Apogee offers cutting edge products, services

Opening a retail store is an increasingly risky proposition in the age of online shopping — let alone a store specializing in just one category of product.

But that’s exactly what Apogee Culinary Designs owner Dennis Epstein has done with his new knife shop and gallery in Hazel Dell. And he says his storefront has a number of factors going for it that will help it buck the trend of declining retail.

Epstein says the store’s biggest driver of customer traffic is going to be knife sharpening and repair services rather than sales of new knives. Knife shops are disappearing because they can’t compete with online retailers selling identical or similar products, he says, but a proper knife repair has to be done in person.

“Service retail is doing well,” he says. “Regular retail is getting hammered.”

The repair work is all done on-site with a sharpening machine in the back room, and Epstein says he aims to always have a one-day turnaround time. There are very few limits on what can be repaired, and Epstein says his goal is to restore every blade as close as possible to its factory finish.

“We do everything from axes to $1,400 barber’s scissors,” he says. “I don’t care if it’s a Wal-Mart knife or a $500 Miyabi — it’ll be treated the same.”

The store includes a front gallery with large displays of kitchen cutlery, pocket knives and a few other blades. Apogee sells several knife brands at the gallery, most prominently its own line of Dragon kitchen knives.

Epstein has worked in the knife industry for 30 years, including a six-year term at Kai USA, the American branch of a Japanese company that manufactures brands like Kershaw Knives and Shun Cutlery. He developed the Dragon line while working at another company, retained the trademark when he left and founded Apogee about four years ago to continue producing and selling the brand.

The knives are manufactured in China and Japan, but use American steel. For the first four years, Apogee operated though an online storefront and retail partners, but Epstein says the retail locations kept closing due to pressure from online sellers, and the remaining customers weren’t buying as many knives.

“My average order size went from $1,200 to $100, and my cost of shipping remained the same,” he says.

He says he explored selling through Amazon, but the fees and shipping costs were prohibitively expensive, which prompted him to look at creating a factory store and in-house processing and shipping center.

“I figured if I’m going to ship myself, I might as well sell out the front,” he says.

The rent at the Hazel Dell facility ended up being about the same as the cost of selling through Amazon, he says, so he hired a staff of three to operate the business and began setting up the storefront.

Epstein lives in Vancouver, but he says the location also made sense from a business perspective because it fills a service need in the area. There are several knife-sharpening businesses in Portland, but only a couple in Clark County, such as Eliot Smith’s Patron Saint of Knives business and BJ’s Rapid Edge, which specializes in barber’s shears.

Since Epstein controls both the online and offline storefronts for Dragon knives, he says he no longer has to worry about being undercut on pricing, and the sharpening and repair services provides access to a whole new market.

“I’m internet-proof,” he says.

All he has to do is make sure customers buy his knives rather than another brand, which is why the Apogee gallery features hands-on testing and training, in order to differentiate itself from other knife stores.

A large square kitchen counter sits at the center of the display gallery, and Epstein eagerly urges customers to try out various knives on the large supply of carrots that are hidden under the counter.

The carrots made a good test case, he says, because it’s easy to feel the difference in texture on a carrot that has been cut with a high-quality knife — and cut properly. Epstein also schools his customers on proper cutting techniques — slicing, not chopping — and offers $80 one-time classes for customers who want to learn more about how food is cut in professional kitchens.

Proper slicing techniques are easy to learn, he says, but too many people have simply never been taught. It’s not just about the quality of the food, Epstein says, although that’s certainly a benefit — it’s about preserving the longevity of blade edge.

“Knives are not as hardy as people think they are,” he says. “They’re delicate tools.”

The gallery opened April 13, tucked in a storefront off Highway 99. It’s not the most prominent spot, but Epstein says most knife repair customers aren’t going to find the store at random — it needs to become a well-known destination.

Epstein says that’s why he’s taken his time to design a clean and upscale storefront. As a retail business, he compares the store to the Portland-area ice cream maker Salt and Straw, which draws long lines to just a handful of locations.

“We’d like to prove the model so we can open more of these,” he says.