A Chat with April’s Profile, A.G. Russell and Goldie Russell, president and CEO, A.G. Russell Knives
CS: How many employees?
Goldie: About 45.
CS: How did the company get started?
A.G.: I returned to Arkansas from California. The movers somehow lost my Arkansas stone. The Arkansas stone is a mineral called novaculite and it’s found only in central Arkansas over into eastern Oklahoma. It’s on the surface, with very little soil on top, easy to access. This is a sharpening stone. From the early 1800s, Europeans first found this stone in 1820. The Native Americans were using it to make tools. It’s similar to flint, just in a much purer, easier to work form. The Europeans found that it would sharpen steel in a superior fashion. It was the premium sharpening stone until ceramics came along. Long story short, the movers lost it, and I had a hard time finding a replacement. Eventually it became so difficult to find, I went to the world’s source, in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and bought enough to put myself into the mail order business peddling whetstones. In addition to putting ads in the American Rifleman and other magazines, I went to local hardware stores, which had earlier refused to order three of them so I could buy one, and I sold them smaller stones to sell to their customers. One of these hardware stores told me about an importer who had been importing Swedish kitchen knives and German pocket knives who had died. I got in touch with his widow and bought their stock, so all of a sudden I was in the knife business as well as the whetstone business.
