I can’t begin to completely organize all of the industry news into one coherent post, so I am not even going to try. Instead I am going to kind of just put out a bit of a photo dump with some interspersed comments in between.
But first, a video:
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I really can’t explain it. This is the closest I can come up with to what it feels like to walk into the show.
Orange Juice, Firearms, pretty much the same thing.
It is a long walk from the Monorail to the the Media Room where I started the day. Took about 20 minutes, but I figure I can shave it down to about 12 now that I have a clue where I am going.
But the scenery is pretty neat.
Fianlly made it to the media room where I met up with Mark and ran into Dogwood Dan Eastland.
He messed up his shoulder fighting ninjas. Or sparring judo.
Benchmade was our first meeting of the day.
Highlight of their new lineup is the new 748 Narrows, a slim and ultralight EDC that Mark and I both agree is the next big Benchmade hit.
There are also a ton of expansions to existing lines including a mini version of their hit Claymore. But there will be a Benchmade specific post to come, as well as our annual SHOT Show print feature.
OKC has made a number of expansions to their Camp Plus folder line, but again, more on that later.
B’Yond EDC booth had some new anodized treatments for their flagship Demko River Wolf.
David Sun was meeting with the buyer from BladeHQ, so I didn’t get to talk to him until later but didn’t snap a picture.
Apropos of nothing at all, Plano wins the best trade show booth wall.
Santa Fe Stoneworks had an amazing knife with meteorite inlays.
Cold Steel has some new knives featuring their Atlas Lock.
A nice little pocket carry eh?
David Andersen ambushed us on the way to Schrade,
…who had a new series of replaceable blade EDC knives in addition to their Alpha, Beta, and Delta class offerings.
Ran into my buddy Ben Petersen at the WE Knife Booth…
They have a new line of Elishewitz designed combative fixed blades, which I really liked.
Browning has a bunch of new knives, but the Buckmark Slim is a really nice knife, especially for the price.
Finally, we ended the day at Spyderco,
where we got to visit with one of the nicest people in the industry, Joyce Laituri, who gave me a knife to give my son for his Birthday.
I hadn’t seen Joyce since SHOT 2020. Blade 2020 and SHOT 2021 were both cancelled, I missed last year’s SHOT, and she missed Blade.
As I think you can tell from my photos, like Blade Show, SHOT is as much about the people as it is about the knives. As we learned during the pandemic, we can do product reveals remotely, but there is no substitute for face to face conversation across a table full of knives.
Have a good one everybody.