Its Time To Restock on Doane Paper - 15% off Promo!

Who said back to school office supply restocking was only for kids?   It sure wasn't me... 

Doane Paper products are some of my absolute favorite products (recent review) that I always like to make sure I have on hand. 

With my recent restock of Doane Paper Idea Journals  (my favorite product), small writing pads, and a set of Garage Series Utility Notebooks, I thought, now is the perfect time to remind other people to restock too. 

Well, I reached out to Chad Doane and asked him what he thought about the idea and he offered to provide readers of The Clicky Post a 15% discount at checkout for your Doane Paper orders! 

At checkout, simply type in the discount section CLICKYPOST to update your total with a sweet deal.  If you're new to Doane Paper, what great timing to put in your first order. 

As usual, orders over $50 receive free shipping. 

Visit www.doanepaper.com to place your order and thanks, Chad, for offering this special promotion! 

**Note, Doane Paper currently only ships to states and territories of the United States, so this deal would not apply to International readers. 

New Page - Things I'm Looking For

I decided to post another page to the site called Things I'm Looking For where I will list pens that are on my radar under the "want" category.   

Not that I'm cheap by any means, but I really enjoy bartering for goods and am looking more to do that.  If I wanted to buy one of the pens on the list, I eventually probably would.  Where is the fun in that?!  

If you're interested in doing a trade of one of the pens on my list for some goods from The Clicky "Trading" Post, just drop me a line through the Contact page.

The Current List: 

- Rotring 600 Rollerball (no color preference) 

- Rotring 600 Knurled Ballpoint Black

- Rotring 600 "Smooth" Ballpoint Black

- Maxmadco Stainless Steel Retractable Pen

- Kaweco Special Ballpoint

Thanks! 

Mike

 

 

Kickstarter Baux (Box) Pen Aluminum Barrel for BIC Stics

You know, the cheap-o BIC pens get a pretty bad rap.  Often times simply the term “BIC Pen” is used in a mocking and derogatory sense as a means of criticizing other pens down to the bottom of the totem pole of quality.  How sad would it be to have a reputation so bad as to be the laughing stock of the entire ink world… shame on us.

Why don’t we put the laughing stock into perspective, shall we?  Based on some statistics I found on the internet, BIC does over $2 Billion (with a B...for BIC's Billions) in annual sales and employs nearly 10,000 people.  They sell approximately 8.76 billion stationary items per year, which by all accounts, is a lot of stinkin’ pens.  Now, even with all of these statistics, your average BIC pen isn’t going to be a life changing experience to use, but that’s not really what they’re all about.

Well, there is a man that decided that he had had enough of it (I may be embellishing a bit) and wanted to provide a quality boost for BIC.  This man’s name is Dan Conti, an inventor or tinkerer of sorts that thought that the barrel of the BIC Stic pens could use a facelift and sought out to create one out of machined aluminum.  This offering is his first venture to launch through Kickstarter and ended up a success.

When I first saw his Kickstarter campaign I thought, “I don’t use BIC pens” (probably in a snooty way), and didn’t initially pledge.  Then, I thought more about it.  I thought, even though I don’t use BIC Stics, any time I’ve written with one it has been a pleasant experience (or not offensive) from a writing perspective.  This thought process coupled with my desire to help support small businesses brought my pen snobbery back down to Earth and I immediately went and pledged for two pens.  I think I got in on the second group after the early backers and ended up paying $23 out the door.

I am glad I did.

Dan was very informative through the entire Kickstarter process, letting us know how things were moving forward, any hang-ups or snags he was hitting, as well as providing insight about how his daughter was doing with her soccer tournaments.  Just an overall down-to-Earth guy.  

Overall, I think Dan did a fantastic job with this project of his.  The idea of it is just really awesome.  My hope is that he does some more projects like this in the future.  

I opted for the clear anodized version with the "grooves" on the grip and tail section.  Something about evenly spaced grooves on a surface sucks me right in.  The machining is nice and clean and the weight of the barrel is actually pretty substantial.  

I won't really delve into the writing experience as the refill is a BIC Stic that I'm sure everyone has used at a bank, restaurant, or doctor's office.  If you haven't tried one, pop by your local office supply store and for about $3 you can get...oh...like 1,000 pens*. 

*(may be slightly exaggerated) 

The only real detail gripe I have is kind of a subtle one.  When they hand stamped the "BAUX - USA" on the front, the force actually left a very slight flat surface on the back which creates some variation in the anodizing.  Many people may not even notice it, but just some feedback for process and quality control for next time.

Well, good work, Dan, and good luck on the next one! 

My idea for another project along the BIC line would be to create a metal barrel to swap in the Clic Stic parts for a retractable BAUX.