Back in 2012, when my wife and I started our company, Chubo—it means "restaurant kitchen"—we wanted to try and represent some of these artisans that were making knives, like small-batch producers, and bring them to the Western market. That's our core mission, to give these blacksmiths some daylight and introduce them to chefs and home cooks across the world. When we started, we had no idea if any of the blacksmiths or knife makers would want to work with us, so it was a little bit of a shot in the dark as to how it would turn out. My wife being Japanese helped, of course. I do speak Japanese, but having someone from the same culture helped alleviate some fears that these people might have had. It's been a gradual process. In the first year we had some people turn us down. Certainly, that first year was the most difficult.