While we’re revved up and ready to look outward during this tenth year and beyond, let’s not forget the leaders who have been the solid foundation of Knock Knock for quite some time—and their inherent solid taste. So, in celebration of our anniversary, we’re looking inward at our executive team and spotlighting favorite items on their product palette. First up: Craig, our publisher, tops the food chain on all-things cuisine.

Food. When I think about food and eating and the significance it has in my life, I think first of how grateful I am that I have never had to struggle with hunger, and that I have been able to afford most foods I have wanted to try.

As a child, I once came home from grade school and announced to my father that stealing was wrong. He replied by concurring that in most cases my statement was likely true, but also told me if a person is starving and steals food from someone who has plenty, it is not necessarily wrong. And he told me that as a child he had stolen food during World War II, when he and his family had none. This rocked my world. Later, it would help me understand my parents’ efforts to try and never waste food, and my own efforts to endeavor to do the same.

Food. I just simply love it. My parents had an enormous vegetable garden, and as a kid I would harvest all kinds legumes and edible treasures. To me, they were treasures and miracles—these living things that started as tiny sprouts and grew into robust plants, yielding morsels like candy-sweet peas, or enormous bottom-heavy fruits like eggplant. I begged my father to let me help in the garden, and he was more than happy to send me out with a pitchfork I used to hunt for gold—gold Yukon potatoes, that is. The garden was my playground.

All this to say that growing food and sharing food was an integral part of growing up for me. And today it still is. Preparing a meal for someone else is an act of caring and love.

I wanted to share some of my tools and “foodie” items (of course, including some Knock Knock products!) that I simply enjoy:

1. Because I am more of a recipe thief than recipe follower, I adore our Recipe Notes Sticky Notes for jotting down my personal alterations to cookbook recipes.

2. This is my great-grandmother’s hand coffee grinder that I use every morning to hand-grind my coffee beans. Making coffee has always been a ritual for me, and the effort of hand-grinding the beans—hearing the whirr and crunch, smelling the aroma—makes me appreciate that cup-o-joe even more.

(As an aside, I am now just realizing I essentially don’t use electric equipment to prep food in my kitchen. I don’t own a food processor, for example, and my beautiful [and useful] KitchenAid has been idle for many years. I actually prefer to do most things with basic tools and my own hands. Perhaps this will turn into—or already is—a new food movement. Huh.)

3. Our very recent title, A Foldout History of Cereal, always brings a smile to my face because the cover features a Cheerio, which reminds me of my European grandmother cringing when trying Cheerios, and making the claim that they tasted “like cardboard with holes in it.”

4. I could not live without my mortar and pestle that I purchased at one of my favorite kitchen stores in Los Angeles, Surfas. I grind so many things in it, including toasted cumin seeds and coriander.

5. Additionally, two key tools I use are my basic tongs and flexible metal spatula—both purchased two decades ago at one of my favorite stores in San Francisco, Cliff’s Variety. It makes me happy that I’ve had these familiar utensils for so many years; they are like old friends who always come through for you when the going gets tough.

6. My all-time favorite food-related title from Knock Knock? Our Foodie Flashcards. To me, it pokes fun at a movement that often seems to take itself too seriously, and simultaneously celebrates the same. It’s smart and funny. My personal favorite card is “spatchcock,” because I never roast a chicken without first spatchcocking it. Seriously! But I laugh out loud every time I look at the “supertaster” card. So, these flashcards are my go-to gift for all those food-crazed friends of mine.

Ah, food.

Clump-o-Lump Debut

Each year in January, a handful of Knock Knockers head to New York for the New York International Gift Fair (where we have a booth) to introduce and sell our new Spring products to retailers. The show serves as one of our first opportunities to gauge how our new product may fair in the marketplace. It is always an event full of anticipation and hope. This year, there was even more excitement than usual in the air for Knock Knockers, due to the launch of our super snuggable, zip-and-match Clump-o-Lumps. These adorable plush creatures let kids (and grown-ups) create imaginative new friends by unzipping heads, torsos, and rumps and then zipping them together again in different combinations.

Here’s a photo of the Clump-o-Lump section of our booth. Look at that Two-Fer (located toward the bottom)—a head and rump zipped together. How cute is that?! We even had a seven-foot-tall totem in the booth!

It was most gratifying to watch customers approach the Clump-o-Lumps, touch them, squeeze them, unzip them, and then smile. Everyone seemed to have a favorite. One mom liked Bee-o the Bee because her term of endearment for her daughter is, “My sweet bee.” Another person liked Shark-o the Shark because he looks so “goofy.” My current personal favorite is Frog-o the Frog because its tongue makes me laugh.

Each night when the show was over for the day, we packed our Clump-o-Lump friends into giant luggage for safekeeping over night. One night we nearly packed Carolyn, our VP of Sales, into the bag with the Clump-o-Lumps:

Here she is in the bag with some of her Clump-o-Lump friends. Good thing we noticed her in there before we zipped it closed.

And now for something completely different.

This offense certainly merits a pic of our large WTF Sticky Note graphic used in our booth.

Mind the Gap

The New York International Gift Show takes place at the Javits Center. It is a place many of us have been to multiple times and as result we have developed a number of pet peeves about the place.

A WTF for the "gap" in the stall.

Several of us particularly love to complain about the “gap” in the bathroom stall. When you are in a stall with the door closed there is a disconcertingly large gap between the door and stall wall. It is more than a peek’s worth of gap too and many of us try to cover it up with jackets, toilet paper, etc. So if you are attending an event at the Javits, our advice is, “Mind the gap.”

I frequently eat my lunch while sitting in the back of my pickup truck, soaking in the California rays. It can never be too hot.

For our weekly “In It for the Money” feature, we’ll be introducing you to the kick-ass Knock Knockers who make everything go, from creative to sales to logistics to . . . everything! Note—everybody answers the first five questions. After that, they have about fifteen wild-card questions from which to choose.

1. Name and title? Craig Hetzer, SVP Creative Director

2. Originally from? Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut (Connecticut’s largest city, and one of the first cities in the United States to go bankrupt). I lived in Connecticut through my college years before heading to San Francisco and then Los Angeles.

3. What the hell do you do all day? I work with our designers, editors, and sales team, helping to shape what it is we make and how we make it. I also work with our business side to ensure that the things we make are financially feasible. I can often be found eating lunch outside in the bed of my pickup truck with my colleague Trish.

4. Favorite thing about working at KK? There are many things I truly like, but I have to say my favorite thing is how often we laugh uproariously at many of the things we write and ideas that we come up with.

5. Favorite hobbies outside work? I have one hobby: gardening. It consumes me at times. I remember being at a party several years ago where someone I had just met asked me, “If you could do anything you wanted, what would you do?” I was slightly inebriated, and without pausing replied (a little to my surprise), “Garden my life away.”

6. Did your professional life exist before Knock Knock? Yes. Prior to Knock Knock, I worked as the associate publisher of Chronicle Books Gift department. In fact, I was part of the team that started and founded its gift and stationery division. I really grew up professionally at Chronicle Books, starting in sales, moving to editorial, and then becoming an associate publisher.

7. Pet peeves? Okay, I cringe when I see the word “stationery” misspelled. In a previous job, I remember losing it after seeing the word “stationery” spelled “stationary” several times in one day. So, I decided to send a company-wide email that read something like this:

Hello book and stationery lovers,

I feel compelled to remind us all how to properly spell the word “stationery” when referring to the kind of product we make. Stationery with an “e” is the correct spelling. Just remember the phrase, “e is for envelope.” Stationary with an “a” means something entirely different.

We are all in the book and stationery business and it is important that we all spell “stationery” properly. After all, none of us misspell the word “book.”

(Not my best career moment)

8. Interesting factoid no one would know about you from first glance? I have the cleanest email inbox, both inbox and sent mail, of anyone I know. I am ruthless with email and delete as many as I can, as soon as I can. Email is such a useful tool but I do often feel like it’s overused and often very distracting. I try and get up from my desk as often as I can and communicate in person. Currently there are seven emails in my inbox.

9. What’s currently in your music rotation right now? I have been going back into my vinyl collection these days and have rediscovered the Durutti Column. I tend to stick with one album for at least two weeks and listen to it over and over again. Two weeks ago I was listening to Arvo Pärt, an Estonian composer who writes a lot of choral pieces with organ. My favorite time to listen to music is early on Saturday morning while I’m having my coffee and sitting on the patio. I do also want to make a call out to KCRW, one of our local public radio stations; they make my commute from Hollywood to Venice tolerable.

10. Food or drink you couldn’t live without? When I was growing up in Connecticut, my parents had a substantial vegetable garden and during the summer months we ate almost exclusively from the garden. We had a huge asparagus patch as well as large areas devoted to growing melons. My parents are both European and grew several things that were lesser known at the time in the United States, like celeriac, rutabaga, kohlrabi, and gooseberries. One of my favorite things in the garden had to be the rhubarb. As a kid I was fascinated by the fact that the leaves were poisonous but the stalks were edible. It seemed so dangerous to be eating the stalks if the leaves could inflict harm. To this day I love rhubarb and would not want to live without it. I cook it with some kumquat slices and sugar and have it with my oats in the morning.

11. What advice would you give your past self? Collaborate with others more. I have found that collaboration has worked to make me less stubborn and more open-minded.