Today I went shopping for a fountain pen and being the apparent recluse that I am (thanks depression), combined with my current research into e-commerce sites (more on that another time), I shopped online.
The first site I found was The Pen Shop which drove me mental with its drop-down only navigation but did categorise by price and, being poor, I liked that1.. After a scan through too see what was around these days since I haven’t had a new fountain pen in over ten years2., I discovered that every fountain pen I’ve ever owned is still being made. Dilemma. Do I choose something I know and love? Or something shiny and new?
I bought a MacBook because they were shiny and new. I just changed my shampoo because it is shiny and new. I regularly read Ikea’s shiny and new latest products pages. You get the idea.
As if loving all things shiny and new weren’t enough, I also can’t buy anything unless somebody else has bought it, loved it and reviewed it online. I bring a whole new stereotype to the word ’sheep’. So a quick search produced the incredibly useful (and insanely geeky if you like this kind of thing) Fountain Pen Network. I geeked out for a while reading pen reviews, looking at samples of how they write, different size nibs, different inks, different papers and about three hours later I remembered what I’d gone there for.
So, after four (five counting this one) paragraphs, I’ve made it to my point and in the tradition of crap web-writers everywhere, my point will almost be shorter than the rest of the post.
I decided I wanted a Lamy Studio Fountain Pen in Black (or possibly Brushed Steel, I had to toss a coin) with a medium nib so I searched for stockists and found a few sites:
- The Pen Shop which I’ve already mentioned did not allow me to select a nib size and didn’t state whether or not they supplied a converter (so I can use bottled ink, so much sexier than cartridges). Also, they had the aforementioned shit navigation and on top of that, the product page didn’t display the price, I had to get that off the category listing page. The design looked rather like they were trying to be WH Smith, and doing a worse job than even WH Smith themselves are doing.
- The Pen Company didn’t immediately piss me off with their navigation and the first thing I noticed was a seriously sexy pen on the updates page, they also include several multi-angle shots of their products. Multi-angle pen porn! By contrast, I was viewing The Office Collection store at the same time which is frankly hideous and some of the product descriptions get cut off in my browser (Flock, I lost my temper with Opera). Despite the fact that The Pen Company didn’t offer a nib size option and was £3.50 more expensive, I closed The Office Collection. I refuse to buy from shoddily designed websites, interestingly, so does my mother who is not even remotely web savvy3., although I don’t think she’s noticed this yet.
- Webster’s Pen Shop came last. As I was navigating the site, I was actually hoping they would have my pen in stock so that I could buy from them. The website’s nothing special, but it also didn’t offend my delicate sensibilities. It’s clean, obvious and pleasing to use. Despite being in business for 35 years, they’ve embraced their online shop and actually laid out some cash to make it decent (unlike River Island). Good on them. My only complaint is that the ‘View Basket’ link isn’t very obvious.
What I haven’t mentioned yet, is that their price, at £40, was £5 more expensive than the cheapest site I looked at and whilst it was only £1.50 more than at The Pen Company, the latter offered free delivery which Webster’s doesn’t. I bought from them anyway. Perhaps I’m insane, but I’ll pay a little bit extra for a good shopping experience with a company that I feel I can trust.
Footnotes- So I didn’t have to depress myself looking at all the stunningly gorgeous pens I can’t afford. Of course, I did it anyway. [↩]
- I can’t find my very expensive Sheaffer but since I’ve had it ten years, not such a big deal. [↩]
- She has progressed to sending e-mails that are not written all in caps and some of them even have punctuation. [↩]
