Please, introduce yourself and your business.
My name is Ben Spangler, I'm a professional Blacksmith/knife maker and I've been running Spangler Forge full-time since fall of 2020. I mainly focus on hard-use belt knives but I also do kitchen knives, historical reproductions, tactical pieces, swords, and dozens of other random things.
Have you always wanted to own your own business?
Absolutely not; I went to school for mechanical engineering and expected to climb the corporate ladder. But after a number of years in the optics industry I was tired of making other people rich and wanted to drive my success more independently.
How long does it take you to produce a ready-to-sell knife?
It all depends on the knife. For the smaller 6" paracord-wrapped belt knives, I can knock out a few of them in a day. But as soon as you want a handle of wood or Micarta, that requires an overnight epoxy cure and a bit of shaping and finishing. The time involved increases exponentially with the size of the blade so larger more elaborate knives can quickly become multi-day projects.
How did you become a contestant on Forged on Fire?
They periodically put out casting calls on various forums; I submitted an application, went through a Skype interview, and suddenly I had dates for filming. I went on as a hobbyist and amateur in 2019, just trying to have fun and see what I could do.
The fact that I ended up almost winning was an unexpected surprise that greatly encouraged me to give more time to the craft and further develop the business side. Website, social media, etc.
How much did you make in your best year? (Please include profit margin)
I'd rather not say the specific amount here, but I'll answer how I approach profit and managing expenses
Ensuring my products are profitable is a core concern of mine; while the "art" is fun and I have a lot of fun, at the end of the day this is a business and I need to ensure that it's profitable above all else. I'm an engineer at heart, so I have rigorously evaluated all my core product lines to determine both the material cost and time/labor required.
It depends on the product but the general rule is that material costs make up about 10% of the total price and business costs (booth fees, CC fees, shipping, etc) take another 10%. So a $200 knife will typically generate a raw profit of $160. The bigger variable is my time invested in each piece; If the total time to make 1 of these knives is 2 hours, then my effective hourly rate is $80/hr.
I try to cut costs where I can, but I'm far more focused on finding ways to speed up production. Getting that higher effective hourly rate matters more than having a good margin.
When did you notice traction when building your business? The “Oh S**t!” moment, what did that feel like?
In 2018 I attended a celtic fair (that I still go to every year) and was blown away by the enthusiasm. If I remember correctly, I walked out with about $4,000 in cash and it freaked me out.
That's more than "fun hobby money" that I had gotten thus far at little fairs and through online sales. That's an amount that needs to be reported for taxes. It was scary because I realized that if I wanted to keep pursuing this, I needed to get serious about the administrative back-end of which I had no experience.
How many attempts at building something did you make before you found what you’re working on now? Did you always have an entrepreneurial drive?
Spangler Forge was my first business venture, though it wasn't a deliberate attempt. It was a very mild hobby for years and slowly grew more and more professional with incremental growth. For that reason, it has always been very stable.
What’s been your most effective marketing strategy?
Marketing is hard for me; Instagram and facebook have great ad features but they're out of reach for me because my account is flagged as "weapons". In the past my marketing budget has gone into patches and stickers which I give away for free.
More recently I've been focusing on creating attractive content on social media and am in the process of building a monthly newsletter to better connect with my most enthusiastic followers.
What is your biggest overhead expense?
I have been very diligent in keeping my overhead to a minimum; I don't really have any fixed monthly payments that would be considered overhead aside from website and insurance fees.
But I've placed orders for grinding belts that total to a greater cost than those annual costs. I originally had grand ambitions to lease a space and have many employees but as the business has matured it's become clear that those are golden handcuffs; it would create so much unnecessary stress.
My business is very profitable as a home workshop and I'd rather maintain my flexibility than pursue a vanity project like that.
How many employees do you have? What have you found is the best way to find great people?
I don't have any true employees. I do have a handful of helpers that come around on a periodic basis but it's minimal work- things like helping to flare the eyelets on kydex sheaths or help me run my booth when I have to go run a blacksmithing demonstration. I take the role of an employer very seriously and would want to do it right with good wages and stable work with benefits.
What’s the most important skill you’ve learned?
Developing processes. The technical processes came easy to me but I've learned a lot about developing processes for the administrative side of the business. Everything from ordering supplies, applying to events, designing custom work, and managing my expense reporting.
I have processes and workflows for them all that enable me to do the tasks fast and consistently.
What do you spend the majority of your time doing, in a given week? (I think a lot of people hear entrepreneurs “work,” but may not understand what that means on a day-to-day basis.
In terms of the E-myth model, I'm very heavily split between the roles of the Entrepreneur, manager, and technician. I'll often start my day at the high level, doing admin work, applying to events, working with retailers and such, then transition to doing the actual work in making the product.
I see my work as manufacturing, and I spend much of the day simply working the line. It can be grueling sometimes but at the end of the day I have to physically make the knives.
What do you know now that you wish you knew when first starting your business?
In the last 4 years of working my business full-time, there are easily several hundred little lessons that I wish I could have implemented on day 1. Many of them are process related, for example I wish I had known that kydex-flaring arbor presses existed or the proper grinding belt brand to use for my style.
It took years of incremental improvements to develop the clear, stable process I use today. But there's no way around that, you simply have to work it out and struggle through it.
The world of entrepreneurship can be misleading. Many people think it’s always easy and always glamorous. What’s a big problem you’ve faced as a business owner and what were the emotions behind it?
I think a lot of people aren't aware how emotionally soothing it is to be able to share the blame when things go wrong. As an employee, it's rarely entirely your fault but as the owner of a business, it's always your fault when things go wrong. Sometimes mistakes are made and you have to reconcile that you messed up and plot a new path forward.
It gets easier with time, but you have to understand from day one that nobody else is going to be responsible for your success; it's all you. And that can be very emotionally dark, especially in the beginning.
Many people don’t know where to start in the business world, they feel stuck. They may want to start a business to become their own boss and create their hours. What is your best advice for someone who feels completely stuck?
Business is fundamentally the leveraging of one's abilities and resources to solve another person's problem. If you want to start a business, you need to evaluate yourself to determine your natural (or attainable) abilities and resources and find how that fits in with the market around you. But not all skills are lucrative and not all resources are in demand, so it may take some trial and error to find a niche that fits you.
