We recently connected with Dominic Bianco and have shared our conversation below.

Dominic, appreciate you joining us today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

There are huge differences between cutlery brands that have been, and are being manufactured around the world. But to really understand why there are these differences, we first have to take a look at how companies differ and how they produce some of the different products. In the past it was pretty easy to get a good working pair of tweezers, same hold true about cuticle nippers, and nail nippers. This is because most brands were manufactured in Germany, Italy, France, USA & England. These countries had very high standards of manufacturing and its processes. I also believe the quantities were not as vast as today. The times were different as well. People purchased a product and used that product for many years and most of the time they got passed down to the next generation.
Today’s economy has given us a unique opportunity to purchase most anything we want and as many as we want. The items are disposable and made very reasonable. They are mass produced and more items are being made by machines.
In my workshop you will find old world tooling. Hand files, custom machinist vices, hand made hammers and tools that they just don’t use any more. Even to find a good hand file today is a challenge because everything is being mass produced and produced for price. They are not producing for quality. Every day I go to work and produce the finest cutlery possible. Hand made. I cannot produce 10,000 pieces a day. In my prime maybe 100 pieces. Now at almost 60 years old I’m slowing down a little. But I refuse to sell anything that does not meet my own personal standards.
Is China the problem? I don’t believe so. Because if China didn’t mass produce all these items that we all love, like 70” Televisions, they would be mass produced somewhere else. But the fact that they can produce smaller items and ship them from China to America at a cost that’s less than my cost just to ship a similar item is overwhelming to anyone manufacturing anywhere else in the world.
So the biggest thing is I make for quality. I also offer this hand made quality at a fairly competitive price. Other manufacturers are making for price. Their mentality is to have the best price in order to gain a large market share of the product they are selling. If you’re selling for a cheap price the quality has to go down. It’s impossible the get the best price, the best quality, & great service. Most companies are lucky to just one on this list.
I believe at Bianco Instruments I have 2 & 1/2 of this list. I offer great service for my products. For only $6.00 any of my items will be sharpened, polished, if the items needs parts the $6.00 covers all that and the shipping back to the client.
I realize that it may be hard to guarantee quality because in some cases it’s determined by a couple variables. Amazon goes by reviews, I go by how long a professional can use my item before there is an issue. Most busy professionals can use one of my items for 1 year before they need service. My guarantee for my products is for 5 years. And if a professional uses my item for a year without issues, then that same item should last for 10 years in a normal household.
Price is my only slight problem. And when you compare the prices for my items from around the world, I’m not the most expensive nor am I the cheapest.

Dominic, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a very personal kind of person. The type that can talk to anyone. I get this from my father. From his early days as a professional hair stylist, to becoming the best sharpening service in the country. My father taught me this craft. It started out just as sharpening and doing small repairs. But in the 1980’s it turned into manufacturing. A few small items at first then some harder items to master like nail cutters. I now make and finish over 160 items. It’s awesome and terrifying at the same time. So I don’t get board making the same item everyday over and over. I make small runs. 50-100 pieces. Any one or two items. Usually takes me a couple days to produce 100 or so pieces.
I think back to when I was a child helping my father on my days off from school. I couldn’t reach the wheels at 9 years old. I had to stand on a wooden box. By the time I was 15 I would sharpen all the wood chisels in my school for the shop teacher and craft scissors for the home economics teacher. They all were in awe of the quality job I could do.
You have to have work ethic to make it in today’s market. So many things cost so much it’s next to impossible to make any real money. I work hard 10-15 hours a day. I also party hard. Love people. Have many close friends and cousins where we go away together and just enjoy each other’s company. I love to fish and work on anything mechanical. I can fix most anything.
I play guitar and sing, I make my own guitars and I’ve played with many people through the years.
But the one thing that I love is knives, always have, always will. I love to make a knife. From shaping it to polishing it. The edge I produce is not just sharp. It’s ridiculous sharp! This week I have designed 3 new knife blocks and the sets of kitchen knives that will go into the knife blocks. These are gonna be the best kitchen knives you can purchase. And isn’t it nice to know that if you drop the knife or maybe you dull the knife, you could get it serviced sharpened up brand new for six dollars and that includes the return shipping.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I call pivoting in business “recreating yourself”. It’s not possible for most people to do this. They get used to doing the things they have done for years in order to make a living. In my case I’m a Gemini. I’m well rounded in many things. But I believe one of my best attributes is to be able to forecast where I believe that a business will grow. It’s not like being a fortune teller, just a feeling I get. I had a house in Bonita Springs Florida for over 30 years. Purchased it when I was very young. With my new bride to be at my side and my dad and his brother I knew this was gonna be a great purchase. 30 years later I sold the home, I just had a bad feeling. Two months later I purchased a condo up on the 8th floor in Naples Florida. So the money from the home went to the condo. Two moths after that Naples, Bonita, Ft Myers we’re all hit by a huge hurricane. I went to check the house I sold, and it had been on the water. is it, is it luck, or is it that I just trusted my gut feeling that I wanted to sell the house. .

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

So many time throughout my different careers. I’ve had to call on different businesses to either be hired to work in their place or to have them trust me where they would give me their instruments for sharpening and I would bring them back the next week. Most of the time it would take 3 to 4 weeks of going to the same place every week and talking to the owner or the people working in in the establishment before they would start to trust me once you understood how long it took to gain their confidence in you. It became easier to get more and more clients. You can’t stop trying, you can’t stop pushing forward. You have to take one day at a time make a plan for that day and make it happen. It’s never easy. Owning your own business is not for everyone. There have been many nights where I didn’t sleep and laid awake in bed trying to figure out what I was going to do the next day. I figured it out. Made a plan and moved forward. It’s the cowards that are afraid to move forward they want to stay in their comfort zone, and not experience the ups and downs of owning your own business. It’s also the cowards that eventually go out of business. If there is one thing that I have learned about being in business is that there is one constant thing. That one constant thing is CHANGE!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.biancoinstruments.com/handmade-kitchen-cutlery
• Youtube: https://youtu.be/8AznwQ5StH0?si=eC0xBreKanWsFRkd