2025 has begun – the move, the new website and our plans going forward
2025 is officially underway – and 2024 is thankfully in the grave (and rotting).
We have had a good start to the year with many orders, another website redesign and a renewed focus on reaching a wider audience via the ever-present internet.
Ironically, that's exactly why I haven't been able to blog – working on the website and social media has taken up all my time.
While I drank my coffee and pondered my choices, I decided to dedicate this chapter of the blog to a glimpse of our plans for the year, which are still in their infancy.
But first, let me tell you the short version of what happened during the annus horribilis – that is, 2024.
The move
As early as December 2023, we started preparing for the move to new premises near Skellefteå. We built up a large warehouse and filled our shelves with products in all stages of production. In addition, a specialized removal company was hired to handle everything, and the new premises were rebuilt to suit our needs – and inspected repeatedly to see how the work was progressing.
On March 15th, we started unplugging everything and loading a truck, with the goal of moving everything at once.
This turned out to be hugely wrong.
To make a long story short: our hope of getting the electrolysis and machines up and running within a month was fading. In the last days of June, we finally managed to manufacture our first diamond grinding wheels at the new location.
The only problem? The quality sucked.
It turned out to be a mix of chemical contamination and the need to adapt our process to the new plating bath. Since we had completely rebuilt the production line when we moved (I mean – why not…), we had to troubleshoot and adapt.
To make a long story short, we returned to stable production in September – and then we were really in a hurry to make up for lost time.
I thought I was being realistic when I told my colleagues that we would have a production shutdown for at least a month after everything was in place. It turned out to be the biggest mistake in any project plan I have ever made.
We were almost five months behind my estimate, and we only managed to do so thanks to the huge inventory we had prepared before moving.
As they say:
It's a good thing you don't know what you're getting into - otherwise you would never do it.
The end result, however, is fantastic.
We are now producing faster and with better quality than ever. We have a much nicer working environment and, more importantly, room to expand – which we will hopefully have to start thinking about soon. 🙂
The Web
Back in January, I made a big effort to merge our two websites (English and Swedish, with similar content) into one English website with a Swedish translation.
It took me about a month to complete.
What was the end result?
OK, but not really an improvement.
The goal was to reduce future workload – and yes, that part worked. At the same time, the site became painfully slow.
To be honest, it wasn't very fast to begin with, but after adding translation and a few other features, I started to doubt the whole setup.
To make matters worse, I was in contact with an advertising agency to help bring in more visitors. They flat out said it wasn’t worth it because the website was too slow – and also too ugly.
Okay, okay...
I hired professional help to rebuild and update the website to modern standards. The plan was to launch the new website and e-shop at the end of May.
May came.
And we were nowhere near ready.
I chased the consultant with a verbal flamethrower, which certainly increased his activity – but we still didn't go live until the end of June.
At this point, naive as I am, I thought it was best that I stayed behind during the holidays to handle the flood of orders that would surely come pouring in.
But no.
The new site didn't sell at all. We had two conversions in the entire month of July.
I seriously wondered if this was the beginning of the end for my company.
I continued to work on the lousy website but couldn’t get it to work as expected. After some serious review, the web consultant and I decided that the best way forward was to redo everything – again – on a fresh WordPress/WooCommerce installation with a new, faster web host.
On January 2, 2025, the website you're reading this on finally went live – and it feels amazing.
Of course, a website is never completely finished and there is always something to improve, but at least it works and is fast.
I am so happy. 🙂
Plans for 2025
The plan is simple – but that doesn't mean it will be easy.
In a sentence:
We will focus on launching new world-class products and marketing them all in a professional manner.
It's no small task for a micro-business in northern Sweden, in the middle of nowhere.
But I am convinced that we will make it.
We are already very good at products related to grinding and we have a pipeline filled with approved products ready to launch – so that's actually the easy part.
The hard part is learning how to market these products effectively.
This is something I’ve been working on for a long time. Now I spend about 50% of my workdays creating content, buying ads, finding good influencers for affiliate partnerships, chatting with them, sending out review samples… you get the idea.
I'm learning, getting faster and – thankfully – starting to enjoy the process.
At the same time, we are also innovative. We are exploring new ways to adjust our manufacturing process, improve plating, and create new fixtures. This suddenly opens doors to even cooler products.
So, in parallel with marketing, I still have to devote the remaining 50% of my time to classic product development.
Our goal is to market exceptional products – not just good products.
The tricky part is that it's not always clear which products will actually sell and which ones will just get thumbs up but not generate any revenue.
The solution?
Even more product development.
So that we can handpick the best products and launch and market them when the time is right.
That's all for now.
2025 is off to a strong start – and I can’t wait to see where we go from here! 🚀
Questions about our diamond whetstones and knife sharpeners
Why do you use diamonds in your brows?
Diamond is the hardest abrasive material available and provides very efficient material removal while maintaining a long-lasting grinding surface. This makes diamond sharpening stones particularly good for hard modern knife steels.
What is the difference between a quick knife sharpener and a diamond sharpener?
A quick knife sharpener often uses a fixed angle and is designed for quick maintenance sharpening in the kitchen. A diamond sharpener is used manually and provides greater control over the sharpening angle and final edge.
Where are Dianova's diamond sharpeners manufactured?
Our diamond sharpening stones are developed and manufactured in Skellefteå, northern Sweden, where we control the plating, grinding process and quality ourselves.
Which knife sharpener is best for kitchen knives?
For most kitchen knives, a fixed-angle sharpening works very well because it makes it easy to achieve a consistent edge without advanced techniques.
