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For those that don’t know Spyderco is an American company based in Golden, Colorado. They make knives.

Until recently I hadn’t heard of them. However since becoming a Dad I’ve been thinking more and more about the fun I had camping out as a Scout when I was a kid. I’ve been looking forward to being able to take my son out camping and teaching him to do all those things kids should do (if you’re in any doubt about what I mean by that then get yourself a copy of The Dangerous Book For Boys – which also inspired this business idea).

While he’s still too young to go out camping I’ve been taking the time to refresh my knowledge and renew the skills I had (what we would now in this age of Ray Mears call “bushcraft”). I’ve also been enjoying buying myself all sorts of essential kit (and the odd toy/gadget – I am a geek after all).

One such tool is obviously a knife. As a kid I was never lucky enough to have a particularly good knife so now I wanted to treat myself to something good. First however I had to learn a bit about knives, so I set about browsing the web and soon found myself reading the British Blades forums. Quite an eye opener, I didn’t realise so many people where so passionate about collecting knives, or how utterly beautiful some of the knives people make are – absolute works of art.

I’m not however a collector, I’m looking for a tool, something that is up to the tasks it’ll face when used camping or “bushcrafting” and ideally something that suits our rather restrictive knife laws. With that specification to work from I soon came to the conclusion that two knives might be better. For bushcraft a fixed blade is a good idea and should be acceptable under UK law. For other occasions (i.e. local walks with the dog) a sub 3” folding knife makes more sense and that’s how I came across Spyderco.

You see Spyderco is quite an innovative and responsive company. Despite being a US company they recognised the legal issues face by us Brits and in collaboration with the British Blades forum members designed what many regard as the best “UK legal EDC knife” (for those who don’t know EDC means Every Day Carry). Here’s the resulting Sypderco UK Pen Knife:

Personally I’m struggling to think of an example of any other company that has really taken the needs of it’s customers to heart and worked so well with it’s customers to design exactly the product they want and need.

Even so, despite the many rave reviews I was put off by it’s looks. Worried that it might draw the wrong sort of attention in our rather knife unfriendly culture. So I haven’t brought one, but nor have I found anything else that receives such good reviews. The more I read about Spyderco, the more I forum posts I see from Spyderco’s founder Sal Glesser, the more I want one and not just because it’s an excellent tool, but because I want to reward a business that so clearly cares about it’s customers. In fact, since I started to draft this post I’ve been an bought my first Spyderco knife.

The lesson here? Talk to your customers, engage them in a dialogue. From that you’ll be able to establish exactly what products/services they want, need and are prepared to pay for and if you do it right you’ll create a community of fans that spread the word about your product/service. Check out the knife forum’s and you’ll no doubt see that Sal Glesser has turned his customers in to fans.

So, would you rather be selling to avid fans, or indifferent customers?

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