The launch of a new pen tablet company, with Bill Lindsay, Xencelabs

Gary Pageau of the Dead Pixels Society talks with Bill Lindsay, Channel/Enterprise Sales Manager, at Xencelabs, a new pen tablet company.  Lindsay talks about how the product was developed, how customer feedback drove the design of the tablet, and the challenges of launching a new photo hardware company in a pandemic. 

Xencelabs is a new global company with a new approach to professional digital design tablets, staffed by industry veterans.

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Transcript

Erin Manning  
Welcome to the dead pixel society podcast, the photo imaging industry's leading news source. here's your host, Gary Pageau.

Gary Pageau  
The Dead Pixels Society podcast is brought to you by Mediaclip, Photo Finale and Advertek Printing.  

Hello again, and welcome to the Dead Pixel Society podcast. I'm your host, Gary Pageau. And today we're joined by Bill Lindsey, the channel enterprise sales manager for a new company called Xencelabs. Hi, Bill, how are you today?

Bill Lindsay  
I'm doing good. Thanks, Gary, for having me on the show.

Gary Pageau  
I've been covering the launch of your new products. But for those who haven't been made aware of Xenselabs, can you talk a little bit about what Xenceabs is? where it came from? And what products you offer?

Bill Lindsay  
That was a that's a loaded question. There's lots of there. So a couple things real quick is we are a new pen tablet company. And what we did was, a lot of us come from the industry, and from inside of Xencelabs. So we're a global company. And what we wanted to do was provide best in class digital drawing solutions. And in doing so, we actually started pulling and talking to people we knew in the industry, people that draw for six to eight hours a day straight. You know, photographers, we talked to motion graphics, we talked to all these different industries. And because we all come from the industry, we have a lot of connections, and we started talking about what they wanted to see what they wanted to do, you know, how can we improve that whole arena of drawing with a pen on a tablet. And so we started get some ideas and some things and things people liked some things people didn't like. And so we created a tablet, a again, going for best in class. So we added a few things that you don't normally see in the industry. So we've added these things into our tablet and created basically pen tablet is our first product. So that's the name of it is pen tablet, that is correct, it is called a pen, tablet. And medium is our very first product we came out with. So the pen tablet medium, we didn't want to go for strange names, since labs alone is kind of a strange enough name. So that's where we, we decided to, let's go ahead and just take that on. And just so everybody knows that says audio, even though i'm pronouncing as cents labs, it's actually x-e-n-c-e labs. So it is a little bit different spelling. And that's where we came up with this whole whole idea and hold principle for it. We do, we did want to, obviously we're addressing and really hitting the professional creativity market. That's where we're going after in that class, there's really only one current product that's out there one current brand, if you will. And so what we did is we're actually targeting that arena, as really, you know, coming out as an alternative solution,

Gary Pageau  
the market for pen tablets, I've had some kind of confused, obviously, I know there's a lot in our industry, photo retouching and maybe some video editing a little bit color correction, you know, that kind of application? What about like iPads and other tablets kind of encroaching on that space? How does your tablet address that sort of competition,

Bill Lindsay  
I still really don't believe the iPad would be per se a competitor. And there's a reason for that it's a great device. But is it a drawing tablet everybody uses not really because you're first limited by software, right? on a PC, Mac or Linux, you have 1000s of applications, right? Right. And on an iPad, you're very limited to really five that I can think of maybe six that are strong. And that's it, period. Right. Now, the other thing is, is Apple also does, they're using, they're not using real pressure, it's simulated pressure is what they're doing. So there is a difference from when you actually draw with a pen that's designed for pressure, and one that's simulating pressure. And that really is a lot of the again, the professional creatives are really, they could feel that they could tell that they you know, the iPad might be great, great for maybe some concept ideas, but when they actually go and do their work, they're really workhorse. They're sitting in front of a computer, that's really kind of what they're doing. And

Gary Pageau  
it could be a giant monitor. Yeah,

Bill Lindsay  
you want it you want a large monitor, you want to be able to control things and draw you know, our tablet, that that type of whole arena that that really becomes really kind of where it comes from,

Gary Pageau  
from what I can see from the product, it comes kind of loaded, right with with all the things you need pancakes, two pans, extra nibs, all that other stuff. That's not from what my experience has been typical of tablet packaging.

Bill Lindsay  
Again, we wanted to come to this market and offer something totally different. So not only do you get your pen in your tablet, but you also get a second pen. So you actually get two pens and there are two different pens. There's a three button pen with an eraser and a thin pen with an eraser. So you actually get two pens. Some people prefer the thin pen because it's more of like a pencil esque type of field. And some people prefer the three button pen because I have three buttons that I can use and maybe like there is they come in a nice case carrying case. So you have this nice hard sided carrying case that you can put your pens into includes extra nibs, everything's in that little case, including even a wireless dongle. So we are tablet gone wireless. Along with that whole package, you get things a little extra, like there is a drawing glove, because people like drawing gloves, so there's a drawing glove. And more importantly, there's actually a case to put everything into so there's a traveling case, because a lot of times people put it in their backpack or in their briefcase in there, right? What do I damage it, but we actually give you the case too. So yeah, we wanted to come kind of to the table with a lot more built in

Gary Pageau  
now you say medium for the first product, the pen tell him how big is medium in terms of size

Bill Lindsay  
is it's basically a little bit larger than a mouse pad would be my my indication of how that is. So it's about 1212 and a half roughly by nine, roughly, we are drawing space, one of the things again, we decided to do was actually do something that nobody else really does. And that's actually use a aspect ratio for your drawing space of 16 by nine, which is the standard, one of the cool things that this company has done is we have put together a team that is really kind of industry leaders in this whole field and brought them together, the same guy that developed the Wacom tablets in actually our head of design. So now he can move ship. So so he's able to been able to take a lot of what he did previously, and really kind of improve upon it. Plus, we got all that feedback from all the industry as far as the artists go the creativity people, you know, we pull them we talk to them. And little little things like we actually have a slope on the front of the tablet so that when you're drawing and your risk gets down toward the edge, it's a comfortable feeling. Because you know, these people are sitting at their tablet for for six, sometimes eight hours straight. Right. Right. Right. So we designed our tablet with comfort in mind to really design it that way for that on that for that very reason.

Gary Pageau  
Yeah. And it's very, you know, clean and smooth. But you also have this accessory device, the quick key,

Bill Lindsay  
yeah, where does that fit in. So one of the things that we got pulled about and we got answers on was a lot of people did not like buttons on their tablet, they seem to get in the way, especially if you're left handed, and you're running into those buttons with your left hand just by moving on the tablet. And so there was a lot of things going on there that that we just told, talk to people and pull them in, they didn't like those buttons. So we thought let's move those buttons to a separate device. And hence, we came up with the quick keys. Now the quick keys has on it eight buttons, but five different sets. So you can actually have per application a total of 40 buttons, you can program things like video editing, when I want to be able to quickly do that, or 3d when I'm editing in 3d. This really gives me that capability of being able to set up these little banks of buttons that I could just choose from and use for quick shortcuts or quick keys, whatever I want to do there, hence the name quick keys. So it also has a dial on it. So if I'm in say Photoshop, and I want to control things like brush size, I can use that dial to control my brush size very quickly, I press a button go to different set. And now I'm controlling zoom with that same exact dial. And I have up to five different settings or five different banks of the so not only do I get 40 different buttons, but I get five different dials that I can use as well. So it may be zoom, it may be a brush size, it may be moving up and down the palette of your layers. I like one of the ones I like a lot is being able to change from a soft edge brush to a hard edge brush. And I can use that dial to do that very quick and easily. So there's all sorts of little tricks we can do and tips that we can that we're going to be working on getting out there for everybody to see. But we've actually one of the cool things about this company is is going into this, we've actually programmed our pens to best practices, best practices in the industry. So again, we pull a lot of people, your Photoshop user, how do you like buttons to be set up? How do you like your pen setup. So one of the things that like I talked about very heavily is the Back button on the pen is a undo that, to me is a very, very powerful tool inside of something like Photoshop, the middle button is my option or my Alt key. And so that gives me a lot of power inside of that specific application. So our pens are fully programmable for each application independently. And it really gives the creative industry a lot better feeling and usage when they take this out of the box and it's already set up the way that they would typically use it in those applications. What applications are supported by this basically everything that is graphical. I mean Are there any anything's missing there anything I can use? A mouse for I can use a pen for so it's an input device, I can control my entire computer. One of the things that I liken it to is a mouse or a touchpad can actually deliver carpal tunnel and in your wrist, and once that damage occurs, you have to have surgery, there's no it doesn't tendons don't heal themselves, or, you know, the ligaments don't heal themselves. And so it pen is a natural media device, something that we've used all our lives, being able to draw in pencil and paper, or even crayons and you know, want to start off with, but it's a natural media device. And so I can control my computer with the natural media device to do everything. Now, when I get into the graphic applications like Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, painter, then I get this added bonus that I have all this pressure controls to control things. So like if I was doing dodge and burn inside of Photoshop, and I know you and I talked a little bit about my history, and I was Adobe for for 10 years, and I was the very first product Photoshop product specialist. And so one of the things I developed was this, you know, we before we actually even had dodge and burn tools inside of Photoshop, I developed this, this method of being able to take a layer, create a layer to it. And then by painting with a pen, I can paint with black using a soft layer, and it would be a burn effect. And if I paint with white, it's a Dodge effect, right. So one of the things I can actually do is do that inside of Photoshop, but I'm controlling, like if I using a mouse, if I wanted to burn an area, I'd set it to about 20 30%. And I'd go over that area multiple times until I actually get that burn effect that way I wanted to look at, well, with a pen, I can control just by my pressure on the surface, how much black I'm depositing on screen so I can burn it dark, you know, pressing down hard, I'm gonna burn it a lot, or I press down on a burner lightly. So it allows me that was controls, things like that very simply by using that. So the graphic apps are an added bonus. But I can use a pen to our pen technology in any app,

Gary Pageau  
even sign a check with it,

Bill Lindsay  
I'm sure Oh, actually, yeah, PDFs. Think about that signing documents people ask, you know, when you're doing some legal thing, or you know, something, you need to sign a document for HR. Well, guess what I signed my name. My real signature, not a digital signature. It's all my real name from

Gary Pageau  
conception of the company to the launch of the product. How long was that? And how long have you been involved with the company?

Bill Lindsay  
See, we started a company was formed about probably just a little over two years ago, I'm going to say okay, so one of the nice things about this company is we've been able to really cherry pick who we wanted what we wanted, we were able to actually go out and decide what roles we wanted people to be and who was the best person for that. So that's one of the nice things about this. So I've been with the company for now, for last six months, before we went became public to the world. We became public in February of this year, and with our first product, and we've got more products in the hopper that we're working in, hopefully be out shortly. So yeah, there's not to give anything away. But yeah, so yeah, there's we're going to be moving fast. It's a light team very small. I wear multiple hats, obviously. And so that's one of the things is we are geared to go and be able to hit the ground running. And the cool thing is too is we're smaller companies. So as things progress, we go Oh, you know what, it'd be so cool to have this feature, guess what? It gets implemented quickly. So that's kind of one of the nice things to

Gary Pageau  
launching a company in the middle of a pandemic is a little bit of a challenge.

Bill Lindsay  
What is what's happening that way? No

Gary Pageau  
I know, that wasn't the plan. I'm sure you know, one of the ways that you know you reach your target market for photographers, graphic artists, animators, etc would be at trade shows, right? You know, things like that. What is your go to market strategy in the wake of you know, there's some shows that are coming back some that aren't great, it's a challenge how are you going to reach people

Bill Lindsay  
we're doing that through obviously advertising but we're you're right this trade shows haven't come back yet. We're seeing the first real shows that are gonna actually be in person or hybrid. Not until like September October. So we'll be addressing those as we go along. We'll be hitting those the virtual shows have been kind of hit or miss. Right. They, they, you know, they're the virtual shows, they really found out the secret sauce yet for virtual shows. And so one of the things that we're doing is we're discussing and and so far, I think one of the better ones is coming up is lightbox Expo, we, we've been talking to them and they've got some ideas that that a lot of people haven't tried yet for virtual. And so we're actually kind of excited about that or become a gold sponsor with them because of just the way they're treating a virtual show, which is gonna be different than most of the virtual shows that are out there. And I've done A few of them already. And they've been like, Oh, this is not working. You know?

Gary Pageau  
Yeah. It's it's thinking, as you know, people going forward, you know, our shows coming back, you know, I think they're gonna come back. Yeah, I don't know if they'll be as large as they were right.

Bill Lindsay  
Right. or international presence, right. And right. I

Gary Pageau  
mean, if you think of something like a CES, will it will there ever be another show with 100,000 people rolling across the across the planet, I mean, you get sick going to CES just anyway, it's getting crazy. So it's interesting. I mean, this is the kind of product though, where you have to, you really need to put your hands on. I mean, that's literally the The advantage of this product over another product is you can actually hold it in your hands and play with it. Yeah. And so you're either going to have, you know, retail displays or something. So I just kind of curious how you're going to adapt that?

Bill Lindsay  
Well, one of the other ways we've done this, Gary, too, is we're actually doing what's called a loaner program, we have to qualify them. So we're looking for opportunities, larger opportunities, say 10 plus units that they're, they're considering or looking to do, we can set up a loaner program and be able to do that we've been working with some of our resellers are ready to be able to do that. So resources, hey, I've got this customer. They're considering, you know, 15 units, what can we do? Oh, yeah, well, we'll send them out a unit. So we'll do what's called a loaner program, we send it to them, they have to send it back. So we're already trying different ways to because you're right, it is a product that it's a touchy feely product, I've got to get it in my hand, I got to see that pen, I got to understand the pressures I'm drawing with it. You know, one of the cool things about our talents too, is we added little lights around the corners of the drawing area. And they change depending on what color like you can change the colors. So like when I'm in Photoshop, the color corners are blue, my touch wheel on my quickies is blue. When I go into Illustrator, everything's green, and the little nuances, things like that, that when I when I sit down and I use it, I thought well, first I thought, oh, who's gonna use that. But now when I get into like Photoshop, and it's blue, I have multiple screens, and I may be looking at my email, but realize my tablets actually in Photoshop, because it's blue. And I can see that on my eye. So it's one of those things where it's like, oh, that's kind of really cool, actually. So long nuances like that really helped out?

Gary Pageau  
I mean, I mean, I imagine you got the full blown, you know, YouTube channel and all that fun stuff. Yeah, it's not the same. And as the photo industry and video industry and you know, a lot of the tech world comes out of COVID, I'm very interested to see what happens because I, you know, I've heard mixed results myself about virtual events, where it's like, it's okay, from a business standpoint, to maybe see a new vendor kind of be introduced them, but you don't have that face to face interaction that people really need. But again, who wants to go to an event with 30,000 people across from across the world who may or may not be vaccinated, you know, that so, you know, I don't know how it's gonna play out. I'm just kind of a bystander in that regard. And I'm just curious, you know, this crew wasn't on your roadmap, you're probably thinking, Okay, we're gonna do photokina we're gonna we're gonna do you know, Photoplus Expo we're gonna do all the

Bill Lindsay  
Photoshop World... yah!. You know that. 

Gary Pageau  
And all these things, kind of, you know, you mentioned you listen to the Scott Kelby episode, you know, you know, Scotty I mean, he's wrestling with that himself with Photoshop world.

Bill Lindsay  
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Gary Pageau  
How do you do the virtual and in person format, right?

Bill Lindsay  
Oh, yeah, that's, that's what people are facing right now is right now they're virtual? Well, when they come back live, do they do a hybrid event? Does it go half live half virtual, it's like, you're there. There's a lot of stuff going on there. Well, where people were really kind of, I don't think it's been fully figured out yet. And it's still people are trying to figure themselves out with themselves what they're gonna do. I know, we've been talking to Scott about that, but Photoshop world and what we're gonna do there and how they're gonna be able to handle that whole arena. So yeah,

Gary Pageau  
well, and fortunately for you, you've got a small team of you know, you probably don't have an incredible amount of over overhead. Right, right. Right. Going forward, you're in a great position.

Bill Lindsay  
Yeah. And I was gonna toss in to you mate reminded me as I was doing, as we were talking, that one of the things when COVID hit that we kind of figured out pretty quick is we actually there's a 3d website called sketchfab. And sketchfab, what we did is we actually took our products and created the 3d version so people actually can see look, not feel But see, look and spin around and get highlight points and understand a lot about it. Because that was one of the things we were facing. How do you deal with this? When they can't, you know, see you in person and be able to feel it from a gear standpoint,

Gary Pageau  
there are a lot of people were buying gear for their home. Yep. Right. Yeah. Because and I think your product, you know, because it is portable is great for students, or college students or people starting out maybe changing careers because of COVID. Yep. So I think you've got a good opportunity.

Bill Lindsay  
Yes. And we learn from past mistakes from previous companies. So like, one of the things that that we have is, is every one of our products even mentioned students, and schools, one of the things that drove me nuts at the other company when I was there for 25 years was that We kept saying we got it for education, you got to have a locking mechanism, it's got to be able to be locked down, and everyone's all product come out no locking, and it's like, well, education. So one things we did was was every product that we come out with has a locking mechanism, or the capability being able to lock it down. So for schools, that's huge, you know, that's one of the big things is I don't want my tablets, running legs and running out the door, right. And so that's one of things we have the capability of doing is locking things down, which is again,

Gary Pageau  
right now your offer to bundles, can you quickly kind of go through what those two bundles what those two products are in those offerings? Yeah,

Bill Lindsay  
we have with the pen talent medium, which is our standard version, which includes the two pens the case the wireless capability, also the carrying case for the whole thing, as well as all the cables. So we even our cables, or our USB C from the tablet to USB a and we have an adapter that's included as well to go from USB a to USB C. So if somebody has like a new MacBook Pro, they can attach our tablet by using that a little adapter to plug it directly in. So we have all the cables that are needed, you get the adapters, you get the drawing glove, you get the pen case with the two pens, and as well as the carrying case for the whole caboodle, if you will. And that's $279. So that's one of the nice things too is we've been able to keep that cost way down, include all these nice little extras. And wait, there's more that we have the bundle version, the final version adds in the quick keys. So the quick keys guy should be sold by itself. So if you wanted a programmable 40 key hot pad, you could with a touch wheel that's at $89. But but really the bundle is kind of adding that directly. And so that brings it up to $359.

Gary Pageau  
Is there a use for the quick QuickKeys without the pad?

Bill Lindsay  
Oh, sure, sure. So people want are just a bility to be able to choose. So like if I'm using a keyboard and I'm reaching across my keyboard all the time, it's much easier because it's all built on muscle, muscle memory, right, you do it enough, you're going to just reach down to it. So people will use the QuickKeys by itself just as a shortcut hot pad that I can actually put a bunch of shortcuts into and just real quickly press it and be able to go from there and keep that just handy after the sign.

Gary Pageau  
I mean, I've seen like hardware volume dials and scroll wheel, things like that. So you could use it like that.

Bill Lindsay  
Yep, exactly. And you have the capability of of the quickies with a dial so it's kind of got both best of both worlds, you got the dial and you've got the the buttons there that you can access as well. So it's as I push one button, just change the sets, I can have a change color. The QuickKeys has an LED panel on it. So it does show you what the keys are set to which is kind of nice. So that's kind of kind of a cool factor there too.

Gary Pageau  
It's kind of cool. And it's very Star Trek looking Yeah, where can someone go for more information for a if they wanted to purchase a bundle, or if they're interested in becoming a dealer or a partner,

Bill Lindsay  
all the above can be if you want to check us out. It's Xencelabs.com. So xencelabs.com. And that's where you can actually go and see the product. If you're a dealer, we have a whole dealer area for partnering with us. And so we have all that good, good information right there. The other thing is, and it was just kind of, as you were talking about it, I just kind of remember, you know, people like what did you get the name Xencelabs, I mean, really, and starts with an x. So what we did is we actually wanted to use uncover this real quick, because we wanted to create a sense of, you know, there's five senses, we wanted to really kind of represent the senses is where that whole aspect came from. And then obviously, Labs is laboratory. So we because we're always changing and being able to go in and do things. So it's it's creative senses with the lab capability to create Xencelabs. And if you actually see our little logo, our little icon, if you will, the element. It's kind of a weird, interesting shape. It looks like kind of like a upside down diamond, if you will, or polygon, but it's got it looks like it's broken. There's pieces that are don't connect in the exact same spot. And the whole reason that is because it's it's meant to be dynamic. We're always changing. We're always moving things are happening. And that's really where that came into play.

Gary Pageau  
Well thanks bill for your time. Congratulations on your launch and looking forward to providing coverage of your new products as it has gone as you go forward, which will be soon

Bill Lindsay  
which will be soon people will hear this so I can't say yeah, what like that, but yes, soon.

Gary Pageau  
Alright, well, thank you so much. Take care.

Bill Lindsay  
Thanks, Gary. Thanks for having me.

Erin Manning  
Thank you for listening to the dead pixels society podcast. Read more great stories and sign up for the newsletter at www the dead pixels society.com