Small + Mighty: Knifewear, no stranger to life on the edge

This feature is brought to you in partnership with Moneris.

Canadian small businesses have met with extraordinary adversity this past year, with many being forced to accept challenging new realities and devise even newer approaches to thrive within them. We sat down with small businesses from across Canada to see how they have adapted, what they have overcome, and why they are optimistic of the future. Every week we will be bringing you another one of their unique stories.

For this week’s edition, we sat down with Nathan Gareau, Communications Manager of Knifewear – a Calgary-based small business with locations across Canada that specializes in high quality Japanese knives. Nathan provides some fantastic insight into the lengths that businesses must go to keep operating.

Given the struggles we’ve seen with business during COVID, why are you optimistic going forward?
“You know as difficult as this whole situation has been for everyone, it’s given us a lot of opportunities to adapt. It’s forced us to try a lot of things that we wanted to do or hadn’t even thought of doing. So, we’ve kind of developed this whole new toolkit utilizing social media and YouTube which has given us many more options than we had before and positions us well going into the next few years.”

What are some of the issues you’ve been able to overcome as a small business owner?
“We are heavily reliant on our customer service, it’s always been our biggest focus. So not being able to be face-to-face with our customers has been difficult. So, that forced us to examine how we go about improving our online customer service. We had a great e-commerce platform before but now we’ve pivoted to live videos and content where customers can now interact with us in real time. We also offer great advice if you need help in the kitchen as everyone is now home and spending a lot of time in there.”

How has the transition from brick and mortar to online commerce effected your business?
“Actually it’s something that we have been doing for a lot of years. We’ve always had an online store, but the online presence wasn’t what it should have been. But we started working with brands that have been helpful like Moneris that have been nothing but positive and supportive and just really helpful. The speed of transaction is just next level.”

What is a lesson that you’ve learned along the way?
“Number 1 – and I can’t stress this enough – plan for the best and plan for the worst. It’s good to have a plan for multiple different scenarios, but always understand that none of them may end up working out. You will always have to pivot and adapt, and you have to be open and flexible, and continually have an open mind.”

A year from now, where do you see your business?
“Given that brick and mortar has it’s limitations, we are definitely focusing in on the online space. Whether its live content or video creation, we really want to focus on educational and relatable content. We also really had out hopes set on our Toronto location opening last year, so in a year from now I think we will be in Toronto, and I know our Toronto customers are looking forward to it.”

‘Small + Mighty: A weekly look at how Canadian small businesses are adapting’.