MERINO MM FIRST PRODUCTION RUN

The first production run of MERINO MM arrived today! In the picture I am using my beta testing MERINO MM to open up the first production box. This is a moment that has taken 3 years to arrive.

Many friends have asked me what all it has taken to get this far and I thought that perhaps many of you were wondering the same thing so here it is:

After SOG (the company that I was deeply vested in for over 12 years) was sold I decided to take my sudden jobless state as an opportunity to go after a dream of mine and create my own brand. I spent about 3-4 months hammering out a brand foundation and then about a 1.5 years refining that foundation along with creating my first product line (the MERINO line).

I took the time to do all the things I wanted and I made sure that I had the designs fully worked out. This involved inventing new tech; creating many proof of concepts to test out the new tech; creating usable prototypes that I could do ergonomic, functional as well as assembly testing on. I also thought a lot about packaging and designed what I thought would be an elegant solution to the packaging problem (I'll do a post on that later).

Once the basic engineering design was complete I then spent the next year + working with a factory that I had a long relationship with to help bring the MERINO into reality. This involved tweaking the design to make it easier to manufacture as well as preforming destructive testing to prove out the mathematical models I used to determine the strength and performance of the knives.

The end result is I now have a final product.