Due to it’s already impressive impact, and obvious potential, the Benchmade team identified Lifesharp as an opportunity to create a defining moment in the customer journey, a point of difference from competitors, and a reinforcement of Benchmade’s long-standing commitment to quality.
Already a long time Domaine client following their platform migration from Magento to Shopify, the Benchmade team came to us with a clear ambition: transform Lifesharp, a simple form set up, into the most visually considered, intuitive, and engaging experience on the site.
Carving Out a New Front-End Experience
While the previous experience existed as a functional submission form, the new Lifesharp needed to operate like an interactive workflow — one that could guide customers through the process of selecting services, identifying the condition of their knives, specifying needs like sharpening, engraving or repair, and doing so in a way that felt unmistakably Benchmade.
On the logistical side, customers had no way to track their knife's progress through the servicing process — their only option was to contact customer support for updates. And for fulfilment, customers had to navigate shipping logistics themselves: packaging their knives, identifying the correct shipping method, and managing carrier details.
Now, Lifesharp is a fully intuitive and seamless experience for customers. We built a visual service tracker inspired by Domino’s Pizza, showing customers exactly where their knives are at any point in the process, offering full transparency from receipt through servicing to completion. Each stage is surfaced clearly in the interface, and progress updates are sent automatically through Klaviyo, ensuring customers are consistently informed.
When Shipping products back to Benchmade for sharpening, customers now pay a flat rate and are provided with a structured method for sending their knives in. Dedicated packaging accommodates knives in their sheaths, and carriers are coordinated to pick the package up directly, making the entire process simpler, safer and more consistent.
Slicing Through Complexity in The Back-End
Behind the scenes, Benchmade’s product catalog carries a level of complexity that goes far beyond a typical service workflow. Different knife types have different rules regarding what services can be performed:
- Some services vary by region
- Certain knife categories come with strict quantity limits
- Many combinations require unique validation before they can be submitted.
On top of that, knives from different product families often have regulatory conditions attached, making some service combinations impossible to submit together. Because of this, Lifesharp could never be a “one size fits all” experience. Every choice a customer makes may trigger a cascading set of checks behind the scenes to ensure the submission is compliant, feasible, and correctly matched to Benchmade’s internal servicing rules.
To keep things moving for Benchmade, we developed an extensive conditional logic system that operates silently as the customer moves through the flow. The interface remains clean and simple, but under the surface it’s constantly evaluating knife types, order combinations and service requests, ensuring that nothing exceeds legal thresholds or internal servicing limits. This creates an experience that feels effortless to the user, while managing a high degree of operational and regulatory nuance in the background.
A custom solution for a non-standard service model
Because knife servicing is not a standard Shopify order type, none of Shopify’s native order statuses or operational workflows applied to Lifesharp. To support the new experience, we built a custom app for Benchmade, specifically designed to manage the servicing lifecycle of each individual knife.
This app:
- Stores and updates the service status for every knife in real time
- Communicates those updates directly to the Shopify front end
- Maintains alignment with Zendesk, which Benchmade uses as their internal source of truth
- Creates separate Zendesk cases for multi-knife submissions (each knife tracked independently)
- Allows technicians to receive information in the same format they are accustomed to, while the customer-facing journey becomes entirely modernized
This ensures that nothing changes for the Benchmade team performing the work — but everything improves for the customer interacting with the service.
Need A Sharper Service Pathway?
What Lifesharp 2.0 ultimately demonstrates is that a well-designed, transparent, and highly considered service pathway can be a powerful differentiator far beyond the knife category.
Whether you’re a fashion house offering bespoke tailoring on past purchases, a flat-pack furniture brand providing lifetime spare parts, or a luxury accessory brand handling refurbishment, reach out to our expert team to discuss how we can create a custom solution for you, just like Benchmade.
