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Time Away

Happy Thanksgiving from Edison! 10 Years in Business!

Hi Pen Fans!

With Thanksgiving approaching, last night my wife and I were speaking about where our business anniversary officially falls (honestly not being sure). Some of you might remember that when this little business of ours started, it was actually called “Pencraft”. Back then, I was making what were basically kit pens, but they didn’t really look like kit pens. I was using just a few components from kits to make our pens which gave me a bit more creative freedom. While these were pretty nice pens, I always wanted to manufacture all of my components and strived for this. When I accomplished this, it was with the Pearl model. At that point, I decided that “Pencraft”, wasn’t the best name for this business, and so I switched the name to The Edison Pen Company.

It was around that time that I went through my third layoff in only three years from a pharmaceuticals job that I had unfortunately learned to hate with a passion. Pens had always been part time. With this third layoff, I had no intention of making a living at pens, thinking of it as a silly dream. I just kept making pens on a very small lathe in our garage to bring in a little income and stay off of unemployment. I intended to scrape by until I found another crappy job in pharmaceuticals.

Well, good things started happening. I’m proud to say that I never collected even one unemployment check. With a little income and (albeit slow) growth, I realized that making pens full time showed the possibility of paying the bills. So over about 6 months, I stopped interviewing. But it was not easy. The first year of doing this, our net income was $17k, which did not get us by without dipping into accounts that we did not want to dip into in order to cover our basic living expenses. It was a bit risky and stressful at first, but working hard and working smart led us to where we are today. Over the years we have acquired more advanced machinery (with more on the way) and a large space with more room to grow into. Our Signature Line is in demand, and we have retailers for our Production Line across the globe. There are five of us full time and we are considering hiring more. We couldn’t ask for better employees as they truly care about the quality of our work as well as our customer service. All of use here at Edison are very happy doing what we do and have fun making your pens!

This leads me to our official anniversary. I’m not sure that I count our days operating as Pencraft as anything official since I was part time and not offering the same products that we do today. So out of curiosity, last night I dug through my old paperwork as the official anniversary date has always been kind of ambiguous. The very first invoice that I wrote as Pencraft was November 12, 2006 and the first invoice written as The Edison Pen Company was on October 18th, 2007. So officially, Andrea and I consider this to be our anniversary, and we didn’t realize that 10 years had already passed!

So from all of use here at Edison, we’d like to say thanks to our customers! We are all able to work jobs that we truly enjoy and we consider ourselves very lucky in these regards. All of us have fun making the products that we do, and we thank you for supporting us! As we sit down this weekend with our families to give thanks, we will also give thanks to all of you!

We truly appreciate your support over the last 10 years!

Brian at Edison

Happy Thanksgiving!
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Time Away

Finally Caught Up, Short Vacation, and 2017 LE Status….

Hi Pen Fans!

Three topics to cover with this blog post. My apologies if this is a bit long, but I need to cover a lot of recent topics. It’s best to simply combine!

  1. We are finally caught up with our Signature Line queue! I’m sure that most of you heard that one of our most critical machines went down in the late summer which backed us up a whole lot. The machine was not running for 2 weeks. Then another week to the fix it, and the DC Pen Show added a 4th week of delays. So at the beginning of August, we were 4 weeks behind! The nature of custom-made pens truly does not lend itself to rushing or trying to work too much faster than we already do (which is a good pace to begin with). Working faster than our comfort zone mostly leads to silly mistakes. So rather than rush, our entire team was working longer hours and some weekends from the beginning of August until now. We were able to increase our productivity without silly rushing and as of today we are caught up completely! After being a bit stressed through this process, it feels good to be finally caught up! So we are caught up with our Signature Line, but we do still have a good amount of repairs that have been backlogged. I have been in touch with each of these customers, and we will be full force on those repairs next week. So if you have a pen in for a repair with us, you will be hearing from us most likely before the end of October. For all people involved with our delays, I have done my best to be sure that you have received some kind of update every 1-2 weeks. I hope those involved feel that these updates have been adequate and timely to explain the delays.

So in the end –  Lesson Learned and more machinery is on the way!  I’ve done all of my research, and I’m about to sign papers on some new machinery so that this kind of situation can be handled in the future without problems, as well as increase our overall productivity.

2. Today (Wednesday), I was able to send out photos and tracking information on the very last pens that have been delayed! It felt so so very good, and I feel that a huge weight is off my shoulders considering more than 2 months of being behind! Due to it being very sorely needed, I am taking Thursday and Friday as vacation this week, and will return on Monday or Tuesday of next week. If I am slow with emails, you’ll know why.

3. We have understandably received a lot of emails lately about the 2017 LE Group Buy Pen. This pen is an annual tradition with our company, and is the only time that you’ll see an Edison Pen discounted in any way. Considering our machine issues outlined above, I’m sure that no one is surprised that there will not be a 2017 LE Group Buy pen. Instead, we will do our best to do a 2018 LE Group Buy pen in early 2018, and then we will try to do another in 2018 late in the year. So barring something unforeseen, we will do two LE Group Buy Pens in 2018.

I think that I’ve covered it all! If anyone has questions, please reach out!

Brian at Edison

The problem was a servo motor. This is my reaction when it was finally fixed in August! While this felt great, we then had a lot work to get caught up!
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Time Away

Back from Vacation, but Machine Down! Delays!

Hi Pen Fans!

Well, Murphy’s Law is in full effect here at the Edison Pen Co!

Andrea and I left for a much needed vacation two weeks ago. But after we left, one of our large lathes went down!

Being about 2,000 miles away, there was little that I could do to diagnose or fix the lathe over that two week period.

So while we were gone our crew was working, but our productivity was cut severely, as this lathe is critical for pretty much all components that go into our pens. During this time, we were already backed up trying to get overall inventory built up since my wife’s surgery slowed us down last month. This machine going down severely compounded our struggles to get caught up.

Bottom line, we are behind on everything as a result of this in spite of our employees working evenings and Saturdays while we were gone. Andrea and I also worked the weekend and long days since we returned in an attempt to get back on track and will continue to do so until we are. A bit stressful, but we are getting through it as best as we can.

So I apologize, but I need to ask everyone for flexibility on timelines regarding essentially everything. This includes the Goulet Summer Premiere. We had plans for a large shipment of Premieres to head out last week, but that’s obviously delayed. Our Signature Line, our Production Line Inventory, and our repairs are all going to be backed up until we can get back on track.

And then the icing on the cake is that we have the DC Pen Show coming in two weeks! Sheesh!

So I’m asking our customers to please be flexible with us until we can get our feet back under us. Between moving our entire business, my wife’s surgery, some huge projects, a couple of new product launches, and now a downed machine, the last six months have been pretty insane and at times rather stressful!

Our apologies for any inconveniences as a result of this. I will do my best to be in touch with each customer individually as to how they may be effected by this.

But the good news – a critical part for the lathe will be here this week, maybe next. Then the machine should be up an running (fingers crossed) at that time. Once this part is here and installed, we can work towards getting our business back on track and will be doing so full force.

Thanks in advance for understanding.

Brian at Edison

 

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Time Away

On Vacation!

Hi Pen Fans!

Andrea and I are currently on a sorely needed vacation.

After moving the business earlier this year, some huge projects, some new product launches and Andrea’s surgery, the last 6 months have been the busiest since we started this business!

We decided to do our vacation right. We are getting away for a little over 2 weeks.

While we are away, Jake will be doing his best to keep up with emails. If you are slow in getting a response, you’ll know why. If you need my direct attention, I’ll be returning emails on the 17th or 18th.

Thanks! I’ll see you when I’m well rested! 🙂

Brian at Edison

 

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Time Away

Spring Break Vacation, But Still Operational…

Hi Pen Fans!

Just a quick heads up that Andrea and I will be enjoying our son’s spring break by taking a nice vacation the week of April 10th.

However, while we are gone our facility will still be operational and Jake will be handling emails. If you need my direct attention, I’ll be back on the 17th.

Thanks!

Brian at Edison

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Time Away

Vacation, But We’ll Still Be in Operation…

Hi Pen Fans!

Some of you might know that I’m a huge baseball fan.

I’m going to be taking my annual vacation to Goodyear, AZ to check out my Cleveland Indians doing their Spring Training.

I’ll be gone from Friday the 24th until Monday the 6th. While I’m gone, the rest of our crew will be here working. So emails will be fielded by Jake. If an email needs my direct attention, I’ll return it on the 6th.

Thanks!

Brian at Edison

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Time Away

Settling In!

Hi Pen Fans!

Well, we are back in action in our new and much larger location! Everything went very smooth, but also took much longer than I ever anticipated!

We’ve been posting some photos on our Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook page. We’ll continue to do so as we continue settling.

For those of you expecting an email from me, you should have received it by now. If not, please reach out.

Our new information is now on our Contact Page.

Thanks for your patience as we made this transition that is proving to be quite excellent for our business!

Brian at Edison 

 

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Time Away

We’re on the Move!

Hi Pen Fans!

As many of you know, we are going to be moving our business to a much larger space (almost 4-fold larger! We are so excited!).

This move will begin this afternoon, and will continue through all of next week. So if everything goes as planned, we will be back in action on Feb 6th.

For those of you wondering how this will effect our order queue, fear not! We knew this move was coming, so back in December we purposely worked in an extra week of orders to get ahead. This means that all orders that occurred before the move were shipped a week early, and all orders after the move will still be delivered on the promised date. If this does not occur for some unforeseen reason, I’ll reach out individually to the customers effected.

So the main reason for this post – we will most likely be completely incommunicado until we are up an running again on Feb 6th. During this move, I can’t promise that I can return emails in any kind of timely manner (if at all), and we won’t be answering the phones so we can focus entirely on the move.

This is not going to be a small undertaking…our machines are very large and very heavy. Getting them safely moved, wired, and re-calibrated at the new location has me a little stressed out! And this is only the large machines! We have plenty of smaller machines, inventory, materials….basically everything to safely relocate!

I think that we’ll be fine, but wish us luck!

I’ll give updates when we are safely settled in.

Brian at Edison

 

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Time Away

Happy Holidays From Edison!

Hi Pen Fans!

We are currently taking our Holiday Break.

I will be taking a much needed break from my computer, so I probably won’t be able to return emails until the New Year. During this time, Andrea and I as well as our employees will be focusing on our families and not work.  So if I don’t respond to emails until after the New Year, you’ll know why.

And stay tuned – we’ll have some pretty great announcements in early 2017!

I’d like to say thanks to everyone for another great year!  We at Edison truly appreciate your business!

Everyone have a great Holiday Season!

Brian at Edison

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Time Away

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hi Pen Fans!

It’s that time of year for us to give thanks!  Here at Edison we have a lot to be thankful for! Our business has been growing and growing since the beginning. In the last six years we’ve been recognized with five consecutive wins in the Goldspot Polls, and have been recognized by Pen World Magazine in their Readers’ Choice Awards twice (nomination and win), along with plenty of good press in general.

When I sit down with family today for my favorite meal of the year, a big portion of my thanks definitely goes to our fans, who we wouldn’t exist without.

Thanks for supporting our business!

My wife and I just celebrated our 13th anniversary yesterday.  Our 11 year old is doing great in school and is growing up too fast!  Our employees love what they do! Everyone is healthy and happy!

So again, thanks for supporting our business, and everyone have a great Thanksgiving!  Please take a moment this week to recall all of the blessings in your life!

Below is a photo from the summer of my family heading to our favorite place – the ballpark!

Thanks!

Brian at Edison

ballpark