2020 Send Off!

Happy Holidays, All!  

As 2020 comes to a close, I wanted to take a moment to reflect back on this pivotal year for Toor and our customers, as well as look at what lies ahead for all of us.  

"To bluntly sum it up: This past year has been a crazy f-ing roller coaster for Toor Knives!"

Massive increases in our manufacturing, surviving the COVID-19 storm, developing new product with our collaborative partners and learning even more about the knife making process all combined to create a whirlwind year, here at Toor. As the dust finally settles on 2020, we find ourselves having tripled our staff and quadrupled our blade output - and it is all thanks to each and every one of YOU, our loyal supporters! 

We started the year off by purchasing our first few large CNC machines, in order to help us improve our quality and capacity. The only problem was, I had just gotten back from Afghanistan and none us really knew how to operate them! To address this, I enrolled in the local city college machine technology course and brought on our resident CNC wizard, Abraham King, and we dove in.  Admittedly, it wasn’t pretty in the beginning, and we f-ed up a lot of blades…. but we were learning!  

Undeterred, we kept at it and implemented new software to produce machine programs for our blades. One thing led to another and we were able to design and consistently produce our iconic and timeless Toor Knives original, the Field 1.0. This blade obviously led to the Field 2.0, as we were able to implement the same process and machining techniques to produce it, in-turn creating our Outdoor Series. Both knives went off the charts when we released them, and they were truly our first two blades that we were able to consistently manufacture here, in-house. We will forever hold these knives close as they were the blades that kicked this company off in 2020, leading us to build an entire facility dedicated to limited production bladesmithing.   

With all the positives that came from this first batch of Outdoor Series blades, we equally experienced negatives, as well. Like so many around the globe, we were hit by the COVID-19 storm in March and were forced to furlough almost all our staff. This left us with just a few dedicated people to run our entire operation, and our production went down to almost 10% of normal output. Along with many other businesses we quickly realized we were on our own (due to lack of support from California’s leadership) and decided to make the best of a terrible situation! 

This time was used to completely remodel the entire Toor Knives facility, in order to make more room for machines and employees. Right around the time we finished our electrical, structural, and overall layout remodel, we were able to slowly bring back our team of employees to start working again. We partnered with local manufacturing companies to help produce “essential” goods for the COVID-19 pandemic, which formally classified us as an essential business and also allowed us to start producing blades again. We ramped up our staff to almost triple the manpower we had prior to March, and went ‘all in’!  

It paid off…

The 2020 Serpent was released shortly thereafter, and it quickly became the largest launch in Toor Knives history. We took this opportunity to add even more infrastructure to the company and expanded into another building, which is now dedicated to our front office staff and also houses our fulfillment center. Two manufacturing shifts are now up and running, to make sure we could get enough blades out to all of you! We capitalized on the opportunity to partner with some really awesome companies for collaborative blades, and truly brought several game changing products to the marketplace.  

In short, the Toor Team worked our asses off, experienced all the friction associated with 2020, fought through it, and had the biggest year we have ever had, despite all the COVID-19 BS.   

Of course, NONE of this would have ever happened if it weren’t for all of our loyal customers dedicated to supporting businesses like ours! This year was not easy for ANY small business out there, but fortunately we were able to put ourselves into a position coming into 2021 where, again, we are knocking down more walls and expanding even more.  

In the past twelve months, we have produced many new Toor products, built a team of over 35 dedicated individuals, and grown into 2 new buildings.  Equally exciting has been the partnerships and products we’ve developed with companies like Haley Strategic Partners, Re- Factor Tactical, OAF Nation, Kore Essentials, Tac Hunt Fish, Dark Corner Concepts, Spikes Tactical, Shooting Surplus and the list goes on.  

As we look into upcoming projects in 2021, we are excited to announce that we will be producing four new folding knives in-house next year, as well as six additional new fixed blades, along with other tools and equipment.  

From all of us here at Toor Knives, THANK YOU for being a loyal customer and we look forward to better serving you in 2021!