Colombian pencils offered by Rad & Hungry

One of the great things about running a specialty blog like this is that if someone is interested enough in something to Google it, chances are they’ll see your site. Big, venerable pencil blogs like Pencil Revolution, Pencil Talk, and others are certainly going to come up before a young upstart like mine, but if a Googler really wants to read about pencils, chances are, they’ll see me (hi, guys!). There just aren’t that many of us out there, compared to, say, Apple blogs or life-hacking blogs.

That’s why I was super excited when I got an email from Hen Chung the other day. She is a traveler, a scribomechanist (lover of writing/office supplies), and entrepreneur. And she has a new business called Rad & Hungry.

“Ever since I can remember I always purchased pencils and stationary.” Hen told me in an email.

“I was born in Korea and spent my summers there but went to school in America. I was obsessed with pencils and stationary and typography. Roughly 10 years ago I started buying more and more journals every time I traveled outside of the country but I also started buying an assortment of office supplies. Almost always I’d buy a box full of pads, pencils, pens, and paperclips.”

(I totally understand that impulse. Just last week when I got back from San Francisco, I hit a Dick Blick Art Supply store and brought back lots of pens and pencils, and a couple notepads, I can’t get in Fort Wayne. So imagine if I was traveling overseas!)

This spawned an idea between Hen and her co-creator Sam Alston, and Rad & Hungry was born.

If you remember PencilThings.com‘s Pencil of the Month Club, which has since been discontinued, you’ll remember that every month, subscribers got a little package with a couple pencils, an eraser or other accessory, and often a vintage or discontinued pencil, along with a little letter explaining the product and their value or usefulness. It was the highlight of my month — often times, my Wired magazine and PotM Club package would arrive together.

It’s dead and gone, unfortunately, but this looks like it’ll be a fun replacement, though a bit more expensive. Every month, Rad & Hungry sends subscribers a package, usually including a pencil or two, a notepad, and office supplies (this month: paperclips) from a foreign country. I’ll be getting mine in the mail soon, and I’ll put some pictures and a review up here.

Plus, there’s a “mystery item,” something fun that may not be necessarily office-supply related.

Check out her first package from Colombia for $16 (the one I’ll be getting soon), and read her travel blog.

I’ll be interesting to see what she comes up with! One of the things that Don from PencilThings.com always told me was that it was really hard to keep coming up with new products to feature for the PotM Club. I look forward to seeing Hen and Sam’s releases!

BONUS:
Where the heck did “Rad & Hungry” come from? Hen said it’s simple: Dance off + spicy chicken sandwich with waffle fries and root beer = Rad and Hungry.

I had been working on a name for months. It was really frustrating because every word or possible word combo is already taken as a domain name on the web. I wanted a conceptual name and not something generic sounding like ‘office products’. One night I went dancing with my brother and we both love to dance. My friend was the DJ that night so there was a really fun group of us dancing together when this guy challenged us to a dance off. Seriously! The funny thing is that none of us were really bustin’ out any hard core dance moves! I had just bust a move and when it was the guys turn he started to dance but fell on his butt (I think he was drunk!) so I decided I had won the dance off. I just texted a friend to tell him that I won the dance off and had to stop texting and dancing cause I was hungry and was on a mission to go to a 24 hr Jack-in-the-Box for a Spicy Chicken Sandwich with waffle fries and root beer. My last text to him was: “I got to go cause I’m rad and hungry.”

She said it made perfect sense. “Rad”, because the products she finds are rad, and “Hungry” because of her nonstop search for goods.