An article posted Tuesday, April 1, 2014, on www.thepilot.com, an online news site serving Moore County, North Carolina, detailed Spartan Blades’ knife manufacturing facility move to a historic restaurant, now closed of course—the LobSteer on U.S. 1 in Southern Pines, North Carolina.
Ted M. Natt Jr., of www.thepilot.com, details:
The sign outside the former LobSteer restaurant on U.S. 1 in Southern Pines proclaims that Spartan Blades is coming soon.
“We’ve had people coming in and asking about being short-order cooks and waitresses,” Spartan Blades co-owner Curtis Iovito said with a laugh last week, “so we’re telling people it’s going to be a Greek-Japanese fusion restaurant.”
The confusion is understandable, given that the LobSteer operated on the site for 44 years until closing last year.
But Spartan Blades manufactures finely crafted tactical and field knives for the military, law enforcement, outdoor enthusiasts and collectors. The knives are sold in gun shops, cutlery shops and specialty stores in 30 states and 20 countries through a network of 120 authorized dealers.
“We’ve gained quite a bit of notoriety in the past few years,” Iovito said. “We had over $1 million in sales for the first time last year.”
Iovito and business partner Mark Carey, who met while serving in the U.S. Army Special Forces, currently produce 2,500 knives a year in less than 1,000 square feet of space in what used to be the mule barn at Malcolm Blue Farm in Aberdeen.
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