<span style="color: #333333;">It’s No Secret that the SOG brand started with a mission 25 years ago to create knives that stand apart from the pack and that Spencer Frazer’s, Founder and Lead Image, mission to create innovative products would continue to meet the demands of the company’s customers.
For Today readers who are not familiar with SOG, the story begins in Vietnam, where members of a highly classified U.S. special ops unit carried a unique combat knife into the jungle on covert missions. In 1986, that knife inspired Spencer Frazer to found SOG Specialty Knives.
His mission: to reproduce the original Vietnam SOG Bowie knife, pictured left and below and in the movie Terminator 2, and to pay tribute to the special ops unit that created it.
What began as a single commemorative tool soon became a full product line, field-proven by U.S. Special Forces, honored as the Navy Seal knife of choice and carried into the most demanding situations.
<span style="color: #333333;">Spencer Frazer is a creative, having started his career as a child with an affinity for knives and axes learned in the Boy Scouts. He has worked with many different materials, building models and prototypes. His career took him into the aerospace defense industry, working in R&D Tool & Die and as a model-maker. He learned scale, a color theory from time spent with modern artists, and later worked in product development, creating toys and consumer products. All these life experiences converged the moment Spencer saw his first Vietnam SOG Bowie.
“The knife was magical in how it looked and felt.
You could see the history, as well as the functional aspects of the knife.”
That single knife spawned the birth of SOG Specialty Knives & Tools, Inc. with one goal, to reproduce the mystical knife … the SOG Bowie.
“We started our company by having to sell a one-knife line at the very high price of $200 retail.”
“SOG was the first company to produce a sculptural-faceted folding knife. We called it the Tomcat. With the Paratool, SOG became the second company ever to produce a folding multi-tool. And we remain the only company that uses compound leverage in our multi-tools, the only company to have adjustable lock-on clips on our folding knives, the only company to employ one of the strongest locks in the industry with the Arc-Lock, the only company to use exotic BG-42 steel cost effectively in the production of our knives and the first company in the world to offer an automatic opening multi-tool.” — Spencer Frazer
“I design each one of our products to be functional and comfortable to use, as well as aesthetically pleasing. If I personally don’t like them or wouldn’t use them, they don’t make it into production We don’t settle for ordinary. We never did, and we never will.”
— Spencer Frazer
Photos courtesy SOG
