FROST CUTLERY OPENS RETAIL STORE IN OOLTEWAH.
Frost Cutlery debuts retail knife shop
Lionel Adams moseyed through a maze of shiny glass display cases at Frost Cutlery’s brand-new retail knife shop in Ooltewah on Friday morning and shook his head. “There’s always something new,” he said, browsing through thousands of knives, hatchets, swords and gizmos. “You have to make four or five laps before you can even see everything.”
The Knife Shoppe at Frost Cutlery features 9,000 square feet of all things sharp — plus a few extras like gladiator helmets and zombie targets. The long-standing Ooltewah knife distributor built the shop to ramp up retail sales and capitalize on traffic from Interstate 75.
Frost Cutlery already generates $30 million in annual revenue, with about $18 million coming from Cutlery Corner, a four-hour live knife show that the company films and broadcasts four nights a week. The show reaches as many as 90 million viewers as it’s replayed each week.
For years, fans of the show would stop by Frost Cutlery’s Ooltewah headquarters hoping to shop for knives. But there was no real shop, just a few tables stacked with merchandise.
After a grand opening on Black Friday, business at the new shop has been steady, said manager Jay Haggard.
“It’s become more of a destination than just a store,” he said.
To that end, the company is bringing in guests, like Tim Guraedy, who’s better known as “Mountain Man” from A&E’s hit TV show “Duck Dynasty,” to draw a crowd and put the new store on the map. Guraedy will be visiting on Dec. 14, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. It’s a free event that’s open to the public.
Eventually, director of strategic projects Cameron Thomsen hopes to cover the now-bare shop walls with deer heads, fish and hunting trophies.
“I want to make this the ultimate destination for men,” he said, although he’s quick to add that shoppers seem to be evenly split between men and women. The store includes about 45 brands, with everything from kitchen to hunting knives.
Shopper Jack Womac made the trip to the shop from Cleveland, Tenn., on Friday to pick up an order and look for a set of kitchen knives for his sister, who just survived cancer. He used to shop at the old tables set up in the warehouse before The Knife Shoppe opened.
“This is a whole lot better,” he said. “They’ve got 10 times as many knives.”