Project Monsoon- A New Way To Interact With Our Customers

UPDATE: ENTRIES ARE NOW CLOSED.

We hope everyone is having a great summer so far. Here in Arizona we are on the cusp of the monsoon season where we have hot, sunny temperatures mixed with dark clouds, and lightning filled thunderstorms. You can be getting sunburned one minute, and drenched in rain the next. It makes for some beautiful scenery and once you experience it, you will never forget it.

This yearly seasonal weather pattern has inspired our latest experiment in pen-making. We have been experimenting for a while with different materials and finishes and have come up with some pretty cool results. This new pen represents the Arizona monsoon season, but in pen form. The orange body represents the heat/sun, the grey cap represent the storm clouds and silver grip sections represent the lightning that so often comes during our monsoon season. So, to celebrate some of the success we have had with some of the new finishes, we are going to try something new. Instead of our usual method of product testing, we are going to include more community members to give us feedback on our latest endeavors. 

Here is how it works. We are going to, through different means, give (yes, give) away a small number of this pen to gain feedback on materials and finishes. We want to hear it all. The good, and even the bad. The point of this is to be more in touch with our customer base and their wants and needs. So, if you are interested in getting your hands on one of these “Monsoon” pens to review, here is how to do it:

Choose from the following options:

• Write us a short original essay on the topic “Made in America” and email it to us with the subject line “Monsoon Essay”. You don’t have to be a great writer, just tell us a story.
•  Create original artwork inspired by “Made in America” and share it with us via email (subject line “Monsoon Artwork”) or Instagram (#monsoonreview). Please create something new, nobody says it has to be fancy, but don’t reuse old artwork. Artwork from all ages, including children, is encouraged.
• Take an original photo or video depicting what “Made in America” means to you and post it on Instagram with the hashtag #monsoonreview and tag @karaskustoms and @karaspenco. We can’t wait to see what you come up with.

We will be choosing 3 people per category in a completely biased method based on our tastes and preferences. This is not a contest, we will pick our favorites in each category and that is who will win. Each category will be judged by a different employee, so you can enter each category to increase your chances of winning. Enter as many times as you want, but each entry must be unique. We will post the winners and their entries on this blog (http://blog.karaskustoms.com/). We will announce the winners on August 12^th, 2016 Tuesday, August 16th . You will have 48 hours to respond before we choose another winner. 

We are asking all winners of this giveaway to provide us with a review of the Monsoon pen. This can be as simple or as complicated as you wish, we just want to hear your thoughts. Good and bad, it doesn’t matter, but we want to hear from you. We obviously can’t make you review this pen if you are chosen, but it would be awesome if you did.

Once again, we will choose the winners on Friday, August 12th Monday, August 15th. Good luck!

Fountain K Press Release

The Fountain K and Kickstarter

August 13, 2015

One of the greatest tools that a manufacturer has is their ability to innovate within their own product line. The innovation process is one that occurs naturally for any manufacturer that wishes to remain relevant in today’s ever changing marketplace. Incremental changes and improvements are inevitable. Smaller production runs are used to “dial in” manufacturing, establish proof of concept, as well as a way to test market feasibility of newly created products. We take pride in our ability to innovate in the realm of pen manufacturing. There are other metal machined pens, many of them are of high quality and standards, but we were at forefront of innovating the design and construction of machined metal pens and bringing them back to the marketplace. This was all made possible for us through crowdfunding and Kickstarter. It was this same spirit of innovation that led us to decide and try to move forward without using Kickstarter.

We have been very happy with our partnership with Kickstarter. The partnership has allowed us to grow our business into what it is today. We have several extremely successful pen designs that would not have been possible if it weren’t for the Kickstarter platform. That being said, we also know that those pens wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for our many backers, and while Kickstarter allows us to maintain a connection within its infrastructure, it’s not the same level of connection that a company like ours seeks to have with its customers. We understand that the waiting process after pledging to a campaign is not an ideal process for the customer. You have pledged towards a project and the rewards can sometimes take months to get into your hands. We don’t like that process either as it causes us a lot of stress as we work to deliver all rewards on the expected timetable. All of these thoughts went through our minds as we looked at the Fountain K project and got closer and closer to a final decision.

As a company, we sat down to have one last look at the entire Fountain K project before calling it complete and ready to go. We went over all the data we had gleaned from cost analyses, feedback emails, nib sourcing emails, and the mountain of customer requests for another machined fountain pen. As we went through the meeting several things began to dawn on us that would ultimately influence our decision to move forward with the Fountain K project on our own.

Primarily, we were left with a small production run of Fountain K pens after prepping for a Kickstarter launch. After sending out units for review and internal testing, we were left with enough pens to allow us to raise enough funds (through direct sales) to equal a modest goal on Kickstarter. We were staring at pens that were completely done, that we had photos and video of, and that people were asking for. Our ultimate goal was to see if consumers were interested in the product, and to gain capital to move forward with production if the product was viable. We could do this with the number of pens we had on hand. So that’s what we are going to do. 

The Fountain K examples we have are ready to go. They are what our Kickstarter backers would have received and are very nice pens. We are looking to change nib suppliers for all of our future pens, so at some point, some small changes to the Fountain K will occur. This means these pens are unique and are very limited in number. The sales of these pens will allow us to produce more in the future, but these will never be made again. By selling this very small batch, we are in a sense “kickstarting” the project ourselves. This will mean the next batch will be funded by this seed money and we will have enough to move into full production moving forward. It is a slower way to do things, but it allows us more autonomy and the ability to create new products in a manner we are more comfortable with. 

We put a lot of time and effort into all of our pens. But we put an even greater amount of thought into how we proceed on any particular project. We have established our reputation by creating high-quality machined writing instruments and on our top notch customer service. By adding innovation, adaptability and exceptional product design to the list of things that are associated with Karas Kustoms, we can only improve our outstanding reputation. There is only so much we can do on our own to make a pen be successful, as we rely on our customers to ultimately tell us how successful a product really is. So we can build it with all of the innovation, quality and care as we know how, but the decision on whether the pen is truly as successful lies in their hands.

Bill Karas, Owner

Dan Bishop, Industrial Design Lead

Paul Bennett, Marketing/Customer Service Lead
 

Makin' Cases

We recently got our hands on a couple GoPro cameras so we decided to break them in by showing you how we make our machined iPhone cases. It turned out pretty sweet. Take a look and let us know what you think.

RENDER K in Color

We are now selling our RENDER K pens in colors! Head on down to our website and have a look.

Machined Pens!

We just finished up a batch of prototypes for something we really think is cool- PENS! Because everyone we talked to had a different type of pen that they really liked, we designed a pen that can take several different types of ink from different manufacturers. The pen originally was just going to take the refill for a Pilot Hi-Tec C, but we eventually made it work for Parker pen refills and for a Fisher Space Pen refill.


After we got rolling, we figured we would make a plain version, an aluminum version, and a brass version. After using the pens for a while, we decided that the pens needed a clip, so...


We bent up some clips by hand, and installed them with some hardware. We think they turned out great. The problem is, we are a machine shop and while we can make the parts for the body of the pen, we can't stamp the clips ourselves. We are working on getting the funding to get the stamping dies made up so we can roll into full production.

Here at the shop, Dan was kind enough to demo his pen for all the world to see. What dinosaurs and unusually flat cars have to do with anything, we'll never know. But, one thing we do know, these pens are awesome and we hope to have them available for you as soon as possible.

iPhone Cases

We are making cases for the new iPhone... Stay tuned.

Merc Dash

One of our customers brought in an entire dash from a ‘49 Mercury, along with a hand drawn sketch, and asked us to design and make a custom dash for them. Of course we said, “No problem.” The main bezel is machined from a solid piece of brass, with vents on the right side to allow for A/C to flow. The gauge cluster features a red acrylic panel, that was painted, then machined, to allow for light to shine through the transparent panel in selected areas. This is only a mock-up, without the actual gauges behind the panel, but we were so pleased with how it turned out, we had to share.

Nice, huh?

This last one shows how the light behind the gauges shows through the panel.

Machined Speedster

We recently completed a short run of these machined speedsters. They end up around 7 1/2 inches long and are made from solid aluminum and feature bronze bearings in the wheels for a long life of smooth rollin'.

And, of course, made by us in the USA.