CRESCENT Products: SARGE Knives — Setting No Limits for its Marketplace
There are all kinds of knives – from a pocket knife every boy’s grandfather gave him to a blade that law enforcement would grab for their war on drugs. There’s a knife for every occasion and a lot of thought that has to go in to each design. Manufacturers have to ask what materials they’ll use, what the elements of the knife might be from the handle to the blade, and whether the blade will be fixed or folding.
Greer-based SARGE Knives also has one more tool in its arsenal. His name is Tom Kreger. Matt Morris continues talking with CRESCENT about the advances SARGE Knives is making, but next week, we’ll be joined by his father Gene. We won’t give anything away other than that he’s a character unto himself. Make sure you meet Gene next week.
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Like you said, you saw the machete. This is something we just added to the line. I was talking to some of our biggest…
This thing is insane.
Yeah. One of our big hardware customers showed me his list of his top 30 selling items in the knife category. Three of the top 10 were machetes, which really surprised me. That opened my eyes to, “We need to get a machete in our line.” We looked at a lot of designs that were available out there and this was the one that we thought offered the best features of anything that we saw. You had to have one that had a lot of features that wasn’t very expensive. These things take a lot of abuse.
And it’s not something…I don’t think I’ve ever seen the closed handle as opposed to just the grip. And then then that saw tooth…
This is nothing I can take credit for as far as design…
You should.
Yeah.
Nobody else is around, go ahead and take credit.
But there are some nice features. There are a lot of things that you don’t see. You may see a machete with a saw tooth on it, but you don’t see that combined with a D guard grip. I was at a trade show a couple of weeks ago and one of the hardware dealers, he bought 30 of these for DEA agents that were going into these marijuana fields and using the machetes to clear out. It’s always fun to hear stories about how somebody is actually using the knives.
It’s a shame the guy couldn’t send you pictures of the blade in use.
Oh, I know. I always encourage people to send us photos of them using our knives so we can post them on the web site. Last year, I had some military guys from Afghanistan send me some pictures. We engraved their division’s name on the knife and we sent it to them. They sent me some photos back and that was cool to see them using the knives.
What kind of materials are you using for these?
Well, first, you have to see what materials are available to you from the factory. Then we look at the menu of stainless steel that is available and then one that is going to be able to allow you to hit that quality that you want at the price that they’re willing to pay so we currently offer 440 stainless steel as our standard grade stainless, which is considered an excellent general purpose stainless steel. Then we have 440C, which is a premium stainless steel that we offer on some of our higher-end knives in our line. So, when you see a knife with 440C, you’re going to know it is a premium stainless and you’re going to pay a little bit more for it. But you’re getting a knife that’s going to retain a sharp edge much longer and it’s a harder material so it’s going to take that sharp edge and keep it. It’s going to last longer.
For somebody like me who doesn’t know, what does that?
It’s a higher carbon content in the stainless. They use a Rockwell Hardness Scale on stainless steels in the knife industry. A 440 stainless is going to fall in the 54-56 range on the Rockwell hardness scale where a 440C is going to be in the 56-60 range. With the harder material, it’s able to retain a sharper edge much longer.
Back in October, the South Carolina Association of Knife Makers awarded Tom Kreger its “Knife of the Year” award. What does that kind of recognition mean for SARGE?
Well, we came in contact with Tom Kreger approximately five years ago when we reached a point where we felt like we wanted to have somebody that was a knife maker, that was a hunter, and that knew a lot about knives to review our line and just come in and review what we’re currently offering and make recommendations like, “Alright, you’ve got a good product here. I’m not too sure about this one, though. I would recommend you change this.”
So he was looking at the entire line?
Yeah, we had him look at our entire line and just give me what he recommended as far as any changes that we needed to make. Any kind of quality issues he thought we may have had, anything that we’re missing from the line. That was one thing that we had him do. And the other thing was that we wanted to have him develop some designs for us so we could market these as Tom Kreger designed knives from SARGE. So that’s what we did. He made a couple of designs just like he would as a custom knife maker. We had him make it just like he normally would a custom knife. We took his design, sent it to our factory, and had them replicate it. What we are able to offer is the quality and feel of a custom knife at a production knife price, which has been really well-received. So when Tom received that award for “Knife of the Year” and he’s designing knives for us, that kind of gives us credibility and some kind of crossover credibility like “He’s designing knives for SARGE and here he is winning ‘Knife of the Year’ for South Carolina.” I think it just validates some of our designs that he has done for us.
And probably, internally, you’re saying to yourselves, “We’re on the right track.”
Yeah, because there are a lot of knife makers in South Carolina. As the more time I’ve been in the business…the big industry show is the blade show that they have in Atlanta and all the different manufacturers have booths there but all the prominent knife makes will have booths set up at the show, and I was really surprised to see how many knife makers from South Carolina are known in the industry. The fact that Tom was recognized as the top knife maker, won the Knife of the Year, we thought was great.
And, like you said, you’re able to provide quality knives at where people can afford it.
Our oyster knife is a good example. We had a meeting with Tom and said, “Design us the ultimate oyster knife” so he created one in his shop, sent us the design, we sent in to the factory and it’s what we have in our line now. The knife like the one he made would sell for $300 to $400 where ours is retailing for $39.95. That’s a perfect example of what we’re trying to achieve with this line.
Without wearing it on its sleeve, SARGE is heavily involved in supporting its community. Why is that involvement so important?
It’s extremely important. We want people to know that SARGE is here and that they support the community and be proud when they travel around saying “Yeah, SARGE Knives is from my town.” We recognize the importance of giving back to the community, and that’s what we try to do, but we also look at where can we have the most impact. Who is the most efficient with the money they raise? How much of that money is going directly to the cause that they’re involved with? We try to get involved with things that we feel strongly about. Anytime there’s a way to tie our products in with fundraiser event, it’s kind of a no-brainer.
What, in the grand scheme of things makes SARGE different from everybody else in the marketplace?
I think a lot of knife companies will specialize in a certain style of knives. They’ll kind of be more of a tactical style knife line, or they’ll be more of a traditional, collectible type of knife line. When we built the line, we wanted to have a broad selection, wide variety of knives that all had this same value statement that gave our retail dealers the ability to eliminate having like five different knife vendors they had to deal with to cover all the different types of knives out there. So they could say, “I deal with SARGE. They cover all the different types of knives I need. I don’t need to have five different knife vendors that I carry.” I think that is unique to us. We do cover so many segments of the knife category. We have the traditional, your grandfather’s old traditional style pocket knife. We have the tactical style pocket knife. We have the hunting and fishing segment type of knives. We have the specialty gift type of products.
And giant marijuana field clearing knifes wielded by the DEA.
Yeah, and whatever you want to do with the machetes. All with the same common, good quality, value priced statement in mind. I think that’s what distinguishes us from other knife companies. Another thing we really concentrate on, on the retail side, is our countertop merchandising display. Everybody’s completing from countertop space so we design our displays to minimize the amount of room that it requires. We’ve got a 1 foot square area that we need and we can put your 100 different type knives on display in a small little area. And on a good-looking display that actually makes the perceived value of the knives much higher. I think a company may have good knives but their display looks bad and it makes the quality of their knives look bad. We take into consideration everything, from the look of the catalog, to the displays, to the packaging that we use. It’s all part of the value statement, even the web site.
NOTE: Suddenly, a new personality bursts through the door of the conference room. With his booming voice almost laughing as he apologizes through a giant friendly grin, “It didn’t get on my calendar. I remember talking about it, but it wasn’t on the calendar.”
Matt looks back over smiling. “This is Gene. This is my dad, he owns the place.”
Stay tuned for Part 3. For Part 1, Click HERE.
