320 | Turning Customers Into Your Best Marketers | with Brandon Horoho

Brandon Horoho

Our idea is like from day one is if a customer posts or tags about us, we're starting a conversation. We are resharing every piece of content. 

Chase Clymer

Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, a podcast dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And I believe running a direct-to-consumer brand does not have to be complicated or a guessing game. 

On this podcast, we interview founders and experts who are putting in the work and creating  real results. 

I also share my own insights from running our top Shopify consultancy, Electric Eye. We cut the fluff in favor of facts to help you grow your Ecommerce business.

Let's get on with the show. 

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. I'm your host Chase Clymer. And today I'm welcoming an amazing founder, Brandon Horoho, who comes to us from Montana Knife Company. Brandon, how are you doing? 

Brandon Horoho

Doing great, man. Thanks for having me on. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. I'm excited to chat. So,  the name gives it away a little bit. But for those that don't know, could you kind of let us know what you're up to over there at Montana Knife Company? 

Brandon Horoho

Yeah. So I mean, do you want me to start from the beginning? 

Chase Clymer

Well, what products are you selling? Let's just start there. 

Brandon Horoho

Okay, perfect. So Montana Knife Company. Obviously, we are a knife company. If you ask Meta or Google, we are an apparel company that occasionally sells knives. So we specialize in high end fixed blade hunting knives. 

And then last year or the year before, we branched into culinary knives and we're slowly getting into tactics. But the idea is, first blood the last bite. So if you're a hunter, there is a knife for every process of when you're in the field hunting the animal, the whole way down to you're eating the steak on your dining room table with our steak knives. So we have a knife for everything from point A to point Z. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah, that definitely lays it out for us. Now, take me back in time. Where did you get this idea? What was the catalyst to Brandon going, I'm going to start a knife company. 

Brandon Horoho

Right. So, we have a wild story of how this company started. Not kidding when I say this, they'll probably be a really cool documentary or movie or something based off of this because my business partner, Josh Smith, started making knives at the age of 11. 

So we always say, this company has only been around for four and a half, five years right now, but we always say it's a 30 year overnight success because he started making knives at the age of 11. His little league baseball coach was a knife maker. They started making knives together. 

And then before he knew it, he was testing to become a master bladesmith at the age of 19. And he achieved that. There's only like 130 master bladesmiths in the entire world. He still holds the record of earning it at the youngest age possible. And he's held that title for over 20 years now. 

He started making knives and he started becoming one of the top knife makers in the world. He was making swords for sheiks and super high end knives for famous people. And his knives were anywhere between $ 5,000 and like $30,000. 

Super high end Damascus knives. I mean, I don't even wanna call them knives. They were pieces of art. There are things that will be in museums when all of us are gone for years and years, years and years. So, but the idea of Montana Knife Company, the idea was like, Josh was born in Lincoln, Montana. His roots are in hunting, the outdoors.

And he was making these beautiful hunting knives that weren't getting used. So he's like, but I want to make hunting knives that are actually the people that aren't scared to take out the field and use and lose and like all this stuff. 

So he's like, those 30 years of making, you know, hunting knives, like super high end, he's like, well, let's just steal it down, take away all the stuff that makes it super expensive and just leave the things that function like what makes a really, really good knife. And that's how he started the company. 

We launched it with one model, which was called the Blackfoot, which is named after the river here, outside of his hometown of Lincoln. And the idea was like, can we make a hunting knife that we hand to any hunter going on any hunt anywhere in the world? And that's where Montana Knife Company started. He started with the prototypes, and then he and I actually met through some mutual friends. 

So my end, like I'm just the business side. I'm the background of the marketing, the growth, the revenue, all that. And from there, that's where it started. And we launched a company like peak COVID. I'm talking like April during the lockdowns. And it was tough because not only were we starting a knife, an online knife company because there was no retail at the time. There's none of that stuff. 

We're also starting an American manufacturing business at the same time.Pretty much scale two businesses over the past four, four and a half years at the same time, which has been pretty difficult, I'm not gonna lie. 

Chase Clymer

I've got a million questions. The first being, obviously, Josh is known for his craftsmanship of these high-end one-of-a-kind knives. Did he also have much of a social media following or presence that helped the catalyst of the business and help you get those for sales? 

Brandon Horoho

Yeah. I think at the time I actually had a bigger Instagram following than he did at the time, but, but he was known. He was really known in the actual knife space. He was forged in fire, I think season one and season two. So he definitely had a little bit of a following to bring in, to kick this off. 

But it wasn't until the two of us got together and we interjected pretty much like, I mean the first batch of knives we had were like almost 200 knives. We seeded almost all of those knives away. And we're like any celebrity that we can think of that would take a knife, we were sending a $300 knife to. 

So that's what really started kind of kicking off the brand was just like, hey, we need to get this out. Get this in the hands of as many people as possible. Get awesome reviews. And then obviously since we did that, we ran out of knives.

So, that point is actually where the whole drop model kicked in. And we never actually meant to be like a drop model brand. This has never been the idea. The problem is that there was a point where we were like three or four months into the business and we had nothing to sell. 

So we had to start pre-marketing for the drop that is coming that we think these knives might be done by December 18th and we know we market up there. And we marketed just really hard until December 18th. And then December 18th happened and we never thought we would sell out. Like that was never the thought. 

And within 14 minutes, we sold our first batch and then we were out. It was that one. I think it was like just a little over a hundred knives. So, it wasn't a huge run, but it was, it's not a small custom batch run by any means either. But we sold out of those within 14 minutes or something like that. 

And then, there was a two or three months lag in between those between the next one because we literally sold those, put another batch on our credit cards, all the raw steel and the handles and like all the material that we needed. Josh made all those, took about two and a half months. 

Then we had another drop and those sold out even faster. And then it was honestly kind of a rinse and repeat for the first two years before we started like forecasting and getting drops in between and things like that. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. How long was Josh still making the product for? 

Brandon Horoho

Oh, man. I mean, he was still sharpening and assembling the knives for at least the first year to year and a half. He was a major part of it. 

Chase Clymer

When did you and he realized that, all right, we need some other people in here. We've got something. And as an owner, you got to get out of the shop. 

Brandon Horoho

Right. So I mean, that was probably by our second drop. This is one thing that's amazing about Josh is he just has this blind faith in this mission. I was still running my agency. I had a Shopify, the Shopify and Klaviyo agency, a bunch of clients, all this stuff. So I was able to kind of float on the backend and he's like, we sold out that first batch and this is what I'm meant to do. And he quit his job on December 31st. He had a six figure lineman business here, you know, lineman job with the state of Montana. 

And I thought he was nuts. I'm like, dude, now I feel responsible for my salary, your salary, your family's being. But it was the best decision that he could have ever made because it ended up working out like there was no plan B at that point. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah. Burn the boats. Not my favorite strategy, but it definitely works for some folks. 

Brandon Horoho

No, and then to answer your question, I think we hired our first or first help.

He was temporary and he's actually currently still working with us was an absolutely amazing 17 year old. His name is Tristan and that dude is like literally running the shop downstairs now and he's only 21 right now. It's one of the coolest things that Josh and I are most proud of is that we know we've helped mentor this kid that we say kid but he's a guy now.

Chase Clymer

Yeah, that's amazing. All right, so walk me through. You've got this drop model and it's quite established. How are you getting the word out about it? Obviously, you've got a lot of experience with email but how are you getting those emails? 

Brandon Horoho

Right. So here's the hardest part: we can't advertise. We can't do paid ads at all. Because Facebook deems us a weapon. Google deems us a weapon. It took us almost four years to run our first ad and we had to do it through some loopholes and all this stuff. 

And it's working great, but it's not direct, like, Hey, here's this knife that's won every single best knife of the year,  competition for the past like four years, go buy this knife. We have to run ads that are like brand ethos ads. But in the early years, in the early days, how we were just gaining mass eyeballs was just, we went hard on Instagram.

So that was, not only did I have an agency, but also I was a big photographer at the time. And I had literally 10 years of Montana photography that we're just sitting on hard drives and stuff like that. So, that's what I use as content in between knife posts. So it just wasn't knife posts after knife posts after knife posts. We were kind of selling the idea of Montana. And this was like before 

Yellowstone blew everything up. It was that height that I wanted to get out and travel. It's also COVID. Everyone's locked in their houses.

Chase Clymer

Yeah. They want to see the great outdoors. 

Brandon Horoho

Right. So I think it was really good. Every other post was something from my old catalog. So we used that and that was able to go viral on Instagram. And we were able to get more likes than we would if it was just a business, hey, buy this knife post. 

On top of that, going back to the seating, that was huge for us. We could buy ads, we're just like, let's just send knives and we send them to like UFC fighters. And we truly treated this company from day one, like we were a Yeti, not like we were this niche hunting knife company. 

And we only focused on hunters. Like we focused, we were just like, Hey, let's try to get in the hands of Joe Rogan. And you know, there was a viral video our first year, Dana White's social media manager sliced his hand open on one of our knives and Dana White went live on Instagram of them stitching his handout versus his hand up. 

And we're trying to figure out why we just got like 20,000 followers and our pages blowing up and like all that stuff. So we had a bunch of cool little moments of us just from seeding knives to celebrities that, you know, helped us pop during those times. 

But everything funneled back to like, since we never had knives on the website, everything was optimized to collect emails and SMS. And still to that day, that is still like our marketing, ethos is like everything is about owning our own data so we can just own it. And when we want to send hundreds of thousands of people to the website, we just have to send out an email and a text message. 

Chase Clymer

Hey, Shopify store owners. Have you ever wondered if your store is leaving money on the table? Imagine increasing sales without spending more money on ads. Sounds too good to be true. Well, it's not.

I'd like to introduce you to StoreTester. StoreTester is a done-for-you conversion rate optimization service for Shopify merchants. 

Could your store benefit from increased conversion rates, higher average order values, and improved revenue per visitor? StoreTester could be the perfect partner for you. From ideation to implementation, this full service A-B testing service takes all of the guesswork out of improving Shopify stores.

Stortester does all the work for you while offering month-to-month transparent fixed pricing. It gets even better. They believe in their service so much they're offering the first test for free for qualified merchants. 

Let me repeat, the first test is free for qualified merchants. Curious to see if you qualify for a free test? Reach out today. Visit storetester.com to schedule an intro call.

That's www.S-T-O-R-E-T-E-S-T-E-R.com. Schedule an intro call today to see if you qualify for a free test. 

Hey everybody, today's podcast is brought to you by Intelligems, the ultimate profit optimization tool for Shopify merchants. I'm telling you this, obviously, you know I own an agency. We use Intelligems when we're running split testing and CRO stuff for all of our clients. 

Are you looking to maximize your profits? Intelligems offers data-driven solutions to optimize your content, prices, discounts, and shipping rates. Join over 500 happy clients who have seen significant improvements.

With Intelligems, you gain control over your Ecommerce economics, boosting your profit per visitor by an astonishing 36%. 

But that's not all. Intelligems users report a 54.62% increase in revenue per visitor and a remarkable rise in conversion rates. 

How does Intelligems do it? Through a suite of tools that allows you to A-B test everything on your Shopify store, from landing pages to product prices and shipping rates. 

Imagine testing new layouts, offers, even a new Shopify theme with ease. 

We're testing a new landing page for our client on a new theme versus an old landing page on their old theme right now. 

Intelligems empowers you to find the perfect price point for your products and optimize your shipping strategy. 

But there's more. Boost your average order value with customized campaign offers and discover if your customers prefer free shipping or a lower list price. 

With over $100 million in incremental profit generated, billion transactions ran through their software. They have over 400 million shoppers that have gone through their tests. 

Intelligems is not a tool. It's a game changer for your business. 

Are you ready to transform your Shopify store's profitability? Book a demo today at intelligems.io. Empower your brand to reach new heights. 

Again, that's intelligems.io. Intelligems, giving superpowers to your customer acquisition, retention, and overall profitability.

Chase Clymer

Influencer seeding I think maybe is the most powerful strategy to cut through the noise and really get eyes that aren't bought through Facebook or Meta or Google. And it takes faith and it takes a good product. 

Brandon Horoho

Yeah. And honestly, like what you said right there is like the other big thing I said as a marketer, I could sell everyone one knife. The first knife sells the second knife and the third knife and the fourth knife and the fifth knife and the sixth knife. Product is what people come back for. 

We have an insane return customer rate to the point where I am literally trying to fight off our current customers from buying up all the knives so I can allow a new person in our funnel to actually buy a knife. And it's so hard. It's weird to say that and it almost sounds like I'm complaining, but I'm not complaining. But it's also part of like, I do want to get new customers into our business.

Chase Clymer

Talk to me about those rabid customers. And you've got a pretty unique VIP program, right? 

Brandon Horoho

Yeah. So I mean, that's the thing. We are 100% customer-focused. From day one, Josh and I looked at this and being like, we're fans of all these big hunting brands. And we're fans of all these big outdoor brands. And we're buying thousands of dollars worth of gear from them. And we post on Instagram and we tag them and they won't even reshare our story.

They don't even acknowledge that we just went out and bought $2,000 worth of camo. So our idea from day one is like, if a customer posts or tags about us, we're starting a conversation. We are resharing every piece of content. If you go to our story, it has looked like a row of ants since day one. Because we want to share that our customers are liking our products and we actually care about our customers and we know our customers. 

And I think that is one thing that people are losing in this space is like that, that, that extra touch point. So, you know, the idea was from day one, we never thought we'd be a 100% DTC company. And now we're going into year five, and we're still 100% DTC customers. And we were watching these other brands do all these things for these big box store sales reps, they're taking them out to dinner.

They're buying them all these extravagant hunts, and they're doing all these things to get them to place bigger orders. And that company is never interacting with the end user or the yet end customer. The customer that's actually investing in the company and helping it grow. And we're like, why don't we treat our customers like those sales reps? So that's what we did with our VIP program. It's totally secret. We don't talk about the different tiers. No one knows that they're signed up for it automatically.

It's just something in the background and it moves and it ebbs and flows depending on like, I mean, we recently just had to bump some tiers up and add some tiers and stuff like that. Because people were ordering over a hundred orders or 150 orders, we know within a couple of years. So when our tiers start, the first thing they receive is like a Zippo lighter. And then the second tier, like we send them a custom knife that says MKC VIP on it. 

And then from there, it's crazy stuff like binoculars and backpacks. And we send rifles and bows and handguns and we will then at a certain point, we'll send out plane tickets to come hang out with the crew at some certain events and stuff like that. On the back end, it's very expensive. But for us, we're giving back to the people that have invested in us since day one. It's totally worth it at the end of the day. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah. No, that's amazing. I don't think anyone on the show has talked about a secret VIP program. And obviously, that delight and surprise element in marketing like they don't understand this. 

Definitely helps and it creates just such an ambassador out of these folks when they aren't expecting it and they are rewarded and such. So I think that's just such an amazing strategy, especially for a brand where it's hard for the market in the more typical direct consumer ways. 

Brandon Horoho

Yeah. So there's a lot of stuff that we do mid funnel and bottom funnel versus like always focusing on top funnel. And you know, like I've set up all the Smile.io and for different businesses and things like that, where you're trying to gamify the loyalty system. 

And I think there's something refreshing about it where it's not like gamified, where it's not like, hey, if you just spend a little bit more, we'll send you this, you know, it’s we're it's almost people just don't know if that makes sense. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah. So back to the drop model, how many drops are you doing per year these days? 

Brandon Horoho

We're doing 52 Thursday night drops a year. 

Chase Clymer

That's for those that don't do Math and do calendars. That is once a week. That is once a week. 

Brandon Horoho

Yeah, now. So we know and we've done it for the past two years straight. I haven't taken who we are. I haven't, my marketing team, our creative team hasn't taken off a single week in the past two years. So we're over 100 weeks of straight drops. And people think that's crazy. But, it works for us because we can only make so many knives a week. 

And then, because that's all we can produce downstairs, like we're maxed out in the building we're in right now. We can't fit any more employees downstairs, we can't cram any more machines downstairs.

So we're at max capacity right now until our new facility is built. So the idea is like, hey, you know, let's just, you know, every Thursday night, whatever we make that week, we're just gonna put on the site. And what that does, honestly, it helps. 

There's a lean process in manufacturing. It's crazy, our marketing department is almost more leaned out than our manufacturing, and our manufacturing program has a 100% lean process downstairs.

And the idea is that we know what we're doing every week. We have one model that we're dropping Thursday night. We announced it on Friday. We have an email Saturday. We have an apparel drop Tuesday, a preview email on Wednesday, and we email everybody three times on Thursday to let them know it's dropping Thursday night. So everybody on the team knows exactly what bucket they have to fill with the creative, but it's their job. 

And as a photographer, videographer, designer, they get to fill that bucket with whatever creative they want every single week. And there's no decision fatigue. So they're not worried about things like, Oh, what type of email should we send out? They're like, Oh, I need to send out the most badass Blackfoot 2.0 email possible. 

Chase Clymer

And now you said that you chose the model the week before. So every drop is one specific model. It's not like a hodgepodge of different knives. 

Brandon Horoho

Right. And those models are actually decided almost a year out because of our manufacturing art because 100% American made. The steel was made up in upstate New York. And then, it starts there. And before, you know, it comes to a point where we can, you know, finish it and grind it and sharpen it and assemble it. It's about an eight month turnaround. So, we're forecasting hedging and kind of our bats and our bets within like an eight month cycle. So everything's actually planned. I actually have the whole way to the end of 2026 planned out right now. 

Chase Clymer

Now, if I am curious and I want to hop on the website and check something out, I can't purchase unless it's Thursday or how's it? You know, what's things looking like these days? 

Brandon Horoho

Yeah, exactly. So it's wild because in the knife industry, everything's about pre-orders. And when we started this company and all the people we looked up to and all the people that gave us business advice like, why are you not taking pre-orders? You could literally take a pre-order and then hedge that against a bank as a no. And you can borrow against it. And there's all this like business benefits. 

The problem is when we started this, Josh and I like we couldn't guarantee that if we were going to try to make 200 knives, we couldn't guarantee that like there wasn't something going to go wrong. And then there would be like another eight months or another six months depending on the process. 

So we never felt right. Taking money takes people's money before we can ship it. And the other thing we did is like our fulfillment center is in our building. And that's another thing that we take so much pride in our fulfillment team is absolutely amazing.

99.9% of all knives that are bought on Thursday ship Friday. And there's something about that. They buy it and it ships within 12 hours. That to me is the best customer experience versus doing a pre-order or putting yourself on a waitlist. You're just always waiting around for something to happen. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. You mentioned it a few times now. The American-made aspect of the product. Does that make marketing easier? How does that play into your job? 

Brandon Horoho

Like it's wild. In the beginning, we talked about it a ton. It was like, hey, we're going to do this. And everyone said that we couldn't do it. We couldn't do a mass produced knife company at scale, 100% American made. And they said it was impossible. There's only like a handful of companies that actually do it.

There's a bunch of companies that say they're American made, but they're actually just assembled in the U S like we're a hundred percent American made. So like I said, at the beginning it was weird too, because we also talked to some people who said like that's, you know, people don't really care. It's American made. 

They say it, when they actually, you know, kind of talk with their wallet, it doesn't show. I couldn't disagree more. I think when you look at our NPS survey and our, you know, score and like all that stuff, the top of the thing is 100% American made. 

But I think the difference is that we're showing everybody the process. If you go to our YouTube and watch our vlog, it's a behind the scenes of this shop, which is crazy. And that's trying to build this business and they're seeing the people sharpening the knives and building the knives and assembly knives. And these are all like Montanans that you can go and have a beer with. And there's American made. 

And then there's Tristan downstairs. There's made by Melissa, there's made by Nick, made by certain people. So I think it all depends on how you market it. But it does also give me a bunch of stuff to always focus on. We never have a lack of content in this building. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. And obviously, we know content is king. And it is just a never stopping job to be done. Right. Now, obviously, if I'm listening to this podcast, I can't buy something immediately. But if I want to sign up for this email newsletter so I can get notified about the next drop, where should I go? What should I do? 

Brandon Horoho

Great question. I appreciate you saying that. We do have a couple knives on our website. Some of our special use knives. So if there's something you need there, I think there's like 13 different models and a couple different colors there. They're kind of leftovers. But if you want to sign up, anywhere on our website, there's a bunch of sign up forms. The pop up will definitely get you.

Don't worry about that. And then you click any links on her Instagram and Twitter. It's the best way to get to that email sign up. 

Chase Clymer

Awesome. Brandon, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing all those insights. 

Brandon Horoho

Yeah, definitely, man. I appreciate it. 

Chase Clymer

We can't thank our guests enough for coming on the show and sharing their knowledge and journey with us. We've got a lot to think about and potentially add into our own business. You can find all the links in the show notes. 

You can subscribe to the newsletter at honestecommerce.co to get each episode delivered right to your inbox. 

If you're enjoying this content, consider leaving a review on iTunes, that really helps us out. 

Lastly, if you're a store owner looking for an amazing partner to help get your Shopify store to the next level, reach out to Electric Eye at electriceye.io/connect.

Until next time!