The Growing Popularity of the Elephant Toenail Knife
Saturday, January 3rd, 2009
Knives are as popular as ever. The web has dramatically increased their visibility and availability.
Pocket knives account for the majority of knives owned and used. Within this group, we find hundreds of different patterns. The Elephant Toenail is a pocket knife pattern. There are thousands of toenail enthusiasts who own one or more. Some folks only buy the old ones and others are equally satisfied with the newer ones.
We tend to think of toenail enthusiasts to be a small niche’ group, but it may surprise you to know, the group isn’t as small as we might think. And it is growing….
Tracking Knife Popularity
Trying to track interest in knives isn’t easy. If the knives are new, then we could look at the retail sales numbers. But what about old knives? Well, we could interview dealers, but that would be such a microcosm of info, plus we’d have to conduct the surveys in each region of the country to get its national appeal.
Knife Show traffic? Well, that would provide some info, but not interest in a specific pattern. Price trends would offer some info too, but not necessarily how popular the knives really are, plus popularity doesn’t automatically always translate into higher prices.
With the advent of the Web, we have an additional resource to gauge their popularity.
2004- 2008 Visitor Trend at ElephantToenails.com
Click to enlarge
Go ahead and say it-
“Scott, you can’t take web traffic for one website and correlate it directly to an overall interest in a knife pattern.”
OK, I hear you. But, I do think the increasing number of folks coming to look at these knives is an indication of their interest.
Why else would someone come to a single knife pattern website??
Sure, some visitors may be looking for a Pachyderm’s foot and not an Elephant Toenail knife.
The Numbers
Then we’d need to look at the number of visitors to visits ratio.
The folks who visit come back.
One could say the increase is only a result of collectors just now finding the ET.com site and not a reflection of an increase in the popularity of the knife itself.
If toenails aren’t growing in popularity and there is only a finite number of toenail collectors, then why are the numbers increasing across the board, including the depth of research folks are doing?
Pageviews have increased year after year, and for 2008 they increased to 261,000.
So not only are more folks coming. They are coming back. And for 2008, each of the approx. 20,000 visitors viewed on average about 13 pages, and pageviews are the goal for a non-ecommerce site.
Conclusion
Here’s the deal- I thought you would find these ET.com trends interesting. I know I did.
To my knowledge, this is the first time there has been a tool of this scope to help track a specific knife pattern’s popularity on a national level (most visitors to ET.com are from the US).
Is there any earth shattering revelation here for us? Not really, only that folks like Elephant Toenails!
But, I didn’t have to show all of this for us to know that, now did I?
ElephantToenails.com was launched in October 2003.




















Over the last 5 years it has been interesting to watch how folks use ET.com. Even though we are just one site among BILLIONS out there in cyberspace, I am glad folks visit and use the information in their pursuit and enjoyment of toenail collecting.
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