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A 25-Year-Old Turning a Profit Selling Pencils
- bruceb 11y agoShe has 4 employees even if part time + $1,900 rent, it seems she has to markup the pencils more than 100%
- yolesaber 11y agoShe invested $80,000 to start the enterprise. Wow. That's quite the upfront cost.
- wmil 11y agoShe went to school for fine arts and traveled the world afterwards. It's reasonable to assume that her family has a lot of money and this started as a vanity business.
- nness 11y agoAt 25, its certainly hard to imagine how those funds were raised any other way.
- MyHypatia 11y agoWhy do you describe it as a vanity business? She collected pencils and then decided to create a business selling them. How is this any different than someone deciding to open a shop that sells Teddy bears? Or someone who decides to make an app that does some niche thing? Isn't the entire point of the HN community to take your passion or interest and turn it into a business? Describing her business, where she has 3 employees and is making a profit, as a vanity business is awfully dismissive.
- wmil 11y agoIt was a harsh way to put it. I just think it's dangerous to talk about businesses like this without mentioning that it's likely she's never planning to recoup her investment. I don't want to disparage her shop but people read these articles and think they can move to NYC and make artisan hot sauce. People doing that aren't making enough to pay for their rent or lifestyle. They just have money from another source.
- ascorbic 11y agoThat's a pretty standard markup for non-tech products.
- sjf 11y agoWelcome to retail, 100% is nothing for small items, I'd be surprised if the markup wasn't 10x.
- 5555624 11y ago"Weaver typically charges twice her wholesale cost." If that's true, she is a selling a lot of pencils.
- spatten 11y agoShe was also featured in this Freakonomics podcast about "I Pencil" (worth the listen): http://freakonomics.com/podcast/i-pencil/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/i-pencil/
- nateweiss 11y agoIt's really a neat little store, and some of the pencils are super cool. It has the feeling of a record store or maybe comic book store, full of treasures that may or may not speak to you on a given day. I'd encourage dropping in if you're in the area, plenty of good nerdy fun to be had. I got a box of pencils that you sharpen on both ends, one end is red pencil and the other is the "normal" black/graphite color. Great for drawing little UI mockups and such.
- BryanKepler 11y agoI think it is absolutely ridiculous that a 25-year-old with no experience in the pencil industry thinks she can disrupt the space with her dumb millennial Instagram project.
- duiker101 11y agowhoa whoa whoa hang on a moment... did you even read the article? this is not someone that reads all your "startup today" websites and goes on how she will disrupt the industry and how she woke up one random day and found a niche in selling pencils. This is someone that wants to sell pencils. End of the story. From reading the title I thought something very similar to you, but then I realized, none of us could probably pull anything similar. This is a person that has passion about what she does, and that's all she needs. She's probably not trying to get in the industry so she can then sell out and move to the next thing, this is simply what she wants to do. She had a passion for pencils and she made it into her job and is succeeding, well done! That's something that a lot of people will never manage to do! She likes to share her love for pencils on instagram? well, we all have our passions and want to share them with like minded people! Personally, I do not share her passion, but attacking her like that seems an act of pure jealousy. Maybe you should just learn from it and think how you can transform your passion in something more?
- BryanKepler 11y agoPencils are not a passion--pencils are a way of life. My grandfather made pencils in the war, and afterwards, he and my grandmother moved to Ames, Iowa, where they opened up a local mom and pop pencil shop. That was where my father learned to read and write. It was a wholesome family business. These were handcrafted, locally grown, American pencils made by artisans of the trade. My father took over the business until 1997 when rising Ames rents and increasing mass-produced competition drove us out. We had to move to San Francisco where my father, who was not college educated mind you, got a job at Staples in the pencil department. He hated every minute of it. This woman is not a pencil artisan like my father and his father. She is simply selling mass-produced products without getting in touch with their rich history. Don't lecture me about passion.
- flashman 11y agoThe final quote has a lot of relevance for any person building a product or service: "I didn’t start this because I want to be a business lady. I started it because I really wanted to sell people pencils.”
- coroutines 11y ago"I didn't start this because I wanted to make rent. I started it because I really wanted to dropkick loud children in movie theaters." Find your passion.
- noir_lord 11y agoThere are times where if there was an Uber style app for that I'd probably consider it. Just have someone turn up at the theatre and dropkick the kids two rows forwards, it would be tempting. Fortunately the cinema near me now does late showings (through to 1am or later) and I'm naturally a night owl. It is so much better!
- Chris2048 11y agoThe irrational man is responsible for change in the world, once again.
- bluthru 11y agoI'm really glad quirky and specialized places like this exist, even though I would never spend $80 a year for one pencil a month.
- polishninja 11y agoHere's her website, for anyone that's curious. http://cwpencils.com/ http://cwpencils.com/
- isuckatcoding 11y agoNot saying I am going to go and open a shop that sells hats now but I found this somewhat refreshing. Everytime I think of a potential business idea, I quickly think 'naah that'll never work. Amazon, or "ACME-Corp" has probably done it already or they'll do it better' Seems like it is a matter of finding that passion and niche. She clearly found both.
- toyg 11y agoTo be fair, she had passion, niche, and a huge conglomerate of people with loads of disposable income (aka NYC) at her disposal. The same shop in a smaller city would likely not survive. That's the beauty of cities: they made the long tail possible well before the Internet.
- EliRivers 11y agoOn a tangent, the internet has ended up damaging the long tail and in many fields we now have a situation far more polarised than before. Sad times.
- HeyLaughingBoy 11y agoWhat would be an example of that?
- EliRivers 11y agoThe mid-list publishing industry has taken an enormous beating. There used to be a lot more people who made a living writing; now, the split between best seller or writing around a day job is much more pronounced.
- contingencies 11y agoAlmost any sector of retail?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- paublyrne 11y agoHeadline writers just aren't trying anymore.
- randomgyatwork 11y agoI write in my journal almost everyday, I've tried pencils in the past, but a simple pen is much more practical.
- tzs 11y agoIf you care enough about pencils to buy from a specialized pencil shop, then perhaps you will also be interested in having your pencils hand sharpened by an artisanal pencil sharpener: http://www.artisanalpencilsharpening.com http://www.artisanalpencilsharpening.com Personally, I use a mechanical pencil--the Uni-ball Kuru Toga. This has a simple, clever ratcheting mechanism in the head that slightly rotates the lead every time you press it down on the paper and also when you pick it back up, so it wears evenly on all sides into a conical point instead of developing a flat spot. Here's a video showing how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80k7Jl1o8Lc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80k7Jl1o8Lc
- nitrogen 11y agoI struggle to think of the occupation for which a $500 pencil sharpening is a good value, but if you just want to give loads of money to someone interesting, hey, why not?
- midgetjones 11y agoIt used to be $50, but now he's somewhat famous, so I guess if people still pay it...
- fenomas 11y agoThe guy who runs it is a humorist, so there's that. Oddly enough, it's the same guy who used to write the brilliant "Get Your War On" comic (and the more surreal "My New Fighting/Filing Technique"), for anyone who remembers those.
- cge 11y agoIt's worth noting that the person behind it is a humorist and cartoonist, and while I expect that he'll actually sharpen a pencil if you pay him, it is almost certainly not meant to be taken as a serious method of pencil sharpening. I expect the significant increases in price after the service's inception—over an order of magnitude—reflect this. The service is connected with a book that a New Yorker review suggests is classified as humor by its publisher out of a lack of "avant-garde reference" sections in bookstores.
- philippoi 11y ago“Mechanical pencils, they don't smell like anything. The lead is so small you can get no line variation out of it," says Weaver. I heard this countless times in art and architecture classes in college, but I disagree. My favorite pencil to draw with is the Alvin Draf-Tec Retrac, http://www.alvinco.com/Shop/Products.aspx?IID=29525 http://www.alvinco.com/Shop/Products.aspx?IID=29525, which they offer for 0.3, 0.5, and 0.7-mm graphite sizes. Both the 0.5 and 0.7 are good all-around but the 0.3's are great for fine details. I love the way the weight and balance of the pencil allows very responsive feel so I can easily shift from light to dark shading or thick to thin line weight intuitively. I've never found that it's harder to get a full light-to-dark shading gradient from that mechanical pencil. I also like to exploit the point the tip develops to have different edges to use for different strokes. As the tip develops, it's more predictable, where a wood enclosed pencil requires constant tip maintenance.
- shahar2k 11y agothose are fantastic pencils, I own a few, they are quite fragile though and the plastic casing tends to crack making the whole thing useless. when I'm drawing I really enjoy the pentel 1000, especially at 0.9 mm
- philippoi 11y agoGreat recommendation, I'll look to try one of those out soon. I'm hoping to wrap up my current project in the next couple of months and after that should be the perfect time for experimenting with new tools.
- ZeroGravitas 11y agoI think I'm more intrigued by the restaurant downstairs that specialises in Champaign and chicken. That's a pretty strange neighbourhood.
- Zelmor 11y agoSo good to see people doing what they like and making a living of it. Gives hope for the rest of us. :)