Snarf: The Utility Knife Reinvented for Knife Nuts

Hey everyone, so sorry for the extreme gap in updates! We’ve had a bit of a crisis on our hands which has kept us up burning the midnight oil the past month and a half, and we want to apologize for the effect that has had on our communications.

When we got back from Blade Show Texas, we realized that we were missing about 80 knives – 40 gray satin Truffles and 40 gray satin HiveMinds. That’s about 1/3 of our stock that somehow disappeared. I guess it’s still possible that they'll show up, but after all these weeks, that seems unlikely. 

So to try to recoup the financial loss from the missing knives, I've been customizing our existing stock to sell exclusives. The upside is I’m learning a lot of new skills, the downside is it has really cut into my available time. So I’m pretty far backed up on emails and other comms. 

That said, I apologize that I left you guys hanging. You've made a significant investment in the future of AKT by backing Snarf and I want to make it clear how much we value your trust and support by keeping you as up-to-date as we can, so sorry I dropped the ball on that this time.

So picking up from the last update, we mentioned our OEM wanted to produce additional samples of colorways before going to production. Even though this would delay getting the knives out to our backers, it would ensure that the minor tweaks and color options we added during the campaign came out as expected.

So although we hated to delay the delivery, we did decide to go ahead and have Scikio/DreamTech produce updated samples. Here's how they turned out:


Laura from Scikio and Frank from DreamTech who are co-producing Snarf are actually bringing these samples to us at Blade Show Atlanta next week, so we'll get to handle them and ask questions in person. This also means if you happen to be attending Blade Show you can handle them in person as well. We could also do a live at some point if there's enough interest for those who aren't at the show to give some feedback, so let us know if you'd be interested in that. 

I just heard back from Laura and she said that the good news is they've continued production on all the elements they could while still waiting on a final thumbs up from us. That means that if we approve the samples at Blade Show, they expect to finish production late July and ship to us early August. We originally estimated everyone would receive their knives in June, so the current quote is two months behind, but the delay will mean we've had one more chance to make sure everything is as we hoped for.

Speaking of, this is all assuming everything is ready to go. In the photo above, some of the colors seem off (especially the Miamiburst colorway) but that could just be due to poor lighting. Either way, we'll get another update back to you after Blade Show so you know what the status is.

I especially hate to inform everyone of a delayed shipment after a delay in communication, but I do hope that this will mean we're able to get you the best first-gen Snarf we can. Just keep in mind that if for any reason during the campaign you'd like a refund, please message me at [email protected]. We'd hate to lose your support, but we'd much prefer you be happy!

Again, if you'll be at Blade Show next week please stop by the booth and say hello, and if you see a box of 80 AKT knives on sale on Craigslist please hit us up! Seriously, thank you guys so much for the support and for bringing Snarf to life!

-Michael

P.S. - Several of you expressed interest in giving us feedback on future projects, so I wanted to let you know we've got a prototype for Truffles Jr. (1" shorter than Truffles) and we'd love your thoughts! You can fill out the survey here: Truffles Jr. Feedback and you can also use the survey to join our mailing list specifically to give feedback on future designs! Again thanks so much!

Hey everyone - a huge shoutout to all the Snarf backers who were able to pop by the booth at the Texas Blade Show and handle our Snarf prototypes! It was so cool getting to meet some of you folks in person and we hope we'll be able to do the same at Blade Show Atlanta. If you've never been, I highly recommend attending Blade Show not only to see a gagillion amazing knives, but more importantly to meet the amazing folks behind the knives. Hands down, our favorite thing about the knife community is the people, and that's on full display at the Blade Show events.





So in short, if you can make a Blade Show, we encourage you to do so. We'd love to meet you and we promise that most Blade Show evenings don't end with an ER trip!

Speaking of Snarf at Blade Show, I've been in talks with Laura at Scikio (our OEM) and we're still cooking on Snarf production. Currently Frank and his team at DreamTech (the factory Scikio is working with to make Snarf) are working on the Blade Grabblers (yes, that's the actual name of what holds the blades). Man that was a lot of parenthetical statements. Anyone else think primarily in footnotes? 🤘😅

So things are moving along, but Laura did mention to me today that there might be some value in taking the extra step to get some production samples since we have so many models this time around. In the past the most models we've ever done at one time was two, and now we have 12 Snarf variants. So I'm asking her to find out how much time that might add to production because I'm of the mind that we only get to make it right once and there's no going back, so if it's not going to slow things down too much it would probably be worth getting some production samples in hand. So I'll let you know more on that once I hear back from her. 

If you've got any thoughts on the matter we're open for suggestions as well. We're also looking for a platform to allow us to get feedback on designs prior to us releasing them via preorders, so if you'd be interested in being part of the R&D team for AKT, we're all ears about that as well!

We'll keep you in the loop as we get closer to the finish line, but in the meantime thank you all so much for helping bring Snarf to life!

-Michael

Hey everyone - hope you had an excellent holiday season. We spent Christmas with our extended family, then spent New Year's in Branson with Melody, the kiddos, and my parents. I landed back in town on 1/3 ready to hit the ground running...and then spent the next seven days in bed with one of the worst colds I've had in a while! 

I'm finally up and running and trying to get caught up, but I wanted to take a second to give everyone an update on Snarf. I placed the order and paid the deposit just before the holidays, so we've got the ball rolling there and are currently on track for a June delivery.

We did hit one pretty significant financial snag that I wanted you to be aware of. It turns out there was a misunderstanding regarding the quote that we received from the manufacturer, so once we actually went to place the order we discovered that each knife is actually going to cost us about $6 more than we had planned. That doesn't sound like much, but based on our minimum order quantity per colorway, that's $20K more than we had budgeted for.

Although we are still stoked about the record-breaking $118K we raised for this project, the amount we actually received after taxes and fees was $94K, so that extra $20K was quite the gut punch. In the interest of transparency, everyone involved really shoulders some of the burden here. When the first ballpark quote was received the knife was not completely finalized. When I received the prototypes I reached out to Laura (my direct contact at Scikio) to ask about a new quote from Frank (the factory owner) the communication led Laura to believe she had communicated that we were still waiting on a quote from Frank and led me to believe the ballpark quote was the final quote. Then Frank didn't get around to sending Laura an updated quote until after I placed the order, so it wasn't until then that we all realized the mistake.

Crazy as it may seem, the $6 increase represents a pretty serious discount that Frank is giving us for the mistake, and although it amounts to a huge chunk of change, I've worked with Laura and Frank enough (and met with them personally enough) to know that they're doing their best to produce the knives at the best price without losing money on their end.

Of course all of this won't have any impact on the amount you paid for Snarf. But once I get the late backer site set up, there will be an increase on the price for Snarf for late backers, and another increase once we have all the preorders shipped and we start selling them in stock. I just didn't want you to see those price increases and thing we were getting greedy - just trying to make up for a major miscommunication/miscalculation!

Melody and I are heading to Vegas this weekend to celebrate our 21st anniversary and meet with Laura while she's in town for SHOT Show, so we'll likely have more updates once we return. I actually met Laura originally at SHOT Show back in 2023 when she introduced me to what would eventually be known as the Roundhouse Lock.  So she's basically been a part of AKT from the beginning so it'll be nice to reconnect with her in person and plan out more designs for 2026. It helps that she's about as crazy as Melody and I are as demonstrated in the photo of a company retreat she sent me (she's the horizontal one)!


I hope to get the late backer site up and running in the next few weeks. This will give you the opportunity to finalize your order, add anything new, and give us your shipping info. So keep a lookout for that coming soon!

As always, thank you so much for backing Snarf. I went full-time with AKT just before we launched Snarf, so I definitely waited with bated breath to see if Snarf was going to be my first failure or success now that AKT is my main day job. So thank you so much for bringing Snarf to life and signaling to us that you want to see more of what's in store for AKT!

All the best!

-Michael, Chief Knife Nerd, AKT

It's hard to put into words how blown away we were by the response to Snarf.

I mean, we love Snarf, but it's so surreal to find over 1,000 folks that love Snarf too! We're stoked to find our tribe!

We'll be in touch with more deets soon, but we're just so thankful for you guys bringing Snarf to life!

In the meantime, make sure you're following us on Instagram/Facebook/YouTube. Speaking of, here's an update I made on our YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/shorts/_S99LMr65xo?si=d5PNx-om8M900_7I

Thank you for getting Snarfed!

-Michael and Melody, AKT