2017 DC Pen Show #3

Welcome back for the third installment of my experience at the 2017 DC Pen Show. I finished yesterday with spotting Brian Goulet of The Goulet Pen Company. Allow me a few moments for some backstory here.

I was really getting into fountain pens, mostly because you have such a rainbow of inks to choose from. Hooray for color! If I recall correctly (it’s been a VERY busy year), I discovered Goulet Pens when I was looking for pen subscription boxes. I found some posts about their Ink Drop ink subscription box. Unfortunately, it had been discontinued a few months prior, but there was a silver lining. Goulet Pens sells ink samples! So I could test out any ink I wanted for a couple bucks. Needless to say, I quickly placed an order.

It was soon after that I discovered their YouTube channel. If you have any interest whatsoever in fountain pens and haven’t seen their channel, do yourself a favor and check it out. If you have seen their videos, I’m sure you can understand why I was hoping to meet Mr. Goulet. He’s so personable. But it goes beyond that.

On June 21, I ordered the super limited edition Stipula Etruria Rainbow Prisma 88 from Goulet Pens. It was an impulse buy, but after seeing the photo of it on Instagram, I just fell in love. And I have no regrets. After I placed my order, it occurred to me to ask for pen #19. After all, I’d spent so much money, I might as well ask for my favorite number. Not only did I get a quick reply assuring me that it wasn’t a silly request, a few days later, I got pen #19!

I realized, after seeing it in person, that pen #19 was doubly special. Not only was it my favorite number, but the text marking it pen 19/88 meant my birth year was basically on the pen. How cool! I was floored by the customer service (and my luck) and wanted to personally thank Brian for running such a wonderful company.

Which brings me back to the pen show. I’d been keeping an eye out for the Goulet Pens shirts. I saw a few people wearing them, but when I finally spotted Brian, I tapped Jim on his shoulder and we made a beeline for his location.

He’s popular, people. Like REALLY popular. And he’s so personable that when you start talking to him, you don’t want to stop. Which is how we ended up waiting to talk to him. And waiting.

His wife, another Rachel, was standing with him, and I spoke to her for a while. She is equally lovely, which makes perfect sense, really. I told her about my Stipula experience, and thanked her for her part in running such a great company. We traded a few pleasantries before lapsing into silence as I waited, mostly patiently, for Brian to finish speaking to the two guys he was conversing with.

I listened in on their conversation here and there and was amazed when Brian mentioned that their new warehouse is probably about the size of the ballroom we were standing in, because that place was enormous. I seriously contemplated interrupting simply to say thank you, as there was no sign of their conversation slowing down anytime soon.

Jim was determined to wait out the conversation, but I decided to take a stroll down one of the aisles to break up all the standing I was doing. Jim was still waiting there when I got back. And Brian was still speaking to the same two guys. They’d started discussing business.

Even Jim was ready to admit defeat, so we wandered off together down a different aisle. Inevitably, I suppose, we made our way back to Brian. Rachel was no longer there. She was probably enjoying the pen show while he talked shop.

I was determined, this time, to wait for my turn to speak to him. His crowd had grown to include another lady who was listening in, and occasionally contributing to, the discussion.

Brian acknowledged that we’d been standing there for some time, which was rather nice. After a few minutes, the lady started dominating the conversation, and the two guys left to take in the show.

An older man walked up at one point and interrupted so he could thank Brian. But he just took over the conversation completely. It was masterfully done, really. I took mental notes. Thankfully, he didn’t stay long, and the lady had left, so Brian turned his attention to us.

We got to thank him, for the customer service at Goulet Pens, for the YouTube videos and what they’ve taught us, for being a genuine person, for just about everything we could think of. We let him know we’ve sent every person we’ve infected with the Fountain Pen Virus to his channel to learn more. And he was absolutely lovely, letting us get the hero worship out.

With the general thank yous out of the way, I made sure to thank him for Goulet Pens getting me pen #19. That is when I saw him really come alive. I could tell he was really happy to hear such a personal story of how his company did well. He seemed to share my joy in receiving a pen that seemed almost destined for me.

He wanted to know how I liked the pen and how it was working for me. It was the perfect opening to take care of my other reason for coming to the show. My Stipula is cranky, and I told him so. I explained how it skips on the downstrokes sometimes, and how I had such a hard time getting it started when I first bought it.

He explained to me that his own Stipula got cracked because he over flexed it. He was trying to describe how to check for a crack, so I decided to just hand him my pen. When I unzipped my bag of holding to get my pen, the handful of people around us went nuts. They all wanted to know what brand it is and where I got it. It’s TopFox, and I got it from Amazon, if you’re wondering. Even Brian seemed intrigued by the number of pens it can hold.

Brian carefully scrutinized my pen and determined I hadn’t cracked anything. He asked if he could write with it (like I’d say no), and pulled out his Traveler’s Notebook to jot down a few scribbles. Of course it worked perfectly for him.

I mentioned I’d found its sweet spot recently, so he handed me the pen and asked to see how I write with it. I wrote in Brian Goulet’s notebook! I really should have done something silly like “Rachel was here” so that 10 years down the line, he and his wife would have been trying to remember why she wrote in his notebook. But, I always get my best ideas after the fact.

I did pull my notebook out to show him examples of how my Stipula skipped, and he told me to let him know how it does in the next few months. He promised that if it kept having problems, Goulet Pens would make sure everything got sorted so that it was the perfect writing machine it should be.

And he meant it. It wasn’t just lip service. And I can’t quite tell you how much that meant. If he didn’t already have a customer for life, he’d have a customer for life. I carefully put my pen and notebook away, and I knew I just had to ask.

“Could I get a photo with you?” With a grin, he agreed, and I asked my friend to take the picture. My proof of meeting a “celebrity”. And I’ll always have the story of writing in his notebook to go with it.

With a final thanks for everything, we left Brian to the people waiting to talk to him and went to investigate the table that had chocolate.

Have you ever met someone you consider a celebrity? How about one of your heroes? Leave a comment below and let me know. Come back tomorrow to read the last installment of my 2017 DC Pen Show experience. And check out my Instagram feed for some sexy pen porn of my Edison Pearl and Stipula Prisma 88.