About Us
Sleeping Tiger was formed by Debbie Donahoe and Dave Machamer, both engineers who share a passion for Martial Arts and Self-Defense. We have been teaching and studying martial arts for decades and saw a need to make vulnerable people safer. This became a priority for us when we each had daughters going off to college. We realized that a wearable self-defense weapon could provide round-the-clock, always-ready protection without requiring strength or special skills.
We started brainstorming knife concepts in 2014. Two years later we setup a machine shop and began the years long process of prototyping and testing wildly different form factors, always keeping the critical demands of an attack situation in mind. At long last, we honed in on the Tigress design and kicked off the manufacturing process in 2024 using all local manufacturers.