Bottom line is it's about the man himself. He is a successful and big-time promoter with charisma and the ability to fire up a crowd. He understands his client demographics and caters to them in a strategic way. For example, last year at BLADE he rented a large room that happened to be next to Jim Cooper's photo room, where I was working all weekend. I watched as the room and stage were set up, then the band arrived and set up. I spoke with the band members a little bit. They'd been brought in by Ernie et. al. to play a short set of 'kick out the jams' smokin' hot rock tunes as a warm up to the lottery. There were loud cheers as Ernie addressed them (fired them up actually) when the music ended. The crowd was huge, loud, excited and was largely 20-something males, lots of black T-shirts, jeans and shoulder packs full of tactical knives. 8 or 10 distracted wives and girlfriends waited outside the room. The rough and tumble esprit de corps atmosphere inside was not as inviting to women as it is to the target demographic group described above. It was probably not more than an hour before everyone streamed out of the room, obviously very pleased and pumped up - smiles all around. "Slam bam thank you man" to paraphrase a familiar saying. Honestly I was impressed. Anyone wanting to do well in the knife business should at least study the approach Mr. Emerson uses, not necessarily to duplicate it, but to be smart and learn from it. The only Emerson knife I own is a factory version, not one of his 'customs.' His use (in this case) of a chisel grind and his patented 'wave' opening mechanism add interest and functionality to a basic black tactical knife with an abundance of "clack factor." Clack factor is the sound you want your EDC tactical folder to make when you whip it out and open it. Some may laugh but it makes sense and is useful. It's like loud pipes on a motorcycle or the sound of the slide on my Springfield XDm when I chamber the first round. I think you catch my drift here. I'm not an EE fanboy but I know world-class marketing when I see it in action. He's world-class in that regard, IMO.