kitchen knife made in Japan

This year was the second time to take part in this show. This show was very lively and the north American market has been still busy. We felt the number of vistors were more than the last year. Actually, the show association announced that. Our booth is decorated as the Japanese traditional motif. We also hang up the Japanese carp kite on the wall.(in the middle of picture below). Some customers came by our booth. And we could communicated with them openly. we hope our products made them understood our policy and approach at leastThat was a good oppotunity. The cusomers are attracted by our new lines. We really expect that new lines are one of the necessay items for them in their business.

We participated in Anmbiente following last year. It was very productive for us. And we met a lot of cutomers there. We displayed our new lines in our booth this time. We were sure that most customers were interested in them. We have 3 types of newlines. One of them is called "Ripple". It represents the orcean wave which looks like the wave on Japanese famous picture "Hokusai". Actually, it stands out. We will launch new items by this spring.

We are going to announce one special shop in Toronto. The store is called KNIFE. It is run by Mr. Eugene Ong.

He has dedicated his life to work as a cook for 10 years and now he uses his know-how of cooking skill to spread the use and care of Japanese blades to other professional chefs and knife enthusiasts by providing kitchen knives he selected carefully. He can also provide a sharpening service to educate knife novice or chefs who want to develop their skills. We rely on his concept and business model. We hope we can grow our brand gradually with his shop in Toronto.
 

Here is his comment.

"The knife is the most important tool in the kitchen and therefore should be treated with proper care and respect".

This year the MCUSTA team attended the Ambiente Expo from February 12th to 16th at the Messe conference center in Frankfurt, Germany. Ambiente is a truly huge trade show, with tens of thousands of exhibitors from across the world gathered together in 11 hangar-sized conference halls. We had never seen such a spectacular trade show.

This was our first appearance at the International Home + Houseware Show, held at the McCormick Place convention center in Chicago from March 14th to 16th. The scale of the show was huge, with crowds of exhibitors and customers contributing to the energy.

We are very proud of our Montreal distributor's new specialty retail shop for HOCHO kitchen knives, which was just featured in the local newspaper, the Montreal Gazette.
Our distributor, Mr. Guillaume De L'isle, has operated a growing sharpening and distribution business, L'Émouleur, for the past few years and has just launched his first specialty shop in the trendy shopping district on Laurier Avenue.

L'Émouleur is an old French word meaning "the sharpener", and, as might be expected, Guillaume offers unparalleled after-sales service including hand sharpening.

He is always ready to share his enthusiasm for HOCHO knives and his knife sharpening expertise with clients, so if you are in the Montreal area please stop in to chat or simply to admire the beautiful HOCHO knives on display.

Click here for the article:
http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Critic+Notebook+most+cutting+edge+store+city/
2164666/story.html

The knives at the center of the photo are MCUSTA / ZANMAI products.

L'Émouleur website:
www.montrealknife.com

Once again this year we exhibited our products at the Blade Show West in Portland, Oregon from September 18th to 20th at the Monarch Hotel.

Even though we had fewer visitors this year, most probably due to the current economic slowdown, we were very pleased with the response to our MCUSTA knives and NEVANON scissors.

We are looking to expand our presence in the North American scissor market, as there is clearly a demand for high quality products.

The general atmosphere was relaxed and friendly, and it is always a great pleasure to exhibit in our hometown.

Of course we are looking forward to next year's show, and we hope the economic climate will be better so that Portland's Blade show keeps growing for many years to come. 

This demonstration video is uploaded from our Montreal distributor's website (http://www.emouleur.com/). As with any high performance product, daily maintenance is the secret to keeping your HOCHO sharp and beautiful for many years to come. This video shows you the basics of HOCHO knife sharpening, and we have included a brief how-to section on our maintenance page for easy reference.

If you have any further questions regarding the maintenance of your Zanmai HOCHO, please feel free to contact us at: tomo@ash.name

And of course whetstones are available too.