Montana Knife Firm launched in 2020 in a two-car storage close to Missoula. One co-founder is an authorized “Grasp Bladesmith” who has produced handmade knives since he was 11. The opposite, Brandon Horoho, is a seasoned digital marketer and ecommerce professional.
Mixed, the entrepreneurs show the worth of expertise at scale marketed on to shoppers. Enterprise is booming, and the corporate will quickly transfer right into a 50,000 sq. ft. manufacturing facility.
Brandon and I lately spoke. He shared the corporate’s origins, tradition, “drop” promoting, and extra. Our complete audio is embedded under. The transcript is edited for size and readability.
Eric Bandholz: Inform us who you might be and what you do.
Brandon Horoho: I’m the co-founder, vp, and chief advertising and marketing officer of Montana Knife Firm. My background is in advertising and marketing, and I’ve been concerned in ecommerce since 2010.
I’ve labored for large complement and health manufacturers and on many ecommerce platforms, together with Magento and Shopify. Certainly one of my early accomplishments was adopting SMS advertising and marketing when it was unregulated, which helped me perceive how one can develop companies in rising markets.
We make our knives fully in Montana, close to Missoula. We began in 2020 and are fully bootstrapped. We give attention to creating high quality knives for probably the most hardcore hunters, providing a product you can tackle a two-week hunt in Alaska while not having backups. We goal to make instruments that final for generations. We stand other than the mass market, which has shifted towards cheaper, disposable merchandise.
We manufacture our knives to final. That’s what units us aside. We’re obsessive about high quality and craftsmanship, even at scale. My enterprise accomplice, Josh Smith, has been making knives since he was 11. At age 19, he turned the youngest Grasp Bladesmith from the American Bladesmith Society. His specialty is Damascus metal and extremely intricate, custom-made handles.
Folks would purchase his knives to gather them, which bothered him as a result of he wished of us to make use of them. That’s why we began this firm.
Bandholz: How do you stand out in a crowded trade?
Horoho: We’re completely different from conventional knife corporations. We don’t do blade reveals, and we don’t observe the standard market tendencies for knives. We give attention to making particular instruments for particular folks. Our model is just like the anti-knife knife firm.
We additionally differentiate by way of our dedication to customer support. Our guarantee is unmatched — in case you purchase a knife from us, we’ll sharpen it as typically as you want. If one thing goes flawed, we’ll repair it. This guarantee applies to the unique proprietor and anybody who inherits the knife.
Bandholz: Have you ever had any points with knockoffs of your knives?
Horoho: We’ve seen a couple of knockoffs on platforms like Temu, however we don’t lose sleep over it. We’re 100% direct-to-consumer, so in case you aren’t shopping for from our web site, you’re shopping for a pretend. Our knives are hand-finished and hand-sharpened; it’s powerful for anybody to copy that on a big scale.
Bandholz: Your knives are sometimes out of inventory. Is {that a} success or failure?
Horoho: It is determined by the way you take a look at it. Once we began, we might afford to make solely 200 knives — most went to family and friends. We bought out earlier than we had the subsequent batch prepared. That’s how our drop mannequin began — we had no product to promote for a month or two, so we determined to announce drops for particular dates.
Coming from the health and attire world, I used to be accustomed to the drop mannequin, however it wasn’t presupposed to be our main enterprise technique. The primary time we did it, the knives bought out in 14 minutes, and we hadn’t even completed making them. It was chaos. We didn’t have sufficient packaging, and Josh was sharpening knives as quick as he might whereas I labored on the delivery labels.
We continued with the drop mannequin as a result of it labored, however it was by no means the plan. We had been additionally launching throughout Covid, so we confronted challenges sourcing metal and discovering contractors keen to work with a small firm like ours.
Bandholz: Have you ever stored up with demand?
Horoho: No, we nonetheless haven’t caught up. Once we began, we purchased one CNC machine — Laptop Numerical Management, a producing course of — and operated out of a two-car storage. We now have a ten,000-square-foot facility on Josh’s property, however we outgrew it in lower than a yr. We’re constructing a 50,000-square-foot plant, which can embody 30,000 sq. ft of producing house.
We’re nonetheless constrained even with our expanded manufacturing capabilities. Now we have solely 5 obtainable knife fashions, and our sell-through price is about two weeks. We drop new merchandise each Thursday, however we will’t make sufficient to maintain up with the demand.
Bandholz: Inform us about your advertising and marketing efforts.
Horoho: I had a few years of constructing advertising and marketing errors earlier than Montana Knife. We targeted on the fundamentals first, establishing a correct knowledge administration system from day one, particularly for Google and Fb advertisements, which I’m accustomed to from my time within the complement house.
I knew we’d be competing with corporations which were round for many years, however once I checked out their digital footprints, I noticed they had been lacking alternatives. I labored with a pal, Joel, from Fluxe Digital Advertising, to ascertain a powerful natural search technique, even earlier than we had merchandise on the positioning. That’s been enormous.
Our focus is rising our e mail listing, not simply social media platforms. Being able to succeed in clients instantly has been key. Constant day by day posting retains us prime of thoughts, and collaborations with like-minded manufacturers are the place I see the longer term. Synthetic intelligence may quickly dominate advertisements, however real model partnerships will stand out.
Bandholz: The place can folks observe you?
Horoho: MontanaKnifeCompany.com. We’re on X, YouTube, and Instagram. You will discover me on LinkedIn and Instagram.