Background
Utility knives are used every day by businesses across a wide range of industries, especially food service, to open boxes and bags of supplies. A variety of types are used, including single-edge razor blades, snap-off blade knives, single-sided carton cutters, and others. The one trait these different knives share is that they all use replaceable blades.
Unfortunately, replaceable blades can become lost and create a hazard that leads to severe medical and legal costs. To minimize the risk of such losses, one of the world’s largest multi-unit food-service organizations approached Spellbound for help in finding a solution. Every year, this company was experiencing an average of 11 incidents when loose blades contaminated foods and injured customers, resulting in the loss of millions of dollars.
Mission
Stop the bleeding, and prevent these injuries and losses from occurring.
Solution
Spellbound developed an inexpensive, disposable utility knife with a blade that never needs to be touched or replaced—the first of its kind. Once the blade dulls, the user simply disposes of the knife, or sends it back to Spellbound for recycling. Lightweight yet high-strength, the knife features a stainless-steel blade designed and formulated to resist corrosion and wear. The brightly colored knife body also makes it hard to misplace or lose in a work environment. This industry first has subsequently led the way to many more safe-knife developments.
Results
The knife was introduced system-wide by the client. In the first 12 months of use, financial losses were eliminated entirely, saving millions of dollars. To put it into perspective, our client said they would’ve had to open 300 fully staffed and profitable food service locations to apply all the dollars saved to their bottom line. Clearly, the safe knife was a huge success.
Since its introduction, tens of millions of the knife have been sold as well as new generations of safe-cutting devices. Millions of dollars have been saved for many companies. Even more importantly, because of the safe knife, hundreds of people have been saved from needless loose-blade injuries.