moderncooking
KKF Sponsor
Hey Folks,
Firstly, I just want to say that your continued support and always constructive feedback is totally appreciated. That also includes the somewhat challenging topic of the Modern Cooking MCX partnership with Fredrik and its impact on his custom orders.
I won't argue that this partnership has had an impact on delivery of custom orders and for my part I am sorry. I want to give you a little background on our partnership and assure you that Fredrik has not once ever expressed anything other than gratitude for the support this community and those on his books have given him.
Late last year I developed the plan to find a knife maker or several knife makers that I could develop a collaborative set of products with. The goal was always to develop something unique, high performance and as reasonable as possible in price. From the moment Fredrik and I began our correspondence it was clear that we had like-minded views on what we wanted to achieve. Both of us are former chefs and quickly found that we worked well together. Fredrik made it clear to me, back in October or November, that he wanted to do more batch style knife making. He felt that this allowed him to focus on the processes of making knives rather than the details of each custom order. For example, perfecting Honyaki.
We understood that this could impact delivery of his custom orders and we both felt that it was important to ensure these customers would get looked after. We agreed to deliver an MCX batch every month throughout 2022 with Fredrik producing 10-14 knives per batch over 2 weeks of each month and dedicating the remainder of each month to his custom orders.
However, the pressures of this have taken its toll and clearly communication for one thing has not been ideal. There are some extenuating circumstances on Fredrik’s side, personal matters, and clearly producing so many knives in a month is a huge challenge as is.
We have big plans for the coming months and year, and we hope to bring some very exciting knives to the market, but we have also discussed, as a priority, keeping Fredrik’s custom order customers happy.
With this said Fredrik has written the below message for you. He was unable to post as he does not have an approved account here. Fredrik is working hard to deliver the knives and making knives has been the priority over communication, this has been done with the best intentions, but clearly left you all a little in the dark. Hopefully, this will address that and won't leave you feeling neglected or un-appreciated.
I assure you it is quite the opposite, this community and the support and feedback you provide to both Fredrik and I is valued more than you know.
Best regards,
Peter
---------------------------------------------------------------
Hey all, this is Fredrik Spåre.
I was notified of this discussion and felt I really wanted to address some issues people are having with me and my custom order list. Please try and read this with an open mind.
So I started thinking of closing my books for quite a while before it eventually happened. The main reason I didn't do it is because of the insecurity in workflow I felt it would mean (perhaps wrong) because having a queue lined up gave me a feeling of stability.
Perhaps I should have closed much earlier, but I didn't.
So eventually Peter at Modern Cooking (plus other retailers that I turned down) approached me and suggested we did some collaborations. Even though it would take time away from the custom list, it felt like a great opportunity and I gladly agreed.
I combined the custom orders with the work from Modern Cooking and I quickly noticed how much smoother the work was when working on larger batches instead of doing one-ofs with sometimes extremely detailed requests. Not a big surprise, but unfortunately this realization came at a very sensitive time in my personal life.
So me and my wife of 14 years decided to split and with that came a much larger demand of financial security for me and my daughter. As many of you might know, no one gets into knifemaking to make lots of money, but I do feel that if I work 6-7 days a week I at least should be able to support myself and my daughter.
Well, sometimes a custom order that I charge €280 incl VAT for can fail because of the previously mentioned very specific details and suddenly the money I make that week gets drastically reduced. Not the customers fault, not my fault (or well, kinda my fault but whatever) but it's a very sensitive economical situation.
So doing more work with retailers meant more stability and I could still produce a healthy amount of customs every month. Of course, this meant that the waiting time increased quite alot and I tried communicating it through instagram and actually got an overwhelming amount of positive messages. So that makes me feel a bit sad to see people now ganging up and, politely, taking a stand against the stuff Modern Cooking are offering instead of supporting one of the few businesses that are actually dedicated to taking care of their contracted blacksmiths/makers. It is absolutely not how I would have reacted to the situation, but to each their own.
Some makers raise their prices to compensate for the risks, some deny taking very specific orders and I should perhaps have done the latter.
So what I have actually planned on doing for some time now is to offer everyone on the custom order list an alternative to get a knife faster than waiting for their spot in the queue. I will send out an email to everyone waiting for it.
I understand the frustration with not getting replies when trying to contact me, but please understand that I dont ignore anyone out of spite, its simply just very time consuming and combined with the last 6 months of turbulence in my private life, I simply have not managed to keep up.
With all that said, much love to all of you. You have made my dream come true by working as a knife maker. <3
Fredrik Spåre
Firstly, I just want to say that your continued support and always constructive feedback is totally appreciated. That also includes the somewhat challenging topic of the Modern Cooking MCX partnership with Fredrik and its impact on his custom orders.
I won't argue that this partnership has had an impact on delivery of custom orders and for my part I am sorry. I want to give you a little background on our partnership and assure you that Fredrik has not once ever expressed anything other than gratitude for the support this community and those on his books have given him.
Late last year I developed the plan to find a knife maker or several knife makers that I could develop a collaborative set of products with. The goal was always to develop something unique, high performance and as reasonable as possible in price. From the moment Fredrik and I began our correspondence it was clear that we had like-minded views on what we wanted to achieve. Both of us are former chefs and quickly found that we worked well together. Fredrik made it clear to me, back in October or November, that he wanted to do more batch style knife making. He felt that this allowed him to focus on the processes of making knives rather than the details of each custom order. For example, perfecting Honyaki.
We understood that this could impact delivery of his custom orders and we both felt that it was important to ensure these customers would get looked after. We agreed to deliver an MCX batch every month throughout 2022 with Fredrik producing 10-14 knives per batch over 2 weeks of each month and dedicating the remainder of each month to his custom orders.
However, the pressures of this have taken its toll and clearly communication for one thing has not been ideal. There are some extenuating circumstances on Fredrik’s side, personal matters, and clearly producing so many knives in a month is a huge challenge as is.
We have big plans for the coming months and year, and we hope to bring some very exciting knives to the market, but we have also discussed, as a priority, keeping Fredrik’s custom order customers happy.
With this said Fredrik has written the below message for you. He was unable to post as he does not have an approved account here. Fredrik is working hard to deliver the knives and making knives has been the priority over communication, this has been done with the best intentions, but clearly left you all a little in the dark. Hopefully, this will address that and won't leave you feeling neglected or un-appreciated.
I assure you it is quite the opposite, this community and the support and feedback you provide to both Fredrik and I is valued more than you know.
Best regards,
Peter
---------------------------------------------------------------
Hey all, this is Fredrik Spåre.
I was notified of this discussion and felt I really wanted to address some issues people are having with me and my custom order list. Please try and read this with an open mind.
So I started thinking of closing my books for quite a while before it eventually happened. The main reason I didn't do it is because of the insecurity in workflow I felt it would mean (perhaps wrong) because having a queue lined up gave me a feeling of stability.
Perhaps I should have closed much earlier, but I didn't.
So eventually Peter at Modern Cooking (plus other retailers that I turned down) approached me and suggested we did some collaborations. Even though it would take time away from the custom list, it felt like a great opportunity and I gladly agreed.
I combined the custom orders with the work from Modern Cooking and I quickly noticed how much smoother the work was when working on larger batches instead of doing one-ofs with sometimes extremely detailed requests. Not a big surprise, but unfortunately this realization came at a very sensitive time in my personal life.
So me and my wife of 14 years decided to split and with that came a much larger demand of financial security for me and my daughter. As many of you might know, no one gets into knifemaking to make lots of money, but I do feel that if I work 6-7 days a week I at least should be able to support myself and my daughter.
Well, sometimes a custom order that I charge €280 incl VAT for can fail because of the previously mentioned very specific details and suddenly the money I make that week gets drastically reduced. Not the customers fault, not my fault (or well, kinda my fault but whatever) but it's a very sensitive economical situation.
So doing more work with retailers meant more stability and I could still produce a healthy amount of customs every month. Of course, this meant that the waiting time increased quite alot and I tried communicating it through instagram and actually got an overwhelming amount of positive messages. So that makes me feel a bit sad to see people now ganging up and, politely, taking a stand against the stuff Modern Cooking are offering instead of supporting one of the few businesses that are actually dedicated to taking care of their contracted blacksmiths/makers. It is absolutely not how I would have reacted to the situation, but to each their own.
Some makers raise their prices to compensate for the risks, some deny taking very specific orders and I should perhaps have done the latter.
So what I have actually planned on doing for some time now is to offer everyone on the custom order list an alternative to get a knife faster than waiting for their spot in the queue. I will send out an email to everyone waiting for it.
I understand the frustration with not getting replies when trying to contact me, but please understand that I dont ignore anyone out of spite, its simply just very time consuming and combined with the last 6 months of turbulence in my private life, I simply have not managed to keep up.
With all that said, much love to all of you. You have made my dream come true by working as a knife maker. <3
Fredrik Spåre
Last edited:
.
