Anymore "high-end" Kershaws?

[Gnarly]

Other top tier companies have similar capacity but only by have much or most of the production done oversees and or by having limited new knife designs.

That's because Rick Hinderer & Thomas W et al, have VISION....

The other companies are wearing bifocals.

(Made in a shoe factory called "Taiwan".)

 

[Noctis3880]

The demand is there, but what pays to keep the factory running and the employees salaried? The profit margin has to be pretty slim on the really high end exotic stuff. You could kind of compare it to car manufacturing. Exotic car makers like Lamborghini can (hopefully) make a profit selling relatively few cars because their factory is set up that way and their pricing is set up to cover the cost of manufacturing and limited marketing and distribution. Compare this to Ford, they can certainly make a Lamborghini level car, look at the GT. But is it practical for them to produce it? The R&D and manufacturing costs were not likely to have been recovered by the short run, plus there is the added cost of being able to support maintenance of the ones that were produced. Hopefully valuable info was gained during development that trickled down to their mainstream cars. And of course publicity and mindshare gained were invaluable.

I guess I am just saying we should do all we can to support and buy the volume knives so Kershaw and ZT can afford to make is the high end and sprints we want. And when they do make something for us we need to make sure it goes fast so they know they didn't make a mistake. And also make sure we let them know when we really like something new or think that something really works well in the high end stuff so they can think about incorporating it into their mainstream production.

True, but perhaps we can compromise with a mid-production range? Somewhere in the neighborhood of $125-$175? I think Benchmade has the right general idea with their recent runs of M390 knives. The 710 in M390 is around $150 and the 583 is slightly more pricey at $187(though cheaper at GPknives). The M390 mini-grip was a particularly good deal.

I think the Speedform II had a good concept with G10 handles and a full Elmax blade at under $100. It's just that the ergos isn't quite right(hard to explain this one). But anyways, high performance doesn't necessarily demand expensive accessories(carbon fiber, titanium). Good ol' G10 & stainless liners have always done fine for some popular knives(BM 710, Spyderco Para2).

With the various runs of knives, it shouldn't be too difficult to pull the data on a popular seller(say, the Skyline) and release it essentially with a blade swap. That seems like it would be better than doing it in reverse, with the high-end first and the lower-end clones second(Speedform, then Speedform II).

 

[knivesandguns]

True, but perhaps we can compromise with a mid-production range? Somewhere in the neighborhood of $125-$175? I think Benchmade has the right general idea with their recent runs of M390 knives. The 710 in M390 is around $150 and the 583 is slightly more pricey at $187(though cheaper at GPknives). The M390 mini-grip was a particularly good deal.

I think the Speedform II had a good concept with G10 handles and a full Elmax blade at under $100. It's just that the ergos isn't quite right(hard to explain this one). But anyways, high performance doesn't necessarily demand expensive accessories(carbon fiber, titanium). Good ol' G10 & stainless liners have always done fine for some popular knives(BM 710, Spyderco Para2).

With the various runs of knives, it shouldn't be too difficult to pull the data on a popular seller(say, the Skyline) and release it essentially with a blade swap. That seems like it would be better than doing it in reverse, with the high-end first and the lower-end clones second(Speedform, then Speedform II).

I see what you're saying, but that price range is not what they need to compete for. That's not what they want. That's not who they really compete with. The skyline does great w/o exotic steel -- most purchases come from wal-mart for that model.

Zero Tolerance stays in that price range mostly.

 

[kneedeep]

True, but perhaps we can compromise with a mid-production range? Somewhere in the neighborhood of $125-$175? I think Benchmade has the right general idea with their recent runs of M390 knives. The 710 in M390 is around $150 and the 583 is slightly more pricey at $187(though cheaper at GPknives). The M390 mini-grip was a particularly good deal.

I think the Speedform II had a good concept with G10 handles and a full Elmax blade at under $100. It's just that the ergos isn't quite right(hard to explain this one). But anyways, high performance doesn't necessarily demand expensive accessories(carbon fiber, titanium). Good ol' G10 & stainless liners have always done fine for some popular knives(BM 710, Spyderco Para2).

With the various runs of knives, it shouldn't be too difficult to pull the data on a popular seller(say, the Skyline) and release it essentially with a blade swap. That seems like it would be better than doing it in reverse, with the high-end first and the lower-end clones second(Speedform, then Speedform II).

I'm sure Kai USA has plenty of readily accessible info on what sells. They likely float many ideas for variations of popular models, but someone has to buy them, and I don't mean the end line user. If there isn't a distributor or bulk buyer on board for a full run (size of which likely depends on the quantity of the different material Kai has to buy in bulk) then it is a pretty unattractive gamble.

Look at that digicamo skyline, Thomas mentions that they hadn't had any takers on it yet, and that required only a tiny run of 600.

If you dig through the subforum you can find pictures of plenty of variations that never got done because no one stepped up and committed to a run.

I'm sure Kai loves to hear what we want, and we do have some effect on things they make, but if we really want special runs done, we need to let the distributors and bulk buyers know somehow.