The letter
One letter a month. Never more.
Not a campaign, not a countdown, not a note reminding you that your basket is lonely. A letter about what we are making, what people have rolled up inside their pens, and the occasional thing we got wrong. You join it at the foot of any page, and you leave it from the foot of any letter.
What we send
A letter, not a campaign.
It goes out once a month, and some months it does not go out at all. It is written by the same person who packs the boxes, which is why it reads like a letter and why it is occasionally late.
What tends to be in it:
- What we are making, including the parts that are not working yet.
- Notes people have told us they rolled up inside a pen, shared with their permission.
- A new finish, a restock, or a change to something you already own.
- Now and then, an apology.
What is never in it: a daily email, a countdown clock, a manufactured last chance, a discount that was never a discount, or your address in somebody else's list. We do not sell, rent or swap it. We do not add you back after you have left, and we do not add you because you bought something — buying a pen and reading a letter are two different agreements.
Every email we send
Five kinds of email, and which ones you control.
Some of these are part of the order you placed and cannot be switched off while it is still running — a receipt you could turn off would not be much of a receipt. The rest are yours. This is the whole list; nothing else goes out under our name.
| When it goes out | Can you turn it off? | |
|---|---|---|
| Order confirmation | Within minutes of you ordering | No, while an order is live — it is your receipt |
| Dispatch and tracking | When the parcel leaves the workshop | No, while an order is live — you need the number |
| A reply from a person | When you have written to us | No — it is an answer to your own email |
| The letter | Once a month at most, and only if you asked for it | Yes — unsubscribe link at the foot of every one |
| Back in stock | Once, when the finish you asked about returns | Yes — and it stops itself after that single email |
Transactional emails stop by themselves once an order is complete. If you have left the letter and one still arrives, tell us at [Email] — that is a fault, not a campaign.
Consent and data
How you join the list, and how you leave it.
An email address is a small thing to hand over and a tedious thing to get back. So this page says exactly how yours is taken, what is done with it, how long it is kept, and how you end the arrangement in one tap.
Everything below applies to the letter. The emails that belong to an order are covered in the last clause, because those work differently and we would rather be honest about it than pretend everything is optional.
Last updated
1How you join
By typing your address into the form at the foot of a page and pressing the button. That is the only route in. There is no pre-ticked box anywhere on this site, and there is no box beside the payment button quietly adding you at checkout.
Buying a pen does not put you on the list. Writing to us does not put you on the list. Being sent a referral link does not put you on the list.
If you find yourself receiving the letter and cannot remember asking, we have made a mistake. Tell us at [Email] and we will take you off and go and find out how it happened.
2How you leave
Every letter carries an unsubscribe link at the foot. It works in one tap, it takes effect straight away, and it does not ask you to log in, confirm twice, or explain what went wrong.
If the link fails, email [Email] and we will do it by hand the same working day. You do not need to use particular words, and you do not need to be polite about it.
Leaving the list changes nothing else: your orders, your warranty and your right to return something all carry on exactly as before.
We do not add anyone back. If you sign up again later, that is your decision and it starts from scratch.
3What we hold, and what we can see
Your email address, the date you subscribed, and your first name if you gave us one. Nothing else is required, and there is nothing else in the form.
The provider we use to send the letter records whether an email was opened and whether a link in it was clicked. We look at it in the aggregate — whether a paragraph was worth writing — not to build a profile of you. We do not track you around this site off the back of an email, and we do not pass your address to advertising networks.
We do not sell, rent, share or swap the list, and we do not send anyone else's marketing in the letter.
The full account of who processes what is in the privacy policy.
4How long we keep it
While you are subscribed, and no longer than is useful after that.
- You unsubscribe: we keep a record that this address left, so that nothing accidentally puts it back. That record is your address and the date, nothing more.
- You never open a letter for two years: we take you off ourselves. A list nobody reads is not a compliment.
- You ask us to delete you: we delete you, including that suppression record, within one month.
Order records are kept separately and for longer, because tax law in [Country] requires it. That is set out on the legal page.
5Your rights
You can ask us for a copy of what we hold on you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, or object to us using it — free, and without giving a reason.
Use the form below or write to [Email]. We answer within one month, and normally within a day or two, because there is not usually much to find.
If we handle it badly you can complain to the data protection authority in [Country]. We would rather you told us first, but you are not required to.
6The emails we cannot switch off
While an order is live, some emails are part of the order rather than part of the marketing: the confirmation, the dispatch and tracking note, a message about a delay, a refund confirmation, and the reply to an email you sent us.
These are sent because we owe you them, so they are not optional and they carry no unsubscribe link. Leaving the letter has no effect on them.
They stop on their own once the order is complete. If you have no live order, no open return and no unanswered email with us, and something still arrives that is not the letter, write to [Email] — it is a fault and we will want to know.
Questions about this page
Write to [Email] and a person will answer. If you want to leave the list and the link is not working, that email is enough — you do not have to explain yourself.
Related reading: the privacy policy and the cookies page.
Your choices
Tell us what to send, and what to stop.
The quickest way out is the unsubscribe link at the foot of any letter — one tap, and it takes effect immediately. Use this form for the things that link cannot do: a change of address, a copy of what we hold on you, or the lot deleted.
A person reads it, usually within one working day, and writes back to say it is done.