Category Archives: Cam On Commerce

CamOnCommerce.com. Posts here are related to work and business in one way or another. I own and have invested in many retail and technology companies and sometimes I have something insightful or interesting to say on the subject of business.

A Bright Idea: Flashlights

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At work we’re always looking for products to expand into. One of the things that we’ve really enjoyed are Flashlights. The other day our Fenix flashlight rep asked us if we had any flashlight related domains or websites. I had casually looked, but we really didn’t have any good solid flashlight web domains. I’m a big believer in virtual real estate and moonlight as a domain buyer/seller so I made it my personal mission to get some good flashlight related domains (in case we ever decided to open an online flashlight store). I’m not going to discuss strategies for getting domains in this post, but you do need a small fortune to hunt down good domain names.

Overall I think I did pretty well. In a strange twist of fate I was actually able to procure fenixflashlight.com and fenixflashlights.com. Now they redirect to the Fenix flashlights for sale on our website (a fair amount of visitors comes from this kind of direct traffic). I also secured ledflashlights.com,  flashlightblog.com (we run knifeblog.com so it was a good match) and flashlightsforsale.com (we also own knivesforsale.com, so another good match).  On a whim – and because it cost next to nothing –  I picked up ledlightblog.com; LED technology seems to be the direction all lights are headed.

Slowly but surely our flashlight sales are picking up. We recently became an authorized dealer for Surefire and Xeno flashlights. The world of flashlights is actually pretty big – maybe rivaling the knife industry in size. Maybe.  Full speed ahead.

Resources: LED flashlights, Fenix Flashlights, Flashlight Blog, Knife Blog, Surefire Flashlights, Xeno Flashlights, flashlights for sale.

Posted by Cam, July 7, 2011

Will the Real Knife HQ Please Stand Up?

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I recently came across a funny post about knife hq. Part of the post reads, “At first it seemed as though there was a dispute over who owned the actual knife hq. I saw a blade hq as number one when researching knife hq, but how can the blade hq be number one? As I delved further in to my research I found there really is only one knife hq… if you do the research you will find that Survival Knife HQ is the real Knife HQ and that simply put, the others don’t even come close.” 

I just though I’d take a moment to answer the poster’s question and correct his misconceptions. Quite simply put- bladehq.com is knifehq.com.  There’s no dispute over who owns knife hq or which company is the “real” knifehq. Furthermore a quick visit to both websites in question will leave you with little doubt about which one doesn’t “even come close.”

Speaking of survival knives– if you’re actually looking for some you can buy check out a knife hq owned website called survivalknives.com! We sell- wait for it- survival knives. I guess, given the evidence, you could say SurvivalKnives.com is the “real” survival knife hq.

Posted by Cam, July 3, 2011

Looking for a Sign

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When we moved to our new building back in June 2009 I remember wondering how long it would take us to put up a sign on our building. The answer turned out to be one year and ten months. After doing some research we chose  Allied Electric Sign from Salt Lake. The were exceptional- reasonable cost, quick production, excellent quality and they came and installed it for us. I would not hesitate to recommend them or use them in the future.

This sign is about four times larger than the sign on our last building. One really nice thing is that we have good freeway visibility (south & north). People seem to have a much easier time finding us. Perhaps this is what contributes to the increased store traffic we’ve been seeing.

And now when customers come in they are greeted with a store, as opposed to the mess from just a year ago. We pushed the counters forward to corral customers in (I’m pretty sure I mentioned this in another post), built out shelves and quickly filled them.

These pictures are a diorama shot of the store as you walk in. There’s a lot of stuff and I think the overall feel is nice. Our cabinets will probably need to be replaced at some point  (pieces of the veneer are coming off and the lightning didn’t survive the move) but they do for now. It’s pretty exciting to see something in your head actually start to take shape.

Overall things are steadily evolving. We separated out some of the departments (i.e. order fulfillment & customer service) and I think that while initially difficult the long term result will be very beneficial. Below you can see our order fulfillment center.  We’ve expanded it a little from last year. Additionally we reorganized our warehouse a bit, but we’re actually starting to feel a space crunch. I don’t know how we would have survived if we hadn’t moved when we did. We’ve still got three years left on our current contract and so we’re trying to acquire the unit next to us so we don’t run out of room.

The customer service center is adjacent to the order fulfillment area. Right now this space is also shared partially by our product department. And we finally started using the space upstairs! We have (part of) our product team, our content & marketing and our programming department upstairs. Indeed, growth has been good (personally I find growth to be quite challenging. That will be a great topic for another post though…). 

I never thought I’d see the day where I could work in my office, but I’ve been spending more and more of my time there. Ive got a great crew, and – with regard to business – we’ve been very fortunate. There’s a lot on our plate this year, but I’m confident that we’ll do it all and then some.


www.bladehq.com, www.bladeplay.com, www.emergencymatters.com

Posted April 17, 2011 by Cam Hughes

Dual Screens

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I’ve got an awesome Sony Z series laptop. It’s small, powerful and – get ready –  it’s got a 13″ LED backlit 1080p screen. It’s almost like having a 13″ iPhone 4 retina display-  absolutely amazing. And everyone who looks at the screen says, “Wow! That’s incredible!” which is inevitably followed by “Everything is so small. How do you work on that thing?”  I have to admit that sometimes it’s a bit difficult to see things and I find myself using the zoom shortcuts a lot (Ctrl &  “+” or “-“). I probably would have just lived with it (I consider it a minor inconvenience), but work got to the point where I simply needed more screen real estate.

I’ve actually tried to add a second monitor before, but I ran into a couple of snags. That monitor didn’t have an HDMI input and when I tried to hook the monitor up using the VGA connector my laptop power supply actually caused some screen distortion (rolling waves of color).  I finally caved and bought a new HDMI ready monitor (23″ 1080p Samsung B2330). Wow. My dual screen set up has been awesome. When I work I typically have about 2-4 IE windows open (each w/ several tabs), Photoshop, several work applications (i.e. our telephone HUD) and several Windows folders. And yeah- those two screens below have the same resolution.

 If you go the dual screen route I strongly recommend using the HDMI interface. My laptop has had no issues with the HDMI connection; I plug in the cable and I’ve got two screens. Using the VGA connector required me to continually adjust the resolution, screen position and messed up the icons on my desktop.

Also, two tips:  1) HDMI carries audio as well as video. If your monitor has an audio output your laptop might configure itself to output audio through the HDMI cable. Just right click on the speaker icon on your menu bar and choose “playback devices.” Click on the speaker icon (or whatever you want to use) and set that as your default. 2) For some reason when you connect a 1080p monitor to a PC via HDMI part of the screen often gets cut off. You can correct this by changing a setting on your monitor. Just make sure the monitor is set to “PC” mode and everything should fit A-OK (thanks Jim!).

Posted February 10, 2010 by Cam Hughes

A Bird in the Hand

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There are so many things I want to do. Sometimes I lie awake in bed and I can’t shut off my mind. I drive myself crazy because I’m terrified to miss anything that I perceive as an opportunity. I look at the world and see dollar signs on everything. What you say is weighed by how marketable or profitable it could be. Everything is a potential business idea. I need a break from it. I need to take a step back from the world of business because I simply can’t do it all. And because I already have a bird in the hand.

Anyone who knows me is familiar with my company (or companies). I sell knives, self defense products, survival & outdoor gear, emergency preparedness items, watches, even dehydrated food. But all of that is the very tip of the iceberg, ladies and gentlemen. There is so much more we could sell. And so many nights I simply stay up, obsessing over new products, combing the “www” for information. Sometimes I just wish time would stop so I could find everything, learn everything, know everything. But that’s obviously not going to happen. I have to pick my battles.

And so, I present to you some of my findings. Something that I would pursue if I had the time and didn’t have projects that interested me even more. The research I’ve compiled here isn’t complete and obviously there are certain proprietary things that I won’t share, but I think if what I outlined below was initiated (competently) the result would be a viable side business. The methodology for approaching this project is 1) find s product I’m interested in 2) determine market interest 3) review competition 4) find available Internet real estate 5) determine barriers to entry 6) totally up to you.

The product of interest: Laser Pointers

The first step is to do some basic research. I love Wikepedia’s general information. In the case of laser pointers it outlines the various types, uses and even provides some regulatory info. Good stuff. Wikipedia Laser Pointer Article.

The next step is to determine is there’s any market interest. I think Google is a great resource for this (get ready for a life changing tool). Google will actually tell you how many people are searching for a specific thing or things (using keywords). For example, in Google’s keyword tool I have typed in “laser pointer” and a few different variants of pointers I learned about from the Wiki article. Next (on the left of the screen) I checked the “[exact]” box to see how many people typed the exact keywords I have entered. I can instantly gauge the demand for a laser pointer. Roughly 12,000 people search for one each month. I can also see that people type the singular “laser pointer” far more often than the plural “laser pointers.” And people are big into green laser pointers with over 6,000 people Googling them each month. Google also shows you other keyword or keyword strings with high search volumes. More good stuff.

Now we check out the competition. If we google “laser pointer” or “laser pointers” the first website we come to is www.wickedlasers.com. They have a pretty nice looking store and it only take s a few seconds of browsing to see that they take lasers seriously and (more importantly) have built a nice little business around this product. You can generally guesstimate a company’s success by visiting their “about” page, by checking their Facebook account (WickedLasers has over 11,000 fans!) and doing a Google search for the company’s domain name to see how many search results are returned (77,000 in this case). Seems pretty healthy!

You can also buy laser pointers at places like Amazon, ThinkGeek, RadioShack, Dragonlasers, etc. Well cool, looks like there are some laser pointer stores out there. Why not be part of the action. [As as aside, digging deeper will show you that WickedLasers is Japan based and they actually do some B2B].

Now in order to make your Internet business a reality you’ll need a domain where your website resides. There are two schools of thought on this. 1) You can find a domain and create a brand around it (i.e. WickedLasers) or 2) you can buy up exact match domains (i.e. domains names that are keywords people are typing into search engines such as Google) and try to dominate search engine results. Either will be tough- there are no short cuts to the top.

There are plenty of brand-able laser domains you can pick up from places like GoDaddy for $11.99 a year. Things like AwesomeLasers.com or LaserPointerDeals.com are readily available. But to be clear- these domains are not keywords. People won’t find your website unless you’ve done a good job marketing or advertising.

My personal choice (this time) would be to pick up some more expensive exact match domains and build out information websites that drive traffic to my actual website (maybe something brand-able, maybe an exact match domain, no idea at this point). Looking at my Google keyword search list I can see what people are looking for. So, I head over to one of my favorite places to search for domains. I type in my keyword string, “laserpointer.” Look at that- there are actually two exact match domains for sale! [As another aside- you’ll have to figure out where to go to buy the domains on your own, but it should be pretty simple].

A trip to another place for domains and I find this:

At this point I’m only really missing one color. So I head over to RedLaserPointer.com. And:

If I was pursuing this dream of owning an online laser pointer company (and assuming I had determined the barriers to entry were not insurmountable) I would actually go ahead and make an offer on RedLaserPointer.com. Based on the traffic and sale prices of the other domains I’d offer between $800-$1000. Anyone reasonable would accept it. After getting it I’d buy up the other domains and I’d have a sweet little laser pointer domain portfolio. If red laser guy didn’t want to sell, not a big deal. It would have been a minimal part of my traffic.

At this point I’d be fantasizing about how well my info sites would do. First or second in the search engine results for exact matches. I could reasonably expect about a third of the people searching to click through to my websites if I have the first or second spot (and I’ve got a good chance with my exact match domain and my amazing little content sites that I’ve set up with relevant and unique content). If I’ve got all four sites running I can expect about 3000 visitors each month and targeted traffic is money). Yeah, okay- I got ahead of myself a bit.

The Barriers to entry are an important consideration. They should have probably been carefully assessed prior to making any investments. However, I have not given them too much consideration at this point so I added them here at the end. Here’s what you’re dealing with:
1) Product availability. Can you get the product? Can you sell it for a profit?
2) Competition. How established is your competition? How extensive is their product line? What are you up against?
3) Website. Obviously you’re going to need a place to sell them and websites aren’t free. There are some great websites like WickedLasers, but you’ve also got websites like LaserPointersForSale.com.

If you had this website (or were going to make one like it) I would actually consider it to be a barrier to entry (and by the way, I might think hard about making an offer on this website. It has a lot of exact match searches and the person who built it can’t be too invested in it). You’re going to need a good website to sell your product so determine your ability to provide your customers with a good shopping experience (and consider things like order fulfillment at this time a well).
4) Regulatory issues. Some lasers can’t be imported and other have restrictions on sales. Some states have laws that cover the use of lasers.
5) I’m sure there are plenty more barriers to entry, but that’s about where I gave up. I simply ran out of time to answer these questions and map out a coherent business strategy for this particular product.

Laser pointers are cool. There’s a demand. There are some great domains out there. But I’m not going to do it. And I’m actually scarred not to do it. I feel like I’m missing out. But in an effort to face my fear I’m walking away from this one and leaving it for you, the reader. As I said before, I’ve got a bird in the hand. That’s not going to stop me from going after a few birds in the bush, but the ones I have my eyes on right aren’t laser pointers. Iceberg.

Posted January 26, 2011

Physical Store Required

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The year was 2003. We had been running BladePlay for a few months and we wanted to get into some higher end cutlery. Our first two picks were Benchmade and Kershaw. We called them both and one of their first questions was, “Do you have a physical store?” We didn’t, and so our efforts were temporarily stonewalled. Later that year we moved from my home into our first warehouse in Orem, UT.

One of the first phone calls from the warehouse was to Benchmade. “Yes, we have a store.” The warehouse was 900 square feet, about 100 of which was a small front office. That office was “the store.”  Benchmade sales were brisk and things were going well.  And then one day our Benchmade rep, Campbell, called us. “Hey! I’m about fifteen minutes from your store.”

Fate was on our side that day. We had a customer in the warehouse at that very moment (Vaughn). With his help we literally carried the warehouse shelving into the front office and set up a “store.” We threw a desk in the corner and Jim manned the phone. “Browse!” I commanded Vaughn as Campbell pulled up.  As I opened the door to welcome Campbell the phone rang and Jim took the call. Campbell eyed our setup with warranted suspicion. There was a tense moment and then he finally shrugged. The store was good enough.

So why a store? Lost of brand name companies require that you have a physical (brick and mortar) store in order to carry their product line. Campbell explained that, in Benchmade’s case, it was a mechanism to ensure brand integrity. Benchmade doesn’t want people selling their knives out of a garage. Additionally, if you have a store it gives you a certain credibility. I can certainly see that angle. As an established knife retailer I’ve actually come to appreciate this requirement. It’s a barrier to entry. One layer of protection for those of us in the business already. But the walls are coming down.

Not all brands care if you have  a store. Many are readily available through distribution networks or from the manufacturer directly. And with Internet shopping become such  a dominant force many companies that “require” a storefront don’t really check anymore. Part of me wishes they would. I enjoy an equal playing field. A guy selling out of this garage doesn’t have the overhead of a guy who runs a full on store (my overhead is nearly $4000 a day). Still, despite the drawbacks of a store, they are really cool. Which brings me to our new store.

 We moved to our current location last July (2009- you can see the store we threw together here if you’d like). It wasn’t until this past week week (November 2010) that we decided to finally get things finished up. A store gives you power. It gives you legitimacy. It gives you bragging rights. It’s a lot of work, but I really think when we’re finished it’s going to be beautiful. The design came together pretty well. Once it’s finished I’ll be sure to post more pictures (some before and after).

I was reading “Delivering Happiness” the other day. I smiled when Tony was explaining how shoe manufactures required companies to have a physical store. Zappos ended up buying a local shoe business so they could carry the brands they needed. Our store has been a great tool. But when we allowed it to fall into disrepair it didn’t seem to matter (except to our egos). Maybe we’ve outgrown the need for a store (our brand has become reasonably well respected), but we’re going to have one! Stay tuned.