A new website for selling custom chef knives

Greenberg Woods

Greenberg Woods

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Dec 27, 2013
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Hey guys, I posted about this a few years ago, but the guy has plans moving ahead.

A friend of mine has a lot of experience in the high end kitchen knife market, working in some of the top kitchen knife stores mostly selling Japanese knives. He is looking to move into more western style knives done by custom makers


What his business idea is as of now is basically that makers would list knives on his site with their own explanation of the knife, their own style, their principles and so on and my friend would do most of the advertising and take a commison or a percentage of the sale. In a way, Chef knives to go for american makers and try to change the view of total japanese cutlery superiority in the mind of American semi hipster cooks.

Does that sound like sound like something anyone here would be interested in? Any advice?
 
I would like to hear more also.

To throw my 2 cents out there, I think its success will largely depend on your friends ability to make the site viable. I'm sure there would be no shortage of bladesmiths posting their work but bladesmithing is already somewhat a self marketing venture. Meaning I have to work hard to get my knives out there for public consumption i.e. going to various knife shows, posting in the exchange here, maintaining a facebook and instagram page, etc. Adding one more site to post my work on may seem simple up front but when combined with all the other work it takes to get my knives out there I think you would see a sharp drop in quality and quantity posted to the site if makers don't see results.

What I am getting at is how does your friend plan on marketing this? How many unique visits does he expect per actual purchase? What is his experience selling knives? It takes a special person to fork over 500$ + for a handmade kitchen knife, chefs and cooks don't make a whole lot with the influx in wanna be Bobby Flays and Rachel Rays.

I'm not trying to be discouraging only realistic. And I am certainly no expert in selling knives, but I have spent considerable time looking at makers that have been in the business selling and new comers that see decent success and I can say one thing with absolute certainty and that is it's not easy!

-Clint
 
Basically, he is a chef and has a long history in the buying and selling of custom knives "corporate to custom" and selling to American and European clients. He has found that japanese distributes can undercut him as many japanese makers will sell cheaper to them on buying japanese knives and so he is interested in selling American and European hand made knives in the same style.

The way Japanese knives are marketed as hand crafted works of art by masters, but to a degree each maker could describe himself and as much or as little of their process as they like. MY friend does the marketing as its already his buisness and when knives sell he has a commision or percentage of the sale.
 
ok with the idea of a "Chef" trying to market goods to other "Chef's" but it really comes down to numbers like how many hit's/views per day his site can get. unfortunately it is very much becoming a "Numbers game"
i put a few knives on "Consignment with a supposed to be well known /well established "Dealer some years ago he sold one knife within 2 weeks i could have sold in a few days. the other knives were very seriously under priced and he took Years to sell them . eventually i asked them to be returned to me where i sold them in short order.
Many makers would rather sell "Batches" to offset the discount because of volume. (this would mean buying the knives and marking them up to earn profit)
if your friend builds a great web site and grows lots of traffic to it it might work out, but you want 2-5000 views weekly at minimum.
custom knives are a funny thing at $0-$250 everyone is fighting for sales, at $250-$500 fewer buyers that are more interested in Quality,$500 -$750 fewer yet buyers and the Quality simply has to be there or it won't sell.
well known names don't hurt to bring people in and return to see if there is anything new.
just my Observations over the past 15 years, i wish him the best and hope he is very sucessfull
 
Geenberg, I would be very interested, it sounds like your friend has a base of contacts and a reasonable marketing target--that is really what is key--having actual real buyers to get your website in front of. I have personally been getting more and more into Kitchen knives--I like doing them and feel I have gotten to a reasonable level of quality--I need a channel to sell them--so I would definitely give your friend an opportunity--and I don't begrudge anyone garnering a commission if they sell a product.

I'll be interested to know more!
 
It sounds good in theory, and wouldn't cost anyone unless their knives sold. Whet he is providing is a hosting site that you can sell on. He gets a commission for the sales when they happen. That is fair as long as the percentage is reasonable. The main thing that will decide if this takes off or just suits there is the customer base he can garner, and the degree of personal time and money he is willing to put into it in advertising and other exposure. Some ideas would be:

running adds in chef and foodie magazines, in Blade, and in Knives.
a table with two or three laptops open for customers to browse the available knives set up at a major food/chef show.
a presence on foodie/chef discussion sites and Facebook, where he discusses the makers and quality of the knives available on his site.
etc.


There are many logistic things that he needs to think out, like:
payments (who actually makes the sale),
contracts,
his commission and how he gets it,
etc.


I had a similar offer about 10 years ago where the seller wanted me to send him the info and photos and he would list the knives and handle the sales. He wanted a price from me that I wanted to make and would price the knives accordingly.
When a sale was made, I would ship the knife to the buyer with my paperwork and warranty. The site owner would confirm receipt of the payment before I mailed the knife, and send the funds to my Paypal upon notification of receipt of the knife by the customer. When I looked at his contract, it said his sale price would be double my price. That was crazy, as he would make considerably more than I would - since I had to make the knife, pay for the materials, and pay for the shipping. His profit of the sale would be nearly 50% and mine would end up being about 25%. Sure, he would have some expenses, but very few, as he was only going to run this as a website. I declined the offer.
 
It sounds like an interesting idea, but from what I have found there are ample sites to sell knives on with a nominal entry fee. Watering that down further is probably counterproductive. Unless as has been said, he can bring in a good crowd of buyers.
And the part about elevating the American custom knife up in the minds of buyers, I don't know how effective that would be, even if achieved on a wider scale. There are many great American kitchen knife makers out there and their quality knives command some good prices.

If it were me I'd be doing a ton of research before I put money into this idea. Thanks for posting this Ben. Best of luck to your friend.
 
Brock47 said:
It sounds like an interesting idea, but from what I have found there are ample sites to sell knives on with a nominal entry fee. Watering that down further is probably counterproductive. Unless as has been said, he can bring in a good crowd of buyers.
And the part about elevating the American custom knife up in the minds of buyers, I don't know how effective that would be, even if achieved on a wider scale. There are many great American kitchen knife makers out there and their quality knives command some good prices.
Click to expand...

I haven't found an American kitchen knife selling site. look at the kitchen knife sub-forum here. 95% of the time when someone asks for knife recommendations, they are steered toward Japanese products
scott
 
Epicurean Edge, which is part of Blade Gallery typical has some US made customs and CKTG does or did, but EE is about as close as I have seen to a dedicated site. A number of guys sell their knives on Kitchen Knife Forums and its smaller competitor, Kitchen Kinfe Fora, but that is an expensive proposition. You have to be "approved" and a knife maker membership costs about 10 tnies what a maker/provider membership costs on here.
scott.livesey said:
I haven't found an American kitchen knife selling site. look at the kitchen knife sub-forum here. 95% of the time when someone asks for knife recommendations, they are steered toward Japanese products
scott
Click to expand...
 
There is at least one good forum of kitchen knife users where one can sell your knives without paying anything. Then there are a couple more forums where you need to pay a membership fee. There are a couple retailers who purchase custom made knives direct from makers and mark them up a bit. It sounds like this idea would really be dependent on this guy's customer base. Me personally, I sell on a forum that has no cost to me and also here that is a flat fee.
As far as promoting american smith's work over that of Japanese counterparts well, the biggest factor is availability of laminated steels to american smiths. Right now we can only get 52100 core stainless clad and its too expensive for knives in the sub 250$ category. I have an absolutely stellar super blue core stainless clad knife from a small Japanese shop, its a 180mm wa handled knife that cost me 130$. That is very hard to beat.
 
timos- said:
There is at least one good forum of kitchen knife users where one can sell your knives without paying anything. would you PM me the site?
As far as promoting american smith's work over that of Japanese counterparts well, the biggest factor is availability of laminated steels to american smiths. Right now we can only get 52100 core stainless clad and its too expensive for knives in the sub 250$ category. .
Click to expand...

there is a dedicated forum for kitchen knives, but to sell there is very expensive. they will not let you post your own work and i got kicked off for saying "PM me with your ideas and i will see if it can be done."
Why do you need laminated steel? I understand about wanting part of the knife stainless and having a spine softer than the edge. I also think part of it is the restricted distribution of Hitachi Yasuki blade steels and the high cost of that steel.
scott
 
There is several kitchen knife forums out there. Why laminated steel? Well partly its because that is what people want, but from a production standpoint, laminated steel can make a lot of things easier. Grinding and finishing a surface that is mostly soft is much quicker and less effort.
Alot of these well informed chef knife buyers like to maintain the geometry or even change it. You can do this with relative ease on a big coarse stone, now try that with a mono steel blade hardened to rc 62, not so easy. I am most definitely not saying laminated is better performance or anything like that, but it has its advantages to both the maker and the user.
 
Tim, the laminated vs "honyaki" thing is a sales/market5ing issue. The Japanese still operate on 400 year old models even when talking about modern steels. Where else in the world is it still considered to be tighter and require more skill to make a monosteel knife? On the other hand, how are they able to flip the around and convince the Western market that they consider to be their CHEAPER knives are the premium products?;)\By the way, what is that one forum that you mentioned?
timos- said:
There is at least one good forum of kitchen knife users where one can sell your knives without paying anything. Then there are a couple more forums where you need to pay a membership fee. There are a couple retailers who purchase custom made knives direct from makers and mark them up a bit. It sounds like this idea would really be dependent on this guy's customer base. Me personally, I sell on a forum that has no cost to me and also here that is a flat fee.
As far as promoting american smith's work over that of Japanese counterparts well, the biggest factor is availability of laminated steels to american smiths. Right now we can only get 52100 core stainless clad and its too expensive for knives in the sub 250$ category. I have an absolutely stellar super blue core stainless clad knife from a small Japanese shop, its a 180mm wa handled knife that cost me 130$. That is very hard to beat.
Click to expand...
 
Yeah, i wasn't going to mention the attitude/drama issues on those couple of forums, but you did. :D
scott.livesey said:
there is a dedicated forum for kitchen knives, but to sell there is very expensive. they will not let you post your own work and i got kicked off for saying "PM me with your ideas and i will see if it can be done."
Why do you need laminated steel? I understand about wanting part of the knife stainless and having a spine softer than the edge. I also think part of it is the restricted distribution of Hitachi Yasuki blade steels and the high cost of that steel.
scott
Click to expand...
 
I looked at a Japanese knife site, an 8" honyaki Usuba in White steel was $900 while one of White laminate was $300. could not find any smaller knives that were honyaki. so I guess I should market my 5" basic kitchen knife in 1.2519 as a honyaki Deba made from Yasuki Blue #2? there were lessons to be learned from Japanese makers: thinner stock, flatter grinds, higher hardness, low edge angle. so at the moment, the thickest steel I have in work is 1/16", i have some mules in testing that are 1/32". I usually HT O-1 to Rc62-63, but the 1/32" mules are Rc64, the 5" knife in 1.2519 is Rc65. i grind primary bevel at 8 degrees per side or less. We should be able to break into the market if we can over the bias toward American knives.
scott
 
scott.livesey said:
I haven't found an American kitchen knife selling site. look at the kitchen knife sub-forum here. 95% of the time when someone asks for knife recommendations, they are steered toward Japanese products
scott
Click to expand...

You make a great point Scott. And others have too.
I'm not saying there is a site dedicated to only USA made knives, and I don't think it's a bad idea, I think it's a good one. But it would be good for American makers. For the business owner, I think it's a huge battle to take on and might be pretty slow to realize the rewards.
I am a relatively new maker to be sure and don't have the experience with making and selling that many do here and on other forums. So my opinion is worth what it's worth.

The obstacles I see in this specifically are three, but all revolve around perception.

1. The Japanese knife has a lot of what I call blade romance going for it. When you see a a video like this it is intriguing and it sells knives. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNPc6xBBiLk
Shig has a great and well deserved reputation. Personally I love this video. But when the rubber meets the road what does one of these knives have over a well made and well designed stock removal blade? A lot of it is romance.

2. The samurai legends. This just adds to the romance of the Japanese blade. I think no other culture has this kind of great history to lend to their blade romance.

3. The steel. Again, when the rubber meets the road, is the best Japanese steel going to out-compete a really good monosteel? Maybe, maybe not. But it's about perception, not so much the facts. Look at the idea of "packing" the steel through cold forging. This may or may not be real, but it is perceived as real to most buyers.

There are a lot of obstacles to overcome for a U.S. stock removal blade, and this applies to a lesser degree to a U.S. forged blade (there is added value is several ways, and certainly blade romance).
The successful American makers that I have studied are dedicated to the study of kitchen knife blade making, they are not the makers who knock out a kitchen shaped blade, and they do very well.
These I think are the obstacles to be overcome to make a site as the one suggested successful. It has a lot to do with blade romance and the skill of the maker.
 
here's my opinion
in this craft I believe you have to go out and get your own customers,
everyone is different, makers, market, style, steel, region etc etc. that's all :-)
 
Yes, and guys like Joel at Cut Brooklyn have done a good job of developing a new customer base for custom kitchen knives. With that said, it might not hurt to have "dealers" to get the word out, especially, if they have already done the homework involved in locating your ideal customer. Remember that a lot of well known makers still use the "regular" knife dealers.
HSC /// said:
here's my opinion
in this craft I believe you have to go out and get your own customers,
everyone is different, makers, market, style, steel, region etc etc. that's all :-)
Click to expand...
 
Some makers do seem to like selling to dealers. The thing is any one of us could post some photos along with a price on the internet, there isnt all that much value to that. Now where a dealer situation might be nice is , If I am a little slow one month or a customer backs out or something, then you have a dealer that is gonna PAY me for the knife/knives (maybe at a slight discount) and then re-sell it. So I get paid and keep the cash flow up, I am willing to take a slight loss to a dealer as opposed to the end consumer.
 
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