Thank you all for taking the time to take the survey!
Here are the results of the survey, and our answers to the results and comments. The original question will be listed, along with the results. Multiple choice questions will list what percentage of the vote each choice received. Fill in the blank questions will be listed with the customers answer first, then my comment to some of the answers.
#1 Which designs would you be interested in seeing more of?
23% More self defense knives
19% More EDC knives
16% Karambits
16% Combat knives
14% Hunting knives
7% Kitchen knives
5% Swords
(These stats match the exact direction we plan to take the business)
#2 Are there any designs not listed that you would like to see made more often? If so list what they are.
“would like to see more personal size Tantos in the traditional curved blade style. Not the truncated armor piercing point style that is so popular today. I seldom find the need to pierce armor these days.” --More of this design will definitely be coming. It is a type of design we currently make, but usually isn't seen up for sale because they sell fast. With the added production we expect this year you should be seeing a lot more of them will be offered -Jason
“theyre probably difficult to make but i love balisongs and your sort of neo-tribal designs would probably make an amazing final product!” --I've always been a fan of balisongs but I haven't made one to date. This is something I would definitely like to get into but it will be a bit of a wait...at least 6 months I expect, maybe more. Before I offered any for sale I would make myself and my testers some to see how they hold up. Balisongs are notorious for loosening up and becoming sloppy and I want to make sure our designs would be as strong as possible. -Jason
“Longer blades/handles proportionately thicker with an integrated quillon to keep the hand from slipping” --More large knives are on the way. We will first be working on building our inventory of smaller knives up (they are faster to make since there is less material to work) then start on some larger blades. The knives you will see up for auction in the next week(and last week) are some examples of some upcoming designs we have been developing. -Jason
“folders” --I've made a few Linerlocks in the past, and plan on making more. We will first be building our inventory of fixed blades before starting on folders. We will concentrate primarily on Linerlocks. -Jason
“bolos, camp knives, machetes” – Camp knives, and Bolos are definitely on the way (probably 3ish month wait before you see many in inventory). Machetes are something I have considered but I'm not sure how they would sell. Many people prefer just buying a $5 junk machete, but I do on occasion get troops in areas such as South American jungles wanting a top of the line machete. So we will probably make a few for sale and see what the response is.....but after working on building the camp knife inventory. -Jason
26% S30V
19% O1
15% A2
15% ATS-34
15%
11% 52100
#4 Any other types of steels you wish to see us use? If so list below.
“154CM is my personal favorite, also had good experiences with ZDP-18” --154CM is a very nice steel, very similar to ATS-34. We will probably be offering one of these two steels later in the year. We think a high quality stainless would be a good addition to the line for those of us that work in hot, humid, acidic, etc situations. I have heard good things about ZDP-18 but I have never worked with it so I would need to do some experimenting before offering it for sale. -Jason
“AUS-8 has served me well, but i see its limitations.” AUS-8 has some good qualities to it...it's fairly stain resistant, it is available in a wide variety of sizes, it is pretty affordable(thus making the knives affordable) and it's relatively easy to sharpen. This is also one of the few decent steels that I can purchase right in the
“d2” Nice steel, great edge holding. Not sure about offering it though. It falls between a high carbon steel and a stainless steel....it's not quite stainless, but definitely more stain resistant than something like 1095. The problem is I don't get many people asking me for it so I'm not sure how the customers would like it. But I do like this steel. I may order a small quantity of all my favorite steels and start making occasional batches of various steels for those customers wanting to try it. I would love to offer a wide variety of steel but at this point we lack time to try and keep more than a few types of steel in inventory. Perhaps we can incorporate more as we grow. -Jason
“L-6” Decent steel, not available in a wide range of sizes though. We may or may not offer this steel. If we do offer it one of the first things we would do is use it in a
#5 We use many types of handle materials but lately most of our work has been wrapped, or with our own composite handle material. We have experience with the following material and we are wondering which ones you might like to see us use more often.
23% Carbon fiber
17% More leathers used with handle wrap (stingray, frog, ostrich leg, lizard, snake, shark,
etc.
13% Silk cord handle wrap (imported from
13% Stabilized wood
9% Exotic Hardwoods
6% Anodized Aluminum
4% Titanium
4% Lapidary materials
4% Giraffe Bone
2%
2% Camel Bone
2% Mammoth Ivory
First a note on handle materials... we definitely will be offering more leathers. We plan on offering more exotic hardwoods...but we will have to look at import/export laws regarding woods. We may offer anodized Titanium/Aluminum simply because I enjoy doing it (I used to have a jewelry business using these materials and lately I've been missing the colors it offers). Lapidary materials I hope to offer on pricier models...simply because I enjoy the color/pattern available in stone. Carbon fiber I have mixed feelings about.....it's a superb engineering material but it is pricey (thus raising the price of the knives) and it is a royal pain in the butt to work. It leaves tiny splinters all over in your skin making you itch like mad (ever roll around in an attic of fiberglass insulation? Same feeling except for worse) and is very, very bad to breathe so we would need to work the material wet, which creates a huge mess, and clean the shop every time after using it. But we may start using it since people want it. Silk cord will be offered in the next few months.
The following are customer choices:
“G10” Nice material. Similar to the composite we offer but with a fiberglass base. Nice and strong and affordable. The fiberglass pretty much only comes in white though so any coloring has to be done by dying the epoxy....so we wouldn't be able to offer the patterns available in the composite lines. It also has the same health hazards as the carbon fiber. We may or may not offer it. -Jason
“Stabilized belly button lint?” Unfortunately due to personal hygiene my belly button harvest is low. I talked to Hazel about me cleaning less often to up my lint harvest but she shot that idea down. Too bad the survey was anonymous because I would have grabbed some dryer lint to stabilize and send to you labeled as “stabilized belly button lint” just to freak you out a tad. -Jason
#6 Before I started Ecos Knives I made a lot of knives geared more for collections than hard use. They were of course usable but they often featured more expensive materials, and finer finishes. Customers started asking for models with more user-friendly finishes, and reduced cost so they wouldn't be afraid to use them....and thats been our goal with Ecos. High performance handmade knives at an affordable price. Now that we offer primarily these types of knives we have some customers requesting pricier knives with finer finishes and more expensive materials for their collections or as gifts. While we fully intend to keep most of our line affordable using knives, we are curious how many people would be interested in more expensive models.
60% Says “No we shouldn't”
40% Says “yes, we should”
#7 I've been planning on making limited and serial numbered pieces with the date and number etched onto the knife for those of you seeking collector pieces. These pieces would be limited to no more than 20 of them a year, and maybe even 10 per year. They would use the best of materials and finishes and would often feature unique designs (although some will be upgraded “standard models”) Is this something you would be interested in seeing?
64% Yes
36% No
36% Yes
36% Maybe
29% No
(Better ratio than I thought since many customers are not knifemakers nor want to be. I'm an avid reader and have wanted to try making a book for years so I may start one after the move)
#9 What types of payment options would you like to see added to the store?
85% Direct credit card payments (bypassing Paypal, done directly through us)
8% Google Checkout
8% Money Orders
(I will have to check into the logistics of offering these payment methods through our site. I want to make sure its secure, affordable, and easy for both us and our customers)
#10 In the near future we will be setting up relationships with various knife dealers, are there any knife dealers you may have good experiences with that you think our knives would be a good match for? If so list any.
“personally i like buying straight from you or your ebay store. its a much more personal feel.”“ I agree with you there. I would like to keep the business as personal as possible (which is often hard due to lack of time) but one advantage to using dealers is they do a lot of the legwork for us, which saves us time. They also work as a marketing tool which will help expand our customer base. One more benefit is it is much easier/faster for us to send a whole batch to one dealer than to send/communicate with a few dozen customers. While these may sound like nothing but cold business reasons, it is very hard to offer custom knives at these prices so we do have to look at it from a business aspect sometimes just to ensure we survive. I want to make sure that 30yrs from now we are still here to provide for our customers and not just be a distant memory.
“Bladeforums.com. It's a forum, but it would be a great place for advertising and sales on higher priced, more customized pieces.” We agree. In the past we sold/advertised some pieces on the forums (we are a member of several forums including bladeforums.com, britishblades.com, knifenetwork.com, knifeforums.com, etc) and plan to sell more there soon. I just haven't had time to participate on the forums much of late and feel guilty “trying to make a buck” on there while not offering advice and help to other makers. Hopefully soon I will have more time to be a more active member. We will also be pricing banner ad's. -Jason
(several knife dealers were suggested to us, and we will look into them. Thank you for the suggestions)
#11 What other changes should we make to the business?
I was surprised that not a single critical and/or negative comment was left in this area. As the saying goes “you can't make everyone happy all of the time” and I know there are areas we need to work on......such as more prompt email correspondences, and more prompt shipping(we used to have very fast shipping but we have been lagging lately, sorry!) Hopefully we can be more prompt in these areas soon....we are making changes that will help.
With that said we really appreciate the comments left! Even though these are made to be affordable tools, a part of me goes into each knife and we do our best to keep our customers happy. It's a good feeling knowing that so many of you are. If it wasn't for wonderful customers such as yourselves I would be stuck in a more mundane job instead of being able to move overseas to explore different cultures, and do the work I've enjoyed so much over the last 18yrs. Thanks all!
I won't bother posting your comments here....many of them are personal, and besides when I see businesses posting “customer comments” I often think the business could be creating the comments to make themselves look better. Thats one thing we like about Ebay...the feedback system. If anyone wants to check out our customer feedback they can check our profile there.
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