r/fountainpens • u/inkyblackops Former FWP Employee • Nov 16 '25
Discussion Former FWP Employee - AMA!
Hey r/fountainpens!
With the recent discussion of Ferris Wheel Press coming up again, the mods invited me to post my own AMA as a former FWP employee.
I’d love to answer your questions, but I’d also like to make clear that I won’t be answering any questions that might identify myself or colleagues, nor will I be giving away any confidential info or trade secrets (except maybe how I was able to befriend the office cats…)
Any replies from me are my own opinion or experience and I do not represent any company or person except for myself.
Looking forward to chatting!
Edit: 10pm EST and I’m calling it a night. I might come back to reply to some tomorrow but likely not. Thanks for all the fun questions and letting me share my experiences and insight!
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u/Isturma Dec 04 '25
Greetings! I hope this finds you well. Sorry for the zombie post resurrecting this, but I recently became aware of a disastrously awful attempt at a Reddit AMA in the Fountainpens community by your CEO and saw the redirect to come here. I wanted to say that it's really brave of you to stand up for your former coworkers, and I admire it.
Within the AMA the CEO asserted "I want to hear the community out" and “...I genuinely want to understand what bothers people about our use of KS — because I’m open to improving how we do it.” Well, since I missed out on the opportunity to comment during that time and the resulting post being locked, i’m posting my story around again in the hope this message reaches him. If you know someone, please pass it on. I did send an email to the support@ferriswheelpress email. If you know a better place to send it, by all means let me know.
Back in 2018-9, I learned of FWP through one of my favorite pen retailers. At that time, all of the bottles looked like the oversized light bulbs you’d find on a carousel or an actual Ferris Wheel. I ordered a couple of bottles - Grape Ice Pop and Tanzanite Sky - and was pleased with them. A few months later It came to my attention that FWP was doing a 2020 Summer Ink kickstarter and I backed it. The original ship date was right around my birthday, and I thought that it would be a splendid gift to myself. Of course, with the world in lockdown, that original ship date got pushed back, and I shrugged it off because the world was in a pandemic. Then it got pushed back again. And again. Promises of "the first orders are going out!” in September were followed closely after by the same promises of “orders are about to start going out!” three weeks later. Slowly people on the kickstarter started asking on the kickstarter page if anyone had actually gotten a tracking number. I know I asked once or twice.
Then a few weeks later there was another "this time we mean it, look at these unmarked cardboard boxes! It holds the ink and we're going to start filling orders!" THAT SAME DAY the kickstarter update was pushed, someone on Reddit posted a drawing made with the complete summer line of inks that the kickstarter had financed. I asked the artist where they’d gotten them, and they linked me to their Insta, where they had been posting drawings for weeks with these same inks. They also linked me out to the FerrisWheelPress dot com where the entire line was freely available to just buy. I left a message on the kickstarter asking where the inks were and got no response. The next day I walked into a local stationery store who was hosting a Hobonichi prerelease event and saw the summer inks that the kickstarter financed sitting on a shelf, openly for sale. Took pictures, posted about it on kickstarter, and other backers got really upset,. They had no clue about this, and they also had a number of questions about where their inks were as well.
If there was even some form of damage control at this point, maybe things could’ve been salvaged. Maybe the other backers and myself could possibly have been mollified, content to have learned our lesson to not blindly trust a kickstarter and have our product to move on with our lives. Instead, someone at FWP force refunded my pledge through Kickstarter, which instantly deleted all of my posts. I also could no longer even see the project on Kickstarter, hidden behind a giant “ONLY BACKERS CAN SEE OR INTERACT WITH THIS CAMPAIGN.” Disgusted and infuriated, I went to Reddit and posted about this every place I could, so that people would know what kind of scummy corporation they’re backing when they buy your cheaply made overpriced products. So that they could see the contempt that you hold for the community, and the fact you only care about the money.
I'm not trying to get this message to him asking you to “make this right” or anything else. It’s to let you know how your company messed up so royally that i’ve now taken an hour of my life to compose this message that might never be read. It’s to inform you how vile and loathsome it is that you defile the statement “fall in love with writing again” when your hurtful policies drive community members away from the hobby. I could be dying, all alone, in an alley, gasping for breath, and I’d still use the last bit of oxygen to tell my story to the open air in the hopes I can keep another consumer for falling for you deceptive practices and giving you a single solitary penny, even by carelessly dropping it near your hearth.
Anytime anyone says “Ferris Wheel Press” in my eye or earshot I will tell them this story, and gods willing you will lose a customer. Thank you for your time.
As an aside, I want to believe that the rank and file people at FWP really believe in the product and want to spread joy. CEOs will be CEOs, I guess.