Ep 42: Stu Shank on Starting a Family Knife Business

Welcome to the Rewild Gear Podcast. Modern life, society, and responsibilities have domesticated us, but now it's time to rediscover your adventurous side. Whether that's camping, hiking, hunting, fishing, or just spending time in the great outdoors, this is the podcast for you. Join us as we get back to the wilderness and rewild. Welcome to the Adventure Made Podcast. I'm your host, Seth Spears, and I'm here today with Stu Shank. Stu is the co-founder and CEO of Reef Knives, a new direct-to-consumer family-owned American-made knife company. I first became aware of Reef Knives last summer when they launched a very successful crowdfunding campaign to back their knives. And I was super impressed with their branding, marketing strategy, and even more importantly, the high quality of their knives. My brother Adam, who you've heard on the podcast many times before, and I had the pleasure of hanging out with Stu and his brother Ben last month at Blade Show Texas. And all 4 of us really hit it off over drinks, talking about family-owned businesses, the outdoor industry, and our passion for creating high-quality and American-made products. So super excited to have Stu on here today because I feel like we've kind of been on similar trajectories over the years and our companies are somewhat similar. So Stu, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much, Seth. Really appreciate you having me. It's an honor to be here.

Totally. Well, let's get into it. So I'd love to kind of just get a little bit of background about you. Obviously, you've done a few things before getting into the knife and the outdoor industry. So just Give our audience a little bit of info about you, who you are, where you came from, and kind of how you got where you are today.

Yeah. I'm from America. I'm a dad. I have 3 kids, a wife. I've got 3 young daughters who keep me very busy. Let's see. I've made a career out of sales and marketing. My most recent exploits prior to starting Reef Knives, I was working at a company called Stargazer Cast Iron, which is a direct-to-consumer cast iron cookware brand. And that's— that was really the catalyst for me jumping back into the outdoor industry.

Mm-hmm.

You know, I've always been— I've always been passionate about the outdoors. And I get that from my grandfather and we can go into that later, but it's really instilled deeply in me. And, working for other people for such a long time, you kind of get tired of it and you realize there's not a whole lot of upside there.

I know how that is. Been there, done that.

Worn the t-shirt. And, I think probably much like you and your brothers, I got together with with one of my brothers, Ben, who you, like you said, met at Blade Show Texas. And we were just like, you know, why aren't we doing something for ourselves? We have, we have good skills. We have, you know, we have some resources. Like, let's, let's try something. Let's do something family, family. Let's do a family business. And let's really see what we can make happen. Yeah. So Anyway, I— we've both been into both guns and knives for a long time. I started collecting knives probably about 12 years ago. I just, I love knives. I've always loved knives, really. But—

Same team.

Yeah, but really, I, you know, I jumped in with both feet. I mean, headfirst. Yeah, probably about 12 years ago. And so for us, it was really like, What can we do that we won't feel like we're, we're going to work every day? It's like, man, this feels obvious. Like, let's start a knife company. So yeah, you know, here we are. And this is about 3 years later. We're finally coming to market. And you know, we do— you said we're direct to consumer, and we are. We have a direct to consumer component, but we will also be in dealers and retailers. Right now, we're working on filling a bunch of pre-orders. You referenced the Kickstarter. We had that successful Kickstarter. Yeah, it's been a ride, man. But, I just shipped out all the Kickstarter orders last week, so I'm really glad to have that off my plate. Now, we're looking to fill some dealer orders. And yeah, it's just keeping us really, really busy.

Great. That's so fun though, huh?

If you're going to be stressed out about something, it might as well be your thing and not somebody else's, right?

Yeah, 100%. So I want to dig into a whole bunch of things here, but especially starting a business with your family and your brother specifically, you know, that can be a lot of fun. And, you know, family is great and working together, but it can also have challenges as well because, you know, you know each other really well, you know what you're good at, what you're not good at, and get on each other's nerves. So tell me a little bit about that, what that process has been like and how that's been starting a family-owned business like this.

Yeah. There's that old saying like, the devil you know is better than the devil you don't. So, as far as that goes, I mean, it's been really good. I'm lucky to be in a family that we all have very good relationships with each other. My brothers, I have 3 brothers, 3 biological brothers anyway. I have a stepbrother. I've got a brother-in-law who I love all of them. unconditionally. And, it's, for us, I don't think we've seen some of the challenges that other people may see in a family business yet anyway. I'm sure there will be challenges because there's challenges with everything. And, just like anything else and particularly in business, it's like everything always takes 3 times as long, is 3 times as difficult as you think it's going to be. And, that has been the case. But luckily, The, um, the chemistry between my brother and I has not been affected at all. He's, you know, he's still, uh, one of my best friends and, and I'm sure will continue to be forever. So it's just, we haven't— and, and look, you know, we're gonna have our challenges, I'm sure, down the road.

Of course.

It's, it's been awesome and it's given us a good reason to— he lives in Dallas right now, I live in Pennsylvania, you know, it gives us a reason to connect on a regular basis. So, you know, it's really I think been, um, it's been refreshing for both of us because, you know, again, we just, you know, we're a very loving family and we have, we have great relationships. And I, you know, I get to work with one of my best friends. So that's, that's, that's been really great.

Yeah, that's great. So tell me a little bit about the skill set differences between you and Ben, because obviously you're both bringing different things to the table. So I know you have a little bit of a marketing background and working at Stargazer, right? That's the name of the cast iron company?

Yeah, most recently. Yeah. That's—

yeah. So tell me a little bit about that background and your skill set that you brought to the table and how that differs from Ben's and how you kind of divvy up some of those duties and things.

Yeah. You know, it's, it's been, it's been interesting, right? Because when you're, when you're first getting started, I think, and you know this because you're an entrepreneur, when you first get started in a startup, in the startup world, like you really A lot of times you have no idea what to expect. I mean, I think we were lucky. Ben's owned businesses before. I've been a part very early on in several startups in my career where I've had sort of very a high level of responsibility in those startups and have had access to the information that drives all the processes that help to grow a company. So, I think that we've been able to both Both of us have been able to leverage those skills that we've had from past business experiences to help to at least jumpstart Reef Knives here. We share, I think, a lot of things in common. We both have had quite a bit of time in sales roles for other organizations. He, right now, he's some sort of senior-level director for a software, for a major software company. In sales. So, you know, he's been really busy doing that since January. I've been doing this full-time, so I've taken on a lot of the responsive— a lot of the day-to-day responsibilities. And we talk regularly and, you know, we brainstorm and so forth. And it's been a good balance. And it's, you know, I don't know what's going to happen in the future, what the organization will look like in the future, but that's kind of how we're set up right now. His background from an education standpoint is in finance and having run other successful businesses. And, for him, and I'm speaking for him here, he might punch me after this, but from Texas. That's okay.

We'll get the boxing gloves out, let you guys go at it.

Right. It's good he's in Texas and I'm in Pennsylvania right now. He's got a lot of experience truly like running and managing businesses, particularly from the financial standpoint, you know, and that's been more of his forte, I think, in his sort of startup experience just because that was his background. He graduated from East Carolina University with a finance degree and he's been able to put that to good use over the course of his career. You know, I have a business administration degree for whatever that's worth. Not much, I can tell you.

I have one of those too.

Yeah. So, you know, it's just a lot of it's just sort of trial and error. And then, we are leveraging our past experience in sales and marketing. And, you know, Ben's also— I'm going to just keep pumping my brother up because I'm uncomfortable talking about myself. Ben's also, he's really a mechanical genius. Like, he was the guy when we were in middle school and high school, he was always like creating these new gadgets from nothing, you know, like an air-powered potato gun.

Oh, fun.

Like, just like really just off-the-wall stuff that it's like—

I want one of those.

And this is, you know, these are, this is back before the days of YouTube, you know, where he's just figuring this stuff out. And so it was just, I think that we both have strengths that complement each other and we both have strengths that we share. And I think that that's important too, because that gives you, that can help bring a different perspective on what you're trying to do with your strengths as well. So, you know, I think we're in a good position from that standpoint.

Yeah, no, that's great. So, So from there, so your former positions and the things that you guys were doing before, and then when you decided you were going to start Reef Knives, tell me a little bit about that process from idea to, you know, company formation and some of those iterations to getting to launch.

Whoo. All right. Yeah. So 2019, you know, I come up with this cockamamie scheme. To start a knife company and you know start talking to Ben about it and convince him it's a good idea. Man, I've really fooled him.

And that was that was 2014 you said?

That was 2019.

Sorry, 2019. Okay, gotcha, gotcha. I just heard.

So no, it's all good. So this is pre-pandemic, and it's funny because like everyone's like, oh, you started a pandemic business. Like no, we had we were working on this pre-pandemic, you know. But could the did the pandemic? help facilitate the growth of the idea? Yeah, maybe. But it was 2019, the idea was born. I'm not, I'm not an engineer by trade, but I started getting into like CAD and knife design. And I, you know, I have a history of sort of art. I've always been sort of an artist. I've got some artistic—

Oh, cool.

Our grandfather was, was an artist, and he would take me to workshops and stuff. And I I think that that skill has translated into, into sort of the knife designing, but making something that's both aesthetically pleasing and also functionally practical, you know, is really the basis of design. And that's what we've tried to do. But, you know, we— in all throughout 2020, it was just like, we're just working on these designs, R&D, you know, what are going to be the best materials? Why? What do we think? What do we think are the most important functional characteristics of a knife? You know, you really only have 2 pieces of a knife. You have a knife, you have the blade, and you have the handle. It's like, yeah, you hold the handle, you work with the blade. It's, it seems simple. A lot of people screw it up. So we, you know, we wanted to be sure that we were doing something that We were wanting to be sure that we were doing something that was going to be just like maximum functionality.

Yeah.

So most of, most of 2020 and into 2021 was just like coming up with the knife designs. And what, what the materials were going to be and also learning some CAD and being able to kind of get in there and do some things obviously with the, with the help of some professional engineers because that stuff's Really complicated. There's a robust feature set in CAD programs. But anyway, you know, I was lucky then to have a lot of experience building websites, building out sort of marketing plans, marketing mixes, trying to understand and also just seeing and understanding the market, what people are looking for, what people aren't looking for. It's just, you know, you have to take all these things into consideration. And, we spent a lot of time evaluating those things. So, let's see. I think we launched the website in April of 2021. So, about a year ago.

Yeah.

We're technically— I mean, I don't even know at this point when you're actually to market. I don't know what that defining— I mean, we sold product through the Kickstarter and we had some pre-orders on the website that I finally shipped last week. So, it's been a really long road. I mean—

When did you first start taking orders, the pre-orders and all of that?

Yeah. So, our Kickstarter was last June. It started, it ran end of June to the end of July, and I can't remember the exact dates. And then, we did about 2 months of website pre-orders around the end of 2021, um, that were then taken down because I didn't— like, I don't want to be a pre-order business.

Yeah.

I've seen, I've seen pre-order businesses. I've been a part of pre-order businesses. It's a, it's a nightmare because—

Definitely.

Everyone with the, uh, with the Amazon effect, if you, if you will, people, you know, people expect stuff right now. It doesn't matter what the quality is. It doesn't matter, like— and, and when people hear an estimated time of delivery that's gospel to people even though it's like, no, this is our best guess of when we're going to be through production and we're going to be able to ship you these products. It's a tough position to be in. So anyway, we've since shut down pre-orders and we'll open up orders back up as soon as we have inventory to sell. So, looking forward to that day.

Yeah. And, that's a very different attitude than some knife companies that we know that just continually take preorders and, you know, takes them a few years to ship. So yeah, which is always interesting strategy, which I don't—

Yeah, you know, I just— and for me, it's really more of a personal thing. Like, I just don't want to be in that. I don't want to be in that position because there's no, there's no guarantees in business. It's like, I don't want to take people's money anymore without without having a product to ship them. Um, yeah, you know, because things can go wrong, right? Things go wrong all the time. We can't, we can't control everything. We can't control the world, and it's just get yourself in trouble quick.

Yeah, it's definitely one thing if you're taking pre-orders and, you know, they're in production and, you know, they're coming. It's just maybe there's a supply chain issue to slow down or shipping or whatever, and so it takes longer. It's something else entirely when you're taking a whole bunch of pre-orders and it's just proof of concept and you haven't even Maybe line up your manufacturer or have the materials in hand or things like that. So, very different. So, there's something to be said for leveraging other people's money like that. However, that can also get really sticky if things go belly up. So, I like the way you guys are doing it. To me, that definitely seems like the more ethical way.

Thank you.

And, that's very much the way we went about it at Rewild Gear too.

Yeah. No. And, you guys are doing a great job, man. I love what you guys are doing over there.

Yeah. Thank you. It's been a fun project for sure. I'm still in the middle of it. Stu, tell me about the knife design. How did you guys settle on the materials, the design, the size, the shape, you know, all the dimensions about it. Our audience loves hearing about the nitty-gritty.

All right.

Yeah, the steels, all that. And I know you're a steel nerd too. So you have to— so let's get into it.

I mean, you really, you really have to be in order to— I think in order to make a good knife, you have to understand what the, what the properties of the steel are and the value that the, the value that the steel you're using is bringing to the end consumer. When we set out to make a knife, I was really looking to make the toughest, most durable— I don't want to say bulletproof because nothing's— it's hard to find something that's bulletproof.

The perfect knife, if you will.

Well, yeah, right. Sure. We're always striving for perfection. And that way, right, if you shoot for the moon, you— or you shoot for the stars, you land on the moon. If you miss, you're still pretty high up anyway. Yeah, so, you know, both— we have 2 knife models right now that we were taking preorders on. It's the F4 Bushcraft Survival Knife is the whole name. And then we have the F6 Leuku Survival Knife. The F4 is a 4-inch blade. It's got a 5-inch handle. So, you know, it'll fit a wide range of hand sizes. The F6 is a 6-inch blade with a 5 1/8-inch handle. The, the F4, you know, we call it the bushcraft survival knife because it's really made for— we designed it for like finer, finer use cases. Bushcraft tasks, things like, yeah, whatever, feather sticks, making things, making fine tools out of, out of wood, whether it's spoons or, or netting needles or whatever it is, you know, this, this knife was designed to be able to take those tasks on. But we also, you know, we knew that we were also making hard-use survival knives. So, you know, we had to balance— we balance, we balance the— I'm struggling to find the word. But we're trying to balance the, the refinement of what we're doing with also the ruggedness of what we're doing so that, you know, you can make those fine bushcraft tasks or crafts out in the woods, but you can also, you know, pound through a piece of wood with it to baton with it or to do light chopping or whatever it might be that you're going to have to do in a survival situation, you know, out in the field. So— And, you know, at the end of the day, we also wanted to make something that was going to last forever, that, you know, people would be able to pass down to their kids or whoever they wanted to pass it down to.

Yeah.

The steel we ultimately settled on was CPM-3V. CPM-3V is a well-known steel. It's made by Crucible Industries up in New York. So it's American-made steel using their particle metallurgy process that they pioneered, I think, back in the '70s. Which, you know, just basically it makes much finer steel particles, gives you a finer steel structure so that you have— basically, you get a lot of benefits from, from that. You get a tougher steel, you get a steel that holds its edge better. I know you know all this because you guys are also using CPM steel in your—

Yeah, we're using S35VN. Yeah, a little bit different. Similar but slightly different.

Similar but different. Yep. Same company, also the CPM process. And a great steel. We were really— the reason we settled on CPM-3V is because it has that increased toughness. Now obviously, it gives some of that, you know, when you have that increased toughness, we've given up some corrosion resistance. So CPM-3V is a— it's technically a carbon steel. Because— and it's not stainless. It doesn't have enough chromium to be stainless. But as far as carbon steels, as far as carbon steels go, it has much better corrosion resistance than other traditional carbon or tool steels, things like A2, O1, 1095, a lot of these other steels that you see a lot of other production knife companies are— well, not just production knife companies, just any other knife companies using. You get a lot of added benefit with the 3V. And it's also a very well-balanced steel. So you get, you get good corrosion resistance, you get incredible toughness. It's one of the toughest steels out there. And you get very good wear resistance. So it holds its edge for a very long time. And when you harden to where we're hardening, 58-60 Rockwell, yeah, that's, it's still got great wear resistance, but it's not so hard. Like if you go up over 60, you start to lose a lot of toughness and you get that, you get crazy wear resistance to the point where it becomes very difficult to sharpen. So, you know, everything that we did, we wanted to be, we wanted to be about balance and match the match balance to the functionality and the use case for any one of our individual products.

So totally.

Handle material, we went with G10. The simple, the simple fact of the matter with G10 is it's, it's one of the most durable handle materials out there. And again, these are hard-use knives. You know, wood's beautiful, wood's great. But it's also, it's also perishable. Like, you really have high maintenance, it's perishable. You know that a wood handle, you got to take, you got to take really close care of. G10 is essentially maintenance-free. It's super tough. And in a survival knife, we— that's very important, right? Is again, just going back to the toughness. It's one of the toughest handle materials out there. And that's why we went with G10. We're using 3 sets of hardware because, you know, 3 is better than 2. In our opinion, you know, if you only have 2 sets of hardware, you have a hard use knife, God forbid you blow out a screw out in the woods.

Probably also because your handle length is a little bit longer too. So you probably need that for a little bit more support, right?

Yeah, I mean, that's, you know, that's part of it too. But that really wasn't the— that really wasn't the reason. The reason was really what we saw as the most important thing, which is making a knife that was as durable as possible without it being completely impractical. Like, way too overbuilt.

You know, there's—

again, it was about balance. And there's nothing wrong with, with 2. It's just with 2 sets of hardware. I mean, we're coming out with a knife, smaller knife that will have, you know, just 2 sets of hardware. But again, it comes back to use case, right? For us, you know, if you're making a— if you're making a knife to process, to process game, you know, you're not beating it through wood. you probably don't need 3, 3 pieces of hardware in there. I mean, it's just, it's just, again, it's all looking at your use case and trying to develop something that's going to be as practical as possible for what you, for what you envision this, this tool being used for.

Yeah, totally. And I find this so fascinating, just like the thought process between what we have done with ReWild Gear and our Gasper 4 knife and what you guys have done at Reef Knives, because it's a very similar thought process. However, the difference that I'm seeing is that you're going after more of the bushcraft and survival niches or sub-niches of the outdoor space. And we were going a little bit more towards general camping and hunting.

Yeah.

So which it's also great as a survival and bushcraft knife too. And, you know, both of, both of these products will do sort of double duty there. But it's just a little bit more specific based on the blade shape and type and material. So as an example, you know, we went with S35VN for its more corrosive resistant properties. Just realizing, you know, if you're around water or you're skinning game or things like that, you want it to be a little bit more less likely to rust and corrode and all that. So yeah, so digging into that, it's just really interesting, all the little minutiae around, around the knife creation process.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's— everything's a balance. And, you know, we are certainly going to get into stainless steels. And had MagnaCut not just launched, you know, it probably would have been S35VN. And we're— and that's a great steel. And totally, totally, you know, tough enough, you get the stain resistance. Like, that's a good— that is a premium steel. And so you guys made the right decision.

Thanks.

From where I'm standing, you guys made the right decision. That is— that's a great steel. And I applaud you guys for investing, you know, investing the money to make a product with that steel. Like, it's, you know, the CPM steels American-made steels, they're not cheap, you know, and definitely our price points reflect that. And it's like, you know, I know for some people they consider price in the balance. I mean, we kind of went the complete opposite direction. We were like, we're gonna spend whatever money it takes to make the best knife that we possibly can. And I, you know, and we think that the market's gonna, gonna respond to that.

Yeah.

So, and I think that's important, you know, in this, I think that the whole world has gone disposable. It's like, we're not making a disposable tool. You know, this isn't a tool. And you guys aren't either. I love that. Yeah. And that's part of the reason why, you know, we wanted to connect at Blade Show Texas, because we really enjoy what you guys are doing.

Yeah.

And I look forward to owning my own Gaspar 4. But it's, yeah, it's You just have to consider all the variables. As far as the, you know, we went drop point blade on, on all the knives we're coming out with first. It's the most— it's, it's the most, in my opinion, the most broadly functioning blade shape is the drop point. I don't think— I think most people would agree.

Totally.

Yeah, sure. And that's why, and that's why I went with a drop point. You know, there's anything, anything outside of drop point, you're getting into more specialized use cases. You know, if you tanto, you're, you might be prying with, it's like, you can pry with these, but we don't encourage it.

My brother Adam loves the tanto style blade. I mean, he's just such a fan of the tanto. I'm like, what do you got to do with that? Come on. It's just for looks, but not use.

Yeah, I mean, it's got its practical applications. And It does look so cool. I mean, I also love the look of a tanto blade, but from a functionality standpoint, like, yeah, I think that you're gonna get better use out of a drop point blade than you are a tanto blade, depending on what you're doing.

Yeah.

Again, so yeah, it's all just looking at the use case. But that's why we decided to go with drop point on all of our initial knives here. And it's so funny, you know, because there's only a few different— like, there's only a few different blade shapes you can have, you know. And it's— and I'm sure you guys have experienced this where like you launch a knife and someone's like, oh, well, that looks like XYZ knife. And it's just like, oh yeah, you know. And then you put them up against each other. Like, all knives remind people of so many other knives because It's one of the most common tools in the world.

It was the first tool.

Right. And we use them and we use them every day, right?

Yeah.

You know, we have— everybody's got a whole collection of knives in their kitchens. Everybody's got— so it's, it's always, it's just always funny to, to hear the response.

Yeah.

Response.

Yeah, for sure. And I love what you guys are doing, especially that dedication to quality workmanship and materials and being made in the US. That was one of the things that we decided on too. And that's one of the things that really struck me about, about you and Ben And just your, your mission to that quality. And I remember last summer just running across your Kickstarter Indiegogo campaign, just be— and I passed this on to my brothers and like, whoa, check out, check out these guys and what they're doing. This is great. Like, I love their branding and their marketing and the designs are— they're cool too. It's different than what we're going after, but I really like what they're doing. So I was just so glad that we were able to connect and just really hit it off.

Definitely.

Tell— let's get into a little bit about the, the the crowdfunding campaign? Because it seems like that was very successful. And that's something that we've actually talked about with next products down the road. So I'd love to hear your experience about that and the thought process going in into all of that.

Yeah, so that was, it was actually the second crowdfunding campaign that I ran. I learned a lot from my first failed experience with crowdfunding.

And what was that with?

So I have— it's living on computer servers somewhere out in the never-sphere— a social media platform that a friend of mine and I started that was designed to be for Christian-based communities. We never quite got it off the ground. We just never quite got it to launch. It was really a resources thing.

Mm-hmm.

But, what I learned is that certain types of products or certain types of— yeah, I mean, really, you need a product to do a crowdfunding campaign, not a—

Physical product.

Right, exactly. A physical product, a tangible physical product that someone can hold like a manufactured product, not a software platform or some other—

Not ones and zeros.

Yes, correct. At least that's, that's my perception, or one of the major reasons why our— the crowdfunding campaign for Outside Sunday probably failed. The other was we failed to build community around our cause. Whereas with Reef Knives, we spent a lot of time and a lot of energy over those first 2 and a half years before launching the Kickstarter campaign, just building a network. Communicating our vision to people in the outdoor community, helping them to understand where we were going with our idea, what our purpose was, our purposes were. And when you start to build a community of people who resonate with the vision that you have for whatever your project is that you're working on, that's how you make That's the biggest way to make it, or the best way to make a crowdfunding campaign successful. If people don't identify or can't identify with what you're doing, they're not gonna take a risk on you by backing whatever a project is that you're doing. I think the other thing that made our Kickstarter successful was getting prototypes into the hands of people who, A, know what they're talking about, and B, have some sort of a following that like, you know, yeah, so people who, who, yeah, who understand what they're talking about, in this case knives, right? They use them regularly. They have many of them. They've got experience in the market that we're going after. Again, survival and bushcraft and bushcraft outdoors, you know, in general. people who are doing it every day and have, have good experience and can give you, can give you real functional feedback about the design, your messaging, whatever it, whatever it might be. But also, you know, and maybe, maybe even more importantly, is just getting eyes on, on your products so that people know you exist. Which is particularly challenging for a knife company because, because Everybody considers knives weapons. And so, you know, we've been demonized across every, every platform, right? And we can't— we're not allowed to advertise. We're not allowed to do this or that or the other thing.

So frustrating.

Yeah. Which it is incredible because knives are one of the most essential tools on this planet. And it's like, can they be used as weapons? Yes. But I can probably— I won't get into that. I mean, there's a, there's a lot of things that can be— that are sold that can be used as very functional weapons. Oh, for sure. In whatever given scenario, if necessary. So anyway, I don't want to get too far up on that soapbox, but—

Sure. I'd like to dig into the community building side of that. So when you're creating an audience first before launching the crowdfunding campaign, what are some of the steps that you took to build community around the products and just the interests and the outdoor lifestyle?

You got to jump in and get involved. You have to be a part of the community. You can't just like you can't you can't just talk about it. You really have to you really have to do it. You have to understand it. You have to get to know people. You need to let people get to know you. You know, you have to come into it being yourself and and just being genuine. I mean, I think these days, you know, we've all been beaten to death by these big corporations that are just so. Disingenuous, and a lot of them are just pure evil. And, um, you know, when, when you can, when you can connect with people on a personal level, help them to under— like I said, understand your vision and, and truly start to build, um, real relationships, real friendships with, with, with people who are in that community, understand what they're talking about, understand what, understand what, uh, what the community's needs are. who can, who you can relate to and sort of bounce ideas off of. And yeah, yeah, I mean, it's just get involved. Be an active member of the community. You can't just, you can't just sit back and, and, and be a passive observer. You got to jump in.

Old school guerrilla marketing, really.

Yeah, I mean, that's, that's what it takes, man. That's all because that's all I mean, hey, look, again, that's all we can do, right?

Yeah, pretty much.

And I think, you know, you have to be a certain type of person to do that because you You have to be someone who likes people, genuinely cares about people, genuinely wants to— genuinely interested in the community and what that community stands for and what it's all about, the function of that community, being outdoors, learning outdoor skills, learning survival skills, whatever it might be and whatever you're target audience is going to be, um, you, you should have a general interest in that. If you don't, people are going to see— people are going to be able to expose you pretty quickly, and they're probably not going to buy in.

Yeah, I mean, if you're just in it for the money, you're in it for the wrong reason, in my opinion. No matter what the industry is in business, you know, anytime— there's a lot of people that they see an opportunity and just want to jump in, but then their dedication to the quality is usually going to be lacking, as opposed to someone who— they have a passion for it. Like you and I, we have a passion for the outdoors.

Absolutely.

And that shines through in your marketing, in the product quality, and And often because we're so passionate about what we're doing, we want to make the best, our margins are going to be less, you know. So we're actually making less percentage-wise than what those other ones are just because we want to keep the cost close to where people can afford.

Manageable and accessible.

Yeah. And also because the materials are more expensive, it usually takes longer. There's so many factors that go into it. So yeah, I applaud you for, for doing that as well.

Thank you.

Speaking about the outdoors, I'd love to tap into that a little bit. Where did your love for the outdoors and just the industry in general come from?

Yeah. I mean, my love for the outdoors is really just— it came from both of my grandfathers, particularly my mother's dad who when we were really young, I guess when I was technically in the crib at the time, My grandparents bought a piece of land from my great-uncle's, great-great-uncle's homestead. It was my grandmother's uncle. Hold on. I forget what the family dichotomy was there. But anyway, because I just called him my uncle at the time.

Nice.

My much older uncle. Anyway, It was old family land in West Virginia. They bought a 1-acre plot of his large homestead and built— my father and my grandfather, his father-in-law, built this cabin. And so, anytime growing up, anytime we went on vacation, anytime there was time off from school in the summers and so on and so forth, we would be in the backcountry of West Virginia just adventuring around. We had some four-wheelers there. There were lots of guns. There were lots of knives. Um, we, we hunted a lot. We, uh, we fished. We, we just— we would— it was so wonderful. You know, you get out, you'd leave the house or the cabin in the morning, and you would just disappear into the woods.

Yeah.

You know, for, for the whole day. And you, you might even skip lunch. You'd come back in for dinner. And your parents were just like hoping that you're still alive out there somewhere.

Yeah.

Um, which luckily we all survived. But anyway, you know, the deep-seated love for the outdoors really, it came from my grandparents providing us with that sort, with that outlet. Um, you know, growing up in suburbia for most of our, for most of the time of the year, It was always nice to have that outlet where you could just go out and you could do whatever you want and you could explore and do all these activities that you can't do in a suburban setting. And, our grandfather, he was a huge sportsman, huge outdoorsman. So, he hunted, he fished, he rode horses, he spent time in Montana, he did all this stuff.

Yeah.

I mean, he was a medical doctor by trade, but he just in all of his spare time, he was an outdoorsman. And, we always got to go along for the ride. And luckily, You know, they— he had the vision to be able to, you know, purchase this land, build a cabin on it, and provide us all with— provide my cousins and I, uh, and my family and my cousins, uh, with, with this amazing opportunity to experience and get to know and fall in love with the outdoors. Um, and it, and it totally worked. Um, my, my father's parents, they owned a farm, so 120-acre farm. So, it was the same thing. We go—

Yeah.

We get to disappear out onto the farm when we were there and we got to explore and we got to hang out with cows and chickens and all this other stuff, learn about gardening and other just essential skills that are kind of going the way of the dinosaur because now we're all relying on these systems that have been set up and just general consumerism. You know, where it's like, well, where do you get your food? I get it from the grocery store. Okay, where does the grocery store get their food? I don't know.

It's like— Such a disconnect from our food supply.

It's amazing. It's really amazing. But yeah, I would say those are the 2 major reasons why we're in love with the outdoor experience.

Yeah. And, we're losing a lot of that. Most kids today, they don't spend much time just in nature and in the outdoors. And, that's one of our missions is to encourage people to get outside and spend more time and disconnect from their phones and technology and spend more time in nature reconnecting with kind of that wild side that we all have within us because it's my belief that when we do that, we come back out of nature and become better fathers, business owners, spouses, all of those things, just better humans all around. So, are you doing anything specifically to encourage your own kids to love the wilderness and love the great outdoors?

Yeah. I mean, I try to get them out regularly. Anytime we're going on vacation, I like to go someplace that's a little more rural. We do a lot of lakes and mountains.

Yeah.

We still make it to the family cabin on occasion. Right now, I'm making plans. So, my dad, when he retired, he took over at a high level the family farm. Him and my uncle are running it, his brother. And so, we get down to the farm, which is still in a very rural state, and we get out there and we run through the fields and we play in the creeks and we do all these other things that unfortunately a lot of people don't have the opportunity to do. But, teaching my kids to whatever it might be, be around fire, build fire, respect nature, don't litter.

Yeah.

Just the little things, the little things that other people or The other things that I think are missing from society as a whole where it's like, you know, you have a lot of people preaching sustainability and all this other stuff and that same person is just like throwing a Styrofoam Dunkin' Donuts cup out of their car window. And, it's like, alright, well, you know, we can talk about virtue signaling and all the other nonsense that goes on in our culture today.

Yeah.

But, it's just if you're not teaching people to understand the outdoors from a young age, it's going to be a lot— I mean, just like with anything, it's going to be a lot more difficult to do that when when they're older. So, you need to instill some sort of deep-seated foundational understanding of what nature is, the value of nature and the outdoors. And so, because otherwise culture gets a hold of it and gets, I think, fuses things in a big way.

Oh, yeah, for sure. Is there anything that you personally or that your company is doing to help improve conservation or sustainability And to help protect our wild spaces and places. But this is something that we're really big on at Rewild Gear. It's just really putting an emphasis on that because we need more and more people to get involved there.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, one of the main— I mean, we're a very small company and we have basically no revenue yet.

I know a little something about that too.

You have this vision for what you can do in the future and how you can help. The basis the basis of our company, which is quality products that will last generations. I think one of the biggest threats to nature and the environment is consumerism, right? I mean, it's these cheap things that we buy from different places that we know that we're going to throw those things away or they're going to need to be replaced shortly.

Yeah.

And, they're made out of materials that they're not durable and they're not biodegradable, so they're just going to end up in a landfill somewhere. And, while it's probably not practical, you can't make everything out of something that's biodegradable right now. I mean, hopefully we get there and I know that there's a lot of smart people working on that. For us, when you make a product that's meant to last, that's I think the most essential thing you can do to be a part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

Yeah.

And, that is one of the basic drivers of what we're doing. And, that's one of the most important parts of having a good quality product is that it's going to last a long time. If your product doesn't last a long time, it's just not a quality product. It's probably not even a— it's just a bad design, right? A high-quality computer that lasts, what, 3 years or so?

Functional obsolescence.

Yeah, right.

Or intentional obsolescence.

And I get— I'm sure that would be argued depending on who you're talking to. But yeah, I mean, and that's part— that's another reason why we love the idea of knives, right, is because it's a timeless tool. It's not going to go out of style. You're always going to need it. And you can make something that's going to last a very, very long time and isn't going to take up— excuse me— take up space in a landfill.

Sure. You know, on that note, however, from strictly a business perspective, when you're making something that is going to last Quote unquote forever, or has a lifetime warranty, you're really limiting yourself as far as sales because you can't sell that same thing to someone else unless they lose it or they somehow break it, you know, or something. So, and this flies in the face of this current entrepreneurial startup culture that we have of let's build something and get a subscription and recurring revenue, which is great, nothing wrong with that. However, it's throw as much money at it. And just consume, consume, consume. And so, we can make the most revenue and then sell it and make $1 billion. So, where is that balance when it comes to business and technology and making money and creating amazing products that are sustainable that last but also enables you to have a business for the long haul? That is, the goal isn't just to build something and sell it but maybe to pass it on to your own kids.

Yeah. So, I'll say a few things on that. So, first and foremost, There's billions of people in this world. And so, making a good quality product is not going to cost you business. Ensuring something for a life or guaranteeing something for a lifetime shouldn't cost you business. Is it the fastest way to $2 billion? No, it's not.

Definitely not.

But, if you have principles, And, if you have ethics and a moral compass, that's the right way to do it. And yeah, I'm calling a lot of people out there because I think that there's a lot of people out there who at whatever cost just want to be rich.

Sure.

And, that's not what we're about and that's not what we want to do. Not that we wouldn't love to be rich, right?

If we get there and that will happen because creating those quality products because people—

Yeah, because of the value, because of the true value that you're bringing. And, because of the recognition of your principles and your ethics, those are things that are foundational to a company and a cause. And, as long as you stay true to those things, the money will come. It's like, yeah, you can scale a business out as fast as you can and make it as easy and as cheap to buy your product and use it over and over again or whatever it might be, But if you, if you don't have that foundation, you know, yeah, you might sell it for $1 billion. But whoever buys it's an idiot, because that's gonna go, it's gonna, you know, it's not built for the long term. Yeah, right. So with Reef Knives, we wanted, we want to build something that's going to be generational.

Yeah.

And that's really, that's really it. And so in order for it to be generational, it's got to be built on appropriate foundations, morals, ethics, an understanding, a general understanding of what's right, what's right and what's wrong. Looking beyond just the value of a dollar.

Yeah.

At the end of the day.

Yeah, I completely agree there. One thing I meant to ask earlier, and just we waltzed past that, is where did the name Reef Knives come from? Why didn't you call it Shank Knives?

Yeah, Shank Knives. Yeah, so our last name Shank spelled appropriately, S-H-A-N-K. Appreciate you bringing that up. We didn't know, you know what it was. So there's a couple reasons. A, we felt like we're not making knives that, that are for stabbing people in prison. You know, from a gimmick, they can improvise those on their own. We're not, we're not, we didn't want to be gimmicky about it, you know, because we're making a quality product that's built to last. We didn't want to have gimmicks around it. And, we felt like unfortunately our last name could be considered gimmicky because it's a perception thing even though it is our last name. And, you could say that that's just divine provenance or whatever. It was always meant to be. But, Reef, the name Reef is a family name, is the maiden name of my 5th great-grandmother. So, My 7th great-grandfather came to Philadelphia from Switzerland, Germany in 1715.

Oh, wow.

His grandson, Henry Shank, was married to Anna Reef, and they were in the late 1700s. He was the first Mennonite bishop in Virginia. So, they moved from Lancaster, Pennsylvania down to the area of Harrisonburg, Virginia. Um, the reason we picked Reef is because, A, we like the sound of it. It's one syllable.

Yeah.

Um, and, and also, you know, just out of respect for what they did, you know, going from, you know, Pennsylvania and civilization down to the middle of nowhere in the mid-1700s, like, that was not for the faint of heart. I mean, They were true trailblazers. I mean, just to imagine what the world must have been like for them then, going and starting something completely new in this new country, right? I mean, they would have been going down there right around the time of the American Revolution, like just a wild, wild scenario. In fact, just down the street from from my grandparents' farm is the Lincoln Plantation. So, Abraham Lincoln's grandfather's farm was about a mile and a half, 2 miles down the road. So now, it's a historical landmark. But, it's crazy to think about that our family was running around and creating America with people like Daniel Boone and—

Yeah.

you know, Abe Lincoln's freaking grandparents. Like, that's wild to think about. So anyway, it was my— it was an honor thing. Like, we couldn't— we felt like we couldn't use Shank. So we found somebody with— in our family tree that had a cool story and that sort of resonated with what we— what we saw as our vision for Reef Knives, which was— just our moral and ethical compass as well as our thirst for adventure and the amount of courage that's required to do things that we do. Yeah, exactly.

I love that. Stu, what is the biggest life lesson that nature and the outdoors and just the wilderness in general has taught you?

The biggest life lesson is that everything's connected.

Hmm.

Absolutely everything is connected. You cannot— I mean, it's like the butterfly effect. Like, you can't do something somewhere and not have it affect something else somewhere down the road. And, that's why it's so important that we are all so mindful of how we're spending our time and what we're doing on a daily basis because we are living in history right now. We're creating history. And, the things that we do today and for the rest of our lives are going to have effects on people for generations to come.

Yeah.

And, that's why it's so important to be able to understand nature. I mean, it's our life force. It's how we survive, right? The Earth was designed that way. We are nature. So, if we continue to just, I mean, just to boil this down, if we continue to destroy nature, we're just destroying ourselves. And, if we're doing that just for money, something that really, it has value in our culture and you need money to survive because that's how our systems have been set up. But, that's not like for thousands and thousands of years up until you know, 200 years ago, that wasn't the case, right?

No.

So, you know, there is a better way. There is a better way, and we just need to— the more that we can get back to doing things the right way in sort of a respectful manner to where we're respecting other people, respecting the Earth, just using good sound judgment that's based on some sort of a moral compass, like just do anything good, you know, and you're going to have positive effects who knows how long into the future, generations.

I completely agree with all that. That's, you know, that's great sound advice too. Stu, what, what outdoor gear equipment do you consider essential when you're going out for your adventures? Yeah, and I know you're gonna say a knife.

As would I.

2 knives.

2 knives. One is none, 2 is one, right? Yep. So 2 knives. You gotta have layers. I'm a big layer guy. Like, if you're going out into the woods in a t-shirt, and I've learned this the hard way on more than one occasion, even if it's warm out and during the day, like, you're probably going to be in trouble at some point. Just like, bring some layers, put them in your pack. A pack's essential if you're going on a real adventure. I mean, if you're just going out for a little walk in the woods, you probably don't need a pack. You know, you should probably have some first aid equipment, some basic stuff to stop the bleeding if you need to. Ideally, you'd have some sort of a way to communicate with somebody if you couldn't get yourself out of the woods. Nice pair of shoes. Or boots are going to be essential. Some way to make fire in case the worst happens. Those are the most basic things.

Oh, yeah.

Obviously, food's important whether you're bringing it, just be sure to clean up after yourself, or the ability to get your own food. In that case, you may want to have some sort of a— the ability to make traps. Yeah, great. Guns are also great. You know, they're great for protecting yourself in a worst-case scenario depending on where you are in the wilderness. And, if you're in a survival situation, they're very efficient at getting food. So anyway.

Yeah. No, that works for me.

I would say that would summarize my thoughts on gear. Obviously, you need some sort of a shelter if you're going to be out overnight. You need some way to stay warm. Whether that's a sleeping bag, or, you know, you just have to have a plan, you know. And again, when we talk about designing knives and the use case, like, what's your adventure? What's, what's the use case? Like, I've had some crazy experiences where we haven't planned our gear well. And those learning experiences were so valuable because it's like, you have to plan your gear very specifically for the trip you're going on. If you don't, yes, you're going to be miserable. You may even put your life in danger. So I digress.

Yeah, no, that's great advice. I like all of those a lot. Stu, what outdoor brands other than your own do you think are doing a great job, whether in product quality or sustainability or both?

Read Wild Gear, of course.

Outside of us too.

I really, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take the opportunity to rep another knife company. I love ESEE Knives, and I love what they do and the products that they put out. Yeah, I own quite a few and I'll probably own more.

Same.

I really like, as far as packs and things go, I like what Tough Possum Gear is doing and what they're all about. I like the Hidden Woodsman shelter stuff. I like Warbonnet Outdoors. And, I really am into American-made as much as possible. All these companies are Made in America stuff, made in America products that are high quality and made here. Hey, if you're into cast iron cookware and camping, Stargazer Cast Iron, they make a really awesome product that, you know, it's smooth, it's lighter weight, smoother cast iron. So, it kind of harkens back to the days of like Griswold and Wagner. Yeah, people who know cast iron understand the value of good cast iron cookware. So, I like what they're doing in that sense. Let's see. I know there's others that just aren't coming to mind in the moment under pressure. I'm not that great of a public speaker. So, a lot of times I have trouble getting things from my head to my mouth without losing them. I don't know what it is. I've always been a better writer. Yeah.

All good. Yeah. So, do you have a favorite book or books that have really impacted your life over the years?

Yeah. The 2 that always come to mind that have had the most profound effect on me, my life, and what drives me are The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. That's one of my absolute favorite books. I think that everybody should read it at a young age.

Mm-hmm.

I really like the book Ishmael, and I can't remember who the author is, but it's a book about culture and how culture happens as sort of a fictional story. I had a biology professor have that as required reading when I was in college, and it seemed so weird, like, why are we reading this book? If you haven't read it, definitely pick it up. It's a really cool take on culture and just how things work and things evolve from a social standpoint.

We'll definitely get those added into the shownotes for sure. Yeah.

And then, I think the biggest one for me is the Bible.

Cool.

It's the book I read every day and that I'll continue reading as often as possible for the rest of my life. And, it's just absolutely central to to everything I do.

Great.

So yeah.

What's one piece of advice you would give to our audience?

One piece of advice. Well, if you're good, I'll get— well, I'm going to provide a little bit of context and give a couple different things. If you're going to start a business, it's going to be way harder than you think. It's going to be way harder than you think. So just be ready for it. If you're not passionate about what you're getting into, you're going to have trouble because it is just so much more difficult. Like I said, 3 times longer, 3 times more expensive. I'm sure Seth and his brothers will attest to this.

Yes.

So, that's the first thing. The other thing is just remember everything's connected and that everything that you do, good or bad, is going to have a profound effect in ways that you can't possibly even understand. So, So, just understand what you're doing and why you're doing it and just try to have motivations for good rather than selfishness.

Altruism.

And, we'll all be a lot better off if we can each do that.

Yeah, that's great. Stu, this has been so much fun. Thanks so much for being on the show today. Where can people go to find out more about you online?

Yeah. The places we're most active are our website reefknives.com. Reef is spelled R-E-I-F-F knives.com. And then we're very active on Instagram. We're active on Facebook. We're going to get more active on YouTube. We're Reef Knives on all those platforms. So you can, you can find us there. Yeah. Right now, those are the places we're gonna— our knives should start hitting dealers over the next few months. We're going to be rolling out to different dealers around the country. So, you'll be able to find our products at different well-known dealers around the world, which we're looking forward to. Like I said, we will be selling through our website once we have the inventory to support it. So, feel free to reach out. My name's Stu. Ben's the other guy you might talk to. We're pretty approachable and we'd love to hear from you.

Sounds good.

Thank you so much for having us, Seth.

Oh, you're very welcome. Thank you for coming on the show. And, for all of you listening, Until next time, stay wild.

Thanks for listening to the Rewild Gear Podcast. You can check out the show notes for today's episode at rewildgearpodcast.com. If you're ready to spend more time in the wild, our line of high-quality minimalistic outdoor gear can help you do just that. Check us out at rewildgear.com.