Knife designer going for global audience

SCOTT Staib wanted to be a chef ever since he was 12 years old, a desire he attributes "to the Italian side of my family." But his career as a chef, once it got under way, was cut short after he began suffering symptoms of tendonitis and carpal tunnel syndrome - complaints, he discovered, afflicting many professional chefs.

While most chefs work through the pain or undergo operations to continue working, Staib took a different path. He began thinking about creating ergonomically designed chefs' knives to reduce or eliminate injuries caused by the repetitive motions of cutting and chopping and slicing on the food line.

The result is his fledgling Ergo Chef knives company in Danbury (www.ergochef.com), which makes seven professional-grade, forged knives he's beginning to market nationally. He hopes sales will be about half a million dollars this year and grow to between $3 million and $5 million within five years. By then, Ergo Chef will have more than tripled its product fine by adding a less expensive line of cutlery, a line of professional knives with overmolded handles instead of the classic threerivet handle, and an array of other kitchen products such as bamboo cutting boards.