Scribe

Welcome to the Erasable podcast. Today we're kicking off a new series we're calling Reraceable, where we bring back some of our most memorable episodes and interviews from the past 10 years of podcasting. For this first installment, we thought this would be perfect. The first perfect place to start. We're rewinding to episode 106 and an incredible conversation Johnny and Andy had with Henry Hulan, chairman of the Musgrave Pencil Company. This interview gave us a rare inside look at the history and craftsmanship of American pencil making. And it led to something truly special, extremely special to us. The creation of the Musgrave Single Barrel 106, a pencil made from vintage red cedar and. And named after this very episode. So that's fun to look back on. So even though I wasn't part of this original interview, I, like so many of you, have loved revisiting this conversation over the years. So let's jump in and rediscover why it was such a standout moment. Thanks for listening.

Well, of course, I started here over 50 years ago and I have worked in the shop. I have worked in a couple of the departments in the factory. I was sort of the bookkeeper, and then I got into sales and then president of the company for about 15 years. And now we have a new president. And I'm trying to slow down a little bit. It's hard to do when you've worked all your life. And I'm just. Do what in sales? What's the fun stuff now? I can do fun things now.

pencils, like working with Nicole and things like that. I get to do more about what I want to do now.

That's a good question. Because one thing I want to say first is a US Manufacturer making pencils can only start with a wood slate. And you can't say you make a pencil and start with a raw pencil and finish the process. My grandfather, James Rayford Musgrave, saw an opportunity to make and sell pencil slats in the early 1900s. He did this without cutting a single tree. Pencil slats had to be cut from a dried wood. And Mr. Musgrave saw this in the cedar rail fences all over Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi. And what happened was he would purchase these cedar rail fences and make a narrow ply fence slat. And the slat is the wood piece that the pencil process starts from. And he would made these pencil slats and originally sold them to pencil manufacturers, mostly in Europe. And a lot of times he would replace the cedar rail fence with a wire fence if the farmer requested. So what happened? We continued cutting pencil slats, but after a while, Mr. Musgrave wanted to make the whole pencil. So he went to Europe and traded pencil slats for pencil machinery. In November of 1923, made the first pencil for Musgrave Pencil Company after selling slats from 1916 on. Well, we made and sold slats probably through. Almost through the 50s.

Yes, it was. This was what we call a Tennessee red cedar. It was a killed. I mean, it was already dried because it was sitting outside all the time. And they would bring them in and make these little narrow ply slats and grade them and be sure what the water content was in them so they would make. So they wouldn't crack or anything when they made pencils.

Let me tell you something interesting. Yeah. That this is. I don't know whether this needs to be out or not, but I found about maybe six or eight burlap bags of Tennessee red cedar slats that came out of a warehouse across the street that is no longer there. And I am going to try to make some pencils out of some of them.

Have the same thing as Jack Daniels has when they make a single barrel. We're going to have a single barrel pencil.

Well, I would start out by saying that any family owned operated business has challenges. The big advantage in doing is doing what you want to do when you want to do it. You don't have to wait for a board approval, submit a request in writing. You can just talk about it and do it. And I think the big challenge is trying to. To do too much yourself and thinking you can handle all aspects of the business yourself, you know, including sales, marketing, accounting, production, purchasing. And you know, I think in the last 10 years we have sort of gone outside and selected an advisory council that has really helped us in those different categories. And that's. You have to have a little bit more diversification and come from your inner family.

in the company right now? My brother is involved in the company. I had another brother that has just gotten out of the company. He wanted more time to do some things for himself. And I've had a couple of sons that have worked for us for a little while, but they are no longer here. So my brother and myself are. We're the two owners right now.

Well, since we started, you know, so long ago, the Musgrave has always been a part and participated in our town's relationship between the city and the factory. And my dad gave land a long time ago for a softball baseball field and he built a couple of tennis courts for the city to use. And they kept them up and used the field. They still use the field even today. And we, of course, like any family business, we've helped with fundraisers, we've served on boards, we've helped advertised Shovel as a great place to grow up. The pencil city got its name many years ago when there were several pencil companies and as many pencil imprinters that bought pencils from the manufacturers and imprinted them with different people's logos and sayings and all that sort of stuff. And imprint all kinds of ads on them. Today there's only Musgrave and one imprinter. And when we had our 100th anniversary in 2016, we had about 500 folks and we had. Our governor Bill Haslam was down here and we had a good time. We're looking to the next. We're looking forward to the next. To the 200th anniversary.

Well, of course they are Empire Pencil Company.

Is a big pencil company and they've been purchased several times. And they're part of the Newell family right now.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

National Pencil Company was here. Not Reliance Pencil Company was a pencil company in Lewisburg. But then you've got Shelbyville Pencil Co. And Economy Pencil Co. Were both imprinters. And Shelbyville Pencil Co. Is still here, but Economy was sold and they're gone.

Well, being a family owned, operated business, our family made the decision to stay in Shelbyville. And we, you know, right now we've got about 80 employees representing almost that many families. And we just, we didn't want to leave Shelbyville and our employees didn't either. So our employees have made our company. So, you know, why would you want to move or sell or, you know, they're the ones that have kept us here and that's why we're here today.

And, you know, the challenges that you face are, you know, of course, the first challenge is Asia, slash China, whatever. You know, they've got inexpensive imports a long time ago, maybe it's not quite as bad now, but they've flooded the market.

And

material suppliers, a lot have moved to China or some other place in Asia. And some materials are harder to find. Graphite cores the same way. Pretty interesting story about challenge that. I went to Asia, Vietnam, Taiwan, China, about a year and a half ago, and I was in a small workshop in southern China. And they were printing a camo pencil for the United States Army. That same camo pencil two months before, I had bid on and did not get the bid because of our pricing. So here it was being printed at this workshop in southern China. And I might fill out when I picked up a handful of myself. Look at here, look at here.

Yeah, right? That's what you're facing sometimes. Yeah.

The graphite core is. I mean, what we can do, we can control everything. We can control the graphite, we control the paint or the lacquer that you put on it. We can control the ferrule, the eraser, the printing, the packaging and all that makes our pencil a little different. And it makes us be in control of what we want to. Of what we want to make and what the end product.

Looks like. You know, if a pencil, if it's got a good graphite core in it, a lot of the rest of it is cosmetic, but it certainly makes the pencil. And that's what we have control of.

Yeah, we can handle as few as five gross. Which is 720pencils. Yeah.

That. That's, that's, that's. Now you're talking about the good old full hex pencil.

And. And it takes a little longer, a little, little bit harder to paint. Because when you paint a full hex pencil Those hex edges take a little bit more paint than a semi hex. So they're a little bit. Takes a few more coats and you just have to watch them.

And the hex surface has a tiny bit more imprint room too. So when we make a pencil and sell them to an imprinter, then, I mean, it's not a lot, but still, Instead of a 10 point, you might be able to use a 12 point type. And that makes a difference. And plus, you know, to me, it feels good in your hand and. And if you're lucky, it won't roll away from you at that very time. You might really need it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that's the. You know, the wood slat then is when it's planed and grooved. And then the graphite and glue is laid in those grooved slats. When you shape them out, that that core just has to be right in the center so it'll sharpen correctly. You've gotten pencils before when they sharpen on one side or the other side. And I'm certainly not saying we haven't done that before, but that's what you really have to watch.

Yeah.

Excellent.

Oh, let's see. Like. Okay. In addition, might be any one of the 1200 unigraph drawing line of pencils is a really fun line too because they're about 15 degrees offered in that. And that would be. That's one of them. My favorite is probably is the Tesco pencil. I also like. I don't know whether you've ever written with a 600 news.

Okay. Okay.

That's got a real soft. You can even. A lot of people use it for shading drawings and things like that. And you know, now we've got. Nicole came up with a variety pack that's got 10 popular items in it. It's got four jumbos, it's got two hex pencils, it's got one round with no eraser and it's got the Tescoin and the 600 ewes in it. So. That's a pretty neat little variety pack.

We may. No, I just. You had asked about something you'd like to see. We had two pen pencils that we. We can no longer find a ferrule for. And the ferrule is what holds the eraser onto the pencil. We had a pencil called the top hat and one called the charger. One was a hex and one was a round and it had a 2 diameter ferrule on it. Oh wow. The ferrule fit regular sized pencil but the top of the ferrule held a jumbo size eraser. And it was popular, it was popular in school, it was popular for some reason for music writers. And we cannot get that feral anymore. So we had to discontinue it.

Okay.

Another really interesting pencil was the indelible koar pencil. And it is still popular in the tattoo market where people will freehand a picture of whatever you want tattooed on whatever part of the body you want and on a piece of wax paper and then they'll wet your skin and then they'll put that design on your skin and when they pull it off, the indelible portion of the pencil will leave that design on your skin and then they can freehand the rest of it. Pretty interesting.

We do not.

Yes.

Oh, gosh. I don't know whether you remember seeing a very small pencil for you to resubscribe to a subscription of either look or Life or something like that. It was a tiny red. It was 0.125 in diameter, very, very small. It was three and a half inches long. And it was actually sharpened and we made millions of those things and sent them to a company and in Colorado where they stuffed these pencils for you to renew your subscription in an envelope and just put it in the regular mail. Didn't have to be special or anything because it was so small. And that was a real. That took some doing. I mean, we had to have a couple of machines made and that was just a different type and style of pencil.

Some? We are, yes.

It's just a larger. And the bridge pencil is small, but it's larger, so it's not as hard to make.

Well, you know, all of our older pencils, I think, you know, I don't know how we came up with the different fonts and designs and things like that. We were just. I think my mother even helped do some of those way back when.

They just. I don't know, they just happened. We would either find a font that we liked or somebody would say, let's try this. And because we did not. We did not have an artist on staff during all Those years. Not until we started our designer line of pencils did we have a full time artist on staff.

Probably the Mitsubishi makes a. A pencil that's got a real, really good soft. It's probably a core between an HB and a B or a 2B or something like that. And they used to sell me that core for me to put in one of the high grade pencils that I made. But they have the Uni Ball and another company in the United States was making a Uni Ball and they would not allow them to sell me those graphite cores, even though nobody in the United States was making them. So I couldn't use them anymore. So I think I've got three left. Yeah. Oh, wow.

That's good. And we can start by saying two years ago we had a board change, elected a new president, a board chair,

and

through talking, marketing became a priority. My son Harper knew of Nicole and her firm and made a pretty powerful presentation about why marketing is a tool that can be used in a hundred different ways from from now on through eternity. And I can say that we applaud Nicole for the job she's done working very closely with Our president, Mike Smith, and my son Harper.

Thank you. Thank you,

I share, then Nicole can share.

that's a tough question. And you know, right now we're looking into some caps. That's something that people like. And we have a US supplier that's got a good quality cap, but they're somewhat expensive right at this time. And we'll continue to look at that. You know, maybe a canvas tote, like the little beanbag tote or something like that. But of course, what I really, you know, would like is we are a pencil manufacturer, so I would like to have a special pencil selection about once every quarter. And that way we'll keep our name out there. We'll have some, two or three other things for social media that people like to use and have along with their pencils. But you know, I like to sell pencils. I love selling T shirts and caps, but I love to see those pencils coming off that shape. Shaper line or grooving line, the painting line, the printing line. And so that would be my goal. And we'll see what Nicole wants to do.

That is always Nicole. I think the shirts that are on the site are done like it's just an on demand printer. So that we could just give customers a different way to show love for the brand. I think you guys have talked about on previous podcasts the test scoring pencil being an odd choice because it was so quirky, but that's exactly why we picked it. It's just kind of fun and weird and like, I vaguely. I think that's actually how I felt about the test scoring pencil the first time I saw it because I was kind of new to the pencil industry. I was like, I'm vaguely familiar with this design and I don't know why. And you know, I thought that was why it was fun to put on a shirt. But those aren't necessarily, you know, generating a margin for us. I tried to keep the cost really as low as we could to not lose any money on that. But you know, just give brands, sorry, fans a different way to engage with us. So that's where those came from. But yeah, I don't, you know, we're not necessarily going to do a ton of new stuff, although those hats would be pretty amazing.

give me, yeah, you know, I can speak to some fun content that will be coming out in our social media in the next little bit which was I got into Henry's collection of just old pencils. We photographed those really beautifully and working to kind of get that online and kind of part of our Instagram feed. So that's, you know, looking back, but it's just, it's fun stuff, it's interesting and you know, it's shot in a really modern way, but it's these old pencils. So I'm really excited to start sharing some of that content in addition to the behind the scenes stuff that you're seeing that really is kind of living on the site now. And that's. Yeah, I need to give credit to Emily Dorio. That was the photographer that has done a lot of the behind the scenes stuff. She worked with me and my husband is my work partner. He's the creative director behind everything. And so anyways, it's been fun to start to share that because who wouldn't Want to see behind the scenes of the pencil factory?

Yeah, that was New York Times Magazine.

And I think that he. If I'm not mistaken, I think he was embedded with them for a while. So his photographs from that article were over the course of a couple months. We didn't have that luxury of time, but we were really inspired, fired by that piece, you know, to be totally honest, when we were like, yeah, this is. This is what we want to work with Emily to capture.

Just love them.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, you know, I mean, I can see it now. Musgrave celebrates 200 years. 1916 to 2116. We had 500 to attend 100. We'll need a bigger tent to accommodate 1,000 people. Maybe. Besides our governor, our president might also attend. Put that on your calendar right now,

Yeah, seriously. Wood case pencils are made from a renewable resource, and it's always been a useful tool in the education market. Plus, it's an expensive advertising giveaway. You just hope that our grandkids and I can speak about mine, too, and their kids don't wear out their two thumbs with all of the glowing rectangles that they're on every day, because it usually takes three fingers to hold a pencil.

You're right. Yeah.

Well, either in work or outside of work, I use pencils 100% of the time. I used to. Everything I write, I write with a pencil. Notes, whatever. They're. They just. Of course, they've always been a part of my life, and I've got scads of them just here in the boardroom, in my office, in my home. You know, you can't go in a room without being able to pick up several pencils. So that's just. That's my life.

And I love being around them. I love what they have meant to me and my family and our employees, and it's a fun item. Really is.

Excellent.

Nicole, you're the ideal woman.

Well, I mean, you know, all the stuff that we're doing wouldn't be possible without Mike. The president of the company's been really supportive. I've had a direct line to him and been able to really get things going quickly. I think we've been working together for six months now, and we've got a lot accomplished in six months. I mean, I think anybody that's worked at an agency, it's. For me, I run kind of a lean ship. So it's my husband and I, and then we hire contractors to kind of fill in expertise roles versus employing a big staff. So, I mean, to have a new website and all this new Instagram content in six months, we've been really, really going fast. So, you know, that's a big thanks to Mike and a big thanks to Henry and a big thanks to Harper, who's been a big champion of helping create change. And that's been really fun to work on with this client because they don't second guess us creatively. You know, when I presented logos, they all just looked at the table and were like, that one.

That's amazing. Thank you. I agree. That's the one I like too. I've done creative endless rounds of changes, you know, or you're like, why are they asking me to, you know? You know, it's just been awesome that there's been trust and excitement and that's been great.

Yeah. Yeah, I think I did not know really that this whole world of pencil enthusiasts existed before I started working on it. And you know, my husband being the creative director, I'm like, there are people who feel about pencils how you feel about fonts, honey. Like, you know, it's just funny. Everybody has their thing that they love, you know, and so it's been fun to kind of uncover this community of people who totally just love it. And you know, there's a few fans who started like commenting on everything and it's like so positive and so that's been really fun. But we have to, you know, for us, strategically, we have to balance between creating content that builds the brand to some of those more bulk buyers, which Musgrave is known for having those relationships, and then the person that might buy a one off pencil. So we're trying to make sure that we walk that line of appealing to both and doing that in a really smart way that helps establish Musgrave and you know, too, it's like, I'm not, I. I'm not creating something that wasn't there. Musgrave has a hundred year old history and it was like, it felt like a treasure box that I got to unpack. And so really I feel like the reason it's been Good and fun and interesting is because this company is good and fun and interesting, and the people are so kind and they love what they do and they love their product, and it's been fun to shine a light on it. So I don't necessarily think it's my creative genius. You know, I think if anything, just help getting to be the medium or something.

Yeah, I mean, you kind of think. I think about it, like, cars, you know, it's like, there's BMWs and Mercedes, but like, a Camry is a great car and people love it and it is not going to break down on you, and it's awesome and it just keeps getting better. And, you know, and I kind of think about Musgrave in that way of just being like, yeah, let's make affordable really great pencils that people love, because there's a lot of school kids out there. I mean, you know, in some of the comments that I would read on Amazon about some of the import pencils, like, I'm a foster parent and I give these out to my kids and, you know, I wish they had really stayed together better because it's better than giving them candy. And, you know, it's like, wow, these are used for kids and we need to really make these affordable and great and easy to use and be thinking about that generation of kids that need to learn and, you know, prizes other than handing them candy. I'm giving out pencils this Halloween.

They're.

Yeah, I'll put it on Tim's to do list. Part of the dynamic of being married to your creative partner. Hey, too. I know when you. I listened to your podcast last week and you were talking about our five new shirts, and I was like, yeah. And then you were like, I wish they would do a news one. And I was like, you guys, you're moving the gold post on me every time.

Yeah.

Okay. All right, I'll add it to the honeydew.

We hope they don't go away. We're not planning on going.

Well, you're welcome to come.

Thank you very much. It has been. It's been fun and I've enjoyed it. And just keep watching for a post every now and then. We're not going to overdo it, but they'll continue to come.

Yeah, musgravepencil.com and then the Instagram is usgrave pencil.

Okay, that wraps up the first installment of Reraceable. We hope you enjoyed revisiting our conversation with Henry Hulin and reflecting on the history and craftsmanship behind Musgrave's iconic pencils. If you want to hear more past episodes or explore show notes or connect with us, head over to Eraceable Us. And if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a fellow pencil nerd. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time on the Erasable podcast.