Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

On April 1, local bladesmith Trevor Barrett set out on a quest to gift celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay a custom-made knife, posting a video to social media platform TikTok. To Barrett's surprise, the gamble paid off.

"I bet you like knives, right? Probably use them quite a bit? Well, I'm going to make one for you right here in my forge in Haines, Alaska," Barrett said, addressing Ramsay in the opening of the April 1 TikTok video.

Barrett ended the minute-long video with a plea to his audience for help bringing the offer to Ramsay's attention, asking them to comment @GordanRamsayOfficial.

The video was a marketing Hail Mary for the knife business Barrett's trying to grow.

"I was thinking of ways to try and expand a little bit, but it can be difficult with trends online, so I thought, let me try reaching out to someone who uses knives a lot. Well, who do I know that's influential and uses knives? Chefs use knives, more than hunters. I thought, who's the most famous chef I can think of off the top of my head?" Barrett said.

He said Ramsay was the first name that occurred to him. "I thought, there's no way this is going to work. He's a straight up celebrity, and I'm a small-town guy in Alaska. But I also thought, this won't hurt me if I try."

Barrett watched several Ramsay videos and tried to model the knife on the types the chef was using. The knife he ended up making would normally sell for roughly $400, he said.

The day Barrett posted the video, it went viral, logging 1 million views in 24 hours.

"It's super weird because it was a complete accident. I'm thirty-three. I'm not a TikToker. I'm not into that stuff. If I had it my way, I'd just be working all the time, but you need to market yourself if you want to have a product," he said.

A week after Barrett posted the video, he was scrolling through TikTok and noticed that Ramsay's account had followed him, allowing the two to send direct messages to each other. Barrett messaged Ramsay and received a response from the chef's team.

"They said, 'Gordon saw the video, and he loves it and he would love the knife.' We exchanged info, and I sent the knife to him," Barrett said. Ramsay's press office didn't respond to a request for comment by press time.

Barrett said the video has served its purpose, yielding great results for his business. Within a week, his TikTok account had 60,000 new followers, and he's now getting daily requests for custom knives. Most of the requests are for kitchen knives, although he receives the occasional odd request.

"An eight-year-old kid messaged me the other day, saying, 'Can you make me a throwing star?'" Barrett said. "I thought, uh, you should probably have your dad message me."

Barrett said he's in the process of finalizing paperwork and licensing to make the knife business official. He started bladesmithing five years ago, learning from Google and YouTube, and "lots and lots of trial and error." He said he thought of it as a hobby for many years.

"I did it because I thought it was super cool and very interesting because it wasn't very modern. It's kind of a lost art," he said.

A few months before the COVID-19 pandemic began, Barrett decided to try to make bladesmithing his full-time job, counting on tourists as a big source of his market. And then everything shut down.

"I was super concerned because I didn't know how we were going to keep going. That's what got me to download TikTok. Someone said it was good for exposure," Barrett said. He estimates that, at this point, 90% of his requests come from the platform.