Mail-In Knife Orders?
 

hey everybody hows it goin? i was just wondering on something ever since the weaponry catagory came to life.

ever since i had a crippling car accident a few years ago the knife store i used to work for has been trying to find a place for me so that i could return to work. the idea is for me to run a mail-in/800 number knife order part of the business. so i was like sure why not i dont have much anything else going right now; but i got to thinking would people actually order something not knowing that you were an actual company? i'm not try to advertise or anything i was just wondering what your thoughts on this might be. would you call or place an order from someone if you never seen their store front or knew nothing about them? i mean we're case xx authorized dealer and all that crap but in the back of your mind would you be going ..."i don't know?" just curious on your thoughts. thanks in advance

You wouldn't be speaking of Smokey Mountain Knifeworks by any chance, would you?

As far as ordering goes, most people will order out of a catalog if they already know what they want.

I order all of my knives online or mail order. In the first place, it's almost always cheaper than a knife store. You'd probably be swamped with orders and have to hire a few assistants.

i would order....why the heck not :P

I've bought several knives online, but only because they tend to be cheaper. Selling knives over the phone or via mail-in isn't likely to be an automatic success, because A) you'll be harder to find then punching up a search in Google, and B) since your selling knives for a store, your pricing will probably be higher than many online retailers, because the store still has to pay all the overhead for a physical location.

I definitely think it can work, but you're going to have to bust your ass to get attention.

no i hate that place their to high on all their junk. actually before we decided on all this we checked prices everywhere and we're way below everyone else. even shepard hills cant compete with us. i thought maybe about running some ads in some bigger city's newspapers or something along those lines. this is my first time trying to do something like this ... kinda in the dark.

I order from www.uws.com/blades4less all the time. Found them on the web one day while surfing.

sorry man i can eat them ALIVE. Not even competition :(

I think the only people who would be hesitant to order from you are first time knife buyers or people who don't really know what they want. As debaser said, if somebody knows what they want they can just order from a catalog.

I bought most of my blades through the mail.
What I look for is a good catalog.
A website to back up the catalog is good too, but not nessassary.
I mostly order from Szco

i totally agree with you on the catalog and website. the idea is to offer way low prices because we dont have to maintain a running website or big catalogs. in theory customers would just call with item number for a price quote & estimated shipping date. i think you'd be surprised how much cheaper we are compared to most places doing this.

well you said you would save money buy not haivng a catalogue, but then how would people know the item numbers? also i think that talking to someone on the phone would be nice if they could tell me more about the knifes, like how big is one compared to another, and the such, its not the same when you just look at the pics and the messurements than when you can actually feel the length and heft in your hand

well we have been thinking about that jadedgrin and came up with a solution. we're going to mail out a little packett from the different manufactures. this'll let people see that item in color and describition. thanks for all the imput everybody.