I just bought a Hideaway from Frontsight. First I ordered a custom straight that had to be made from scratch. You can track the progress of your order on the Hideaway website (
www.hideawayknife.com). My order sat at stage one (the first of about 10 or 12 stages) for about 10 days with nothing happening.
Then I rechecked the site and discovered a ready-to-buy Hideaway claw in my size and fell in love with it. I bought it outright, paying via PayPal and a credit card. When I tried to cancel the first knife order online, there was no way to do it. I didn't need two Hideaways, and at nearly $200 per knife (with S30V steel), they ain't cheap. The next day I checked the site and the custom knife I had tried to cancel had progressed to stage six! There is no way to contact Frontsight other than by email. There's no phone listed, no name, no address, no nuttin'. So I wrote her a few emails requesting that my first order be cancelled. I received no response.
Then I took a look at the knife I had ordered and decided I should have gone with the paracord wrap option on the handle for an extra $15. Again I wrote to Frontsight--another five emails, and again I received no response. And the website indicated that the knife I had just paid for was about to be shipped.
So one knife I no longer wanted was being made for me, and another order I wanted changed was about to be shipped without the change.
I contacted PayPal and initiated a dispute with the seller. I figured this would get Frontsight's attention because, as a registered PayPal seller, she has more than 1000 sales on record. When you initiate a dispute, PayPal wants to see the dispute resolved amicably or the seller is fined.
Presto--that got Frontsight's attention and she zipped me an email. She understood my frustration, she wrote, apologized for the hassle, cancelled my first order, and offered to have the knife I ordered paracord-wrapped if I still wanted it, or she would refund my money. I still wanted the knife. She explained that she had received 500 emails that day, which was why she hadn't responded to mine in a timely fashion.
I'm a journalist. I often cover entrepreneurs for national business magazines (when I'm not too busy writing about knives, haha). Small businesspeople who suddenly find themselves with a hot product on their hands and no way to handle all their inquiries and orders are as common as sand on a beach. Quite often success hinges on figuring out how to deal with the sudden avalanche of business before all those potential customers become permanently alienated. My sense is that Frontsight is at that point. The obvious solution--add staff--only works if you're making a decent profit.
So far, Frontsight indicates that she isn't. She needs to sit down with a good accountant who can run her numbers, help her do some forecasting, and grow her business. Entrepreneurs who fail to do this in a timely way tend to go belly up. That's especially true because the knife business is a copycat business. Sooner or later a larger outfit--CRKT, Spyderco, Cold Steel, or even Emerson--will come out with their own version of the Hideaway. All these folks are easy to deal with, and that's where the business will go.
Even though I initiated a PayPal dispute with Frontsight, I never believed she was out to rip me off. I suspected she was just in over her head in terms of orders and inquiries, as turned out to be the case. Custom knives are a tough racket. There isn't a ton of money in it. Be this as it may, Strider, Busse, Reeves, Mad Dog, and many others have figured out how to answer inquries, fulfill orders, and offer good customer service without having people complaining to their credit card companies. In fact, Strider collaborates with Frontsight on a Hideaway knife. Frontsight ought to ask Mick how he does it.
So that's the situation at present. If you must own a Hideaway--and I did--the best way to get what you want is to think long and hard about which knife and which options you want before you place an order (which I didn't), and be sure to check which knives may be already available for sale in your size if you're in a hurry. If you need to ask a question or change an order, your email is going to get stuck amid hundreds of others, and when it will be answered--if ever--is anyone's guess. Hope that changes soon.
Meanwhile, though, once I finally heard from Frontsight, and got my order changed to what I wanted, my knife was on its way to me that very next day. I still haven't received it yet but will post a review when it arrives.
