CRESCENT Products: SARGE Knives — One of the Shortest Mission Statements to Read

Posted by admin on May 7, 2012 · Leave a Comment

This feature started as a profile of a South Carolina-based knife company, but as is so often the case, things don’t always turn out the way we plan. This feature evolved on its own from SARGE Knives to the entrepreneurial spirit and philosophy of a son of Greenville County’s Dunean Mill Village.

That’s part of what CRESCENT is about – finding those people, places, and stories we may not know, but we become better for learning about them. Gene Morris is one of those South Carolina characters and story tellers we’re glad we get to know…and he could sell air conditioning in Antarctica.

—————————

GENE: We do everything from charity events to whatever. From the knife business we got into the wine tool business, and now we’re doing wine tools for Michael Mondavi. We’re doing wine tools for golf courses who are using them for their tournament gifts rather than a hat that looks like a head wound and a shirt that don’t fit. Same thing with our steak knives. Matt and I are in a steak house in New York and I see people going out and buying steak knives from the steak house, paying $150, $160. We could provide that good or better steak knife at a better value. Now, steak knives are a big part of our business. In Charleston at the Southeast Wildlife Expo, we have our own laser equipment. We took steak knife sets, oyster knives, and boxes and wine tools. For what’s going down there, we lasered pineapples on the boxes because that the sign of Southern hospitality. They look like they were custom made for that market, and the gift market is going to be a good market for us. A friend of mine called, and they were doing a benefit for a college friend of theirs who had cancer. Five girls. Very close knit. One of them has cancer, and it’s progressively gotten worse. It just came to me because this girl is just a very special friend of mine, what I could do extra, so I created a knife. I’ve got one in my desk.

(Gene retrieves the knife from his office)

GENE: The girl’s name is Vicky. She and Sandra who works for me and girls had been friends for years. I’ve never Vicky her but I know her through Sandra, and she always told me how sweet she was and everything and as she went through this illness. Her friends rallied around her. It’s gotten to the place they really need the money. They’re all worried about Vicky, and she said, “I’m going to hit you up for some stuff. Can you give me some stuff for our silent auction?” I said, “Sure.” I thought about the steak knife sets and carving knife sets and the wine tools and a couple of things like that and maybe do a “man package” with a hunting/fishing kit and all that. This girl will always be part of their life. Hopefully, two years from now they’ll be talking about what dark days this was and how they got through it, so what I did, I created this knife. (Gene holds up the knife he picked up from his office.) I took a knife with that laser. See that heart and “Vicky.” What I did was give them 25 of those and 25 envelopes with just that on it. At their silent auction, people just came up and got an envelope and they put their donations in it. We don’t know what it is. There’s not a price, but they’d get the knife with that anonymous donation. What’s a lot of money for one person is nothing for another, and I thought it would be a unique way to raise money. You like that?

Yeah.

GENE: And that’s what I call a tribute knife. It’s as fun for us to find ways to help folks as it is to find ways to make money. My most enjoyable part of this business is just watching people grow, teaching them how to do that. This business, besides the knife business, this is a different business. We can do anything we want to do. Our mission statement is the shortest one you’ll ever read. “We’ll do the right thing and we’ll make a profit.” If you have a problem with either one of those, we ain’t gonna to do business.

I like that.

GENE: It’s a little different, is it not?

It is.

GENE: What else do you have to say besides, “I’m going to do the right thing.” At times, I have asked, “What will it take to make you happy? If I do that, you happy? Alright, take care. We’re probably not good partners, so I suggest you find another supplier.” And we do some things just like our knives, lifetime warranty. If we make ten knives good today, which we won’t, but if we did, nine of them would have broken points and it’s obvious what happened but we’re going to give you another knife (Translation for anyone who “ain’t from around here,” this means that if ten knives happened to be returned that day for defects, SARGE would replace them in accordance with the company’s warranty. He’s not saying that the company will make a bad batch of knives that day.). Why would I spend money advertising, why would I go to trade shows, why would I do all that, spend all that money then upset somebody over the price of a knife? The best example of that was last week at the National Wild Turkey Federation. This young guy walks up and says, “I bought a knife last year. A screw fell out of it.” “Well, I hate that. Is this close to what it was?” “Yeah.” “Well, here, thank you.” He was, “No, I just need a screw.” I’m apologizing for the problem. I’m not worried about getting the screw. I told him, “I just want you to get a working, solid knife back in your pocket, so take this one.” He bought more knives and he told people at the desk about that. And there was a guy last year at the Buck Master, he had a knife similar to this (Gene holds up a hunting knife.), and he’s coming up to me telling me, “Man, I love that knife but I don’t know if I was getting out of my tree stand or what, but it fell out of the sheath. I’ve still got the sheath, I don’t need another sheath, but can I buy a knife?” I gave him the knife and the sheath. “I’m glad you’re a customer. I hate you lost it.” He stayed there 20 minutes doing infocommercials for me to people who were looking at our product. That’s the cheapest way in the world to advertise your product. Takes a little longer but it works.

MATT: Especially with the web-based consumers. If you don’t take care of them, they’ll blast you.

Absolutely.

GENE: You know, most of the time, we never require you to send the product back. People will have an issue, break a knife point, maybe a screw comes out and we get something back in and when we do, we send them 2 of whatever it was, if it’s still in the line. If it’s not still in the line, the closest thing we have, we send them 2 back and apologize. But that’s why…

And you’re solidifying relationships for life.

GENE: Hey, I don’t make no money doing anything one time. If I can’t turn it into a process that we can do repetitively, the same way normally…

It’s a relationship.

GENE: It’s a relationship. Where all that starts is not rules and regulations, it’s… The most important thing we have in all our businesses is the culture. The culture of business is like your personal personality. I can be gone a day and I can be gone a week, and for the most part, the culture of our business allows people to make decisions based on how they would do it if I was sitting here. And you can’t grow unless you can grow that, but your culture is what your business is about. You can be a great salesman. I’ve had great salesmen I’ve fired. I’ve had great accountants I’ve fired. I’ve had good customer service that I’ve fired because they didn’t fit into our culture. One thing that we do not accept, you cannot be disruptive. I don’t care how much you can sell, you will not be disruptive. If you’re disruptive or you’re selfish or you’re egotistical, it just ain’t gonna work. I’ve got enough ego for everybody. My ego is part of the culture of the company.

And the man who signs the checks is entitled to have all the ego he wants to have.

GENE: It works. Every one of our people has weaknesses. There’s no question about it. But they have strengths, and as a team, we understand everybody’s weaknesses, so we work with everybody’s strength. Do you play golf?

I attempt. I play poorly

GENE: If you ever play a tournament like a member/member or member/guest, they usually have what they call a “tee gift package” – a participant’s gift for being in it. At one club, to play in the member/guest is $600. They’re going to spend about $100 per person for tee gifts as part of that package that everybody gets. It’s “OK, let’s give them a hat, a shirt, give them some golf balls.” Somebody’s paying $600, they probably don’t need hats. They’ve got all the hats in the world, and the shirt you’re going to give him is probably not one he would buy for himself. He’s got a certain golf ball he enjoys playing and he plays that. So it’s a difficult deal. I play in a lot of tournaments. About 2/3 of the stuff never gets in my house. It either stays in the car and I give it to somebody, or I trash it. I said, “That’s a lot of money to waste.” So we developed a box and based on the tournament’s budget, it’s menu driven, how we can put a custom knife set, a wine tool, all kinds of things that when you get home you say, “Look, baby. That’s great. I love that wine tool.” Instead of hearing, “You’ve been gone 2 days…” I mean, it’s inclusive. We’re getting into cigar cutters. My point is that it is limitless. It’s products. It’s stuff, and as long as you can maintain the integrity of the stuff, you can keep growing the business. Everything’s a niche to us.