Firm represents the latest in the Mirando family’s 110-year tradition of design innovation

United States, 10th Sep 2026 – MIKEADV CORP, the Boston-based, award-winning Integrated Marketing Communications agency known for handcrafted logo design, web development, and search engine optimization (SEO) services, is celebrating its 20th year in business. The anniversary comes 110 years after agency founder Mike Miranda’s great-uncles, Felix and Mike Miranda known as Mirando  came to the United States from Italy and started the Imperial Knife Company. In a tribute to his great-uncle, MIKEADV CORP’s Founder Mike Miranda was named after him, carrying not just his name, but it seems, his gift for design. 

Like MIKEADV, Imperial Knife Co. was committed to design excellence. “My great-uncle, after whom I was named, was a master of design and manufacturing craft,” explained Mike. “This talent with design runs in the family, apparently, and has been my inspiration in all my client work. As design increasingly gets absorbed into AI-driven processes, I feel the need for true design work is all the more urgent.” Virtually every early-stage client concept at MIKEADV is drawn by hand. “We’re pencil and paper guys,” Mike added. “From my brain to the paper; that’s really the only way to design something that stands out. The digitization comes later. My great-uncle understood this well, and the success he enjoyed with Imperial Knife Company bears it out.” 

Felix and Michael “Mike” Mirando came to the United States from Frosolone, Italy, a town in the Molise region with a long tradition of cutlery making. They settled in Providence, Rhode Island, where the city’s Jewelry District provided an ideal environment for skilled metalworking and small-scale manufacturing.

In 1916, the Mirando brothers established what became the Imperial Knife Company. Their boyhood friend and fellow Frosolone native, Domenic A. Fazzano, later joined them in the business. The company’s earliest work was closely connected to Providence’s jewelry trade. Imperial produced simple knife components, including metal “skeletons” that local jewelers could finish in gold or silver and turn into pocket-watch chain knives.

That market began to change during the 1920s as wristwatches increasingly replaced pocket watches. Imperial responded by expanding into the manufacture of complete pocketknives, developing the high-volume production methods that would eventually make the company one of the largest knife manufacturers in America.

The Great Depression presented another challenge—and an opportunity. Consumers had less money to spend, and manufacturers needed to produce useful goods at lower prices. Imperial became known for inexpensive stamped-metal construction and colorful plastic handle materials that allowed it to manufacture pocketknives efficiently and in large quantities. Felix Mirando was a named inventor on patents covering Imperial’s innovative knife-handle construction, including a 1939 patent involving plastic material applied to a metal knife-handle assembly.

The strategy helped Imperial grow dramatically. Rhode Island historical records indicate that the company employed approximately 1,000 workers by 1929. Its Providence operation eventually expanded to four buildings around Imperial Place, becoming a major presence in the city’s Jewelry District.

By the late 1930s, Imperial’s production had reached extraordinary levels. In a later interview, Mike Mirando recalled production of approximately 10,000 pocketknives per hour. By 1940, Imperial was the world’s largest producer of pocketknives, with historical accounts placing its production at as many as 100,000 knives per day.

Imperial’s story did not end with its early Providence factories. In 1957, the company acquired the former Rochambeau Worsted Company property at 60 King Street in Providence. The facility became an important part of Imperial’s later manufacturing operations, including the production of stainless-steel tableware. After the original Jewelry District operation closed in the 1970s, the King Street plant became Imperial’s principal production facility and remained in use until 1987.

Today, Imperial’s former Providence factories remain part of the city’s industrial heritage. The former Vesta Knitting Mills buildings associated with Imperial stand around Imperial Place and are recognized within Providence’s historic Jewelry District. GoProvidence, Providence’s official tourism organization, includes Imperial Place in its self-guided Jewelry District history tour, recognizing the company’s importance to the neighborhood and to Providence’s manufacturing history.

The story of Imperial Knife is ultimately a story of immigration, craftsmanship, innovation, and American mass production. Two brothers from Frosolone entered Providence’s jewelry-manufacturing world and built a company that grew from a small workshop making components for jewelers into a global-scale producer of affordable pocketknives. Imperial helped make the pocketknife an everyday American tool—and left a lasting mark on the industrial history of Providence, Rhode Island.

“Imperial Knife thrived even during the era of mass production,” Mike reflected. “They were able to do this because they were obsessed with craft. We’re going through a similar phase now with AI, which represents mass automated design. We respond with obsessive handcraft. It’s the same family instinct, playing out in a new century.”

For more information, https://mikeadv.com 

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