If you made knives, how would you market them?

Edit: I've edited the content out. Free for all. No content post.

P.S. Edit: I had stuff in about Cut Brooklin, Quintin Middleton, Kramer, R!chm0nd, and Scmidt Brothers -- what's up with those boys??

k.

I'd pay someone from the New York Times to shill my knives in the Sunday magazine.

All those guys kick ass at marketing. Yesterday, I showed my wife websites of many different knife makers, and ^that^ is literally a complete list of every one she said "I like that" or "that looks good".

I'd hire someone in marketing.

-AJ

All of the above. Nice pics displayed in a very public way along with a few words by someone with widespread credibility.

I had a conversation with Colin in brief about the value of something he made. Part of my conversation was a large part of the equation of how valuable something is, is your thought behind what you've created with the material. Ultimately the material has no value, it's what YOU do with it. You are selling yourself, whether you are selling food, knives, cars, houses, whatever it may be. You're selling yourself and the thought behind your work. The more connection people have to you and your work, the more successful you will come to be. And having a connection to people you will know what markets there are. If you're BSing people, it will come to light eventually. May not be today, may not be tomorrow, but it will come to light.

The beautiful thing I've grasped is the true innovators don't even give a $h!9 about the commercial markets and visualize their own thing and push the envelope on how things are done. This is how I would market a knife or any product. Look at what everyone else is doing and instead of trying to be like them, look for a venue they are not tapping into at all. So many are stuck in the past ways of doing things and as technology is advancing, many are happy to work with old ways of doing things unwilling to take advatange. The internet and the way apps, phones and etc are advancing, certainly this is the new era. Who is going to be the first to create a knife app for custom knives? The food trucks are tweeting where they are going to be and selling out everyday. Build interest in knives and do the same with a knife truck. Go hang out in nice kitchens in your area and give out knives to try and befriend the chefs, this will ALWAYS work if you're positive minded no matter the times. Crazy ideas, maybe. I didn't even think about those but for a second. When we have a bunch of places and a lot of people know who I am, I'll market everyone's stuff and put my name behind it no money down ... well ... payment in knives, nobody ever pays me in knives

Kind Regards

Bryan

Rick's idea makes the most sense to me. But, barring that, I'd do a quick passaround here, build a clean website, then get some buzz in a good Food Industry, like New York, Montreal, or Chicago (read the reviews if you don't believe me), by handing out a couple trial knives to really solid Sous-Chefs.

Yep, straight to the source is always the best. You cannot fail at that. Remember it's not just your knife you're selling though. Don't be a douche. A sour person will kill a great product any day of the week. If both are on point, success is only a matter of time

Sell to yuppie foodies

You really have to identify your demographics first. Each medium and the way that medium is used is driven by different demographic basis.

So far I can think of only one person who has succesfully bridged many different groups...

Pensacola Tiger said:

I'd pay someone from the New York Times to shill my knives in the Sunday magazine.

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+1. Look at how much time we have spent discussing the Cut Brooklyn video. That is invaluable press.

I would put a great deal of work into my website (including text, photos, and video). Cut Brooklyn is a great site. Very clean/stylish/modern and easy to navigate. Jon and Sara have a great site too (cool logo, lots of high resolution photos and videos). Marko looks like he is putting together a nice site (I also like his new logo/maker's mark).

I would probably try to be a presence on the forums (again, Jon does a great job with this; always helpful, but careful not to push his own products too strongly).

Little things are important. I love how Jon and Sara package their products (black tissue paper with JKI sticker and handwritten thank you notes from Sara).

Social media of course (Facebook and Twitter).

And if I had the cash, I would consider advertising with Google. I work for a small/private graduate school and we spend around $15,000 a month with Google during admissions season to get our name to the top of the search results page for certain key words. I am convinced that it is money well spent in our case (would have to do some research on what it would take to compete in the "kitchen knife" key word arena).

Pensacola Tiger said:

I'd pay someone from the New York Times to shill my knives in the Sunday magazine.

Click to expand...

An expensive proposition, but is certainly the way to go.

M

Johnny.B.Good said:

+1. Look at how much time we have spent discussing the Cut Brooklyn video. That is invaluable press.

I would put a great deal of work into my website (including text, photos, and video). Cut Brooklyn is a great site. Very clean/stylish/modern and easy to navigate. Jon and Sara have a great site too (cool logo, lots of high resolution photos and videos). Marko looks like he is putting together a nice site (I also like his new logo/maker's mark).

I would probably try to be a presence on the forums (again, Jon does a great job with this; always helpful, but careful not to push his own products too strongly).

Little things are important. I love how Jon and Sara package their products (black tissue paper with JKI sticker and handwritten thank you notes from Sara).

Social media of course (Facebook and Twitter).

And if I had the cash, I would consider advertising with Google. I work for a small/private graduate school and we spend around $15,000 a month with Google during admissions season to get our name to the top of the search results page for certain key words. I am convinced that it is money well spent in our case (would have to do some research on what it would take to compete in the "kitchen knife" key word arena).

Click to expand...

hey... i write thank you notes too... just people cant read them because my handwriting sucks

JBroida said:

hey... i write thank you notes too... just people cant read them because my handwriting sucks

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Why would anyone want a thank you note from you when they could have one from Sara?

lol... anyways, back to the subject at hand...

Do whatever Kramer does. It seems to be working for him. :wink:

Marketing has never been the bottleneck with my dad's knives.

i coudl market more but its not really hurting me after all i make more then jsut kitchen knives and like to keep things interesting in the shop

sorry guys but if all i made was kitchen stuff i would be burned out in a year

Start small. Sell to friends and family. Hone your skills. Build your clientele slowly as your skill set progresses. Tell your story. Tell your story. Tell your story........

Marketing is about creating a buzz. Not only attracting people, but keeping them interested. Having a stale website, that never changes will never draw people back. Social media is huge today, as are email lists through the likes of Constant Contact. It doesn't take deep pockets, just creativity. Events, newsletters, pictures, videos, updates, etc... attract attention.

I find it very hard to market my artistic blacksmithing work. I used to get the best results from using very specific searches for google adwords like Gothic porch or sculptural railings, copper water feature, etc and linking to a relevant page of my website. I used to pick up more ideal customers that way, who want quality and are willing to pay. Adwords just got more expensive and less effective for me, that combined with no-one really spending the money on architectural stuff. I had about a years worth of work evaporate on me at once when things started to get tight.
With the knives I'm enjoying the mobility of it more. the web seems to work more powerfully in favor of knives, as there are so many groups interested, location is not so important. U-tube attracts more attention for my knives than the blacksmithing stuff. Would be great to get some media PR, but with no money this approach could only be opportunist with me. Contacting media chefs and the alike.
The daily telegraph phoned me once, they obviously thought because I make fancy things I must have some fancy loose change. Needless to say they couldn't work with the limited budget of £50 to run any sort of add for me. They mentioned £15K, which made me laugh quite loud down the phone.
I plan on doing some of the big food shows in the uk in the summer. I enjoy face to face promotion and in the right place it can be powerful promotion. I'll be watching this thread with interest though, I could use some tips. :biggrin:

The smallest color ad in the NYT Sunday magazine goes for $47,000, link here.

A better idea would be to have a website and SEO it up the wazoo. As an example, do a google search for "devin thomas petty." The top *three* results are the same site, and it's not devinthomas.com.

seo can get expensive too though for the non-computer-nerds out there

I'd take over an entire knife forum and have the mods delete any threads that disagree with what I have to say or make me look bad

Joking aside, what about getting some TV Chef to use your knives? I think a lot of people assume TV chefs know about knives when clearly nearly all of them don't. Some up and coming guy on the Food Network or something like that so it wouldn't cost much.

i think theres also a balance point where you have to figure out if you just want to sell knives to sell knives or if you care about where they go to and how they are used. Not that one way is better than the other, but i think its an important factor to consider.

wsfarrell said:

The smallest color ad in the NYT Sunday magazine goes for $47,000, link here.

A better idea would be to have a website and SEO it up the wazoo. As an example, do a google search for "devin thomas petty." The top *three* results are the same site, and it's not devinthomas.com.

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Getting an ad in NY Times magazine is expensive. A cheaper way is to pay an agent to arrange a write-up. Cost of an article will depend on a number of words used, and in paper like New York Times, it would cost thousands.

Less expensive ways are forums, website, knife shows, world-of-mouth, and door-to-door (restaurants).

M

wsfarrell said:

A better idea would be to have a website and SEO it up the wazoo. As an example, do a google search for "devin thomas petty." The top *three* results are the same site, and it's not devinthomas.com.

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Using a search engine ranking finder site (to avoid the use of my previous searches, location, etc.) I get that devinthomas.com is number 3 with a search for "devin thomas petty." I also get devintomas.com as number 3 with my own google search, and I get three different websites, not just one.

edit: We're also on the first page for searches like "damascus steel" and "damascus kitchen knives." But of course "custom kitchen knives" would be a more important general search and you can't find devinthomas.com until page 2. The specific searches like "devin thomas damascus" all come up number one as you would expect.

As a partner in a rather large SEO company I can say Larrin is right. For example "Chef Knives" gets 250,000 searches per month and surprisingly the competition is pretty low in terms of well optimized sites. I'd aim to rank for those types of phrases and make things like damascus secondary. You get to the top of Google for "Best Chef Knives" and thats a whole lot of orders coming in.

And of course forums like this one and the affiliates out their with their "review sites" and you should have a good chunk of the market.

mgax01 said:

As a partner in a rather large SEO company I can say Larrin is right. For example "Chef Knives" gets 250,000 searches per month and surprisingly the competition is pretty low in terms of well optimized sites. I'd aim to rank for those types of phrases and make things like damascus secondary. You get to the top of Google for "Best Chef Knives" and thats a whole lot of orders coming in.

And of course forums like this one and the affiliates out their with their "review sites" and you should have a good chunk of the market.

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But of course my dad is a unique case since he manufactures damascus steel and that is a large portion of his business. It's what made him well known in the knife business.

In the restaurant business we send out "press releases" to all local media; newspaper, local news stations, magazines, blogs, etc... announcing upcoming events (again, creating a buzz). We often get lucky and get a little blurb in the local paper, sometimes a spot on the morning news show.



We have also traded for services. Many local papers/ magazines are small, singularly owned businesses. We have traded $900 in gift certificates for $900 worth of advertising. ***Our catch: We gave them 18 $50 certificates that could not be used with other offers, so that meant 18 seperate visits, where they were sure to spend more than $50!!! Win/ win for us!!