we've been talking about trying to get you on the show for a while now and this just seemed like a, like a perfect time.
Yeah, I mean you guys just had what, the five year anniversary?
Yeah, yeah, we were, we didn't record or actually post anything on social media about it. Celebrating that five year anniversary.
I kept meaning to and I forgot. I think I fell asleep.
Yeah. So. And of course I am joined today by my friend and co host, Johnny Gamber. Hey, Johnny.
The one with the deep voice.
Yes, yes, the deep voice one. So Alex is somebody who's interesting to me. I have a little connection to just because when I, uh, when I worked very briefly at Blackwing, I was the community manager of pencils.com because Blackwing was not really its own sort of like segment of the company yet. It was just a pencil. And I left and they hired somebody who was going to like really like build the brand and kind of fill out like turn Blackwing from like just a boutique, extremely expensive pencil into like the kind of like lifestyle brand that it is. So. And that's Alex. So you've been at Blackwing for like eight or nine years now, right?
I think it was. Yeah, about eight years. Yeah. 2011 into 2011 is when I.
Which is super cool. Yeah, I was excited to be there for the. It was after the release of the MMX and before leading up to the release of the 602 and that was exciting enough. I can't imagine how many pencil product launches you've been through at this point. Like dozens.
Yeah, I mean we've done. How many volumes have we done so far? Yeah, almost 16 at this point.
Wow. Yeah.
So, yeah, it's always interesting.
Yeah. So we're going to dig into some of that during the main topic today and then also talk about the 811, which is pretty amazing. But first let's do some of our tools of the Trade. So, Alex, what are you. What. Whatever you're consuming. Media, drinks, food, and what are you writing with? And on.
Sure, sure. So I am sipping on a lovely Pomplemousse Lacroix.
Yeah, I have a mango going. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. What else am I consuming right now? I'm consuming the Dungeons and Dragons players handbook because I just started playing. I need to understand how this thing works. And that's pretty much occupying all of my reading time right now because it's. I don't know if you guys have ever flipped through that guy, but it's. There's some action in there.
It's intense. Are you the dungeon master of this thing or are you just part of
a. I am not. I'm just part of a. Part of a campaign. Just getting my feet wet with it. That's really cool. And watching. What am I watching right now? I started the staircase. I don't know if you guys have watched that. It's like a true crime documentary on Netflix.
I've heard a lot about it. I have not watched it, but. Yeah, that looks amazing. What do you think?
Yeah, I'm only like four episodes in, but I have no idea. I have no idea who did it or why.
Yeah, no spoilers here.
And what am I riding with? I'm riding with a Blackwing 811 and I'm writing in my 602 Summit notebook. It's where I. My notebook of choice right now.
Alex. Staying on brand. Literally on brand. Johnny, how about you?
So I'm gonna run through the list because it's a lot of stuff.
There's a lot of. Yeah, sorry, go on.
Yeah, so I like British stuff. Yeah, I finished Lolita, which was interesting. And my daughter lent me Matilda, which I'd never read before.
Oh, I love Matilda.
And I just found out that Netflix is going to do an animated series.
I've heard about this, so that's cool.
Yeah, and we watched recently Crooked House and Ordeal by Innocence, which were both related to. Are from Agatha Christie books. They were on Amazon and both really, really good. And did you guys see the film Colette that came out recently with Keira Knightley?
No, it was on the airplane, but I did not watch it.
Yeah, it was really good. Like, surprisingly good. Yeah, no pencil porn, but a lot of, like, dip pens and stuff. So that was cool. And the film was good also. And I'm like, really addicted to endeavor that Rosie likes to get up from her nap and watch with me. So I'm in season four, which is so good. That's a really, really good, like, you know, it's in HD, but they did a really good job with their 60s props type shows. So it doesn't look vintage, but it is. There's a lot of like moleskins and click pens, so that's cool. And I'm writing with, of course, Blackwing811 on a right notepads in the pine book, which is like the other end of the green spectrum.
Oh yeah, you got it all. Mike Hagen will be jealous. You have so many green things going on.
Green.
Nice.
Yeah. How about you, Andy?
I am consuming. There's a book. Well, I'm consuming a mango. Mango. Lacroix. I'll say it the Midwestern way, since we actually just had a conversation about Alex's last name and how it's pronounced in French and how it's pronounced in Midwest US And I feel like Lacroix. And lacroix is another one of those things. So I'm drinking that. I am in the middle of reading a novel by one of my favorite sci fi authors, Charlie Jane Anders. She just released this book. It's called City in the Middle of the Night. It's really good. And I am also kind of at the same time because I always have like, you know, at least a novel and a nonfiction thing going. I'm reading a book called Mismatch. How Inclusivity Shapes Design. And it's written by this person named Kat Holmes, who is the director of UX at Google, but she's also. She used to be design director at Microsoft and wrote this manual for inclusive design. So basically making sure that, you know, the designs that they're creating work well for, you know, people with disabilities or people who are in like, you know, stress situations. And it's, it's really interesting. It talks about like, kind of the history of. I think the classic example is like curb cuts. You know, Berkeley, California was one of the first to ever like, have curb cuts, you know, as part of their sidewalks. And she just makes a lot of parallels between like that and, you know, digital design. So it's pretty, pretty interesting if you are doing the kind of things that I'm doing and trying to write the book that I'm trying to write. This, I think is really complementary to that. And I am writing, I'm three for three writing with my, my Blackwing 811, which we'll dig into in a bit. And I'm writing on something I just bought in Singapore. It is a, it's a Muji writing tablet, but it's that like unbleached kind of brownish craft paper that they have.
Oh, cool.
Which is just really, really lovely. It's kind of a. It's lighter than like a craft brown field notes, but it's darker than like, like kind of a yellow, you know, like a yellow writing pad. So it's a really pleasing kind of like light brown color.
Yeah,
yeah. So I see Alex has a very important fresh point. I don't know if you see this written down, Alex, in the Google Doc.
I'm going to pull it up.
Yeah. Wow.
Where did that come from? Johnny certainly didn't write that into the, like fill that into the blank.
Of course not.
Oh, yes, yes. Let me open the vault.
Yes. So it says here Alex is going to tell us about all of the Blackwing secrets. So if you want to go ahead with that. Do you have any fresh points you want to share with the world, Alex?
Not anything in particular. Well, actually, yeah, I do have kind of a fresh point. It was kind of leaked a little bit I think the other day. But we're working on new websites for both of BothPencils.com and the Blackwing website.
Oh, awesome.
And yeah, we're hoping to be able to launch them in the next week or so.
Nice.
That's going to be pretty sweet. As part of that whole thing, we're going to have a new subscription platform that's going to hopefully make managing the volume subscriptions a little bit easier. And Nick is going to be getting a lot of support also in the form of a help desk that's going to make sure. Very nice to respond to all those inquiries that are coming in.
Can you say what e commerce platform you're using? And maybe you don't even want to,
but yeah, no, yeah, for sure. We're switching over to Shopify Plus.
Nice. Very cool.
Yeah. And so the subscriptions will be through Recharge, which is a very, very well established subscription platform through Shopify also. So.
Very cool. I know a bunch of people who are product designers at Shopify. They make some really cool stuff.
Yeah, Yeah, I love it so far. Yeah, absolutely.
Cool. Awesome. Yeah, I can't wait to. Can't wait to use that. I definitely like, you know, I don't have to manage my subscription a lot. I just like once a year go and, you know, pay you 110 bucks and call it even. But like, I do look forward to like, you know, having that be a little bit easier to use.
Yeah, yeah, I think it's going to be. It's going to be great. It's going to be great for everybody, for us and for anyone that's a subscriber.
Very cool. Yeah. Johnny, how about you? Fresh points.
So I really just have two. One is Baron fig oracle pencils came out, which is awesome. Did you get a set of those?
I did.
So what did you think?
I was. So I was talking a little bit with Joey about this and I really like the core. Like it's different than the other ones and I have a hunch that's not supposed to be, but I really did feel, I think, I think Les put it in on her blog that like it has, it feels like more of a, like a true, like a true HB compared to like, you know, some of them were like a little bit darker and deeper and of course some of them were just straight up broken. But I had one of my yellow school pencil archers and like, and one of these oracles and I was just like, you know, writing with it and I thought it felt a little bit like more HB ish. I don't know what you thought.
Yeah, it felt sort of like a general's pencil in that the lead was. I don't know. You know, the Kimberly's have that kind of unwaxed, but the graphite is still kind of smooth feel to them.
Yeah.
It's sort of like a specifically generals thing. I think they felt like that.
It's like a smooth grit.
Yeah. As opposed to vrco, which is sort of like a waxed nail.
Yeah.
Usually. Or like you never know what you're gonna get.
Yeah.
Assuming they're v arco and that they don't have a secret, you know, Portuguese pencil factory that only makes them for bear and fig. Right. Could be. Who knows? Yeah.
Who knows?
Yeah. These.
I think they're lovely. The colors are lovely. I, I, you know, think the, the theme is like cool. But yeah, they're, they're pretty nice.
Yeah. And it had been a while, so I was starting to wonder if that series was going to be over. Like, oh, that sucks. They were always really cool.
Yeah.
But I was really happy to see them. Really cool. And even the quality control is better. Like the cores are centered.
Yeah.
And I don't know what their factory does, but they always seem to get very fragrant cedar.
Yeah.
Appreciate.
Did you. If we can go on a Baron fig tangent for a second. Did you see that thing that Joey's doing in the Baron Fig group with the auction?
What?
It's so funny. So you know how people always just drop in and Be like, oh, you should re release this custom Squire. We really need more custom Squires. And he said I will give, I will personally create and give away one custom aluminum Squire with custom Sharpie art on it if for the highest bidder. And like the money going to the charity of your choice. And so people started bidding in this like Facebook thread and last time I saw they were up to like like almost $300. So I think it ends on Friday. But I, I love that he sort of took this like rabid demand for these for this thing and just like, you know, turned it into some, some money for charity. So that was, that was fun. By the time he released this. Well, I guess I won't. It won't be over yet. It doesn't until Friday. But if you're in the Baron Figs fanatic group, go check out this and bid high on your custom one of a kind Squire.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
So apparently the Ouija board was named in Baltimore. So these pencils like brought that to mind right away. Which I appreciate it.
Nice.
Sort of vintagey looking.
Is there a story to the name Ouija Ouja?
I have no idea. Yeah, it could just like floated up from Poe's grave.
Yeah.
Across Baltimore through all the death and destruction and the periodic riots we have.
Hey, Mob town.
So you have to roll the pencil to get your answer. There was the one thing that bugged me, like I don't want to roll my pencils and bust up the course.
Yeah.
So I've just decided to like spin them in my hand and then stop. Yeah. Not that I'm sitting here playing with one of these things like all day.
Of course not.
Should I have some more coffee? Most definitely. Yeah. We're recording at 9:30 my time. I've had like seven cups of coffee today.
Yeah. Enjoy. Well, I like for once we have a west coast centric time zone. So usually we're on east coast time since both you and Tim are over there. But now, now we have a guest in my time zone.
Fighting the good fight.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Here on the cold east coast. Still chilly. It's going to rain all day tomorrow.
Yeah.
I hope they keep doing it because even like the packaging is super nice with Baron Fig pencils.
Yeah.
That tube is like, like promote whoever came up with this tube.
Yeah, I think that was. Well when, when, when they were on announcing the release of it. I think Joey said that that was all Adam Cornfield. Um. Cause I remember he said he's had to sit down and like figure out how to diagram, how to fit, like hex pencils into, like the smallest tube possible. So. And they, of course, they don't have any of those pesky, like, oversized ferals to get in the way. So, like some pencils,
one day there's going to be, you know, Baron Fig X Blackwing, and it's going to come in like a toolbox.
Ooh, I can't wait for the Blackwing Baron Fig collaboration.
That would actually be pretty awesome.
Yeah.
Worlds collide and hand. We'll talk about this later, I'm sure.
Sorry, Alex. You're going to get a lot of these in the next. In the next hour or so.
It's all good. Trying to silence my dog.
Oh, no, I think all the dogs. All the dogs we can. It's good. Any other fresh points, Johnny?
Well, real quick on that one. Our friends Les and D on their respective blogs have out reviews that you should go check out because they're really good reviews. They did some good photos too. My only other one is that I've started writing for Write Notepads blog, which makes me happy because nobody has a. The companies don't do blogs anymore that much. Like everyone kind of does it for a little while and lets off and they're like trying to push theirs, which is great.
Yeah.
So I hope it takes off Field notes used to. And pencils.com used to and even the pencil store, but like not that regularly. So I think that John Moses who works at Write Notepads is trying to do like, you know, a few weeks. A few posts a week.
Yeah.
On there. So that'll be cool.
Nice.
So I wrote one about paper and note taking that I think comes out tomorrow.
Nice.
So that'd be awesome. Yeah, those are all my fresh points.
Very cool. I just have a couple of them. A couple quick ones. So I was in Singapore last week and as I've talked about on this show and I had some really fun kind of pencil experiences. Mostly I just went to some art stores and picked up a whole bunch of interesting and I don't even know how to say it. The Chung Hua Pencils. I know a few of them have hit some shelves in the U.S. but there were some that I've just never seen before. So, Johnny, I sent some. Sent some off to you and I sent some off to Tim trying to think of what. Oh, oh, I went to Daiso in Singapore and they had a bunch of golden swords, which is awesome. So I sent most of the golden swords home with Michael because he. That was his like he doesn't have any daisos where he is, but I found a few of those and I found a few other kidoboshi daiso branded things. Says Kitoboshi right on it. There is that one that's like a rectangular. Excuse me, a triangular pencil. And there were just like a couple other. There was a, what is it, a blue, red pencil and there was another red marking pencil that was really lovely. So I put together a little sampler of that and sent it off to you, Johnny.
Oh, love you.
Yeah, it was a lot of fun. We had a lot of good. Had a really good time.
Sweet.
The only other other thing I'll mention is that the. I posted this in the group, but like, I just want to just brag on Adobe a little bit. So a while ago our operations people who like do a lot of the planning for the centralized design team was like, hey Andy, like what's some good stationary brands that we can personalize and because before they've had the regular like, you know, Moleskine stamped with our logo and like those pencils with the like black, black dyed wood that are like cool looking but not. Doesn't work, don't work very well. And I was like, oh, you should get some black wings and put your, put our name on it and you should get some Baron Fig confidants and you should put Adobe Design on that. So I kind of never heard anything about it again until all of a sudden they arrived and they're like, hey Andy, check this out. I'm just. So we have the coolest swag. Um, and unfortunately I feel a little bad talking about it because no, I can't give you or send you any listeners because they're not, they're not mine to give out. They're something they'll be giving to like, you know, people who, you know, speak at Adobe Design events or you know, interview or whatever. So if you're at a conference, if you're at a design conference and you see somebody from Adobe there, maybe they can give you one.
They look really cool too.
Yeah, yeah, they're working, the, the branding team is working with this like this brand identity for Adobe Design that has like these little interesting like little shapes and kind of glyphs in it. And I was super surprised to see them on the pencil barrel just because like I, I didn't know that you could do that. Like I, we talked a little bit about before the show, Alex and I, and just he, he was saying about how they would you say you created a special like copper Stamp for everyone. Or brass. Yeah, any.
Yeah, any custom job we do, we actually make a unique brass die for. For whatever is on it. So yeah, if, you know, there's like the glyphs for the Adobe job or, or anything like that, you know, if someone has a specific typeface or logo or whatever, we just create a custom die for it. So we can do whatever we need to.
Yeah. Then when somebody reorders, they'll just have that on hand.
Yep.
Yeah.
So, yeah, big, big props to Blackwing and to Baron Fig both for. For that. There you go. That's your Baron Fig collaboration.
Yeah, it already happened.
Exactly. Cool. So, yeah, that is. That is the fresh point. Should we all jump into the main topic?
Yes. Cool.
So if you're listening to this podcast and you haven't heard of Black Wings, I think something might be wrong with your speakers or headphones or just like, you know, knowledge of pencils. So Black Wing, they're Palomino Blackwing. To be. To be clear, the makers are 4Now4 standard pencil offerings, a quarterly limited edition series, which, like, I. I have to admit, I can't believe, like, I was not expecting it to like, have lasted so long. And I'm excited that it has notebooks, other pencil accessories. Blackwing really sits near the apex of pencildom. So Alex is the brand manager at Blackwing and you've seen him in some of the promotional videos for the volume four, the Mars Pencil, and just kind of around the Internet. So he. He occasionally drops into. Drops into the group every now and then, which is great. So, yeah, thanks so much for taking some time out of your evening and being here, Alex, for sure.
Especially to be here. Yeah, especially since that sounds like a hype reel there.
Yeah. Wah wah. Yeah, especially since this is a super busy time of. Of the season for you since, you know, you just sent out a crapload of pencils.
We did. The pile of boxes keeps getting bigger and bigger.
Oh yeah.
Which is great. But it makes this time of year definitely a little hectic.
Oh, I bet. So we're going to dig into something about the 811 specifically and a little bit about the volumes, kind of like ideation process. But first, I just want to start off, you're the brand manager for one of the most recognizable names in the pencil universe, but starting back at your own personal borrowdale, what first got you interested in pencils?
Pencils and I have. We kind of have a meet cute story that works pretty well. So I seriously, I remember the first time I was kind of infatuated with a pencil. And I was in middle school, I was walking down the hall. I had, you know, some. I had a walkman or something. I had headphones on. I was doing my best to ignore everything around me. And I, in doing so, ignored a pencil that was, that was sitting on the ground and I stepped on it. And I don't know if you guys have ever done that where it like kind of rolls under your foot.
Oh, yeah.
When you step on a pencil, it's almost like a banana peel kind of action. And so I almost wiped out, recovered and picked it up and it was, it was unlike any other pencil I'd ever seen up until that point. You know, my experience with pencils was like crappy mechanicals or yellow, just whatever pencils. And this one was all black. It had two little hearts imprinted on it. And it had the dopest name that middle school me had ever seen on was a Murado Black Warrior. And I was like, this is it. This is like, this is the end.
Badass.
And so, yeah, I kind of got obsessed with those pencils through like middle school and beginning of high school. And ever since then I've just kind of cared about the pencils and the notebooks and all the different kind of tools that I use.
Very cool. And you're also into baseball, aren't you? I feel like I remember that when you came to pencils.com? yeah.
Yeah, well, I'm into, I'm into all competitions.
Yeah,
I'm just kind of a competitive guy.
Gotcha.
Like all sports, all competitions of all types.
Yeah. Very cool.
Awesome. So with your job, you must get to try out like hundreds or maybe thousands of pencils from different markets at different time periods. So what are a few, aside from the Murado Black Warrior and your own pencils? What are a few of your all time favorites and why?
Yeah, I don't know if either of you guys have seen Charles's collection.
Oh, I have.
He's got a gnarly pencil collection. It's. It's a sight to behold. So, yeah, I do get to try a lot of really cool stuff.
Johnny. Johnny, if you ever make it to the Bay Area, we're going to drive to Stockton and you have to look at Charles's collection. It's incredible.
That is a date.
It's, it's awesome. But so some of my favorites for different reasons. One from like a story kind of perspective is the wartime Ticonderogas with the plastic feral. I just think that's fascinating. You know, the evolution kind of how they got the green feral and the stripe and all that. Kind of a history buff too, so that just tickles me.
Yeah.
And then from, like a design standpoint, I really, really like the old crackled Venus pencils.
Oh, yeah.
I freaking love those things. And I've been trying to figure out how the hell they did it for the longest time. So hopefully we'll figure it out and might see a little crackle Blackwing action in the future.
Oh, yeah. Spoiler. You heard it here first, folks.
I haven't cracked it yet, but. And then from a performance perspective, actually, you kind of stole my thunder. I really love those golden swords that Kitaboshi makes. I freaking. I love those things. I don't know why. It's a simple. It's such a simple pencil.
Yeah.
But I don't know, I just. I'd enjoy writing with those a lot.
Yeah. Yeah, they're. They're. I. I just don't know. Like, I mean, yeah, they're like. They're from Kitaboshi, but yeah, they're really lovely. Um, and they're also A$50 for four of them, which is pretty incredible too. Yeah. Yeah. So, focusing in on Blackwing, can you tell us a little bit about what your role at the brand and kind of what professionally brought you to Blackwing?
Sure. I guess I can kind of start at the beginning. I started as kind of a freelance writer. Johnny was mentioning. You know, blogs have kind of gone by the wayside for a lot of people. But when I started, I was. I was a writer. That's what I wanted to be coming out of college. And I was. I was doing freelance writing, and pencils.com was one of the websites that I was writing for. And after I had, you know, done some content for him, started to do a little bit of social media for him.
There was a community manager role that opened. Opened up there.
Yeah, there happened to be a community. Community manager role that opened up, and I. I stepped in to do. To do that, and that eventually kind of developed into a. A marketing role and that further developed into. Into the branding role that I'm. That I'm doing right now. Um, but we're still. I mean, we're still a small team. There's including, like, production, fulfillment, all of that. There's only 15 of us still, and that's between blackwing and pencils dot com. You know, we all kind of. It's all under the same roof,
so
I wear a lot of different hats, as does everyone. Everyone that Works with us. So I do a little bit of everything from, you know, branding decisions, obviously, and kind of strategies and things like that, to product development, collaborations and kind of business development stuff like that, all the way down to copywriting and, you know, some social stuff here and there still.
Yeah. Reigning Charles in on his, like, you know, big high, pie in the sky decisions.
That's. That's above that job. Yeah, it's. I mean, it's. It's. It's a lot of fun. I had no idea that I would be designing and thinking about pencils every day, but I get to do a lot of really, really cool stuff, and I love every second of it.
That's awesome.
Awesome.
So the Blackwing recently got a new addition that I think everybody knows about, the natural. Can you talk a little bit about the idea behind this design? And sort of the ongoing joke is that folks on this podcast and in the Facebook group sort of came up with a lot of the design, but I assume you did just, you know,
do what we have. Johnny just wants his credit.
Yeah. Can you talk about what role, if any, that what people were asking for had in deciding to make a natural pencil that is also extra firm?
Oh, man. Where could that idea possibly have come from? No, I mean, you know, the 211 was what, the second volumes edition we did, and that thing, you know, it sold out super quick, and we'd just gotten started, so we didn't really know what to do. And you've seen the ridiculousness of the ebay listings for those things, so. And obviously we followed the group and we knew that there was a demand from the online community for a natural pencil. And same goes for the extra firm graphite. Right. Anytime we did an extra firm graphite release, you know, people. People reacted, responded really, really well. Yeah, but what. What kind of kept it from, you know, being just like a slam dunk? Okay, let's do it automatically. Is that, you know, we've got this whole worldwide dealer network now, wholesale network, that we wanted to make sure we could really introduce this to and get. Get the support of. And surprisingly, historically, at least, natural pencils really, really struggle in the global pencil market compared to lacquered pencils, at least.
So
over. I don't know if you guys noticed, but over the past couple years, there have been a few little minor tweaks to the pencils. The imprint, we synchronized those so that they're all gold. We adjusted the erasers so that there's some, you know, a different color for each one. And so once We. Once we had that kind of in place, it was like, okay, it all started to make a little bit more sense. Okay. If we introduced a natural, what would it. What would it look like?
It.
Obviously it would have a gold imprint because that's. That's what black wings have.
Yeah.
Would it would have a. An eraser that wasn't black, white, or pink? And that was actually the. The biggest design sticking point for us was what. What color do we do this eraser? We played with. I mean, we played with a bunch of different colors. We played with some browns. We played with some kind of, like, olive greens.
Yeah, I would have expected a brown, but I. Yeah, the gray is really interesting. Yeah.
Yeah. And it was. It was kind of the sleeper. It didn't. We didn't really know if that was going to be the one that we were going to go with. And then we kind of saw it alongside the others, and it just made sense, kind of clicked. So that's the one we went with. But, yeah, I mean, the people spoke, we heard what they wanted, and it definitely definitely seemed like a. Pardon the pun, and natural fit.
So let's kind of shift two volumes a little bit. They're. I mean, frankly, they're a hit, at least. At least among our community. It's. It's highly, highly anticipated, you know, every time it comes out. And everybody loves to kind of play along with the spoilers and the release of the number and trying to figure out the numerology of it. So the visibility, at least within. Within our circles, has really skyrocketed since. Since the series launched in summer of 2015. Um, can you. Can you talk about the beginning, kind of the genesis of blackwing volumes and how you got started with that?
Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, you kind of hit the nail on the head with. With your intro there. We wanted to. I mean, this entire Black Wing, this whole thing, we wanted to get people more people interested in wood pencils and. And pencil use in general. So when we launched the volumes program, we were thinking, how can we get other people into this thing? It's such a strange niche. How can we draw some new people into our circle? And on top of that, the 602 is so steeped in, I don't know, lore and story. How can we tell more stories with pencils? Those are kind of the two main goals. How can we. How can we tell some stories? Because, you know, I was. I was a writer. I like telling stories. You know, we have other members, other team members who were. Who were writers or Just fans of storytelling in general. How can we tell more stories and how can we get new people interested in this stuff and into. Into what we're doing?
So
those two things combined with the fact that we kind of. We had all these design ideas and didn't know where to apply them, you know, I don't want to. Didn't want to dilute the, you know, the kind of. The core offerings that we had. So by doing something that was kind of limited, we could try some fun stuff and see how people like them without just having a million pencils available all the time.
That's cool.
So for any given edition, there's a theme or an idea, like a tribute or a number, and a number and a design. Can you sort of walk us through maybe in general, even with an example or two, what this entire process looks like, from an idea for a cool pencil to the awesome package we open up?
Maybe even start off typically. Where does it start? Does it start with that theme or with the design? And how does it escalate?
Yeah, for sure. I'd say 95% of the time. Well, most of the time. We'll say most of the time it starts with the topic, the theme, or whatever. When we started the program, we. We had a big, you know, big board, and we laid out like, these are. Here's just a brain dump. All the ideas, all the different topics, all the different tributes. And we planned out about two and a half years of, like, this is the ideal. Like, if we could. If we could hit every single one, like, these are the ones we'd like to do. And so we had this board of. At that point, it was like 10 different designs that we were going to go with. Anytime there's a new design, we kind of add it to the board. It's kind of like a no idea is a bad idea. Put it on the board. Let's see what takes shape with it. So we had this huge spreadsheet basically, of ideas, and some of them were kind of broad, some of them were super specific, but they were all ideas that we thought kind of fit with the whole program as a whole. And so, like I said before, most of the time it starts with the topic. We have, like, this. We have this person, this place, or this thing that we think is interesting or would make for an interesting story or is somehow related to this kind of this lifestyle kind of.
Yeah.
Culture that we're. That we're trying to build around the brand. And it starts there, and we kind of develop it out from that you know, if. If you could. Like, a good example is that kind of was the perfect. I'd say the perfect process was we had the. The Steinbeck. Right, the 24. Oh, yeah, right. That was one of the names on our original board. Like, obviously, John Steinbeck would be the perfect. Perfect tribute.
Yeah.
And so we got in touch. We got in touch with the Steinbeck family. I got to go down there and talk with John's son. And, you know, he contributed the design in that case, and was just an amazing process. The number was kind of an organic result of that design process and that story process. And that's usually how the number takes shape. You know, we'll have the design. We'll have. You know, we'll be telling the story both. Both written and. And visually. And the number kind of organically comes out from that. And it's. It's kind of the linchpin. It's usually kind of the linchpin that ties that written story to the visual and brings them together.
Yeah. And it's interesting because that's always. The number's always the first thing that you. That you tease out, Right?
Yeah. And I think that. I think that makes. That makes it kind of fun because it hints at both. Right? It hints at, okay, maybe this is the background or. And maybe this is something to do with how it's going to look.
Yeah, that's really fun. So I know, like, one of the things that just really surprised me about kind of announcing a quarterly pencil release is just. I know I have just a little visibility and, I mean, not much at all compared to. Compared to you and compared to Charles. I just have a little bit of visibility into how complicated a pencil supply chain is. And I was thinking, like, really, if anybody could pull it off, you know, Cal Cedar, who is part of the supply chain, could pull it off. But I know that there's got to be lots and lots of little. Little things and decisions and pieces of this that are super hard to pull together. Um, so in as much as you're able and willing to say what. What volumes. Was the most difficult to actually pull off so far that.
I mean, they all. They all came with their own challenges. Yeah, Right. But I'd say the one that was. And it. It's probably surprising because it seems like it. It might be easy, but the one that was the most challenging for us was the 56. The DiMaggio. Yeah, that one.
I wondered if you were to talk about that one. Yeah.
Oh, man.
So
that's a good nightmare is the QC for that one because it was literally, it was all hands on deck. Everybody was, everybody was cute seeing that pencil, those stripes, the way we, the way we ended up doing that one. Traditionally, a striped pencil is done with a gasket. Right. You have a, you have a paint line. You paint the pencil one color, you throw a gasket on the, on the paint line and that's how you get those stripes that are along the edges of the pencil. But the way we did it was with a roll on imprint process that made it so that if the pencil is just a little off, then stripes were a little off. And so get. Making sure that those were within our tolerances was, was really tough because we're pretty strict when it comes to, you know, making sure. Yeah, everything looks, looks good.
Is there a school somewhere that has a bunch of off striped blackwing blinks?
I don't think so. Those are actually, I think those are probably custom imprint fodder for imprint machine. We gotta make sure the dies are all set properly so we feed in the seconds. That makes sense. But yeah, that one was a, that one was a monster. That's not even. I'm not going to go into getting, getting DiMaggio's team to, to buy in. But that was, that was another added complication for that one.
Huh? They look really good.
Yeah.
It's one of my favorites. It's one of my favorites. I love it. But it's, it's. It was tough.
So in that strain, what is your favorite favorite volume so far? And maybe if we forced you to. What's your least favorite?
You're like making me choose between my.
Your children.
The bonus.
Yeah, I'm going to cheat and I'm going to. I'm going to kind of like I did with the different pencils I've used, I'm going to kind of break them out into the different categories. So conceptually I really like the 1138. It. It was not the prettiest pencil, I will be the first to admit, but I just really liked the fact that we were able to take that entire movie and condense it down into these little kind of barcodes and throw it on the pencil up. I really like that.
Yep.
And it was the first one that kind of had that like out there. It was only the third pencil we released, but it's the first one that had like an out there kind of concept. I was like, wait, what? You know, on the pencil. So that was fun. As far as looks, it's a tie for me between the 73 and the 4. I love the. Just the color combos on both of those and the texture on both of them.
The 73 is definitely in there for me. I love the way that looks. Yeah.
Blue is perfect.
Yeah. So for those of you who aren't, like. Who don't know all the. All the volumes by heart, like we do, the 73 is the lake Tahoe pencil that has that really cool, like, bath, bathysphere, kind of, like. Like, topography on it, and it's. It's kind of in tribute to Blake Tahoe, which is kind of an endangered environment. And the four, of course, is when we just talked about last quarter, which is the Mars pencil. Yeah.
Yeah. I think I just have a thing for texture, maybe. I don't know. Yeah, I like the. Both of those. Had. Had a little bit of. A little bit of tooth to them that you could grab onto.
Yeah. And do you have a. Do you have a least favorite. Or, like, maybe. Maybe you don't even want to say if you do.
I don't.
I don't know.
If I. If I had to pick one, like, if I had to pick one.
Yeah.
I'd probably say the 205, which is the. The one where you did the split.
Yeah.
Of the. The jade and the. And the white jade. It was. I. I don't know why. I don't really have a reason other than. Yeah, I don't really have a reason, but if I had, that'd be it.
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I. I totally agree. Like, I liked the. The concept, but, like, I like an execution. It kind of. It's funny because it kind of looks like it's trying to look like one of those crackled Venus pencils but being just kind of like. Like, you know, I don't even know what that. What the process is, but, like, kind of printed on there. It just didn't quite. Quite reach that. But. Yeah. So speaking of all of these concepts, Alex, I'm sure there's folks all the time, aside from us, who are just lobbing ideas at you, I'm really interested to know. And it's, I'm sure, hard for you to say, because I'm sure you don't want to ever rule anything out, but what are some of the volumes that you really wish you could make but just can't forget for whatever reason?
Yeah, you're absolutely right. I haven't. I haven't ruled anything out. Yeah, I've been rebuffed a few times,
but,
you know, we haven't ruled Anything out. I don't know if there's any. If there's, like, a one that got away for me right now. Yeah, we've got a few in process that. That I can't talk about that. It kind of seemed like it maybe gotten away, but I've kind of come back around.
But how far ahead are you usually working? Like, how many additions ahead do you. I know it can probably vary depending on which pencil it is, because I'm guessing. And you can, you know, confirm or deny or both, but I'm assuming that there's, like, a bunch of blanks that you have, and there's some that you can use from the blanks, and there's some that you can't. That you have to have kind of made special.
And.
And I'm assuming there's, like, a longer lead time on some of those. But just typically, how. How far ahead do you usually work?
Uh, we have kind of a rolling schedule that we try to keep two years at least two years out and that, you know, we move things around and change things up a little bit, but it. Usually we've got four or so different editions prototyping at any given time.
Yeah.
And, you know, that. That could be an addition that we release in, you know, two quarters from now, or it could be one that we say, okay, let's put that on the back burner. We'll, you know, we'll bring that out later. Yeah, cool.
That makes sense. That's. That's interesting. And like, I guess. Yeah, that was, I guess, kind of what I was expecting. But I also know, like, it's really hard to imagine. It's so hard to look that far ahead.
Right.
Like, I know people who start thinking about, you know, Christmas shoots in May.
Right.
Like, it's.
Yeah.
Yeah. Just kind of reminds me of that.
It is.
It's really challenging.
But you touched on it earlier. The supply chain is very complicated, and depending on. Depending on what we're doing with a particular pencil, you know, there could be feral prototypes that we need. Like when we did the stripe.
Yeah.
On the 530.
Yeah. Which is.
That one was. That's the Gold Rush one.
Yeah. By the way, bring. Bring that one back. Like, put that stripe on other things. That is one of my favorite Ferrells. I bought a bunch of the 530s specifically because of that stripe and the. And the extra from Core, but. Yeah.
So. So in that case, like, the prototyping of the feral was. Was intense.
Yeah.
And then, like, the. The four. The one. The one that we just did, like, getting that, figuring out, first of all, what we were going to use to make that sandy texture and, you know, so that it wouldn't damage a sharpener. Yeah, that was, that was. That was intense. So that one took a little bit longer.
I assume you just. Just laid out a bunch of sand in the office and just, like, rolled the pencils in sand before you shipped it out.
You're not far off. Process is pretty close.
How much do you do in the office and how much do you do, like, at the factory? Like, I know that you. You put the ferrule and the pencils, like, in the. You know, in the office.
Yeah, that's. That's all done in the office. And now that we do the. That we have the imprint machine for stuff, we do at least the prototyping stage of the imprinting.
Yeah.
Also, and we've got, you know, jars of different paints and things like that that we. That we can play with and kind of mix and just see how colors play together.
It's the ultimate hacking setup. Although I guess. I guess by definition it is not a hackwing, because it's. It's at the Blackwing Office.
So it's canon.
Yeah, it's canon for sure. Yeah. No, I would love to have a whole episode where we just dig into all the supply chain stuff, but I know that's part of your competitive advantage, and Charles probably wants to hold that pretty close to his chest.
Yeah. Not authorized.
Yeah. Understand.
So sort of like in the middle of things, can you talk about the new one? The 811? Yeah. Maybe describe it and talk about the background a little bit, because I think we haven't said a word about it yet. No one even knows what color it is if they haven't seen it.
Well, I mean, we're. So, I guess, full disclosure, we are recording the day before the announcement, but we have embargoed this episode. It won't. It won't come out until after. Until after the world knows what the 811 is. So presumably you have all seen the announcement in the Erasable group. And if not, go to blackwing602.com and check out the 811 announcement and read the story behind it.
Yeah, there are a lot of people that do a social media embargo around this time, so they don't see any spoilers. That's kind of cool.
You have to do a podcast embargo too, because they're not gonna. I'm about to vividly describe it.
Awesome.
So, yeah, the 811 is a tribute to libraries. That's. That's kind of the. The broad topic for it, I think since. Since that's where we started with this design, that's where I'm going to start with my description.
It was.
It. If you're looking at it, it's got a. An emerald finish. That's. That's slightly gradient. And that was inspired by those iconic green lamps. I think they're called emerald light lamps.
Yeah.
That you see in a lot of libraries on the east coast and in Europe. Whenever I think of a library, for some reason, I think of that lamp. So the color is inspired by that. And the reason why I insisted on you guys having these in your hands when we did this episode is because this is the first Blackwing that glows in the dark.
I. Yeah. Before I had them in my hand, Johnny sent me a picture of it. I'm like, oh, my God, this is amazing.
It's way brighter than like any of the Glow in the dark toys I've ever had.
Yeah.
Yeah. We saturated that sucker with glow in the dark action. So it's.
How many different layers of lacquer are on this thing? I just like, it just seems like a bunch of.
Yeah, there's the bottom coat, which is just white generally. And then I think this one has. Well, then it has the green lacquer, the green coat on it. And then I want to say there are nine layers of that glow.
Wow.
Coat over the top of. And then on top of that, there's. There's a clear coat finish to kind of smooth out a little bit.
And how are you getting that gradient?
That gradient is actually done with. I said lacquer, but that one was actually done with a roll on process.
Oh, I see. Okay, cool.
Similar process that was used in the like the 1138 or the describing the DiMaggio. The 56. Yep.
I think I'm seeing like the. The seam very, very faintly in here.
Yeah, yeah. There might be a subtle seam on some.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just. Just lovely. I think I might. So my dad had one of those green. Green lamps for a long time on his desk. And I, yeah. Have definitely seen them in libraries and I definitely, like, even before I read the description, I kind of made that visual connection between the green and those lamps. So. Yeah.
So it worked.
Yeah, it did. So where did the 811 number come from?
Yeah. So the 811 part of the story that we tell on this edition is this beautiful quote by Maya Angelou where she describes Libraries as a light in the dark, essentially a rainbow in the clouds, she calls it. Something to kind of guide us when things aren't going so hot. And so the 811 comes from the. It's the American Poetry section of the Dewey Decimal System, where most of Dr. Henge's works are housed, along with, you know, a bunch of other poets that inspire us and that kind of provide. That. Provide that light when we're. When we're feeling down.
Yeah, it's kind of an interesting, like, maybe unintentionally connection to. I have a lot of respect for the Stockton Public Library. It's one of the few libraries in the country that has just a social service organization to it because of all the kind of like, you know, underprivileged kids who come and hang out at the library. I attended a lecture at Stanford at some point, some guy was a photographer, was just documenting public libraries around the country, and he spent a lot of time talking about the Stockton Library. So I don't know if that actually has any play into this, but that's just a fun connection there, I think.
Yeah, no, absolutely. And it's. Well, Maya Angelou's mother lived in Stockton.
Oh, that's right. Yeah. She grew up in San Francisco, didn't she?
Yeah, or. Yeah. Or Berkeley or Oakland, somewhere in the Bay Area, for sure. But she would come and visit her mother all the time when she was up in her years. And so there's. There's some other Stockton connections to this one that will be. We'll be telling, hopefully on the. On the blog, Johnny, so you'll be pleased.
Awesome.
Yeah.
And no, go on.
I was going to say, I just had a question about the pink eraser choice, if there was any specific reason there, but I didn't want to interrupt what you were saying if you were going to go on about something else.
Oh, no, that was purely aesthetic. I just thought it played well off the green, actually.
Absolutely. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Johnny was talking about because it kind of. Because it glows. Putting a yellow eraser in it and kind of making like a green arrow wing.
Yeah, it's the. So the glow is. I was really surprised when we got it. And you, you know, I. I intuitively kind of thought this would happen, but when you. When you look at it, you can still read the imprint because it blocks the phosphorescence.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, you can totally read it.
I thought that was freaking awesome.
Yeah.
I don't know. Popped into my head.
That's very cool. So, moving on. From the 8 11. Johnny, anything else to ask before we, we talk about. Move on to other, other topics.
I was going to ask about the eraser.
Oh yeah. Cool. Yeah. So the Blackwing colored pencils are really lovely. They have these like really great weighted metal tips. Any plans on the horizon for any larger wider color range or the ability to purchase single colors of the colored pencils? These are some of the more specific questions we had we wanted to like, be sure to ask about.
Yeah, that's a good question. You know, I'm not, I'm not sure how much deeper we'll get into the colored pencils. Yeah, I wouldn't rule out like a 24 count maybe.
Yeah.
Or a 36 count even. But any, anything beyond that I think is kind of getting away from, from what we do.
That makes sense.
You know, the, the, the colors are great for our, you know, our retail network. They really, really love them. But we're, we like to stick to graphite. I, I'd like to stick to graphite. Yeah, but we. On, on the, on the note of like singles, we've, we've talked about like a red editing black wing
and we've
talked about maybe like a blue sketching one. You know those non. The photocopy blue sketching black wings. I'm not sure how exactly those might manifest themselves, but those are, those are ideas.
Volumes edition.
Awesome.
Red editing volumes edition for sure.
The editor.
Yeah, well, there's already CW Pencils has the editor.
We have small E editor.
Yeah, Perfect.
So moving on to other Blackwing products. So you guys keep updating your notebook line, which is really cool. Recently you had the addition of the gray and then the bookmarks were pink. Like the Pink eraser on a 602, which was like perfect touch. But when you look at them, it sort of sets off my OCD of like there's stiff pocket notebooks, then there's the A5 size slate notebook that has like an exposed spine and then the large soft cover summit. So like they don't match. But as a line it works really well together. So can you talk about, you know, how you can with those three designs and sizes?
Yeah, for sure. So we, you know, the slate is the, the A5 one you were mentioning. That's kind of our flagship notebook, I guess I would say. And that one's been around the longest also. So we, when we introduced that one, we didn't, we didn't have the, you know, the clutch or the summit. Those, those didn't exist. We had some other Blackwing Notebooks that never, you know, we never really fleshed out. But, but the slate was kind of our, our notebook and that was kind of how it was going to stay. But we had a lot, a lot of people asking us specifically, a lot of retailers asking us for some more notebooks. So we thought for the, for the clutch of the summit, we kind of wanted their forms to follow their functions. And so for a small pocket notebook, we wanted it to be flexible, but you know, it has to be. If it's going in your pocket, it's got to be durable. So that's why we went with the kind of sewn binding, but with a wrapped paper cover that matched the COVID that we use for the slate. And then for the summit, we figured it would be something that spent 90% of its life either in a bag or on a desk. So it needed to be transportable. I don't know if that's. I don't think that's a word.
Totally a word. Totally a word.
Yeah. It needed to be something that you could take with you. And having the hardcover bulk on that, like a, like a traditional hardcover bulk, just, it seems excessive. So that's how we landed on the soft cover with that one. But we've actually, we've been kind of mulling over some, some other notebook ideas. Like I mentioned, the slate is far and away our best selling and most popular notebook. So I've been thinking about rolling it out in a small and a large size also.
That would be awesome. Yeah.
And it come with a small one. Come with a little short black wing too.
That's adorable. Blackwing bridge pencil.
Yeah, Little cute short black wing. So that's something we're also looking at.
That's cool. Any.
I mean, if you're, if you want feedback, like. Yeah, we love it.
Yeah, it sounds like Johnny will beta test for you if you're, if you're interested. Yep. I'm a, I'm a big reporter notebook fan, so a Slate reporter's notebook would be pretty, pretty badass.
That would be really awesome. That exposed spine being so flexible. That'd be great.
Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to now I got that in my head.
Yeah, just sit with it. Sit within your head while we're on the subject. And maybe there's not any other interesting products on the horizon that you want to talk about.
I don't know if I can.
Yeah, I always ask Charles this whenever he's come on and like pause the recording. Yeah, don't worry, nobody's listening. You can say whatever
My focus. So I think we've got, you know, we've got the pencil thing down. So I will say that my focus has been outside of. Outside of pencils, but. But directly related to pencils.
Fountain pens.
I want. I want more sharpeners.
Oh, yeah.
That's where my focus has been. So I'm hoping that. Really, really hoping I'll have something more to share about this.
Well, you know, the long. The long point sharpener is pretty great, but for me, the masterpiece has eclipsed that. So a Blackwing masterpiece collaboration would be amazing. I still want. A long time ago, I tried to pitch this to Charles and I guess it's something that was in R and D for a while, is I really wanted a capacitive touch eraser for a blackwing that would both erase and you can use your iPhone with it.
I remember that.
Yeah,
we had a prototype or something like that at some point that would work as a. As a stylist.
Yeah.
The problem was you had to. You had to make contact with the metal.
Oh, interesting.
So you had to hold. You had to hold the pencil, like way down at the bottom. So super uncomfortable. And so we had, like, looked at. We did all sorts of weird stuff. We were looking at, like, okay, what if we get like a metallic lacquer and we put it over the top?
Yeah, that's interesting. I'm also. I'm also waiting for my Blackwing feral, like insert to put on the top of an apple pencil just to make the apple pencil look like a Blackwing. But that seems like, not really up. Not really playing with the brand sanctity of Blackwing. Right.
Yeah, it seems like we might get in trouble for that.
So, you know, you don't want to give away your future editions, obviously, but if you know you want to after we're finished recording, that's totally fine. We won't write it down or anything. But if you could think of like a dream Blackwing that you may or may not be able to ever make one day, what would it look like?
What would it look like? I think it would be more so what it would be about, because I can, you know, we can pretty much. We can make them look. We can make them look however we want.
I.
If we play our cards right, I think my dream edition is going to be coming out in the next year,
so you better not.
Yeah, I don't want to talk about that. I'll make sure to let you guys, like, I'll put a little flag on it. Be like, hey, that was the one I was talking about when it, when it comes out. But other than that, it's probably, it would probably be something comic related. I'm kind of a nerd. Like, I'd love to do a Neil Gaiman edition or like edition or something like that, but I. That's. That's me being selfish.
I don't know, like, like a half toned pencil. That would be really cool with. Yeah, like a, like a comic half tone. That'd be really neat.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, that would be cool.
Yeah. Johnny, what, what is your. What is your Dream Edition?
So what's that place called? The Analog Supply Company. They already make a pencil called the Thoreau Pencil, but it's, you know, it's not that great. Thoreau is really small and I think they don't make it anymore. So volume 1817 for the year Thoreau was born. Maybe call it the Conquered. It would be round, like, really naked, natural. The imprint would be burned in. It would have a matte silver feral and a pink eraser.
Jonathan, Johnny knows what he wants.
Yes, that is specific. Yeah.
And for the core, like extra soft.
Yeah.
Like so. The pencil weighs like six pounds.
Like you're talking like softer than the
black wing, like 8B, 10B.
Yeah. Wow. Really thick. A thick core that makes it feel really heavy. Like a Wopex. Yeah.
Well, the trouble is, if it's a Wolfex shiny, you can't, you can't burn in the imprint because that thing doesn't burn.
They burn. Do it outside. The Caran d' Ache Natura used to have their imprint burned in, and it was really, really cool.
Yeah. So my, my addition, I think that Dade Scolardi and I share the same dream, which would be to basically do a tribute to other kind of venerable Eberhard Faber brands and do a Van Dyke edition with a. Oh, yeah. Yellow pencil with a completely black feral and a special edition box that has that, like, really gorgeous, like green and white, you know, that green and white stripe and kind of that reddish eraser. That would be really cool.
The Volume 601, did it have one of those, like, slide boxes like the Mongol had?
Yeah.
Yep.
That's awesome.
That's the one that we, like, inspired. We didn't copy it for sure. It inspired our Pull Mago issue, issue three.
Yeah.
Yeah. So that's, that's definitely. I hesitated in bringing this up because I was like, well, it could very well be that this is like something that's in the works and I don't want to, like, talk about it in order to like, you know, jinx it from, from appearing. But that's just like. Yeah, just tributes to like further hard Faber tributes are really interesting to me.
Yeah, we've, I mean we've thought about like how, how do you tell that story? Right. How does that story fit within the context of the volumes program as we've kind of structured it?
Yeah.
If you were to do, if you were to do something like that. Right.
I don't know.
It's kind of tricky.
Yeah. Oh, I bet.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But that, that, that's, that's an idea that has been floated. Like if you were to either the Van Dyke or the microtomic or something like that, something, something that shares the same silhouette. If you do some kind of tribute to that, how would it work? I don't know if volumes will ever house that, but that might not show up elsewhere.
The other one I really love is the idea like the old, old black wings that had the little arrow, the up arrow cut out of the feral just to show that it's extendable. And I love the idea of everybody there has just a tiny, tiny little metal, you know, die and you're, you're punching out little tiny metal arrows.
Yeah, we've played with, we've played with punched dies there.
That's cool.
It's trick. It's tricky. Oh, still haven't figured out how to, how to do.
Yeah, laser. Yeah, yeah, laser cut them lasers. Cool. Well, that kind of wraps up our questions and, and I guess Alex, is there anything that we did not cover that you, that you want to mention or talk about?
I already mentioned the websites.
Yeah,
I don't know. We've got some cool stuff coming this year. I think, I think people are gonna, people are gonna like it. We're. Yeah, we're. I'm trying to do more like we've got the volumes is kind of a well oiled machine at this point.
Yeah.
So, so now we're taking the opportunity to, to kind of look elsewhere and say, okay, now you know what, what's next? And I think we've got some really cool stuff coming.
Very cool. Well, I think you started the year off strong with this 8 11. It's definitely in my, in my top five favorites.
Oh, awesome.
Yeah.
Yeah. Such a good. I mean any, any literary tribute I think is going to especially play big with, you know, with our audience and with, with us. So. And libraries like, especially.
Right. So yeah, I hope you made a lot of these.
Yeah. Cool. So just sitting around. So Alex, thank you. Thank you. So much for taking the time and coming out and hanging out with us tonight. So where can people find you, find you and your. Your company on the Internet?
Yeah, I'm rather limited on. On social media. I. I do. You can find me on Instagram, Alexander Poirier. That's. That's about it. But you can find us all over the place at Blackwing, on. On Instagram, at Blackwing, on Twitter, facebook.com palominoblackwing and blackwing602.com Whoever owns blackwing.com still
hasn't given up the ghost yet. I remember talking about that like in the early days, but like, right. I think I worked there when we registered it. And yeah, blackwing, blackwing.com still somebody else.
It's an organic meat company. Yes, Ostrich meat.
Exactly.
Thus the name Black Wings.
Perfect. Interesting. Johnny, where can people find you?
You can find me on the Internet@pencil revolution.com although. So I'm transferring hosts, so it might go down for a little while. Hopefully not. And on social media ensolution.
Nice. So I'm Andy Welfle. You can find my blog that I Never update@woodclinch.com and a lot of other Webby stuff at Andy, WTF? And then you can find me on Twitter and Instagram as wellfli. This is the Erasable podcast. We are at erasable us episode 114 has been in this episode 5 years of recording we are at. You can find show notes and the audio recording for the show at erasable us114. Come join our Facebook group. If you are on Facebook it is facebook.comgroups erasable it's a really great community. A lot of talk, a lot of speculation and rumor mills and really hilarious speculation about the Blackwing. I don't know if you've seen any of them, Alex.
Yeah, definitely. It's funny, some people guess and I'm always shocked at how accurate.
I know like somebody. Somebody got this library one like right off and I was actually freaking nailed it. Really surprised.
Everything. Everything about I was what except the glowing. Nobody knew about the glowing.
Exactly. Yeah. I will admit, like go off on a tangent here for a second. So Mike, Mike Hagens suggested, you know, 811 is what you call in the US when before you dig in order to find like downed power lines and stuff like in your backyard. And when I saw the kind of green blurred backdrop, I was like, that's it. It's a tribute to the American backyard. Kind of like the right notepads front yard. I was like this is the Blackwing backyard. And no, I was way off.
Anyhow, something that would be a red herring for people.
Yeah, that's great.
All before you dig
all this and more in the Facebook group, if you're not in that, come check us out on Twitter and Instagram and our Facebook page itself as erasablepodcast. If you are listening to us on your favorite podcatcher, please recommend us and rate and review us on itunes if you get the chance. Or Google Play Store. That helps us kind of be discovered by more people. And once again, thank you, Alex, for joining us. This is Alex Poirier, the brand manager of blackwing, and we'll talk to you all soon. Do you like our podcast? Most people like our podcast, but if you like our podcast, maybe we'll turn it off.