This actually puts small mom and pop stores ahead of online retailers. The local knife shop where I live beats online prices for benchmades by $20-$30 on just about anything. This is because they are too small to make a ripple with benchmade's pricing enforcement agency (a secretive, little known offshoot of the KGB). They are pretty fed up with the hoops they have to jump through to be benchmade reps though so maybe I should grab a few more knives for good prices while I can...
-
The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is ready to order! See this thread for details: https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-2024-traditional-knife.2003187/
Price is$300$250 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
Am I the only one confused about Benchmade Prices?
- Thread starter Triforge
- Start date
- Joined
- Sep 1, 2013
- Messages
- 842
They do *look* sort of "unsturdy" -- most of their knives don't *look* beefy, and it seems that most of the blades on their folders are relatively thin. While they might be sturdy, some people just prefer a beefy looking knife.
- Joined
- Jan 12, 2009
- Messages
- 3,198
I have seen the some of the videos, and out of the knives referenced I like the HK the best. Still, it just doesn't have the feel in hand that I like. The Griptillian is well known for its utility, but too small for my hands. As for sturdy, I want a knife that I can use day after day for nasty stuff, wash it out with at a hose bibb, or clean it off with charcoal lighter fluid, touch up the edge with some 600gr wet and dry sand paper and drop it back in my pocket.
Don't want to do that with a work sized (my work size) Benchmade that will probably be around $150 to $175 to start when looking for a working man's knife.
Comparing the MAP pricing for the Benchmades to Kershaw knives, I will still be buying Kershaws. Kershaw puts out a lot of product and the pricing goes where it will. So when a product doesn't sell well, you can get a deal on their knife as they allow the dealers to clear out their inventory to allow for new products. Not so with BM's MAP arrangement. Kershaw prices go up and down and follow the market, and they even sell their blems.
With MAP in place, if you are sitting on a poorly selling specimen of a BM knife and want to get it out of your inventory by cutting the price, you can't do that. You sit on it. And the idea that "Benchmade is trying to help the Mom and Pop shops" doesn't hold water, either. Their overhead is already lower, so even with a price break for buying 10 of one model, the larger stores probably can't sell it for significantly less. And not once have I traveled through one of the dozens of small communities that surround my city and walked into an old fashioned store of any kind and seen a Benchmade display proudly selling $125 to $300 knives to the local community.
MAP pricing (also used by some tool makers such as Festool) helps maintain the product value. Since you can never buy them on sale or at discount, if it is a tool/knife you like you might as well buy it when you want it. Also, this helps keep the secondary market in check by keep the price of the used tools up as well since no one is selling off a "bargain" or "deeply discounted" tool (or knife) on the cheap that they bought themselves inexpensively when on sale since those examples don't exist.
Everyone pays the same price and plays by the rules dictated by the manufacturer. Don't know how it is working for BM, but MAP is working well for Festool. Their used tools frequently sell for 80% of their original cost even after a lot of hard use. I think it remains to be seen how well that will work as a business model in the knife industry.
Robert
The reality is if you follow the posts, local shops are selling benchmade knives way below what the MAP price is to face to face customers, and now that it would seem email/cart price discounts etc. are not allowed. The new policy is giving local shops a clear advantage over internet dealers. It's gone way beyond leveling the playing field and appears to have gone well beyond what a typical MAP policy would.
A local dealer can offer me a huge discount below MAP as long as it's face to face or on the phone (at least that's what we're seeing in reports from lots of BM buyers), but an internet dealer doing the same thing by customer's email request, or in cart only price is breaking the "rules".
A local dealer can offer me a huge discount below MAP as long as it's face to face or on the phone (at least that's what we're seeing in reports from lots of BM buyers), but an internet dealer doing the same thing by customer's email request, or in cart only price is breaking the "rules".
- Joined
- May 18, 1999
- Messages
- 1,709
I would love to find one of those dealers! Every local dealer I have ever been to sells at MSRP.
If the local dealer does it, they are violating the agreement and could lose their dealership. It's just harder to catch them when it's face to face.
Exactly, which means in reality the rules don't really apply to those local shops because the odds of Benchmade finding out are slim at best, unlike an online shop doing the same thing.
All one has to do is look at the 940-1 threads, I doubt you'll find an online seller that's selling them for under $263, though in lots of searching I did find one around $250 out of stock of course. Yet in that one thread there are multiple people who claim to have bought them in stores for well under that, and one box clearly marked under $200, I suppose they all could be lying. I admit around here most big box shops sell for over MAP, but as the rules are now it's much easier for those local shops to break them without fear of Benchmade finding out, and if other users reports are to be believed some dealers are already taking advantage of it.
All one has to do is look at the 940-1 threads, I doubt you'll find an online seller that's selling them for under $263, though in lots of searching I did find one around $250 out of stock of course. Yet in that one thread there are multiple people who claim to have bought them in stores for well under that, and one box clearly marked under $200, I suppose they all could be lying. I admit around here most big box shops sell for over MAP, but as the rules are now it's much easier for those local shops to break them without fear of Benchmade finding out, and if other users reports are to be believed some dealers are already taking advantage of it.
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2014
- Messages
- 342
So if I understand this correctly the price distributors are getting the knife for has stayed the same. What they are allowed to sell it for has gone up. It's does NOT cost the distributor more to get it from benchmade?
- Joined
- May 18, 1999
- Messages
- 1,709
The dealers get directly from Benchmade now. Benchmade has not increased their price any, so the dealers end up making more profit.
- Joined
- Nov 9, 2009
- Messages
- 44,314
Or less if any, based on someone being on a budget or not willing to cough up that much coin.
- Joined
- May 18, 1999
- Messages
- 1,709
And that's the issue: will the increased profit margin compensate for the loss of volume? I'm guessing it won't. For my part, I'll buy another brand from the same dealer so they don't feel the pinch. If enough people do that, then the only one who suffers is Benchmade who will hopefully then reconsider their policy.
- Joined
- Jan 12, 2009
- Messages
- 3,198
OK, I got what you are saying now. If a vendor is willing to renege on his contractual agreement and violate it by selling under the mutually agreed upon price, "then the rules don't really apply to those local shops".
So if they can sneak around and get away with it, the rules don't apply... unless they are caught.
Got it. Doesn't sound like an agreement between trustworthy, honorable folks, though. I am pretty sure that ignoring the contractual obligations agreed to by both parties and then sabotaging the pricing of other dealers that "the rules apply to" (you know, the other guys that stand by their word) by undermining their pricing wouldn't be looked upon well by Benchmade.
I doubt if Benchmade looks at their obligatory business agreement as a cat and mouse game.
Robert