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615: How Montana Knife Company Hit 8 Figures On Shopify Without Amazon
00:47:07
In this episode, I chat with Brandon Harahoe, VP of Montana Knife Company, an 8-figure brand that’s proudly Made in the USA and built entirely on Shopify. If you’ve ever wondered whether it’s still possible to scale a massive ecommerce business without...
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all the latest strategies and current events related to E commerce and online business. Now in this episode I have Brandon Harrah Ho who is the VP of an eight figure made in the USA brand called Montana Knife Co. And if any of you out there listening are doubting that you can create an eight figure brand without Amazon, this is the episode for you. Because this company has been killing it with Shopify from day one. But before I begin, I want to let you know that tickets for Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale over@sellersummit.com and if you sell phys products online, this is the event that you should be at. Unlike most events that are filled with high level fluff and inspirational stories, Seller Summit is all about tactical step by step strategies you can actually use in your business right away. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches. People who are running their own e commerce stores, managing inventory, dealing with suppliers and scaling real businesses. No corporate execs and no consultants. Also, I hate big events so I intentionally keep it small and intimate. We cap attendance at around 200 people so you can actually have real conversations and connect with everyone in the room. We've sold out every single year for the past nine years and I expect this year to be no different. It's happening April 21st to 23rd in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. And if you're doing over 250k or $1 million in revenue, we also offer a private mastermind for higher level sellers. Right now tickets are the cheapest they're ever going to be. So if you want in, go over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket. Now onto the show. Welcome to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. Today I'm excited to have Brandon Haraho on the show. Now Brandon was introduced to me by my good friend Kurt Elster from the unofficial Shopify podcast. He is the co founder of Montana Knife Co. An 8 figure E commerce store where all products are made in the USA. The company was 100% D2C from day one. I don't believe they're on Amazon at all and they are killing it in the space. And I wanted to have Brandon on for two reasons today. One, I want to talk about the challenges of Made in the USA and two, I want to talk about how he scaled his business to eight figures 100% with Shopify. And with that. Welcome to the show. Brandon. How are you doing today?
- [02:21]
B
I'm doing great and thank you for having me on the show. And you Know, it's cool to connect through our mutual friend Kurt. You know, he's been a longtime friend and he's actually helped our brand a ton too on the E Commerce side. So when he reached out, he's like, hey, I got a guy who has an awesome podcast. I was like, count me in. And I listened to a bunch, you know, you know, getting ready for this podcast. And it's like, this is spot on with like what we've been building and how we built this and everything.
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A
Awesome. And if you guys like Montana Knife Companies website, Kurt Elster actually designed it over at Ethercycle. Just give, giving a little plug there.
- [02:55]
B
Yep.
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A
So Brandon, I know you're the co founder of the company, but you're not like the main guy, like the face of the company. But what is the story behind Montana Knife Company?
- [03:04]
B
Yeah, so Montana Knife Company has an absolutely wild story. I mean, to the point where we're actually trying to like, like, appropriately like, you know, film an actual documentary around it. Especially with the phase of growth that we're in right now, this is a really cool time to actually film something as like things are going on. But you know, to kind of give you like the quick story is, you know, this, this company, you know, started with Josh Smith. You know, he actually started making knives at the age 11 and then, then he became, then he became the youngest master bladesmith ever in the history of master bladesmith. And he achieved that level at the age of 19, you know, and he's had that title for almost like 20 something years. And no one's, no one's been able to become a master bladesmith at a younger age. And some people have tried and failed. But you know, Josh is a, you know, a true craftsman, a true artist and you know, he is just obsessed with making the best knives. So you know, he started as a really, really high end knife maker. I mean literally the show like Forged in Fire is based off of like what Josh has been doing, you know, but he was doing it 20 years before the show. You know, Josh is actually, I think on season one and two too. So they like just to understand like how he's kind of like in this ether of know, knife making community and all that, you know, and then, you know, so that was, you know, his teens and then his 20s and 30s, you know, he became, you know, actually one of the best knife makers, you know, in the world. He was really known for like his high end Damascus work. But, but the problem was is that all the knives he was making, they were like Expensive pieces of art. Like people, you know, when they commission a knife from, they're like, I want a $15,000 dagger or I want like a $30,000 sword. You know, he has stories of him, you know, giving, you know, making knives for like chic and like Abu Dhabi and Dubai and like going into like, you know, going, you know, getting flown over to the London archives and looking at all these like historical swords and building replicas and all that. But at the, at his core roots, you know, he was born in Lincoln, Montana and you know, he's been a hunter since day one. So. But he's always made the best hunting knives. But the problem was is that for him to make a hunting knife for somebody, you know, just to justify time and material and all this stuff, he had to charge like $3,000 for it, you know, or even on the very lowest end, you know, a couple like a thousand fifteen hundred dollars. And then the problem is like people weren't using them. They would buy them and they weren't, weren't being used. And the reason why they weren't using them is because like a, the price and they were just so beautiful and it's, you know, so his thing was like, I make the best using hunting knife, you know, on the market. There's no question. You know, I've made thousands of knives in my life. I can distill this down to this one knife that every hunter can take on any hunt anywhere in the world. But I've got to figure out how to do it in mass and get that cost down so people actually use them. Like, like these aren't meant to be collector's items. Like we want people to use these in the field. And they're. One of our early sayings was, you know, use the abused and passed down. That's the goal. We want that knife to be used and we want you to pass it down for generations. So like, that's kind of like the backstory where like, you know, Montana Knife Company was born and a couple really cool things happened is that, you know, his mom and him had like the foresight to actually go and register the trademark name Montana Knife Company and buy the URL in like 9, in like 2000. Which is just crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when I came on board, I had to go find this, you know, URL that was owned by some little web agency in Montana, which you can understand was hard to track down and find and get it linked to our Shopify site and all that. So, so like, so that's like Kind of like, like the prequel to like, what true MKC is right now. And then, you know, we launched the brand in 2020. And I'm talking before COVID Right? Like height of COVID Okay. Like the first time, like, yeah, like, like the first time Josh and I met was like, almost like right before the lockdowns, like the, like the countrywide lockdowns. And we're like, right. It was like, yeah, should we start this? Or like, well, you know, might as well, you know, because, like, because, because he always says, like in 2008, you know, he, he kind of listened to the news and all this stuff and like, you know, he actually stopped being a full time professional knife maker when the economy crashed in 2008. Because you could probably understand, like, you know, the budget for a $15,000 knife kind of shrunk on most people's, you know, piano. So, you know, so he actually became a lineman for 10 or 15 years, making really good money. And then. But this has just always been kind of like eating out. I'm like, I need to do this Montana knife company thing.
- [07:39]
A
And.
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B
But then, you know, his thing was like, I just don't have the marketing guy or like the business guy to set up the business in the back end and the funnels and like just the advertising creative and, and, and that's, that's where like Josh and I met. And it's like the rocket fuel, you know, we got the product, we got marketing, and that's where it started.
- [07:58]
A
Okay. Okay. So, you know what's funny here is I have a couple colleagues that sell blades, not, not knives per se, and they get all their stuff from China. And maybe it'd be heresy, I guess, if Josh did that, but China seems to be significantly cheaper. The labor costs are forex lower and then even like the steel costs, I think are 15 to 40% cheaper in China.
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B
So.
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A
And I know cost is like a big factor here. Can you just kind of comment on some of the challenges of USA manufacturing and, and why did you guys decide to focus on made in the usa?
- [08:32]
B
No, that's. That's a great question. And, and here's the thing is like, like, you know, when we started this company, you know, it used to be easy to say that like, oh, Chinese knives are cheap and they' good and like all that stuff. The truth is, is that knives coming out of China, knives coming out of Pakistan, Taiwan, like, some of them were awesome. They were great knives. They were, they were very well manufactured. You know, it took them, you know, they had 20, 30, 40 years competing with some of the American brands, you know, to refine their stuff. So. So we couldn't say that like it's a superior product. We, I mean, we do think now we are a superior product. But at the time, like, you know, there were still good products coming out of China, but you're right, it's cheaper. Just, you know, you can order 100, you can order 10,000, you can order 100,000, and they just show up in, you know, six months. So. But our, our biggest thing was is that, like, you know, we're watching this thing happen during COVID We're watching, you know, supply chains get shut off. We're watching all these things happen, and we're just like, if we're going to do this, let's do this the right way. And, you know, and honestly, American manufacturing has been always true to my heart. It's always been true to Josh's heart. So it was just in our ethos to want to do it, especially with being an actual maker, you know, and the other thing is, too, is that, you know, so many things went right for MKC. The 1, 1 of the other things that went really right for MKC is that the entire knife. Knife market, I'm talking every company in the early, like, teens and, you know, early, you know, 2000s, like, everyone was trying to race to the bottom of the barrel and make the cheapest knife possible so they can just go sell it at Cabela's in a bubble, you know, blister pack for $20, and then, like, it dulls and you just kind of like hock it in your center console or you put in your closet, and then you just go buy a new one because it's not worth the resharpening. And that was just kind of like the mentality of the industry. And then we came in, we're like, no. Like, there's not a lot of things that men pass down anymore, you know, from father to son to grandson. You know, it's usually just like, you know, a watch, maybe some firearms and, like, the knives, you know, like, no one's going to want your iPhone 13. Like, my kids aren't going to want my Apple watch. My kids aren't going to want the iPad. They're like, no, I can't even open the iOS now. It's 2050, you know, so. So these things that we carry on our body, you know, it's different than what men used to carry on their body in, you know, the early 1900s and the 1500s, you know, early, like, like the 1950s. Like, you know, watches and knives and wallets and things like that. So like I said, there's a lot of things that just kind of like, we're like, it's all just focusing on making the best product possible. And for us, that was making it ourselves.
- [11:14]
A
Would you say Josh is famous in this niche or even before, when you guys first started.
- [11:19]
B
Absolutely.
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A
Knives for him or, you know, what's wild?
- [11:24]
B
Like, at the very beginning, I would definitely say, like, our first, like, you know, 100 customers were definitely fans of Josh and knew his pedigree and things like that. What's wild now is, like, it's crazy because, like, there's times that we're like, oh, I didn't even know who Josh Smith was by own, like, five knives. Like, the brand itself is just getting, you know, so big.
- [11:43]
A
Okay. I mean, I don't know anything about knives, but I do know that it's pretty competitive. So you mentioned, like, these knives are heirloom quality. Right. But when you're first starting out and you're marketing, like, can we talk about how you guys got your first sales? Like, how does one scale a knife company? It's a very competitive niche.
- [12:03]
B
Yeah. So it's very competitive. And also too, like, it's probably the oldest. Like. Like, I have a buddy that owns a seasoning company, and I always joke that him and I are in the oldest trades possible. Sharp objects and seasonings. Like, it doesn't get much older than that. So, like, you know, there's a lot of companies. I mean, if you can just think of USA made companies, you know, a lot of Those guys have 120 years on us. A lot of them have 70, 80 years on us. They have government contracts. They, you know, they perfected their manufacturing through mass quantities. I mean, we didn't know how to do anything in 2020. So, like, that's where it's just like. So, you know, we're like, it's just not like American made. Like, we also had to figure out how to manufacture ourselves. And like, that's what we're doing. Like, you might even hear the CNC machines, like, downstairs buzzing right now, you know, so it's again, like, it's not like we're placing an order with another factory and just hoping those knives come and we sell them. I mean, we're literally making them. And like, our first drop, like, our first real drop, we. We, like, you know, I was like, you know, we'll probably sell like 25, 30. We ended up selling all 150 that we had cut ready to make. And literally the next day when we were packaging them, you know, I had to go to Staples and get a printer for the hook up to shopify to print labels. Josh is in the other room literally sharpening knives. His wife is helping us package them. And like, so like, like I said, like, it's, it's not just like, you know, building an E comm brand and, you know, doing drop shipping. It's like, oh, we have to make this product and that it adds a whole nother layer of complexity that like, because, you know, we have 90 people in our, in our company and like 65 of them on the manufacturing side, there's only 15 people on like the accounting and CFO and growth and you know, so. Yeah.
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A
So when you first launched, were you guys just running it out of a house or.
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B
Yep. Yeah. So it was, it was Josh's two car garage and then my bedroom. I was, I actually lived two hours. Yeah, I actually lived two hours north. You know, I was shooting all the product photography in my garage. I was going. And that's the beautiful thing about us living in Montana is like, I could just go walk out in the woods. I got the, the best landscape in the world. So, you know, and I still want to answer your question, like, how do we get those first, like, couple sales? Yeah, you know, like, we. So, you know, obviously like Josh, you know, he kind of had his, you know, his connections. You know, I've been in, you know, the marketing E Comm space for, you know, almost 15, 18 years at that point. I had a bunch of connections and we literally just relied so hard on our network for that first couple, you know, sales, you know, and then what we did is we just, just focused on two things. We focused on, you know, just Instagram growth because at that time that worked out really well for us. You know, TikTok wasn't really around, so we put a lot of focus on Instagram. And I've been a photographer for 10 years, so I had like, you know, terabytes of all this beautiful Montana landscapes and like all this stuff. So I end up dumping my catalog on there just to start getting followers and things like that. Well, because we don't really have knives because we're still making them. So like, we could even like talk about the product. We had nothing to sell for the first three months because we had to make the knives. So. So there's a lot of like, you know, kind of, you know, just like preloading that Funnel. Before that first drop, it was almost like doing a Kickstarter without actually taking pre order.
- [15:24]
A
Okay, so you built up an Instagram account and then you use that to launch. I know you guys have a pretty cool model, and I definitely want to hear about it where you literally drop new knives every single week.
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B
Right, right.
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A
Or something.
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B
So, yeah, yeah. And the drop model is wild. So, you know, I. I came. I. I spent five or six years in the apparel industry. You know, that company did a lot of drop models and stuff like that, but this is, like, totally different because it's the same model, but there's like, everyone's like, oh, yeah, Montana comes just good at, like, you know, doing manufactured scarcity. Like, they're just manufacturing scarcity, and they're, like, dropping five knives and like. Like, no, I mean, literally. So we have our largest drop tonight. We're dropping thousands of knives. And I can tell you right now, I went downstairs and the entire shop is buzzing right now because they are way behind. And, like, we can only drop on the website what we can ship tomorrow. That's always our commitment. So as many knives as they get built this week is how many knives get on Thursday night. And that's always been our. Been our model. So from day one, you know, Josh and I put all this stuff on credit cards. We. We bought that first batch, you know, of raw steel. We turn them into knives. You know, we got them assembled, sharpened, you know, clean sheath, packaged. And then, you know, I remember it just like it was yesterday. It was December 18th of 2020. We launched the first, you know, speedgoat, and we sold them all out in, like, 14 minutes. And we're like, oh. And then. And then it's like, we don't have anything. We literally don't have knives. Like, we don't have anything else to continue this business. And we can't call someone to make them because no one knows. No one else knows how to make them. So. So we rushed, ordered more steel, we got them through the pipeline, and I think we had another drop, like, within, like, like a month, month and a half. But so, like, that's what. That's what started creating this, like, drop model, like, naturally, because, like, so now I had six weeks as a marketer. I had six weeks, and I. And I made a commitment to post on Instagram every single day and, you know, send out emails and stuff like that. So I had six weeks where I couldn't actually convert a sale. So, you know, I started pulling on some of my older, you know, backgrounds And I started, you know, I started coming up with apparel for the brand. I even launched in this time, I even launched a Montana knife company, you know, coffee, you know, like coffee because like, because I went to like the local roaster. I was like, hey, I need something to sell. So like we make a Montana coffee and they, you know, we just white labeled some coffee and we you know, did a drop for that in between the nice things. But, but like that continued on for three or four years where it's just like, you know, we sold them, we bought more, sold them and we, we kept on expecting to never not sell out. We're like, our goal is to be in stock. We want to be a mass knife company. Like we, we don't want to be a drop, drop model company. Like that's not our thing. But we just kept on selling out and we just kept on ordering more and ordering more. So when you're talking about bootstrapping, I literally just sold it, bought more, sold it, bought more. And then we started getting into a little bit of a cadence of like, all right, let's order in between drops so we have more frequent drops.
- [18:29]
A
So I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of if you are interested in starting your own online store. I put together a comprehensive six day mini course on how to get started in E commerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be obtained@mywifequitterjob.com free. Just sign up right there on the front page via email and I'll send you the course right away. Once again, that's mywifequitterjob.com free. Now back to the show. So for the audience who doesn't know what the drop model is, it's basically you, you make a set of knives and then once they're sold, that's it. Right for that, for that.
- [19:20]
B
Right.
- [19:21]
A
And then so that for that first drop you relied on connections to, to get those sales, but you can only rely on like your audience and your connections. So, so long. So by then was the word of mouth good enough for subsequent drops or had the Instagram account and everything caught on and all?
- [19:37]
B
Yeah. So no. This is a great question and I, I love these questions. It helps me like kind of like go back in time and think about like what worked and why it worked and stuff like that. And, you know, so before Montana Knife company, you know, I owned my own agency and I specialized in linking Klaviyo and Shopify accounts. So if you're a big Shopify account, that the Klaviyo.
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A
Yep.
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B
I'd come in, clean things up, help you with your campaigns, help you with your flows, things like that. And it was really successful at the time. But it was cool because I got to go look in the back end of like 20 different companies and see what they're doing, see what they're doing wrong and see what they're doing wrong. So I got to build mkcs, like email list from scratch. And I'm talking, I built it like, and it was just so. I was just so obsessed with building the highest quality engaged list possible and that. And that's what we did. So, like, you know, for those first, like six months a year, the, the main thing I focused on was email. Like, I used to tell Josh, I don't care if your grandma buys a knife, she has to do it through a Shopify website. And I want her email, you know, so, like, so just, just being really strict about that because with us being a knife industry, you know, we weren't. We couldn figure out how to do paid advertising until about year three or four because everything was so restricted, because everyone considered us a weapon, because they just, they just lumped. They just lumped everything that's hunting into weapons. And it's. And it's. And I've had calls with Google Ethics and Meta and all this stuff, and they're just like, it's a slippery slope. We let you go. It lets the door open for other companies. And we're like, I understand. But it also kind of keeps people out of our field too because, like, you can't just relay. Rely on paid ads. And it's something I've never relied on for building this company. It's now it's just gasoline on top of our organic.
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A
Right, okay, so email list. How did you get people on your list in the beginning? It's hard to get people from Instagram onto your list, right?
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B
It is. It definitely is. So, I mean, and that, and that's where like the drop model thing kind of worked, was just like, if you want this knife, sign up for an email. Like, simple as that. Like, we've never done a discount for an email, you know, and I've, I've played all those, like, you know, I've done all those different things like, you know, build an ebook and you know, exchange that for their email and like, those things work. Those things are great. But we had a certain type of energy at the beginning of the company where people wanted our knives so bad they were willing to give up their email and text message first time they visit the site to get this knife because they saw them sell out. And in the knife industry, it was absolutely wild for someone to do drops without pre orders. I mean, we had some of the CEOs of the biggest companies in this industry being like, you guys are crazy. You can, if you just took pre orders, you can, you can leverage that, that pre order database and go get banknotes at a cheaper rate and like all this stuff. And we're like, and we're like, no, we're like, we are not going to take anyone's money that we can't ship the product the next day. And I'm talking since day one, I bet you 99 of all knives have shipped the next day. And the reason is a that. But then also two is like, we were still learning how to do this manufacturing thing too. So we didn't want to take someone's money and promise them, like, you'll have a knife in three months and that batch come in wrong or get lost, you know, in between heat treat and blade grind. Or like there's all these, like, there's a bunch of risk involved with that. And we just never wanted to take someone's money that we couldn't give them the product the next day. And so like I said, there's a lot of. We, we really went a lot against a lot of norms in the, in a very, very old industry. And it just, and like I said, it just worked out for us.
- [23:18]
A
Interesting. Walk me through like you had. You said you have a big drop coming. Walk me through the preparation leading up to the drop to make it the most successful drop ever.
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B
Yeah. So this, so, so this drop is fun. So this is our Blaze Friday. And so what Blaze Friday is, is like when I'm setting up our marketing plan and everything like this, I obsess about repeatable successes. So like, that's why we do a drop every, every Thursday. And then we actually started adding indoor like in stock drops on Saturday. So we're almost doing like a hundred drops a year just for knives. And we're also dropping a piece of peril every single Tuesday and now Friday. So we're dropping two pieces of apparel a week plus two knife drops. But then to make it different. So you know, if you pull back and you look at Your full year marketing plan. You know, everyone's so focused on what, you know, quarter four. Everyone's so focused on Black Friday. And you know, and, and that's, you know, I've, I've been through like 18 Black Friday cycles for D2C E comp. So like I, I know the playbook, I know what's going on. And then like, you know, and I'm just starting to realize it's like, especially Montana knife company, our customers aren't buying because it's Black Friday. They're buying because we're putting all this freaking energy into it.
- [24:33]
A
Yeah.
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B
And like, you know, like we're, we're throwing everything at the wall. We're coming out with new products just for Black Friday. And I'm like, why can't we do this in quarter three? Quarter three or sorry, quarter two. Or you know, or quarter one. Like when we're, you know, traffic's a little lighter on quarter two. So what we started doing is like doing a Black Friday event every single quarter. So it's the same playbook as, as Black Friday, but we're doing it on August, you know, 14th. And you know, in the, you know, the two month lead up to it, just like you would start in October, you know, Facebook ads, you know, email captures. And then the thing is too is like we, we talk to our customers and we're like, what do you guys want? They're like, we love the blaze knives. So we made that a big event. So all of our knives that drop tonight are blaze orange. So you know, it's. So when you're answering that question, like there's, there's different types of drops we do and the, the ethos of the company is this just work put in more effort than any anyone in this industry has ever done before. So when we restock a knife, we actually act like we're relaunching that as a product launch. Like we go through the whole thing like a brand would what most brands put in effort of launching a product. When a knife restocks, that's how much effort we put into it. And when we launch a new product, we honestly act like we're almost relaunching our brand from scratch. Like, so it's just about the effort that's being put out there. Because like again, like, you know, only up until about a year, year and a half ago we were able to run paid ads. So the excitement had to come from us, from the inside of the business.
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A
So does this mean that the knives, once they sell out, you don't sell them again, but occasionally you'll bring them back, but then you relaunch them in a drop. Is that how it works?
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B
Well, no, not actually. So. So this is another thing that is so wild about our company. So opposite of the industry. There's a lot of other knife companies that do drops now, but what they do is they'll come out and they'll drop, like, 30 super custom knives that are all different, and they're like, this is the only time you get this. MKC is a complete opposite. You know, we have our. You know, our 20 different models, and we rotate them, and they're always in the same six colors. Like, I'm obsessed with, like, our branding. Like, when someone sees our knife hanging on a hunting pack, I want that person to be immediately like, oh, that's a Montana knife. Company knife. And you can't do that with all this, like, crazy customization. I think that's where the knife world got a little, like, got a little crazy. Was just, like, people were just so obsessed with trying to look like a custom knife company, you know, like. Like, you know, it would have been easier for us to do that with Josh's pedigree. Like, oh, he's. He's designing these custom knives, and everything's different and everyone's individual, but it's more of, like, the Rolex model. It's like. Like, oh, he has a black foot. You know, that black foot is kind of like the equivalent of, like, the Submariner. Like, oh, he has a stonewall. That's like a Daytona, you know, and it's like, they don't change, you know, and there's, like, slight variations as we, like, grow. But, like, they're not, like, blatant variations where, like, you know, we're gonna come out with pink handles or we're gonna put jade in it and, you know, stuff like that. But. But then when we do do an event like this, orange knives, like, it's. It's like, people, like, it's insane because it's like, this is the only time you get it. But we only do that, like, you know, like four or five times a year.
- [27:47]
A
I see. So you have your staples that are always available on your site, but you do drops every single week. And those are variations of those or so.
- [27:58]
B
Yeah. So, like, I mean, like, right now we have. I think we have, like, 28 different models. So, I mean, like, if you think about it, like, you know, like, we're just gonna make, like, for example, like, okay, we're gonna do Chef Cleavers this week downstairs, they're just making as many chef cleavers as we could finish in that week. And that's all we, marketing wise, we sell those, those sell out. And then like, next week we're going to focus on, you know, a large skinning knife for hunting. And, and those, and those knives just like, rotate. And it's like. So there's no reason to really, like, do, like, like I said down the pipeline, like, we'll probably have to start doing some crazy custom stuff. And like, like, like you're seeing Yeti now. Like, Yeti's been selling the same cooler for 15 years, and now they have to sell it in, like, daylight green, and they have to sell it in lavender. This. And match this Persona. And they go after, you know, I, you know, you know, duck hunters in the south want this camo. And like, that's probably like, a part of our evolution. But as of right now, it's just about, like, my biggest thing is just getting as many new people into our brand as humanly possible just to buy our basic products.
- [29:03]
A
So I think I understand now. So you have scarcity because those cleavers that you mentioned, I'll have to wait for the next cycle of manufacturing to get my hands on those, right?
- [29:12]
B
Yes. Yep.
- [29:13]
A
Right.
- [29:13]
B
Exactly. So it's like either buy it now or, you know, it might be another year, it might be six months, it might be three months. Yeah.
- [29:21]
A
So you mentioned at the beginning of this interview, though, that you didn't. You don't want to sell out. Right, Right. So how do you determine the quantities? I mean, you could just make a lot more and not sell out, Right?
- [29:32]
B
Or no. Yeah, and, and, and, and that's a. Well, that's also the balance, like, you know, with our, you know, with the current building in right now is around 10, 000 square feet. Like, there is a manufacturing limit. Like, like, there is a. There's an actual limit. So, so we have to like, okay, what are our drop knives? What are in stock knives? And like, we have to have that balance of, you know, like what, what, you know, what knives. Our goal is to make as many knives as we can possibly think and sell, but there is like a give and take that we have to account for. And, you know, so, like, you know, there's like five products right now on our website, you know, that are on in stock that we're trying to keep in stock at all times. And those are like, what we call, like, our. The Blackfoot, the Speedgoat, the Stonewall. And a couple of our mini blades. And, you know, so our goal was like, just get as many of those out into the public as possible so that our current funnel is saturated with those knives so that they're just not selling out. Because, like, if a new customer comes to our website, they have nothing to buy. I have nothing to convert.
- [30:32]
A
Yeah.
- [30:33]
B
So the idea is just like, okay, just almost get these guys sick of hearing about Blackfoots, like, they've had enough. And now. So when a new customer comes in, they're like, oh, there's Blackfoot available.
- [30:43]
A
Cool.
- [30:43]
B
I'm gonna buy that, you know, or my dad's birthday's coming up. I need a gift, you know, so it's like I said, there's a lot of things we're doing that not a lot of companies get the chance to do because, a, they're either omnichannel through wholesale, you know, where, like, oh, it's not on your website, but I can just go to Amazon or I'll go to Cabela's or I'll go to their. You know, so. So we get to, you know, control that narrative a little bit more.
- [31:05]
A
So you don't do any wholesale. Is that. Is that correct?
- [31:09]
B
That's correct. Like, we do a couple. Like, we have a couple stores in very select towns. Like, you know, there's a. There's a small store in Jackson Hole right next to the Antler Arch. It's more about, like, foot traffic advertising than it is, like, needle mover. And it's. It's literally then like, less than a half a percent, maybe even less than that, versus our competitors that are 60, 70% wholesale.
- [31:35]
A
Right. So it seems like you are selling at the capacity that you can make these knives right now. So there's really no reason for you to go wholesale. Is that. Is that accurate?
- [31:45]
B
Right, right. And the goal down the road is like, we want to be able to that point where we are wholesale. But even if, you know, Cabela's came to us and, I mean, we have big box stores knocking our door all the time and say, like, hey, we need, you know, 60,000 eyes for 2027 or 2026. We're like, Ah, like, is that worth cutting down on our capacity to D2C to supply wholesale? But. But we want to do wholesale down the road because there are people who are not buying online, especially our knives, you know, the older generations and things like that. Like, they want to see it, they want to feel it, they want to buy it from, like, their local shop. Like, we are Missing out on that. Like, and we see that and we know that. But. But it's just something that, like, it's. We just have to have the like, like, like responsibility of just like, understanding that's an opportunity that's. That's just down the road.
- [32:35]
A
Sure. You know what's funny is I looked on Amazon for Montana Knife company right before this interview. Ton of people search for it. I know on Amazon, but.
- [32:45]
B
Yeah.
- [32:46]
A
And so I guess, like, if you had the capacity, would you guys be on Amazon? Or is Amazon something that's not in the cards?
- [32:52]
B
No. So Amazon. Amazon's fun because, like, I actually hired someone who was on our marketing team, was specifically hired for us to onboard on Amazon. And we hired him. And we hired him three years ago, so we still haven't. But he's also. He's also amazing marketer too, that like, helps us with all of our D2C and like, all that stuff. And then also too, our. Our coo, Andrew, we actually poached him from Amazon. So he. He was. He was in charge of the entire Spokane, like, packaging and shipping fulfillment thing. So. So we. We have the full system. You know, we have the dude that knows, you know, because like, a lot of companies where they fell. Amazon is like, you know, the shipping and the packaging and like getting all the, you know, everything right the first time. So we have all the right components for it. We're just waiting for the right time, you know, in our life cycle to actually onboard that. But it. It's something I'm super interested in and like.
- [33:45]
A
Yeah, so, yeah, that makes sense. It's not really compatible with the drop model. I guess it would have to be staples, right?
- [33:53]
B
It would be. Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's a lot of brands that do that where there's just like their, their core products are on there that are on their website. And then the idea is kind of get them to bite on that one product. The product is so good, they come back and they want another one, but it's not on Amazon, so they have to go to their, you know, their, Their. Their homepage.
- [34:13]
A
So because these knives are. Are what I call, I guess, heirloom knives. Do people buy a bunch of them?
- [34:20]
B
Yeah. So if you. So, like, that's the wildest thing is like our return rate is absolutely insane to where it was my. It was actual metric for me to decrease our return rate.
- [34:33]
A
Okay.
- [34:34]
B
For. Which is, you know, very untypical for a lot of companies. But it was like, how do I get new people into our funnel? So we have a lot of people buy them. We have a, to collect them. You know, we have a very, very ravage, like Facebook group that buy, sells, trades our knives. It's really cool to watch. And they're some of the best dudes ever. And we use them and like, we're in that group all the time, Josh and I, and like, we use that as quality control. We use that as, you know, product, you know, design. We, we're asking them always like, hey, what do you guys want to see next? What do you like? What don't you like? And like. No, we didn't.
- [35:08]
A
Oh, you didn't. Okay. Wow.
- [35:09]
B
No.
- [35:10]
A
Okay.
- [35:10]
B
I know. So some, some other fans created it. We, we feed it, you know what I mean? Like, we definitely promote it and let people know that it's there. But, you know, it's up to, I think six or 7,000, you know, people in there and it's like there's probably a post every 10 to 15 minutes, which is just crazy to us. It's so cool. It's so cool to see.
- [35:31]
A
Can we talk about your social media efforts? I know you have a YouTube channel and I was watching some videos there. Is that a big driver of business or.
- [35:39]
B
It absolutely is. Yeah. So our social is, you know, we put out a lot of content. I'm still personally running our Instagram, so I use the Instagram as like, hey, this is the voice, the brand and all this stuff. So what I post on Instagram, like then we're able to distill that down over the other channels. And so. But like our YouTube is a little bit different because like a, you know, it's not photo based. Like our Instagram actually has always been really good with photos. Not that great with video or YouTube is really good with video SEO. And to me, our, our, our YouTube channel started as just a part of our big SEO hack. Like our big SEO plan of like, how do we just. Like we're looking at all our competitors, they're kind of sleeping behind the wheel. Let's just like day one was the first contractor ever hired was my buddy Joel from Flux and he set up SEO. I'm talking day one. We were paying this contractor before we were paying ourselves a salary because I was like, there's this massive hole that these people are just ignoring because they're so wholesale focused. I was like, we're going to come in and now like Montana knife companies ranking better than companies have been around for 100 years. Like literally 100 year head start and just focusing on the boring thing. So. But our. So you know, through that, you know, we were writing, you know, weekly blogs about knives. And then every blog had a video and that video was the information. It was just like the digested video version of the blog to kind of help with, with, you know, everything that Google's algorithm likes for SEO. So that's where the YouTube channel started. Sort of extremely informational. And then every once in a while, one of those videos would pop off. You know, how to sharpen a knife correctly, sharpen a knife, like a master bladesmith, how to field dress a deer, how to go elk hunting, how to do this. So that's how it started. And then we started doing like the behind the scenes, like the old school, like Gary Vee days where it's like a weekly vlog of like what's happening downstairs. We have a very, very eclectic group of people downstairs. A lot of personalities. They film really well, they love being on camera. They're a bunch of goofballs. And like that to me is like, so our weekly vlogs are like our. Is that middle funnel we get you in and then you start watching our blogs, our vlogs and stuff like that. And you're like, oh, these are guys just like me. And that's the nice thing about American manufacturing is like, you can go have a beer, you know, with like the guy that sharpened your knife. So. So YouTube, you know, a has been amazing because a. That, you know, we finally figured out how to do paid advertising on YouTube. YouTube. And we are. And what's crazy is like we're getting a much greater return because how good our organic content is. So they're seeing our ads and our commercials, but they're staying and subscribing because of our content. So it's something we're really proud of. It's been really working. We haven't. We only just started putting like true focus on it for about the past year, year and a half and it's been. It's one of our top four to five converting things on our exit service, just YouTube itself.
- [38:27]
A
Are you guys doing short form videos also, like on TikTok?
- [38:30]
B
We are, yeah.
- [38:30]
A
Real. Okay. And of all those, would you say, like, if. If someone listening to this is trying to prioritize what to do, what, what would you prioritize?
- [38:40]
B
So I, I get that question all the time. It. It's so dependent on a product. Like right now, like, you know, some of my friends have some of these companies that are just crushing on TikTok shop because they Have a product that is in that price point that is that you're able to go trade, you know, influencer for a commission. Like, we don't have that. Like, for us to send a 1300 chef set is a big gamble.
- [39:04]
A
Yeah. TikTok Shop is not.
- [39:07]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so, so like, so we don't even have that option. So, like, I can't say, like, there's this one specific thing. It's all based off of A, like, product fit and then B is like what you're good at. Like, one of the co founders of the company was amazing behind a camera. So Instagram was just like natural and you know, tick tock was not because it's like turning the camera around. And at that time it was just dances and like all that stuff. So. Yeah, so, so what I would always. What I always, you know, advise people is like, whatever your strongest suit is that you're able to do every day. Like, if, if it was like, that's why we have no Twitter. Like, I'm horrible at writing, I'm horrible copywriting. Like, I don't want to, you know, like, so our Twitter has been ignored for the past, like, five years. It's just because it's like we don't have someone who has that, you know, that verbatim flow just to sit there and tweet all day. Yeah.
- [39:57]
A
Actually, walk me through your posting schedule. So Instagram, you post every single day and like an image. Okay.
- [40:05]
B
Yeah, so I've posted every single day for the past five years. I have not missed a single day of posting on Instagram. And most days we post two or three times, depending on the content that we have or what type of drop it is and things like that. So, like, that's the nice thing now is like the new algorithms, you know, it's. It's so favorable to just getting as much content as possible. Before, you know, they used almost like, like hurt. It almost used to hurt you to post twice a day because, you know, like, it just had to sit in the feed and finally get seen.
- [40:37]
A
Yeah.
- [40:38]
B
Now it's, you know, fed to new people. So.
- [40:39]
A
Yeah. And you're in there answering comments and everything on the Instagram as well.
- [40:44]
B
I. I do a little of that, but we actually, it got to a point where we actually had to hire someone. So. So we have someone that handles comments and our DMs just sure that we're. Because there's a lot of, you know, really big names that slide into our DMs and stuff like that. So we want to make sure they're getting addressed as fast as possible. And then even more importantly, like, our customers are using that as a form of customer service, you know, and then our dms, you know, our comments are very important because we want to respond to every single one.
- [41:10]
A
And then. Are you, you guys still blogging, given the changes with AI and the, like, the Google search landscape?
- [41:17]
B
Yeah, this is the, this is the. I cannot take any credit. It's just pure luck. But, like, yeah, we're still doing one to two blogs every single week. We're doubling down on it. We're actually creating video series that we turn into blogs. Now, here's the wild thing that we did not see coming in 2020, when we set up this SEO program to break down everything about every knife, every steel, every blade grind, every handle, every, like, you know, because, like, when you, you know, when you do the SEO thing, you do the spoke and hub thing, and it's just. Yeah, so, so over the past five years, you know, we have, you know, blog a week, you know, so, you know, and we're using gorgeous AI and we had five years of training. We dumped that into our AI agent, and it knows our company better than anyone else. Like, that's the thing that's, that's like, like I said, there's so many things that just worked out for us that, like, so, like, so, so we're, we're definitely not slowing down because, like, because, like, and then, you know, then we obviously index it with all the, you know, the, the chat GPTs and gronks and stuff, and they're pulling information from our website as a trusted voice.
- [42:25]
A
Okay. I think this, like, answered all my questions because I was originally, I was like, okay, well, you guys are probably significantly more expensive than, like, a Chinese competitor, Right. But it sounds like you've created this community and this cult following for your knives backed by Josh's background, and you're just killing it on, like, the social and community front. Yeah.
- [42:47]
B
And the biggest thing is, like, we just show up every day. I, you know, if I had to give any advice to, like, like, any marketers is just like, the only thing that's going to be AI and really good paid ads is you being excited about your brand yourself. Like, I can't tell you how many marketers I talk to who just don't care about their company. They care about their bonus at the end of the quarter. Like, I care more. Like, this is our lifestyle. This is, this is the company we're growing. We're Trying to grow it every day. Like we're taking pictures of our new building get built. Like, if you're not excited about your company, why would your customers be excited? Excited, like that's like, I think that's the hack in 2020, you know, 5 and 6 and 7 is just the human element of this whole thing.
- [43:28]
A
I mean, you guys are doing everything right, documenting everything, putting out tons of content. I mean, I think that's the way to go. I mean, that's how to get indexed and that builds the personality for you guys. I mean, content is, is like the backbone of what you guys do, right? I mean, the drops are cool too, with, with the. I mean, what I like about the drops is you have scarcity, like every single day. It's every other day it seems, right?
- [43:51]
B
Yeah. Yeah.
- [43:53]
A
So what's, what's it look like going forward? It seems like you guys are building a new facility or something.
- [43:57]
B
Right, right, right. So, I mean, you know, the building that we built now is still on Josh's property. It's literally right next door to the two car garage that we started on. And the goal for this was like, this building was supposed to keep us like in motion for about five years was our plan. Ten months into us moving into here, we started the building of the other one. So it didn't last us that long with our growth. So our next facility is, you know, 51,000 square feet. It's going to have a full retail store. We're gonna have a black rifle coffee in the building itself. So it's going to be a destination right here in Montana. It's right off of Highway 90. And then like I said, like, the goal is to be like 100%, like self sufficient in our manufacturing. Even like all the processes that we would used to have to outsource, like heat treat, like almost every, I mean, I can only say it's like every knife company right now is, you know, outsourcing, heat treating and bevel grind and all these things to people who just do all the knives. So now it's like our goal is like, okay, let's roll the dice and start bringing all that stuff in house and just be 100% self sufficient, you know, so we're self sufficient or marketing the D2C, our massive email list, text message list, and then we're self sufficient on our, you know, our own, like, you know, product and being able to make it and things like that.
- [45:12]
A
That I love it, man, especially with all these tariffs going on. You guys are well positioned and I Love how you're self sufficient, you're not really depending on anyone and so you're in full control of your own destiny. So, Brandon, thank you so much for coming on the show. Like, if people are interested in your knives and just checking out some of your content, where should they go?
- [45:34]
B
Yeah, I'm just Montana Knife Company. You can Google it. Mkc, Google and just Montana Knife Company. You know, check those out. You know, follow us on Instagram DM us. Pop in the comments if you heard it from this podcast. Like, we're like, we're extremely accessible. You can, you can literally DM Josh anytime. You can DM me anytime. That's our goal is like we want to take this back to the older times where like, you know, you used to know the person who owned the business and it's just not a board. It's just not a, you know, boardroom looking for bigger profits. Like it's, it's us. And I think that's what people like following us is like. We're figuring this out. We make mistakes. You know, we're, we're very transparent about it, but we also have a lot of wins.
- [46:16]
A
So dude, I love it man. Thank you so much, Brandon. I'm so glad that Kurt introduced us.
- [46:22]
B
Yeah, absolutely. Steve, this has been great.
- [46:25]
A
Hope you enjoyed this episode. The way Montana Knife Company markets their products is pretty cool. Go check out their website and sign up for their email list. For more information and resources, go to my wife quitherjob.com615 Once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale over at sellers summit.com. if you want to hang out in person in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like minded entrepreneurs and learn a ton, then come to my event. Go to sellersummit.com and if you're interested in starting your own e commerce store, head on over to my wife quitherjob.com and sign up for my free 6 day mini course. Just type in your email and I'll send the course right away via email.