328. Toor Knives Is Locked Out of Paid Ads, So It Built Growth Another Way - Scott Sorensen, Tour Corporation

Tour Knives sells a product the advertising platforms treat like a firearm. That single fact shapes every marketing decision the brand makes, and it's forced Scott Sorensen to build growth in ways most ecommerce operators never have to think about.

Scott is the Chief Marketing Officer of Tour Knives and Tour Corporation, a San Diego brand that manufactures every blade, handle, screw, washer and spacer in its own US factory. He's spent decades building premium consumer brands, from the action-sports eyewear brand Dragon Alliance through performance apparel and tactical eyewear, before moving into the knife space earlier this year. He took the job partly for the challenge, and there's plenty of it.

The channel everyone else takes for granted is closed

Tour is effectively locked out of paid ads. Culinary knives can be advertised, but tactical, field and hunting knives cannot, because the platforms class them alongside weapons. So Tour grows through the channels it's allowed to use, and it does them well.

The biggest drivers are affiliate and ambassador programmes with high-profile people already embedded in the community. Scott's distinction here matters: it's easy to find ambassadors, but the ones worth having already own the knife and already like the brand. When they talk about it on their own channels, it lands as a genuine third-party endorsement to an audience that expects them to be talking about knives anyway.

The rest comes from organic search. Tour is 100% made in the USA, and that isn't only a trust signal. Knives made in the USA is one of the brand's top search terms, so the positioning directly drives discovery from people already in the market.

A word game to advertise at all

For the brands that do try to run ads, Scott describes an ongoing cat-and-mouse game. You call knives tools. You send traffic to a benign landing page with no product images, because if that page contains any of the 36 forbidden words, the ad gets denied. You build content about steel types and edge retention that discusses function without ever naming defensive or offensive use.

And you think twice before challenging a rejection. As Scott puts it, if you challenge a rejected ad, a human gets involved, and that human tends to find the other things the automated system missed and ban you entirely. Payment processors, website platforms and social channels all make life harder too. International customs adds another layer, with knife restrictions in Europe and elsewhere far tighter than in the US.

Sell online the way you'd sell in a shop

Scott's approach to conversion comes straight from physical retail. Marketing is the window dressing that gets someone through the door. Once they're inside, you've lost the salesperson who could greet them and answer questions, so visual storytelling and video have to do that job instead, from the first impression through to the product page and checkout.

He's a believer in immersion. Customers who spend time reading the brand story, that founder Connor Tour was a marine who couldn't find the tools he wanted at the right price so he made his own, feel more connected and buy more.

Restrictions built a strong repeat purchase rate

The retention numbers are the standout. Tour's average customer buys three more knives within a 12-month period after their first purchase. Scott puts this down to a collector mindset ("you can never have enough knives"), backed by a lifetime warranty, free sharpening, and a dedicated person who'll look after a customer's knife for as long as they own it.

Limited drops feed the same loyalty. Tour released 100 hand-numbered knives for America's 250th anniversary on 4th July and sold out in a couple of hours, mostly to existing customers hunting for something special to add to what they already own.

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