Dear Friends,
This may be a day late, but will most certainly not be a dollar short...
I kept reminding myself yesterday that I needed to write this, and then got totally wrapped up in my work and forgot. What work was so engrossing Colin, you may ask? Bars of course... It's always these stupid bars. But more on that in a second.
For those who missed it, we have a new product line!
The Murdy No. 7 leather covers are now available in three sizes on our website. The main reason they get a new category is that they are designed around a different binding system and have a slightly different purpose in mind. Our new Rod Binding method has a stainless steel rod that goes through the leather cover at the spine and creates a loop that allows a saddle stitched insert to slide into the loop and stay.
The smallest is the Pocket Cut, which is thinner and slightly smaller than our Mini Cut Journal, and most importantly has a softcover insert. The prototype I made has been in my pocket for 2 months now and has become an indispensable part of my daily organization. The replacement inserts can be purchased in bulk and inexpensively. They also don't have a ton of pages so I don't mind using them for a scratchpad. If the page looks messy or random, I take heart knowing that I will be replacing this insert shortly anyway.
The 5x7 Cut (I know the name isn't particularly inspired, but at least its descriptive) is one of my new favorite daily carries now. Compatible with the 5"x7" size version of the composition cut notebooks like you would use in school, it's got a bit more surface area to write ideas out on, but is still able to fit into my external coat pocket when I leave the office.
The new Composition Cut is designed to work with its namesake, the traditional 9.75"x7.5" school composition notebook. This is perfect for students, or the old school folks who just love that size, but are looking for something a little less high end than our Ledger Cut.
We have these three available now, but I have more sizes in mind for future launches...
This Rod Binding design actually goes back to before I launched the Journals. For those who know the company history well, you may remember that first came the Slim Cut Binder (in its earlier form) and then came a binder design that was made for half sheets of paper. It had four holes that worked by taking the half sheet, putting it into the three hole puncher with the 8.5" side in, and then flipping it around and punching it again on the same side upside down. This created 4 holes on the side of the page.
We had this product on the market for about a month before I pulled it. Most of the ones we shipped out were returned as the customers (rightly in my mind) identified its major weakness. With the full size binder due to the post binding method, you lose about an inch in the binding itself (known as the gutter margin in printing). Even at the larger size, the binder doesn't really lay flat. When you shrink that down to a half sheet, the physical amount of lost page due to the gutter doesn't change but now you are losing 1" on a page that only has a 5.5" width in total. On top of that its even harder to keep the book open while you write. Thus, that product was quickly discontinued and I went back to the drawing board.
With a better understanding of the market and the issues that we needed to address, I had a couple of main goals. I needed something that would lay flat, and would work with market standard inserts. It also would need to follow the same, no-glue no-stitching built to last ethos that I had set of the company design policy. With all this in mind the concept of the rod binding came to light. I liked it then (and I like it now), but I really wanted our journal line to work with a hardcover insert. The way the Rod Binding works is ideal for a softcover insert as the cover warps around the rod and since it's small, it doesn't really change the amount of writing area on the page since its in the gutter.
So after coming up that idea, I stewed on it and evolved it into the bar binding that we use in our journal line. They are most certainly cousins from a functional standpoint, but with diverging uses. For one thing, the leather covers are much simpler to replace the insert as they require no tools and it can be done in less than 15 seconds. Due to the limitation of saddle stitched inserts I personally still use the No. 2 Journal line for my real journaling. The leather cover has a simpler optional pen holding solution for those who don't want to keep the pen with it.
But why are we launching it now?
Well for one thing, a lot of people have asked for something that can work with the old school composition cut notebooks, and this was the best design for that. Beyond that though is a practical concern. With the difficult macro economic climate we exist in now I wanted to work on finding ways to offer lower cost items to our customers without compromising our quality or design promises. When I was rummaging through my old ideas this one came up as a good solution.
When we look at the journals, they have the leather, the insert, the pen, and the bar that all contribute to the cost and they are all expensive individually. Beyond that there is more labor and leather costs due to the pen holders shape in the journal line. So these leather covers are able to be sold with inexpensive inserts, without the pen, and with a simpler binding solution than our bars. All of this has helped to keep our costs down, which leads to a base price for the Pocket Cut Leather Cover of $59.
There was a lot of discussion and concern that launching the covers would kill our journal sales, but I think that the two product lines are very different, with different use cases and value propositions. Time will tell though.
Speaking of that, the Bar project marches on. Its been a month since the press first arrived, and this project has just dragged on and on, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Yesterday I was able to make good progress on making the bottom fixture plate that we will use in our large scale production.
The concept is pretty straight forward. With our machines capabilities and limitations the best way to make the bars reliably will be to hold the raw material extremely rigidly. For this application, sandwiching the raw stainless steel stock between two thick plates will be ideal. The plates will have small slots cut into them that will allow the tool to pass through them and into the material to be cut.
Initially I was going to have two fixtures, one that did the first half of production, and a second that did the second half of production. You would do a bunch of plates with operation 1 and then swap the fixtures to finish them. Skiddy made a very good point though that this method means that there is more setup time to making bars, and also if all the tools break after op 1, you are stuck with material in limbo while you wait for more tools.
Thus I am working on a fixture now that does three steps all at the same time on three different pieces of raw material, where the material moves like a conveyor belt from one op to the next between runs. This means every time we run the program, fresh material goes in one side, and finished bars come out the other. If all the tools break, the only material we have in limbo is the stuff that is in the machine at the time.
But getting those two plates done is challenging. They need to fit precisely together, every time, and be exactly correctly made so that there is enough clearance for the tools, but not so much clearance that the part can wobble while its being cut. So I am spending my days slowly but surely cutting the fixtures step by step. This too shall pass.
I did take a break from that to have a meeting with our Shopify rep. We have a new point person, and honestly I love getting new point people. I know many business owners hate getting new reps since they like their old ones, but for me, new reps mean new ideas. They are very eager to make a good impression and demonstrate their value, so they like to take a deep look into the business and try to find an opportunity to showcase. Old reps that are good still do this when they see new ideas come out, but many reps aren't that good.
This time was no different.
We have been trying to find a good solution to the international issue for months now. Trying to register, collect duties, add and remit VAT, and then ship to all the countries around the world is an extremely difficult thing for a small business to do, and we are no exception. That is why last year we stopped shipping internationally all together. I hated doing that, since we have customers internationally, but I couldn't deal with the complexity in a way that was economical.
Well wouldn't you know, but Shopify has a method built in. You need to apply for the program, but if we are accepted (and our new rep is very positive we will) we will be able to ship to almost every country on earth with the taxes and duties collected (and displayed to the customer) at point of purchase. Better yet, since we have all our HTS codes properly inputted, we can launch this with a press of a button.
This could be a very big deal for us. We have had a lot of people email us from overseas about buying. Our collaborators program is perfect for influencers, many of whom have an international following. Beyond that, even with our usual social media paid advertising, we can launch ads in several english speaking countries right away and begin to tap into those new markets.
We are still in the waiting period, but this could be coming within days, not weeks...
I will keep you guys posted on this and many other things in the coming letters. Please go check out our new Leather Covers Here: https://murdycreative.co/no7 and keep an eye on our social media for more cool videos showcasing it. I'm confident next week's podcast will have me showing it off.
Stay tuned for more letters on Thursdays in the coming weeks and be sure to go subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you like and watch the videos it helps us get promoted more by the algorithm to people who may never have heard of us.
Ever your servant,
Colin Murdy
CEO/Owner
Murdy Creative Co.
Cell: 414-434-9001
MurdyCreative.Co
