I have been getting this question alot lately. At my first solo show a few weeks ago, I was asked by more than a few people what exactly happened and why did Ironside Edge Works close?
It might seem odd to an outsider to close down a business that had been going for 8 years, survived the pandemic lockdowns, been through so many trials… but in all honesty that’s exactly why it needed to close. I’m not a businessman, my partner wasn’t either at that time, and we were in over our heads.
Ironside Edge Works started my knife making career. It was totally organic and by chance that something grew from my experiments in making a knife for myself. When I set out to make my first blade I had no idea it may become my vocation, a real actual business that would launch a new career. I was totally unprepared and unfortunately my adult working life is also one that is littered with bad business role models. I had nothing to draw from but trial and error to figure out how to even do any of the things I was suddenly tasked with. Things like managing customer expectations, supplier logistics, shipping knives internationally, managing time, pricing and costing, and the financial side of running a business.
Bringing on helpers, and later partners and employees was a total new experience for me. I failed alot and learned a lot, but these were painful and expensive lessons.
While there was a ton of good growth for me as a maker, finding my creative voice and cementing what my personal style is, it also revealed how I’m not cut out for typical business. There’s a weird thing that happened, where there was this invisible force pushing me to grow, to get bigger, make it a “real business”, standardize and create a production line, online store, automation… and all of the trappings that made it feel heavy. There was a point in this journey where I suddenly realized I had built the very thing I didn’t want it to be. Several years earlier I had quit my job. I walked away from a senior position in a niche security gear related business where I managed a big, faceless online store. I hated it, dealing with endless customers, spreadsheets and complaints I could do nothing to remedy on a daily basis. I woke up one day and found myself in the same place again with Ironside Edge Works, and wishing that I could go back to the beginning to start again.
When I started out it felt so fresh, exciting, new. There was a sense of possibilities and trying new things. The clients I had were few, but loyal, much more like patrons of my art than customers. I knew them by name, I knew what they liked and they allowed me the freedom to become the maker I am now. I’m grateful for many of them who stuck by me to the end, even though I probably didn’t deserve their support. I literally wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without some of these patrons. One of them literally bought me my first belt grinder, and another introduced my work to Craig Douglas, who later commissioned his own piece from me. These patrons went above and beyond for a guy they never met based only on what potential they saw in what I was doing. I look back on that now and realize how special it was and just how much I ruined a really good thing by taking it in the wrong direction.
I went down the wrong road. I didn’t need to be anywhere else except where I had started.
Every time Ironside Edge Works was rocked by another disaster I wanted to call it done, but we were in too deep to stop. Since the pandemic lockdowns in 2020, we were behind on custom orders, and not once since then were we ever able to get ahead of our order book. It put us into a constant state of catching up, and to catch up we needed to take on more orders, and so the cycle kept going. It may not have seemed like it from the outside but we tried several times to get caught up and just never could. I took out personal loans to try acquire more equipment to speed things up, but it didn’t alleviate much. The set backs still kept coming only now we had additional debts to also pay off.
Every subsequent disaster just put us further and deeper in arrears with our order book. I know it’s not uncommon in the knife making business for years deep waiting times… in fact , there’s a 6 year wait on some factory knives. But I never enjoyed being behind schedule. It killed me slowly every day, and when the unforeseen catastrophes came, they just kept knocking us down further, and it just didn’t seem to stop.
Both Elijah and I were physically and mentally done by the end of 2023, one of our most stressful years. Some days we just sat at the work bench in silence, neither of us with the energy to do much. We both suffered in our personal lives greatly and felt stuck as slaves to the business we created.
We had made a decision at the start of 2024, that if things didn’t significantly improve by 2025 that we were done… they didn’t. We decided to close our doors. And by all accounts 2025 would have sunk us further with the US tariffs debacle, some critical suppliers closing their doors, and Meta killing all our social accounts. If we had still been going, these would have been the final hammer blow…
We made the right choice to end it when we did. For me personally it’s a huge financial blow that I’m probably going to take years to recover from, but it’s my responsibility as the founder. My wife and I paid off all the debts which were significant by that point, and the consequence of which weighed on me heavily. I spent a difficult year trying to decide if I should or shouldn’t go on with this work and a career that has become very much part of who I am and how I see myself. Ironside Edge Works came very, very close to killing my passion for knife making, and as a result, part of my character, but it hasn’t.
I decided to start again and break my old bad habits. I wanted to go back to that golden time at the beginning where I could create, experiment, and build relations with people who would be my patrons, not customers. This is why I needed a clean slate, and a fresh start.
I’m blessed by God to have a wife who supports me and is proud of the work I do, and doesn’t want to see me give up on my passion. I have no intention of ever disappointing her. I am restarting simply, humbly, and I pray that things are going to be different now and more fulfilling in the Arcadian era of my career.
