Albers Cutlery Company

Got one in the cart and got PayPal to consummate the buy but it was out of stock by the time I clicked ok. Is there a faster way to do this? Someone chime in. Disappointed for the umpteenth time.
 
I'll say it again. Sign-ups with an invoice when knives are ready. Fighting bots and scalpers to get a knife is just BAD BUSINESS.

Lambda Razors is like this. Theo has a huge following. Sign up and when razors are available, you get an email with an order number to complete the sale within a couple of weeks. Decided you don't want it now, the invoice goes to the next person in line.

This totally kills the eBay scalping and gives REAL USERS a chance to buy a great razor at a fair price.
 
Sid Post said:
I'll say it again. Sign-ups with an invoice when knives are ready. Fighting bots and scalpers to get a knife is just BAD BUSINESS.

Lambda Razors is like this. Theo has a huge following. Sign up and when razors are available, you get an email with an order number to complete the sale within a couple of weeks. Decided you don't want it now, the invoice goes to the next person in line.

This totally kills the eBay scalping and gives REAL USERS a chance to buy a great razor at a fair price.
Click to expand...
I agree that fighting bots and scalpers is a total bummer. I wish that Mr. Albers would go back to unannounced drops. The only time I was able to score was twice in 2022. Both times using PayPal. As you can see from my order history I had enough time to go back and order a second cover option and got a refund on shipping both times. As I recall Mr. Albers gave hints here about an upcoming drop but no specific date. I’m not sure if it’s bad business since he still sells out all of his products. He’s running a one man shop and I’m sure his time is precious. Can’t say I have a perfect solution.View attachment 2443221
 
sf fanatic said:
I agree that fighting bots and scalpers is a total bummer. I wish that Mr. Albers would go back to unannounced drops. The only time I was able to score was twice in 2022. Both times using PayPal. As you can see from my order history I had enough time to go back and order a second cover option and got a refund on shipping both times. As I recall Mr. Albers gave hints here about an upcoming drop but no specific date. I’m not sure if it’s bad business since he still sells out all of his products. He’s running a one man shop and I’m sure his time is precious. Can’t say I have a perfect solution.View attachment 2443221
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Same here. I've only purchased a lambfoot and a fixed blade, and both were the random drops with no specific time announced. I'm not fast enough otherwise.
 
Sid Post said:
I'll say it again. Sign-ups with an invoice when knives are ready. Fighting bots and scalpers to get a knife is just BAD BUSINESS.

Lambda Razors is like this. Theo has a huge following. Sign up and when razors are available, you get an email with an order number to complete the sale within a couple of weeks. Decided you don't want it now, the invoice goes to the next person in line.

This totally kills the eBay scalping and gives REAL USERS a chance to buy a great razor at a fair price.
Click to expand...

Sid I don't see any evidence of bots in my sales, nor do I see a whole heck of a lot of flippers. Yes there are a couple here and there but you're going to get that in any business that has to do with collectables and there's really no way to completely avoid it. That's capitalism for you and it comes with the territory. The vast majority of buyers in this last sale were new customers with a handful of repeat customers. No one got more than one knife, nor has anyone in the last several drops. The reason they sell out so quickly is that I drop 35 to 45 knives at a time (this one was 26 due to the fact that I wanted to get them done before the holidays) and I have roughly 1800 people on my mailing list. Yes that's a lot! I'm not running a factory that can pump out 100's of knives at a time, I'm a one man operation working out of my garage so in my opinion the fairest way to enable all the folks who went through the trouble of putting themselves on the mailing list is to send everyone on it a notification about the drops. That's the whole point of being on a notification list, right? I feel I have a responsibility there and at this point just dropping batches willy-nilly without any forewarning would rightfully anger a lot of folks who are expecting at least a heads up.

Eric
 
ea42 said:
Sid I don't see any evidence of bots in my sales, nor do I see a whole heck of a lot of flippers. Yes there are a couple here and there but you're going to get that in any business that has to do with collectables and there's really no way to completely avoid it. That's capitalism for you and it comes with the territory. The vast majority of buyers in this last sale were new customers with a handful of repeat customers. No one got more than one knife, nor has anyone in the last several drops. The reason they sell out so quickly is that I drop 35 to 45 knives at a time (this one was 26 due to the fact that I wanted to get them done before the holidays) and I have roughly 1800 people on my mailing list. Yes that's a lot! I'm not running a factory that can pump out 100's of knives at a time, I'm a one man operation working out of my garage so in my opinion the fairest way to enable all the folks who went through the trouble of putting themselves on the mailing list is to send everyone on it a notification about the drops. That's the whole point of being on a notification list, right? I feel I have a responsibility there and at this point just dropping batches willy-nilly without any forewarning would rightfully anger a lot of folks who are expecting at least a heads up.

Eric
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Mr. Albers, on the two drops I was able to get knives they were not willy-nilly. You provided hints as to when they were going to drop. I believe it gave us mere mortals a chance to participate. As I said I understand that you are a small shop and doing the best you can. Please continue your excellent work!
 
ea42 said:
Sid I don't see any evidence of bots in my sales, nor do I see a whole heck of a lot of flippers. Yes there are a couple here and there but you're going to get that in any business that has to do with collectables and there's really no way to completely avoid it. That's capitalism for you and it comes with the territory. The vast majority of buyers in this last sale were new customers with a handful of repeat customers. No one got more than one knife, nor has anyone in the last several drops. The reason they sell out so quickly is that I drop 35 to 45 knives at a time (this one was 26 due to the fact that I wanted to get them done before the holidays) and I have roughly 1800 people on my mailing list. Yes that's a lot! I'm not running a factory that can pump out 100's of knives at a time, I'm a one man operation working out of my garage so in my opinion the fairest way to enable all the folks who went through the trouble of putting themselves on the mailing list is to send everyone on it a notification about the drops. That's the whole point of being on a notification list, right? I feel I have a responsibility there and at this point just dropping batches willy-nilly without any forewarning would rightfully anger a lot of folks who are expecting at least a heads up.

Eric
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It seems you’ve been moving toward batches of a single material or maybe two material options. I’m not sure if this is a direct effort to make it higher chance for us buyers to be able to get one, and less incentive for anyone to go back for a second. However, I feel it’s a big benefit from the buyer side. I’ve been able to get one on a drop (snakewood lambfoot), and I attribute much of this luck to it being a one-cover batch. My other (macadamia clip) I got from a fair trade on the secondary.

I did not participate this go-around (blue rope) or last (ironwood), but hope you continue one option batches moving forward so that more new buyers have their best chance at getting one direct from you.

Or, maybe you enjoy doing more varied batches… as long as you keep making them! Love seeing all the pictures.

Edited to add this picture of my two!

IMG-2146.jpg
 
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Hoffmajo89 said:
It seems you’ve been moving toward batches of a single material or maybe two material options. I’m not sure if this is a direct effort to make it higher chance for us buyers to be able to get one, and less incentive for anyone to go back for a second. However, I feel it’s a big benefit from the buyer side. I’ve been able to get one on a drop (snakewood lambfoot), and I attribute much of this luck to it being a one-cover batch. My other (macadamia clip) I got from a fair trade on the secondary.

I did not participate this go-around (blue rope) or last (ironwood), but hope you continue one option batches moving forward so that more new buyers have their best chance at getting one direct from you.

Or, maybe you enjoy doing more varied batches… as long as you keep making them! Love seeing all the pictures.

Edited to add this picture of my two!

IMG-2146.jpg
Click to expand...



That's been my goal lately and when the materials allow I'll definitely be going that route. More often though I'll probably have at least a couple of different handle options per batch only because of the scarcity of the handle materials I'm using. Lots of the woods are in small blocks that might only yield 8 or 10 knives per block and often I only find a block or two available at a time for a specific species. It does make it fun though, I love seeing how the different materials transform once they're polished up.

Eric
 
ea42 said:
Sid I don't see any evidence of bots in my sales, nor do I see a whole heck of a lot of flippers. Yes there are a couple here and there but you're going to get that in any business that has to do with collectables and there's really no way to completely avoid it. That's capitalism for you and it comes with the territory. The vast majority of buyers in this last sale were new customers with a handful of repeat customers. No one got more than one knife, nor has anyone in the last several drops. The reason they sell out so quickly is that I drop 35 to 45 knives at a time (this one was 26 due to the fact that I wanted to get them done before the holidays) and I have roughly 1800 people on my mailing list. Yes that's a lot! I'm not running a factory that can pump out 100's of knives at a time, I'm a one man operation working out of my garage so in my opinion the fairest way to enable all the folks who went through the trouble of putting themselves on the mailing list is to send everyone on it a notification about the drops. That's the whole point of being on a notification list, right? I feel I have a responsibility there and at this point just dropping batches willy-nilly without any forewarning would rightfully anger a lot of folks who are expecting at least a heads up.

Eric
Click to expand...

Eric,

I appreciate your point of view but, there are other ways to deal more effectively with this IMHO. I mean no disrespect but, you aren't the only one in this position of running a one-man shop with a huge following.

I also see the same eBay sellers after each drop with your latest knives as well. Maybe they aren't using bots and just hire a bunch of people out of Asia or Africa to VPN into the USA and submit an order for their resell business? I don't expect you to be Internet savvy or some backend IT savant to spot things like this but, it also isn't hard to monitor popular resell sites either. One of your fans would likely have the skillset to manage this sort of activity for you for free or a very modest cost letting you focus on what you do best. Volunteers like myself have done this sort of thing for decades; my contribution was with Japanese Kitchen Knives on two different websites to help them penetrate into the USA domestic market; they were blacksmiths in Japan, not good marketers with hours a day to figure out the English aspects and context of what they were trying to say.

Theo out of Greece is in the same position and I signed up there for his waiting list. When my turn came, he emailed with a PayPal invoice I paid and BINGO my new razor was here in no time at all!

Regarding your email list of 1800 people, how many of them want to actually own and use one of your knives versus those looking to score a flip?

Best Regards,
Sid
 
Sid Post said:
Eric,

I appreciate your point of view but, there are other ways to deal more effectively with this IMHO. I mean no disrespect but, you aren't the only one in this position of running a one-man shop with a huge following.

I also see the same eBay sellers after each drop with your latest knives as well. Maybe they aren't using bots and just hire a bunch of people out of Asia or Africa to VPN into the USA and submit an order for their resell business? I don't expect you to be Internet savvy or some backend IT savant to spot things like this but, it also isn't hard to monitor popular resell sites either. One of your fans would likely have the skillset to manage this sort of activity for you for free or a very modest cost letting you focus on what you do best. Volunteers like myself have done this sort of thing for decades; my contribution was with Japanese Kitchen Knives on two different websites to help them penetrate into the USA domestic market; they were blacksmiths in Japan, not good marketers with hours a day to figure out the English aspects and context of what they were trying to say.

Theo out of Greece is in the same position and I signed up there for his waiting list. When my turn came, he emailed with a PayPal invoice I paid and BINGO my new razor was here in no time at all!

Regarding your email list of 1800 people, how many of them want to actually own and use one of your knives versus those looking to score a flip?

Best Regards,
Sid
Click to expand...

OK, first, what same Ebay sellers? Of the few that are up or have been sold there's exactly ONE repeat seller. Most of those are the jacks that I sold over a year ago. Every other knife is from a different seller (I'm talking folders here). One seller has sold the same knife twice and has it up yet again. I don't know what's up with that nor do I want to know. Another knife that's up for sale I know for a fact was purchased by the seller from a previous owner for much less. How many others are being sold under similar circumstances with different previous owners? I very much doubt any of them were acquired through nefarious means by foreign agents. Another was sold for almost the same price it was purchased for so yes there are folks who might actually be selling a knife because it just isn't their thing.

No I have no idea how many people on that list are looking to score a knife to flip and neither do you but judging by the evidence there seem to be far fewer than you're implying.

The bottom line is the demand is great and I can't make the knives anywhere near fast enough to satisfy it, end of story. I try to be equally as fair as I can to everyone who's interested and needlessly worrying about non existent bots and the insidious underground are not worth time out of the shop.

Eric
 
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