Author Archives: Cam

Just Plugging My Companies!

Posted on by

At BladeHQ we recently created a content & marketing department. I think this effort is critical to our success. Some of the most important elements attached this expected success are, sadly, proprietary. As much as I would love to discuss everything it will have to wait indefinitely. Suffice it to say, marketing revolves around the idea of being mentioned. The more places you’re mentioned the better.

And so it is with pleasure that I mention my companies on my personal blog. I’ll just spotlight one every month or so until I run out…

BladeHQ.com was started back in 2003 as a spin off of my first company, BladePlay.com. It’s purpose was to sell higher end knives and gear it’s marketing more toward professionals and collectors. Initially we had limited success because we lacked a “brick and mortal” retail store (a requirement imposed by many knife manufacturers). We opened our first “store” late in 2003 and started carrying name brand knives on our website. With careful planning and some luck our web store continued to grow even through the recent recessions.

With unparalleled in stock availability, top tier customer service and unmatched value we have become one of the largest knife retail companies in the world. We specialize in military, police and collectible knives. We carry brands including Spyderco Knives, Protech Knives, Microtech Knives, Kershaw Knives, CRKT Knives, TOPS Knives, SOG Knives, Benchmade Knives. We’ve got folding knives, spring assisted knives, butterfly knives, and everything else in between.

Our growth has allowed us to expand and in more recent years we have expanded our offerings to include more niche items such as survival gear, outdoor equipment, watches and even clothing. 2011 has started off super and we have some exciting plans for the coming months.

Say What?

Posted on by

Say What? The Story of Tim.

“I’m going to go out today” Tim’s Mom said. “Do you want to come with me?”
“Yes, I’d like to go with you” said Tim. “I have a feeling today will be a fun day.”

Timmy’s mom stopped at the Butcher’s store first. Tim looked over the counter and said, “Why do you need a knife that big?”
“It gives me an edge” said the Butcher
“Knives are dangerous.” Tim replied.
“You’ve got a good point.” The Butcher smiled.
“You could use your teeth.” Tim suggested.
“You’re a cut up, Tim!” laughed the butcher.

Next Tim’s mom went to a bakery. Tim looked over the counter and said,
“You’re really fast!”
“Well, I’m on a roll!” the baker said.
“Do you like to bake bread?” asked Tim.
“No, I just knead the dough!” laughed the baker.
“You shouldn’t tease Tim like that,” scolded Tim’s mom.
“Just trying to get a rise out of him,” the baker joked back.

Next Tim’s mom went to the bank. Tim looked over the counter and said to the teller, “You must have a lot of money because you work at the bank.”
“Oh, that’s rich,” scowled the teller. Tim didn’t say anything else.

Next Tim’s mom stopped by his Father’s car repair shop to visit.
“Hi dad!” said Tim. “How are you?”
“Feeling kind of tired,” Tim’s dad said.
“What’s wrong?” asked Tim
“I’m just a bit run down,” his dad said.
“You look exhausted!” Tim’s mom said.
“Yes, I think we all agree I’m out of gas,” Tim’s dad replied. “But I’ll be okay! I’m almost finished with work. I’ll see you at home!”

On the way home Tim saw an astronaut walking on the road and stopped to say hi.
“What’s it like to be an astronaut?” Tim said
“I’m kind of spaced out kid. I don’t know right now.” Replied the astronaut.
“I guess it’s hard work,” Suggested Tim.
‘There’s just too much pressure. I’m going to go home and get high.” Sulked the astronaut.

“This story has taken a peculiar turn!” said Tim’s mom
“You’re write!” replied Tim. He’d finally gotten the joke.

This story was written March 19th, 2006. No revisions were made. As I reread this I thought there was still a good bit of potential for more “episodes.”

The Truth About Cooties

Posted on by

The Tuth about Cooties

Freddy Finkerboot’s older brother had warned him about Cooties.
“When girls turn about ten or so they start producing cooties. They’re like termites, but they eat boys, not wood. Get too close to a girl and wham! The cooties will jump onto you and it’s over.”

Those words echoed in Freddy’s mind as he walked into his classroom. Somehow things seemed less care free this year… something was … “Hi Freddy! Good to see you again!” said Samantha. Freddy let out a scream.

“Just stay back! I know all about you. You won’t get me.” Freddy decided the cooties would probably attack through his mouth so he covered it. “Uhm noph gwing thoo ghet coodephs!” he yelled. Samantha rolled her eyes and walked over to talk to Wally.

Didn’t Wally know about cooties? Hadn’t anyone told him? Freddy had to think fast to save him. He picked up a bottle of glue from a desk and threw it toward the infested cootie girl. Whack! That would show cooties that they couldn’t mess with boys!

Apparently principals didn’t understand about cooties. “They’re everywhere, and if we get to close then ba-zing! We’re gonners!” explained Freddy.

Principal Lottahooey sighed. “Freddy, I think you should spend an hour in the Library and do a little research on Cooties.” Freddy thought that would be a good idea. The library seemed like a place cooties would try and avoid.

Ms. Notalottafun, the librarian, was sitting behind her desk looking unhappy. Freddy said, ‘Do you know where I can find a book on cooties?” Ms. Notalottafun scowled at Freddy. “Cooties? Cooties aren’t real. You kids should be worried about hepatitis A, salmonella, e coli and diseases like that!”

“Hepawhat? What are those things you’re talking about?” Freddy asked. Ms. Notalottafun leaned back in your chair. She said, “Freddy, you’re old enough to know that cooties aren’t real. Let me give you some grown up books to look at.”

Some of the books were hard to understand but Freddy did the best he could. Before he left the library, he had the librarian make some copies of a few pages from the books. Freddy had a plan.

During lunch Freddy walked over to Samantha. “I’m really sorry I hit you in the head with glue. My brother told me that girls had cooties and that’s why I acted so strange,” he said.

Samantha nodded her head and said, “Well, it wasn’t very nice. But I accept your apology. Cooties aren’t real, you know.”

“Now I know,” said Freddy.

Freddy found his brother in the cafeteria. “Flibbert, thanks for warning me about cooties.”

“Um yeah, sure man. No problem.” Flibbert said.

Freddy pulled some papers out of his backpack. He said, “I did some research on cooties and found some other stuff out too. Freddy put the papers down on the table by Flibbert. “You need to watch out for salmonella and e coli in your food because, you know, you get it from the cafeteria. These are worse than cooties. And you shouldn’t drink from the water fountain because you can get hepatitis A from it. That’s worse than cooties too. And here’s a list of things you can actually get from girls.”

Flibbert looked through the papers Freddy had brought. He gagged slightly.

Flibbert didn’t eat much lunch that day and wondered if drinking from the toilet was safer than the water fountain. Freddy enjoyed the lunch he’d brought from home and didn’t give cooties a second thought all day.

The Truth about Cooties was originally written August 20th, 2004. I made slight editorial revisions for this posting.

Human Target: Chance’s Corvette

Posted on by

I’m a big fan of Fox’s Human Target. I’d love to give a critique of the show, but that would be a post for one of my other blogs  (that will never get made). Suffice it to say, I was thrilled when Chance pulled up in a Chevrolet Corvette GS (I was getting sick of him driving that Camaro around).

Human Target - Chance's Corvette

At first I couldn’t quite tell what model it was. It looked kind of like a Z06, but it also looked like a coupe. I confess I had to do a quick search online to determine it was GS. I haven’t kept up on Chevy’s upgrade packages lately. It’s a sweet looking car. Even though I prefer black bodies and blacked out rims I can still appreciate this beauty.

Human Target - Chance's Corvette

I haven’t seen too many Corvette’s on TV (at least not on the shows I watch) so this was a nice little surprise. I hope Chance keeps driving it!

Posted on Feb 27, 2011

A Rat Named Pepper

Posted on by

A few weeks ago Michael got his first pet. He picked out a cute little white and grey rat and we named her Pepper. At first she was understandably nervous, but after a few days she started getting comfortable around us and within a week her personality was manifesting itself. She liked to nibble nuts & lick fingers, sit on shoulders, hide under covers and she was a very picky eater (she loved sunflower seeds).

I say “was” because a few days ago she was accidentally killed by a piece of furniture. I won’t go into details, but it was very sad. The irony of the tears we shed for our pet rat didn’t go unnoticed. We exterminate these types of “pests” all the time. But a few weeks with a rat like Pepper can change your perspective. She was a sweet addition to our family and she will be greatly missed. RIP Pepper.

Posted Feb 20, 2011 by Cam Hughes

Dual Screens

Posted on by

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

On the Road Again (How to Remove Your Tires)

Posted on by

I finally got to take Vanessa out of a spin (my car’s name is Vanessa, remember?). We had a fabulous time cruising Utah County and blasting our favorite tunes (I’m only a little crazy). I really wish there were more places where I could drop the pedal and let loose. This car is built for speed and I really don’t get to take advantage of that. Sometimes I think maybe it’s time to get a new hobby… but then I go for a ride and fall in love again.

So yesterday I swung by work to help Jim swap his tires (the pictures below are his car, not mine). He’s got a set of Forgeline rims in the back and the leak. Not the tires- the rims. These particular rims are a three piece forged set and the leak is occurring where the pieces are bolted together. Yes sir, with this kind of performance even your rims need maintenance.

Anyway, I helped Jim swap his wheels off. Wheel swapping is pretty easy on most cars. Vettes with tires that are 12.5″ across and that weigh about 40 lbs are a little trickier. Just a quick set of instructions to help all you people who want to change their Vette tires (or any tires).

Items I recommend:
1. Car Jack (low profile)
2. Jack Pads
3. Torque wrench
4. Wrench extender (pictured in kit above- you may need this is your rims have deep lips).
5.  Wrench bit that fits your lugs (size will vary based on what wheel you have on your car).
5. Locking lug key (if applicable- sometimes nice wheels come with a special lug to deter theft).

Steps to remove / change tires:
1. Put your parking break on.
2. Underneath the car about to feet from the rear ties there is an oval hole. You can put your jack pad there or jack directly from this spot.
3. Carefully position your Jack and pump it up until it’s firmly in place, but don’t lift your car of the ground yet.
4. Loosen your lugs. Here’s a great article on wheel lug torquing, including how to loosen and tighten your lugs.
5. Jack the car up until the tire is off the ground. You can use a car jack stand if you can any concerns that your car might fall.
6. Finish loosening the lugs and remove them.
7. Firmly grip the tire and pull it off the vehicle (and remember, you can roll a tire- you don’t have to lift it to put it somewhere).
8. Give you rotor and brake calipers a little cleaning if you want
9. Lift on the new tire, light up the holes with the lug bolts, and refer to the torquing guide above again.
10. Remove you jack lift (if applicable), lower your car and repeat on the other side.
Remember: after you drive you car 50-100 miles you should tighten the lugs again!

Just in case you’re curious about why you’d be removing or changing tires, here a few good reasons:
1. You’ve got one set of street tires and one set of track tires and you need to switch them.
2. You’ve got a flat and you’re putting on a spare
3. Wheel maintenance (tire, rim, TPMS, etc).
4. Assembly maintenance (breaks, calipers, rotor, etc)
5. Left / Right tire rotation
6. Because you’ve got a sick idea of fun.

Anyway, now that the weather is a littler better (could we do something about these roads? They are awful!), batteries are charged and wheels are swapped maybe you’ll see us on the road again.

Posted Jan 30, 2011 by Cam Hughes

A Bird in the Hand

Posted on by

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