Tip 1: Have High Res Press Pics Freely and Readily Available

This seems really obvious, but it isn’t. As someone that writes previews weeks and sometimes months before public announcements, I am really grateful when companies, after the embargoes are gone but before the products are in the wild, have press pics available. CRKT does a phenomenal job with this. I get press previews and prerelease stuff with embargoes all the time from bunches of different folks, so I write up the content and then wait. If there is no product picture available, the stuff won’t get eyeballs and might not get published.

Think of this like the automotive industry—they print calendars, posters, and books with pictures of new cars in them and GIVE THEM AWAY. I went to the Corvette C8 public debut event for the Northeast with my Dad and as soon as you walked in the door you were given a poster. Every image is free advertising and every article is as well, but without pictures, no one cares on the Internet. Don’t gate them, don’t hide them, and don’t make them tiny. I want to be able to google your product’s name, find a high res image, and use it. Help me help you.

Tip 2: Hit the High Points of Social Media

No, you don’t need a Tik Tok account, a SnapChat account, or a Gentlemint account. YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram are about it. If something becomes huge and stays that way, fine, but don’t squirrel away time and content on formats and platforms no one will ever see. Mind the big stuff and ignore the rest until you can’t anymore.

And when you are doing this, make sure your content works for each platform. Facebook is for connecting with people, YouTube is for long form videos, and IG is for pictures and short videos. It kills me to see “new content” notifications for a company’s YouTube channel only to surf over and find a :27 second video of a knife opening. I did that for three videos when people had questions about new opening mechanisms, but the complaints were loud and correct, so I stopped. Don’t have links in your image if it is going to IG, they won’t work. Don’t regurgitate web content on Facebook (use a link instead).

Lastly, decide which platform is your hub and which are your spokes (making sure, of course that spokes feed users to the hub). WE and Reate are primarily IG-based companies. The Reate website is pretty terrible, in fact. But their IG account is stellar—up to date, with platform-appropriate content, and it has great pictures. That’s the way to make things work. For me, this site is the hub and the Twitter account, IG account, YouTube channel, and the podcast are all spokes, they all channel people to this site.

Tip 3: Have a Two-Pronged Traditional Media Attack

You can’t ignore shill sites, unfortunately, but they don’t have to be your whole approach. Hipsters with money to burn go to shill sites and they may buy your knife everyone once in a while. That is a lot of effort for intermittent reward. The good thing is that independent media or enthusiast media is much easier to please and engage with, usually.

Folks like Nick, myself, and other longtime content creators have already done all the leg work for you. We know the steels and the handle materials. We have a good idea about how and why features are there. And we have networks of people that buy gear weekly waiting with wallets open. Have a packet for the shill sites and email some long time, trustworthy folks in the IKC. They aren’t hard to find and they aren’t hard to please, provided, of course, you aren’t peddling 8Cr as “high end surgical steel.” If you tailor your pitch to each form—general interest and niche interest, a little info and relationship building can go a long way.

Tip 4: Don’t be Everything to Everyone

Chances are your brand isn’t Gerber, KAI, or Buck. Those companies have decades of experience, huge staffs, and buckets of resources. They can made big knives, little knives, and everything in between (oh, remember the Buck Trident? It was a beautiful blue sky product, but really how many of us need a collapsible trident?). If you can’t go wide, go deep.

Look at TRM—they have a jam, a wheelhouse—thin, simple everyday carry knives. They make a few variations on the theme, and that’s it. They have capacity to make more complex stuff, more high end stuff, but that doesn’t jibe with their brand identity and small companies die when they try to be big companies. Starting my own law firm as confirmed this for me. Time and again my partner and I have decided that we’d rather go deep than wide and we have been happier for it.

Tip 5: Price Shop

If your business model relies on people not price shopping, you will fail. Twenty years ago when online shopping was in its infancy, that was a bad idea. Now when you can literally check prices on your phone from markets around the world, its suicide.

Don’t price your production D2 knives over $100. Its not competitive with the market. That isn’t to say it is a bad knife. Tom Krein sells a lot of stuff with D2 for more than $100 and those knives are great. But in the production world, where products lack the polish of a handmade Krein, people want their bucks to go towards steel. And this is the real point of price shopping—its not necessarily about keeping up with the Jones. You don’t NEED M390, but people expect it. Disappointment comes not from failure but from unmet expectations. And a disappointed customer is not a repeat customer.

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Buck Trident

Please someone, buy the Trident. I would love to know what you think.