How MKC Doubled Revenue Without Discounting a Single Knife
Montana Knife Company pulled in $1.7 million over Black Friday weekend without discounting a single knife. Co-founder Brandon Horoho explains how: five targeted product drops, one for each customer persona. An email cadence so aggressive he was watching unsubscribe rates like a hawk. And a VIP program where the reward shows up unannounced in your mailbox. It's a story about knowing exactly who your customer is and giving them what they want before they ask. Also: why Brandon actually high-fives when his repeat customer rate goes down.
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The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.
Kurt Elster • 00:00.001
This episode is brought to you in part by Swim. Here's the thing about wishlist apps. Most of them just sit there. A customer saves a product, and then nothing happens. Swim actually activates that data. When someone wish lists a product, you could trigger price drop or back-in-stock alerts and feed that intent directly into Klaviyo or your CRM. You're not guessing what people want because they've told you. Plus, customers can share wish lists for gifts and your team can view them to offer personalized service online or in store. And unlike card abandonment, wishlist data is permission-based. These are people raising their hands saying, hey, I want this. Just not right now. Swim's been around for over a decade. It powers 45,000 stores and installs in about five minutes. You can try it for free today at getswim. com slash Kurt. That's G-E-T-S-W-Y-M. com slash Kurt. Today on the unofficial shop by podcast, we are gonna break down the Black Friday sale of one of my favorite brands, Montana Knife Company. Who, you know, get ready to compare. Comparison is the thief of joy. We're not bragging here. This is for context. 1. 72 million. That was their Black Friday. Not for the month. Not that's just the the days for you know Black Friday to Cyber Monday. One point seven two million. And what's extraordinary about that is that it there's around double the previous year. And so really, you know, leading them to what I would have to imagine is their best year ever. But joining me again for the second time on the show Brandon Horajo, co-founder, Montana Knife Company, who's going to talk us through their Black Friday, what they learned, you know, what they did right, and maybe what they could have done better. Brandon, thank you for joining us in doing this.
Brandon Horoho • 02:02.480
Yeah, first Kurt, I would say, we made it. We made it through Black Friday, Cyber Monday, 2025. Um, you know With you know, with both of us being in like the e com world, it's th for some reason this year just felt different than other years. There's like a more There's there like nothing felt given ever. There was felt like there was a lot of uncertainty going into Black Friday. Um I don't know, like I said, like I've probably done, you know, fifteen black Fridays in a row with different econ brands and all of my previous, you know, positions and stuff like that. This one here just felt fi different. Um I I think it's just, you know, the economic landscape, like all that stuff. But um it just feels so good to finally be kind of on this back end of this and looking back. And you know, and it's it's easy for me to say that now too, because like I said, we had amazing Black Friday. Um, you know, like everything that we, you know, strategized, like worked, like everything, you know, and then now we're even going into this, you know, gifting period, you know, we call it between Black Friday and the last shipping day, Christmas, and our daily averages are just crushing. So but Um, just you know, it just feels good to be on this side of the Black Friday for twenty twenty five, if you know what I mean.
Kurt Elster • 03:12.760
Oh, absolutely. I mean, for sure, the you're right. It it hit different because we didn't know what would happen going into Black Friday. You know, my my hope was, you know, like October, my feeling was I said, you know what, I think this is deferred spending. Because we, you know, people who were running sales, the sales were performing really well. But people who weren't running sales, you'd see like conversion rate would be down. And then on top of it, you meta ads, the reality is it's just they're more expensive than ever. And it Yeah, m my just my gut feeling is they don't convert as well. Like if you've got meta-ad traffic that's converting at point zero point four percent and it costs more than ever, you know, it it's tough to make those unit economic works. Those unit economics work. versus you know, then suddenly the sale runs and I think there was a lot of deferred spending. It was people waiting for sales. You know, no one No one wants to pay full retail on a premium item like an MKC knife when the the narrative in the news is affordability crisis. And you know, we've been hearing that and inflation, you know, at this point for like, you know, two years now, maybe more. I don't know. But, you know, so you're right. Absolutely thrilling to see see the results after the fact. Uh man, what what was your gut reaction when you saw those numbers?
Brandon Horoho • 04:29.660
You know, I I I was just excited. I mean, just because like I said, like we have such a Like a like a niche product. You know, we're we're a very premium product in a very small demo. If you think about hunting knives itself, like there's only two percent of America who have hunting tags. So it's either you're a fan of the brand or you're a big hunter. And just to see like our customers show up, you know, for those events that we planned for Black Friday, like every single day, is just it. It was more than like the feeling I get like when I have like a really good e-com sale. Like just like, hey, we're building this community. They showed up to support us, you know, and our our customers too know that like This is a big year growth for us. You know, we're like currently right now, we are crammed into a 10,000 square foot garage. And, you know, we have seven CNC machines downstairs. There is I think it's a good thing.
Kurt Elster • 05:24.260
Yes, and and and yeah, and and that that includes all of assembly.
Brandon Horoho • 05:27.540
That also includes all of our finance, all of our PR, you know, and we do our own 3PL. You know, that includes everything. I mean, we are as efficient as it gets in this 10,000 square foot, you know, building. And, you know, and you know, it's not a secret. Like we've been trying to build MKC in the public and we've been showing that we're building this 51,000 square foot. like state-of-the-art American manufacturing system. You know, or manuf Yeah, it's it's amazing. My my business partner Josh did such a good job. Like he actually general contracted the whole thing. Like That's how like in the weeds we are when it comes to growing this in this American manufacturing, like, you know, bringing this back to America. Like we want to be the example. And I think that's like what our customers are seeing is like You know, like we're not going out and buying Porsches and Lamborghinis. Like we're still driving the work trucks that we've had for the past like three or five years.
Kurt Elster • 06:15.140
They're nice trucks, don't get me wrong, but we're not I was gonna say you've you have a very nice Dodge truck, sir.
Brandon Horoho • 06:19.620
I I I I've a very nice to put it, but again, like I said, like we're not like Like there's no question that like every dollar is getting reinvested back in Yeah. So like that's that's like and and you know and that's like what's a little bit different with us, you know, and we don't have a ton like You know, there there's no big VC backing us. Like we're literally bootstrapping every bit. You know, we have really good relationship with banks. And just again, like we're trying to set that example that you can do it here. And I think that's like why We're excited to see those customers show up, you know, during that Black Friday week and seeing the repeat buys and then also too seeing all the new customers come in too. It's just amazing.
Kurt Elster • 06:58.660
It sounds like you had You were cautiously optimistic about it. You know, was there during your Black Friday sales or maybe like right before, was there any moment where you thought, like, man, this might break? This this might be the year it doesn't work right.
Brandon Horoho • 07:13.760
I I I I live every day like I think the customers are not going to show up tomorrow. Like I'm not I'm not kidding. I I think I I worry more about failing than succeeding. And I just kind of live in this like state of like tomorrow is not promised to us by any means. Um, you know, and like I said, this Black Friday, you know, we had to get really crafty. Like I kept on saying to like the team and everything, I was like, this year's gonna be a bar fight. There is nothing absolutely owed to us. It's going to be sloppy. You know, manufacturing is a little behind. We're going to have to pivot day of, which we did. And it it still worked out. Like it, I like I said, we we've got some cool stories we can get into, but Like this Black Friday, you know, we didn't have a lot of new products. But last year, you know, we dropped a bunch of new stuff. The year before, like, it's like the first time we kind of, you know, two years ago we had the first time we have chef knives and stuff like that, culinary sets. This year, you know, we were, you know, the like we didn't have a ton of new because we're so focused on getting into this new building that like, you know, kind of product innovation is taking a pause while we you know, transition over and online this new building because this new building is gonna bring innovation tenfold to us. Cause like literally a sheet of steel is gonna come in one door and a knife is gonna come out the other. We're gonna be one of the only knife companies in the country that can say that. So this Black Friday, like we I mean, I the best way to put it is like we had to market. Like we literally had to do the art of marketing and build a system that was fun for our customers and we had to give our customers what they wanted. Now here's the one thing too is we didn't discount a single knife.
Kurt Elster • 08:51.300
Interesting.
Brandon Horoho • 08:52.340
Yes. So and we still haven't discounted a single knife during Black Friday since the history of this company for the past five Black Fridays. So like that wasn't even on the docket. Like you don't even like that's that you know my marketing team doesn't even have that lever to pull. Now, don't get me wrong, like we discount our our apparel, all that stuff. Like we want a flood. the world with MKC hats, MKC t-shirts and stuff like that. So we can, you know, so I've never say we never discount, but we can definitely discount our apparel. So For the knives, what we did differently is, you know, instead of having one big day, and we o we would always do it the Tuesday before because our thing was always like Hey, we're gonna do Black Friday on Tuesday so our team can go hunt because it's usually the lat Black Friday's the last weekend of hunting season here in Montana. But this year we changed everything up. Everyone kind of had a work. We were just like, hey, get your get your hunting in before Black Friday. It's gonna be chaos. So we we we we literally scrapped everything we knew about Black Friday and we started from scratch and we looked at it as the entire week. And then what we noticed is that, you know, Montana Knife Company is just not a hunting knife company. You know, we're also a really big culinary company. And then, you know, with the intro to the tactical site, which you, you know, helped us build, which is one of the coolest websites ever, um, you know, we have MKC Tactical. And then we have our EDC blue collar. So we have these four personas that want completely different products.
Kurt Elster • 10:18.000
So what we're hunting uh chefs, home chefs, I assume. Everyday carry, so you know, more like a folding knife uh type customer. Not that you sell folding knives, but like that type of customer. And Who am I missing there?
Brandon Horoho • 10:36.380
The the tactical guys.
Kurt Elster • 10:37.740
The tactical guys. MKC tactical. Alright, so we got four personas. I think there's five. What's our fifth one?
Brandon Horoho • 10:43.520
So I I I I I think our fifth well the those are the four main personas, but we had five big drops during that week and I think just doubled up on the on the hunt space. But so Um and like that was like our that was our thing was like hey let's pull back, you know, and we did really, really huge last year, you know, with our culinary. We did we did a million dollars in 10 minutes. Like that's how I know that was last year's number. Like I'm I the story is absolutely wild. You know, we planned this and you know we we didn't have chef knives for like eight months. So we had a big built-up demand for these chef knives. We released them and we s we we did over a million dollars in 10 minutes last year. And I and the funniest part is is like, yeah, the funniest part is I'm literally driving a U-Haul. From northern Alberta with two moose in the back of it with my videographer driving through who knows where Alberta and I'm stock I'm stopped over like a subway or a blippy and I'm sitting there on my phone watching the sale go live and it's just us alone on the like in this like subway with just the dude who built our subs and he's trying to figure out why We were literally dancing on top of the tables. Um so like so that was last year. So last year we we you know we we have a lot to you know a lot of you know ground to cover. You know, we we crushed it last year. So but but what we did is we we learned from that. We're like, hey, our culinary people want culinary knives. They love gifting it and all that stuff. But last year we we kind of left out the hunt people and we left out the tactical and we left out all those other people. So if you were in culinary, that was the greatest thing possible. So that so then we did the same thing. We looked and we're like, okay, we can't discount knives. So let's get crafty. So so we did we did um culinary on Tuesday. We we released the sets and the stake knives, which we haven't released the stake knives in over a year. Those sold out crushed.
Kurt Elster • 12:29.280
We didn't there was no there was no pro like no sale, no discount, no no promotion, just this is now available. And these it Last time we talked, you had sold out a hundred weeks straight. Like you your inventory supply constrained by manufacturing by materials
Brandon Horoho • 12:44.320
Right, right. And and and now like that the the the supply thing is completely changed because now we have a ton of knives in stock. We're able to get our annuities like those knives that our our hardcore customers have had multiple times to buy like they're finding like I don't need another speed go which is like our goal that was our goal this year was to get our our customers to stop buying our knives so new customers can actually get a chance to buy a knife. It's just the craziest thing to say. But that's so so so that's one beautiful thing about Black Friday too is we have this in stock base that we'd never had before. Like that's like what really changed everything this year. But so then we still have our drops. And then and then like I said, like we we looked at our hunt, you know, our hunt guys and we're like, let's give them the knives that they want. Whatever what were our fastest selling knives that sold out this year? Let's go make as many as we can and put that out on we and we did that on Thursday night at dire right during like Thanksgiving dinner. We drop those three ultras, which is our carbon fiber, you know, hunting knife. It's the greatest knife ever. It's super light. It's it it it seriously is.
Kurt Elster • 13:44.920
You got a carbon fiber knife now?
Brandon Horoho • 13:46.660
Yeah, so it's carbon fiber handles and it's magna c it I know magna cut steel. They're gorgeous. They're absolutely like the most gorgeous knives that we've ever made and they're the most functionable and they're the lightest and the sharpest and all that. So We launched that, that just absolutely crushed. And then what we did is on Friday is something we've never done before. We're like, okay, well, we need to do something for the EDC guys and the blue-collar guys. We actually had a brand new model that we this is and this is the crazy part is I tasked my team, I was like, we're not gonna preview this brand new model until the morning. You get 12 hours to launch a knife from beginning to end. And it is your job to build as much hype as possible. And that's and that's what w and that's what we did on Black Friday.
Kurt Elster • 14:30.459
That's a really that was quite the gamble. That's a tough thing to do. And we you know, I know from your previous episode that there's, you know, a very clear cadence where you're spending at least a week Yeah, or more building up the hype and then the product gets released for sale.
Brandon Horoho • 14:46.840
Bingo. And and and like I said, like my my team's probably sick of me hearing sick of hearing me say this, but like our ethos we Like we put more effort into our restocks than most brands put into their product launches. And we put more effort into our product launches than most brands put in when they launch their brand. So like like I'm talking about building custom landing pages and the amount of videos and the amount of UGC and like this the whole layering system like If I was going to go launch a brand, that's how we launch all of our single products. So we had to do that within like a 12-hour period. And that was just fun for the team to do. It it crushed. We sold out that night. It was it was really, really exciting. So we covered culinary, we covered hunt, we covered blue collar, um, and then Saturday, you know, we brought back one of our most popular tactical knives, which is the mini war goat. And we dropped that midday and it just that one there just crushed too. So you know, for the first time of Black Friday, you know, we had all those drops. Plus we had really big volume of each knife too. So, you know, they weren't selling out, you know, we weren't doing a million dollars in 10 minutes, but we were still doing that just spread over an hour, or you know, if not more, because we just had more inventory of all of our knives. So like I said, just kudos to our, you know, our operations team, our manufacturing team, our engineers team, our marketing team, our finance team. Like we all had to work together, circle the boats, and like understand that like we all like everyone had to have their own parts to pull this off. And like when we pull that off, like it is just awesome. And like I said, to do it without having a discount. And like having to beg for someone to buy or knives and stuff like that is just like it's just like I said it's just such a cool feeling to have those people come in and support.
Kurt Elster • 16:28.720
So we're assigning our Black Friday week strategy is, you know, we know we have our buyer personas or like our four core people. And you we're gonna do a a product drop for each of them. A product that you we know they'll love that will be exciting. In one case, a brand new one, and which like that one feels like the real risk here, but it paid off. In their finite inventory, the stuff all I assume all of these sold out.
Brandon Horoho • 16:53.279
Uh no, no, so so they didn't. I mean like we built A ton of them. Like, so like and and that's the thing too is like we're very clear with our customers. We are not trying to be a small niche custom like knife. Our our goal is to make as many of the best knives for the customers who want them. Um so but they all go they are if I mean like so well I I take that back. All of our culinary sets did sell out. All of our stake knives sold out. Uh we have a couple ultras left. Um and the Bad Rock that we launched on Friday, that did sell out that night. So I I guess I'm I guess we did have a lot sell out. We just had a few that we we knew we overproduced on purpose because we just wanted we didn't want to be sold out. Every single we want it we we want people to buy these for gifts. Like we actually want people to buy our knives.
Kurt Elster • 17:38.300
In the past, you know, that was that was the trade-off to the success is it, you know, if you were a customer's like, wow, I really love these knives, I just want to buy one, you had to wait. You know, and that could be frustrating. Um it also, you know, when you do finally get it though, it makes it exciting. But, you know, for you it's like You wanna you wanna sell the knives. You know, and so finally having the stuff in stock consistently is pretty exciting. Yeah, look at like even looking at the the site now, there's there's some nice Nice items left on here, like uh the bighorn chef. I like I do. I love the culinary stuff. I'm your culinary persona. And man, I love these. There's a few of my faves in stock.
Brandon Horoho • 18:18.100
And and that's like one cool thing we've done is that like, you know, so we launched the sets down that Tuesday, but then we were able to go and build some singles and stuff like that. So someone didn't want to you know, buy that entire, you know, $1,300 knife set. Like we release singles a week later, you know, what we couldn't build sets of and stuff like that. That's the beautiful thing downstairs we can look and be like Oh, we have an overindex in black in this one model over index in red. Instead of just holding them and then building sets later, we were just like, hey, let's just release all the singles. And it's been great. Like people are just like, oh, this is awesome. I've button never for the $1,300 set, but I can definitely go buy that one knife.
Kurt Elster • 18:52.100
Yeah, you just want like the one really nice knife. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Man, those order change emails suck. They're always like, I ordered the wrong size. I meant to change the shipping address. Oops, I was drunk. Instead of making customers email you that stuff, let them fix it themselves, with Cleverific. Cleverific is a self-service portal that lets customers edit their orders without bugging you. That means you get fewer headaches, customers get faster fulfillment, and there's fewer returns overall. Everybody wins. Peter Manning, New York Cut their support tickets by 99% with Cleverific. You want in on that? Get 50% off the Pro Plan, just $49 a month. exclusively for listeners of the unofficial Shopify podcast. Go to Cleverific. com slash unofficial and use promo code Kurt50. Done. Problem solved. That's Cleverific Looking at looking at your analytics, where does the traffic come from? You know, is this all email traffic? Is this, you know, or are we paying for Facebook ads? Like where are we getting these people? One bit of context. Uh I believe your traffic goes up 63% year over year.
Brandon Horoho • 19:59.480
Yeah, I've it is sixty-three percent. Yeah, cause cause it's actually greater than our like sales because we just had so much traffic. with like SEO and like all the other cool stuff. Like our website is becoming a hub for information, not just pure sales. It's a place you can go and visit every single week and not have to try to buy something too. So Yeah, traffic's been nuts. Um, but you know, our our paid strategy for Black Friday, um, you know, it's not about the week of Black Friday. I'm all about pulling that slingshot back. As far as possible and starting that like so so we started our like aggressive Black Friday paid spend in August. So, you know, so a couple months before. So like to me, I always like I tell my team that like the the excitement, the new customer, the funnel, like that thing had like all of your work is done before November. Because like, you know, we we we make a very expensive product. It's not an impulse buy to go buy a five hundred dollar knife. So that person has to be like in our funnel, getting warmed up, reading the emails, understanding how drops work. It's not like you know, an easy thing. Like there's there's a lot of friction to our brand. Um so so like so that's what I was saying. Like all of our paid uh paid spend, you know, ramped up hard at the end of August through September, through October. And then, you know, into November, um, and we obviously, you know, we we increased spend and awareness and retargeting during that week, but you know, all of our traffic came from our triggered, triggered marketing. you know, a majority of our, you know, everything comes from our SMS list, our email list. You know, we have a well over a million person email list that we clean. Every quarter, you know, we have a top 1% Klaviyo count. Um, and same thing, we you know with our SMS list, you know, it's massive. So that's like that's the biggest thing. And you know, I was, you know, I screamed about this on the last podcast, every podcast, I'm on, own your data. Own it from day one. Don't care if your grandma buys a knife or buys something from your website. Like make sure she does it through your Shopify and you have her email. Like I cannot. express that enough to Shopify store owners, anyone in the e-com space, anyone growing a business, own your data. Like you want to be able to control your own weather. And that's what MKC does. And so when we send out that text message, our website just gets flooded. And like you want to be able to have that power at will.
Kurt Elster • 22:24.799
The magic of that that first party data. So the idea like ramping up the spend in August, the idea is really let's fill the top of funnel now. So that we have those emails, we have those those phone numbers in our SMS list, and we have you know customers pixeled for retargeting.
Brandon Horoho • 22:40.180
Right. Yep, yeah, exactly. Yep.
Kurt Elster • 22:42.740
That makes sense. Uh and then interesting, you clean that email list quarterly to keep it uh well to keep cost down, but also uh you imagine that also improves open rate, improves deliverability.
Brandon Horoho • 22:56.460
Yes, yes. So like our our email list is everything. So we not only clean it quarterly, we also we we run very aggressive segments. like 90-day segments. Most brands are not running a three-month segment, like active segments. So you either had to open an email, clicked an email, visited our website. And if you haven't done any of those in three months, we stopped sending to you. Um like I and and we we have a very very aggressive sending schedule and like you know this from being part of this ecosystem like we have a very untraditional send schedule like You know, we send an email, we send out one email on Saturday, we send one email on Tuesday, we send one email on Wednesday, and then we send three emails on Thursday. We send two text messages on Thursday. So we we hammer the people with this stuff. And like I market I I always say like I try to market so hard I want you to unsubscribe.
Kurt Elster • 23:47.760
Like buyer get off my list is the the thinking there.
Brandon Horoho • 23:50.960
Yes, yeah. Buyer get off the list. So like that's and like I said, it's just and we're unapologetic about it. We're here to grow a business. We're here to bring back American manufacturing. You know, it's not like the old days of Yeti where like, hey, we want you to come watch this film and fall in love with the brand. Like, I love that strategy. That strategy was awesome. But like we don't have the time to do that. Like, it's like, hey, Are you are you gonna join this with this revolution of bringing back American manufacturing? Like and this is how you can support it. And we're gonna show you how we're gonna reinvest the money and we're gonna hire a bunch of people and we're gonna make you a really good product that we're gonna stand by for generations. not just for your lifetime, but for when you pass that knife down to your kids, we cover it. So that's, you know, the kind of ethos that we have and like And then you know, just the kind of attitude we have when we talk about like list cleaning and email and all that. We're very unapologetic.
Kurt Elster • 24:40.139
So on You know, your your send cadence is is aggressive, you know, on a a regular week with these product drops for Black Friday week Yeah. Well how how aggressive do we get here?
Brandon Horoho • 24:54.620
Oh, I mean, I was like like I said, like Mike, my number two who handles like our in our entire like econ stack. Like we just kept on looking at each other. We're just like, when is the unsubscribed gonna go up? When is the open rate gonna go down? And I mean, we hammered people. So like I said, so like, you know, we pretty much took our Thursday send sequence, you know, three emails, two text messages. And we did that almost every day. I think the only day we took off was Wednesday. And we still sent, I think one or two. We still sent a morning all 90 day active in the morning. And then we sent retargeting in the afternoon for what some couple things that were left over in stock. So I mean we're still sending at least two emails a day from that, you know, from the Monday before to the Sunday, so the entire week. Just hammering people.
Kurt Elster • 25:40.320
So in like is that the that's our our North Star? We're gonna look at unsubscribe and open rate. And when those start to slip, that's where we know like, okay, we're at our limit here, and then we'd pull back.
Brandon Horoho • 25:51.419
Right, right. I I I that's the only way. And then also customer service complaints. Like we got a lot of customer service complaints, but then I would go and look, they didn't unsubscribe. They just complained.
Kurt Elster • 26:00.840
So that tells me something.
Brandon Horoho • 26:03.559
Yeah, they're still here. So yeah.
Kurt Elster • 26:09.559
I don't reply. I just scroll cli I scroll down and click unsubscribe for them. Yeah, let me take care of that for you. And I will refund your zero dollars. Um so you know the other thing that's I think new to MKC this year or maybe you know expanded this year is a VIP program. And I worked on this a little bit for you, getting it to work in Shopify Flow to identify these these customers with with high customer LTVs, repeat purchasers. And I would have to imagine, you know, the VAP program is pretty cool. How does you reward people with you You dil uh delight and surprise, where it's like they hit certain tiers internally, and then they they earned a reward based on that. And it's just a very clever variation on a loyalty program, except like really just done really well. Is does that play into our our Black Friday at all or just, you know, another program that's nice to have?
Brandon Horoho • 27:09.320
Yeah, so uh I I you know Unfortunately, it doesn't play into Black Friday because it is surprising delight. We don't talk about it like publicly. We don't we like when you're a new customer and Like you don't know that's even an option. Like there's nowhere to sign up for it. It's something that we do manually. I mean, like there's some automation in the background to help trigger, but we we've actually hired a person that runs this. Like it's not set up through an app or anything like that. It's like, hey, you know, it's set up through you know Shopify flows and things like that, and then it's like linked up to our clavius so we can tell when people hit certain spend limits. Um but the idea is is like It it all goes back to like how do you want to be treated if you were a customer of another brand? You know, if you're spending a couple thousand dollars with us, like you should get a gift, like because you are re like you are literally investing in our company so that we can reinvest it and grow it. So like that's how we did it, you know, and it started off as just a couple tiers. And then people started hitting levels that we thought would we would never have customers hit. I mean It's not a secret. I mean, we have people spending tens of thousands of dollars, you know, single people spending tens of thousands of dollars with the brand. So as they continue to to reinvest in our company, like That's the right thing to do. We don't do wholesale, we don't do retailers, we don't do any of that stuff. So, you know, how Josh and I always looked at it is like instead of taking out like the wholesale buyer to Cabela's and Send, you know, taking him golfing on a golf trip or taking him on an elk hunt for forty thousand dollars, like this one dude that that controls a weird destiny to some of these companies, like Let's take that money and spread it over the the people that have invested in our company that are helping us grow. So, you know, we don't do since since we don't do that, we're like let's let's take that those incentives that most companies use and give them back to the customers. And, you know, it's worked out amazing and it's and it's awesome. And it changes. There's no like because it has to change because like, you know, some tiers are like, hey, you might get this backpack. Um, but then that company we were working with doesn't make that backpack anymore. So we either change the backpack, we change the company, like it's always changing. You know, we give knives out at a certain point. And sometimes we don't have the same knife in stock that we gave out the month before. So you might get something different. You know, certain you know, so it's always changing and that's where like the Facebook group we have with the MKC User Society and this It's probably the most active Facebook group I've ever seen and they watch this VIP program like a hawk because they're like, wait a minute, I didn't get this when I hit level two. Wait a minute, you got this when you hit level three? And and and and and that's what I love about it being surprised and delight. And it's it and it's set on our terms so that we can, you know, we can change things and do things and it's So it's a lot of fun. It's it's it's wildly successful. And again, it's all about like what's the right thing to do to the you know for the customer. Like if you were the customer of the brand, how would you want to be treated? Um and let's face it too. At the end of the day, we have 94% male demo. Um, you know, and when we run the data on like finding out who our demo is, you know, they're very successful. hardworking, you know, men, and I can say that because that's like our that's just our demo. Um that you know a lot of them own their own businesses. A lot of them are, you know, they're you know previous blue collar who have worked them worked themselves into management positions. Um, and you know, I'll just say it, like guys don't get a lot of gifts. And usually when they do get gifts for Christmas and stuff like that, it's you know, the sweaters, the ties, the the stuff that they can go and buy any day. So I think there is something extremely rewarding when you're gifting, you know, our demo something that they're getting something special that no one else is getting in the mail as a surprise. Um, you know, I think it just hits a little harder, if that makes sense.
Kurt Elster • 30:49.540
Oh, a hundred percent. I mean, well I got I got the MKC Christ Christmas box. And e like that okay, there wasn't a knife in there, but man, even that was really exciting. In last year's there's you had the fur trapper hat in there. I'm still wearing that thing. And uh this year there was the uh a cast iron pan in there. I hadn't owned that thirty seconds out of the box before my wife was like, That's mine now. Yeah, sh she got that. Yeah. It's good stuff. Like a lot of the the accessories, you know, the branded stuff really adds to, you know, like the full collection and the feel of it. Um you wanted the numbers in your looking at your Shopify analytics. One of the numbers that really jumped out to me is return customer rate. Return customer rate is unusually high here. Fifty-eight percent over Black Friday. Wow. I mean that's like subscription consumable businesses. Would be envious of that number, right? If I was selling coffee, I would be thrilled with this number. To have that on hard goods, on durable goods. Quite extraordinary. Uh also means you're getting a ton of new customers during Black Friday. Tell me about this. How do we feel about it?
Brandon Horoho • 31:59.680
So it it it's so funny because for the past like we we we touched we touched on this a little bit earlier in the podcast, but like 55% to me, like ever like I am doing everything I can to get that number as low as possible. I want it like we saw it, I think, yesterday. Um, it dipped down into the 30s for the first time in company history. And me and my CFO were like high fiving each other. Like that was the greatest thing we've ever seen because like we've been like our our customers just come back so much. And like it's our retargeting, our lower funnel is just so healthy. The brand sentiment, like all that stuff, you know, we have a n uh over a 90 NPS score. you know, over you know, for the past like four years. So it's just, so my goal is to get new customers into the funnel. Like, and that's like, I mean, that's been my number one goal this year is to just get more Brand new net new customers into the funnel. So when when I see that, you know, on drop nights on Thursday nights, you know, I'll see returning customer rate at like 85, 90%. Like and then like throughout the week it will start dipping down because of like in stock sales will change. So like like there's like we'll see insane like return customer rates depending on the models and things like that. You know, something like the Blood Brother, you know, drop, which is a very niche drop that's perfectly tailored to our customer. Like that's why we made it. Like that that had like a high, you know, 80s return rate on the last Thursday. So um I I again like we would we have it just the support we have from our like fan base and our customers is just insane. But our goal is to also get new customers into that funnel too.
Kurt Elster • 33:39.039
Yeah, the the hits keep coming here because your AOV went up too. And not a little. It went up twenty percent. Year over, year over Black Friday. If I all right, if I have to hazard a guess, it is the success of the culinary line that helped drive that. That's my theory. What are your feelings on the AOV going up 21%?
Brandon Horoho • 33:58.220
Yeah I there's there's there's no question that a $1300 chef set is going to change, you know, that. Especially whenever your your average AOV through the year is, you know, like we're like, you know, high 200s, low 300s, depending on the models that mix that month. Um, so it like the the the culinary set, the steak sets definitely helped with that. But then also too, when we did the honey knives, we did our most expensive, you know, those carbon fiber ultras are, you know, some of our most premium knives too. So that helped a ton. And then you add on like all the t-shirts and all the hats and all those things for the add-ons. Like we we run that rebuy app and we're another one of those top 1% rebuy customers or you know, you know, clients. Um our rebuy just like just it's so easy to add a hat and a t-shirt and a cutting board and some seasoning and all of our accessories that we we've seen the highest add-on rate that we've ever seen before too in history.
Kurt Elster • 34:49.520
So it's cross cells.
Brandon Horoho • 34:50.879
Mm-hmm. Yeah, a lot of cross cells.
Kurt Elster • 34:52.399
Cross cells definitely help. And that's like that's the value of having those complimentary products, those accessory products. Mm-hmm. That just that speak to the brand. And I don't know, they They make it more fun. I don't know if fun's the right word, but yeah, they they breathe life into the brand, you know, more so than just if it was only knives. Mm-hmm.
Brandon Horoho • 35:12.940
And it and and like that and all of our products come from the marketing team. You know, it's it's the people that have like that are one step removed from the customer. Like we know our customer and we are our customer and like And it gives us a chance to do something fun that doesn't tax downstairs. You know what I mean? Like when I say tax downstairs, but like it doesn't affect the manufacturing capabilities of the knife side. So we're able to go out and go and source and work with other brands and collabs and do all these things that we know that our customers are already, you know, purchasing from and things like that. And You know, like next year we have a whole American-made like apparel side that's coming that's gonna be it's insane. Like I spent, you know, five years, six, seven years in the apparel world and We're doing things that people said you're you're not gonna be able to do as a brand that sells, you know, as a sub-brand. And like we're like we're like we're literally going to the mills and finding factor, you know, finding fabric. and then shipping it across the country to California to get sewn. And then it's it's gonna be like our custom hoodies, our custom hats, our custom t-shirts, you know, all of our labels, all of our buttons, like And it's like that to me is like one of the most exciting projects going into 2026. And we get to do that because like we have this customer base that wants to support our brand and wear our clothes and But we're also doing it in the right way. We're trying to figure out how to do it, you know, domestically, which is not easy. It's it's not impossible. It's just not easy.
Kurt Elster • 36:35.440
Yeah. No, it isn't. It isn't. This one, I'm not sure how it happened. Conversion rate. Conversion rate over like year over year went up 12% But we're not discounting. Is it because we're running free gift with purchase promos? Like what do you speculating, what do you think bumped our conversion rate up at a time where you know typically conversion rates have slipped a little year over year?
Brandon Horoho • 36:55.940
Mm-hmm. So it it it's been a while and to full transparency too, like our conversion rate has been down all year. Um and it's been something I've been tracking, but like our conversion rate's always been weird because we we've always sold out, you know, and there's like I could tell you there's been times where No, we sold a thousand knives and there was two thousand people with knives in their cart that got the their products ripped out and they couldn't buy them. So like how like how do you equate you know conversion rate as a marketer or business owner? So it's something we've never really tracked, but this year it was down a lot. And we think that's just from like the type of content we're putting on our website. We're putting a lot of consumable content, a lot of SEO, a lot of things like that. So hopefully people are just going to the website learning something and leaving. Totally fine with that. Hopefully they come back later through our retargeting. Um but this but and then we also did the giant truck giveaway. which, you know, flooded that one page. You know, you know, we had you know it was a million impressions just on that page itself. So like the and there's nothing to buy there because it's just sign up And it's just you know it's just an opt-in. You know, like we're we're not doing the buy buy X, get, you know, so many rewards and you know, get extra entries and things like that.
Kurt Elster • 38:02.700
Yeah, you try to do like the raffle tickets. Which we don't know is they work well, but you know the whole extra extra thing.
Brandon Horoho • 38:08.559
Totally, totally. So but going into into Black Friday, I think that I think the biggest thing is that versus last year. Last year we didn't have knives. We sold out. And we were like we just like had some very niche knives that were not good gifts. Um so just having our our top products in stock, you know. you know just like you know just going into today like it's insane like where are our averages right now you know it's only 1048 like that's like that's what's helping our conversion rate we have products to sell versus versus years before
Kurt Elster • 38:37.299
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Brandon Horoho • 39:50.240
Our shipping department is insane. It's like I don't understand how they do it with the small space that they have. You know, we have we between even Outside of knives, we have over 800 SKUs and our apparel and accessories and stuff like that. That's all housed across the hallway from my office right here. Um and like they so the biggest priority is if it has a knife, the goal is to get that out within 24 hours. If it's just an apparel product that gets bumped to lower priority. So, and our our team just does so well at organizing all the packages before. And then what we do is we'll actually turn the assembly line, we'll stop making knives for a couple hours, everyone turns into shipping. So like that's like one thing I don't see a lot of other companies doing. So what we'll do is we'll flex labor from you know, one department to another department just to get the right, you know, process done when it needs to get done. So that was something we did, but and I'm not gonna say it was easy. They, I mean, we shipped over, you know, 15,000 items. You know, we had a very, very, very small, you know, error rate. Uh, but like just the entire that shipping department is Absolutely insane. And I can't wait to give them a little bit more space and a little bit more room to to like to even better organize and stuff like that. But it's it's like That's and that and that's like what every like business advisor tells us to do is like hey you like when are you guys gonna go to a 3PL? We're like we're not We're never gonna go to 3PL. If anything, we'll go launch our own 3PL. But like the fact that you buy a knife and it ships the next day is our guarantee. Like That's something we can never risk doing a 3PL. Or if you buy a knife from us, but then you added a bunch of things and this those orders come in different shipments. Like I've I've had that happen. It's just sloppy. It's not a good customer, you know, experience. So I think we're just gonna kinda own our shipping from here on out.
Kurt Elster • 41:39.140
Like we well, and you also the unboxing is part of the experience. Like you always have really great packaging. Um, there's an unboxing experience to it, and that stuff When you're doing it all internally, much easier to maintain, adjust, etc. Versus with the 3PL, they really it makes sense, but they really resist having anything bespoke per client.
Brandon Horoho • 42:02.180
Yeah, and that's the thing, is like our our our packaging is it's it's it's a it's labor intensive, but it's worth it because it is it is like opening up a gift every single time you buy a knife.
Kurt Elster • 42:13.460
So I want to know, like let's let's zoom out here for our Shopify store owners who are listening. Because like you're a humble guy, but if I'm listening to it, I'm still like, hey, yeah, that's great. You know, 1. 7 million over Black Friday. Sounds nice, you know. I'd like that too. And number one, with this drop model, is this sustainable? You know, do we think we could we could keep using Will these same tricks work? I say tricks, but will the same playbook work in two years?
Brandon Horoho • 42:42.180
Right. Uh it it's gonna shift. It's gonna change. Um the drop model is always gonna stay. Cause What would would would I want people like people are so hung up on the drop model and they're so hung up on um like Building false scarcity. The problem is is that we don't do false scarcity.
Kurt Elster • 43:00.940
Yeah, it's not false is the thing.
Brandon Horoho • 43:03.339
Yeah, right, right. Literally, like I've been telling people, trust me, if I had more knives, I'd sell them to you. Like this is how many we could make Thursday morning. The what what I want people to do is to not look at it as a drop model. It's just that we have a like a shit ton of energy every week. that that we that we just focus on one knife every week. So like that's the that's the that's what I think is always gonna work is that you know we we're always gonna have knives in stock. And, you know, what we learned is, you know, we we all thought the same thing, you know, back in, you know, 2021, 2022, 2023, when we were we only had knives to supply Thursday night and we would sell out Thursday night and we'd have no knives on our website until next Thursday. And people are like, well, you're just, you know, you're just building up the you know, the scarcity going into Thursday. What's gonna happen once you have knives in stock? the and we were like, no, you're you're and we kind of agreed with them. We're like this is this is we'll probably have to shift to a different model or something like that. But then what we found out is that, you know There's there's different customers. There's customers that want to go on Thursday night order that knife. And then there's also customers like, I just want to order a knife for my dad. His birthday is in a week. Can I just buy him a knife? And like so our drop cells have never you know they never dropped or decreased. when our in stock goes up. Our in stock sales only have increased and our and our drops have actually and then, you know, now that we can manufacture more, our drop sizes have gotten much bigger. And that's and and it's, you know, it's That's a hard thing to like talk about because it's just like we don't like no we're we're selling more knives Thursday night and we're selling more knives during the day. So it it just it works out but but we have this But like we're always showing up. We're always putting energy in. We're we're doing these beautiful photo shoots, these beautiful videos, like we're all this entertainment. We're giving your behind the scene in the vlog. Like So that's it's not it's not easy. It's a lot of work. I mean we uh we figured out it's like eighty something pieces of content a week when you break it out over Instagram and TikTok and YouTube and our product pages and Like all the Josh's page, my page, like all this stuff. So it's a lot of work, but but once you do it every single week, you know, those buckets are there. It's just my creative team's job to put the coolest stuff in that bucket. And like they love that because there's no diff there's no decision fatigue. Like they don't like, oh man, like what should I work on this week? I'm like, I know exactly what you need to work on. We're launching Blackfoot Damascus and I need the best videos possible. And they they run out and go do that, come back with the greatest content. So like I said, like to me, it's I the same way that you have lean, you know, manufacturing, you know, systems and stuff like that, like that's kind of like what we've built on the marketing side is, you know, we've we've removed all the decision fatigue from the creatives and the marketers and they know exactly what to work on every week. And that drop model, you know, it may change where like, you know, we can't do the sixth restock of the stone wall anymore. Like we're seeing like like that's just something we can't do. So now we have to be like, All right, going into 2026, 2027, like, you know, our drops might have to get, you know, there might be a little bit more of a custom feel to it. Maybe we're getting more into the Damascus or we're doing something with a different handle or doing something Things like that, but figure out what the customer wants and give that to them.
Kurt Elster • 46:17.559
And for someone who may be struggling this year, you know, not seeing the same year over year growth. Is you know, what do you think is the magic that MKC has that just you see consistent growth year after year? Is that Having that consistency of marketing plan where it's like we know exactly what we're going to be doing every week and that's going to happen no matter what. Like, is that the the secret sauce? Is that the takeaway?
Brandon Horoho • 46:44.240
I mean I I think you nailed it. I think that I think that is exactly what it is. Is like we're not the smartest marketers and we're not the most proficient marketers. I mean you work with us, Kurt. You know that as well.
Kurt Elster • 46:53.859
See, I no, I I work with you and I agree. I I don't agree. I think really quite good.
Brandon Horoho • 47:00.260
We're we're we're we're good, but like but like when when I go look at like some of like the really good performance market who are who are able to dive into meta ads and manipulate meta ads and do all this stuff like that's not our forte. Our thing is like, A, we we know how to build culture, we know how to build a community, and we know how to entertain and we know how to you know, just bring energy every single week. You know, we we went through this full branding ex and you know identity, you know, and the creative agency looked at us and goes, like, you're not a company. You're a rock band. Like like he's like he's like I mean that he he's like he's like it's different because it's like you guys are almost dropping a new album every week and you're coming out with new creative and you're doing all this stuff. And it made us realize like that's, you know, and we we pull a lot of our inspiration from, you know, music and stuff like that. And but like I think that's like I think that's honestly like how companies moving forward are gonna have to. Like you have to win with creative, you have to win with you know, collaborations, like that's what's gonna beat all this like AI slop is because like AI can't, you know, fake, you know, Josh going and giving a house away with Chase Rice, one of the biggest country music stars. Like those are things that like we have to, you know, manufacture ourselves. And you know, you just can't, you know, there's no prompt for that, I guess, is the best way to put it.
Kurt Elster • 48:15.760
Yeah. Yeah, you want to do the things that that are difficult to replicate, do things that don't necessarily scale to a point. So, all right, going forward, what's next for MKC? What's what can we expect in 2026?
Brandon Horoho • 48:30.299
Yeah, so I mean 2026 is gonna be a big year for us. Um it might not be a big year of like top line growth. But it's going to be a big year for us because like we're A, we're moving into our new building. Uh we're bringing in three to four new processes on the manufacturing side that we've never done before. Um, you know, and just like and also too, like 99% of most companies, knife companies don't do these things in-house, they outsource them. Um the problem is like we're just we're just constraining our contractors in the United States, you know, for the heat treat and stuff like that. So we're gonna bring a lot of processes in house. That's gonna be really taxing on our engineers, our machinists, like all that stuff. So There's going to be a lot of internal growth that you're not going to really see on the like the marketing side. And we're obviously going to tell the stories, but like, you know, it's it's hard to like understand like how hard that is to onboard these processes. Um, but then also too, you know, it's no secret, you know, the one knife that we don't have in our repertoire is the folder. You go look at any of our competition or any of our peers in the industry, you know, they sell, you know, eight folders to one fixed blade. We only sell fixed blades now. So our goal is to manufacture the best folding knife possible in 2026. You know, making one folder is easy. Making a thousand folder is a little harder, but trying to make you know enough this scale so that everyone who wants an MKC folder, that's a whole nother different process. Like, so it's it's gonna be a lot of work on our team to figure out how to do that and you know not break systems and also put out a you know a superior product that you know matches this the same quality as our fixed plates. So that's that's our 2026. You know, we we have a lot of stuff that's kind of like on not on so much on the marketing gross side, but it's like on the internal business side.
Kurt Elster • 50:19.500
Man, a folder that I would have to I need one of those real bad.
Brandon Horoho • 50:24.180
I know. Addressable market from like hunters, it was just 2% of the United States to like anyone with a pocket. There's a lot of pockets.
Kurt Elster • 50:38.240
Like, oh, well someone has a box that needs to be opened. Ten dads appear with folding knives. Myself included.
Brandon Horoho • 50:46.560
But Yeah, yeah, so like yeah, so we're we're really, really excited about that. Um it it's it's It's gonna be it it's a large mountain that we have to climb, but uh it's it's definitely gonna be worth it. It's just gonna take some some really smart people to help us do that.
Kurt Elster • 51:03.120
And man, Brandon and the MKC team, dude, congrats. 1. 7 million on a Black Friday. Incredible. And uh that 104% year over year growth. I mean, just unreal. I'd love to see it, having worked on the site, you know, having having done a lot of that work. It's exciting. I am I'm thrilled for you. I'm thrilled for MKC. Where if we want to get on the list, where do we go?
Brandon Horoho • 51:28.440
Uh honestly just just the MKC homepage. If you can't find our opt-in or to sign up, like that's my problem. I gotta figure that out. But trust me, like you should get inundated with pop-ups that you helped me set up, Kurt, and all that stuff and all the landing pages. So Um that that's the best thing. Sign up for the text messages. Like that's the greatest thing we can do. We don't send out as many text messages. We do emails. It's just like, hey, this knife's available. Do you want it? Yes or no? Simple as that. We don't we're not gonna sit there and hound you about every little discount and thing like that. So Um, but then also too, follow us on our socials. We're very transparent about our company. Our in our YouTube, you know, like we post a behind-the-scenes video every single week of how we're building this company. Um, you know, our goal is to inspire other companies to do what we're doing.
Kurt Elster • 52:10.540
The it yeah, I know I enjoy I follow you on Instagram and I enjoy it a lot. Got good stories, it just A plus quality content. Brandon Horojo, Montana Knife Company, thank you so much.
Brandon Horoho • 52:22.299
Oh, thank you, Kurt. And again, I appreciate, you know, just A, your friendship, but then also to like your partnership, you know, with MKC and helping us, you know, with all these crazy endeavors. Like you said, we know we market on hard mode and we we throw some problems to you. that I'm like, let's just have Kurt figure it out. And and and and right now you're batting a thousand man. Like I just appreciate all the help and support. We couldn't do it without you.
Kurt Elster • 52:45.280
Thank I appreciate it. Thank you. You made my day. Yeah. All right, I gotta go. I gotta go write some show notes and go shopping for some knives.
Brandon Horoho • 52:52.560
Awesome. I appreciate it, Kurt. Hey, have a good one.
Kurt Elster • 52:56.400
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