Are some knife Mfg. Using cult following to boost their profits.

Status
Not open for further replies.
I'm completely against this. I want people to own my knives. I build them all by hand to custom specs at prices well below many production fixed blades and get them out in under a month. As long as I break even, I'm doing ok.
 
Charlie Mike said:
I'm completely against this. I want people to own my knives. I build them all by hand to custom specs at prices well below many production fixed blades and get them out in under a month. As long as I break even, I'm doing ok.
Click to expand...
I don't think anyone would call a custom made knife, made by hand with blade forging and heat treating a sprint run.

Now i have seen with Randle where a vendor buys a full run of their best selling knives, get them before any single buyer could every get one like a wait of around five years.
Then the vendor shows up at a major firearm show with a bunch of Randle knives for sale at from 40 to 50% above their normal Randle prices.
 
Old question: How do you milk sheep?
Old answer: Release a new iPhone--or iPod or iPad, etc ad infinitum.

You can re-word that old answer to be applicable to the knife enthusiast community. Just substitute the name of a popular knife make/model in a couple sizzling hot new fashion rage steels in lieu of iPhone/Pad/Pod.

This OD of humor comes to you from a guy who bought a MD Laconico Keen, a ZT 0562Ti and a killer set of Wicked Edge equipment this month alone and has sworn to go on a severely restricted new knife/gear diet for the first half of next year.

Baa, baa, BAAAAAAAAAAAA!
 
Generally speaking I'm comfortable with regular production. I generally refuse to pre-order a knife and if said knife sells out on day 1, so be it. I just saved some money and have plenty of good knives.

I don't blame manufacturers with their limited editions or sprint runs. Seems to be good business for them.
 
marrenmiller said:
I don't know if you follow these things, but those knives definitely do go up in value if you check eBay. In fact, they're immediately available right after they all sell out, and they're selling for waaaay higher than retail price.
Click to expand...

I do follow some of them, not directly but through the forums. And I agree that they temporarily go up in value. They act like stock IPOs...they go up initially and then 90% of them lose over time any value they ever had. That is why I said there is a collusion between the manufacturer, flippers and collectors.

Somebody above said that there were between 1-5000 knives made in the runs. NO, that is not right. Spyderco gets contacted by a retailer who wants to do a special run of knives that they design. Spyderco can run around 750 knives in one run, and if they do two runs that is approx 1,500 knives.

Spyderco by doing this is LEAVING hundreds of thousands on the table yearly to prop up their prices through a hard to access product, by creating a a rare product 10 times per year. I don't get it. It does not satisfy the user base. Sal has seen my comments on Spyderco Forums. He's never commented, and as I have said hundreds of others have seen my comments but avoid replying.
 
Tommy-Chi said:
I do follow some of them, not directly but through the forums. And I agree that they temporarily go up in value. They act like stock IPOs...they go up initially and then 90% of them lose over time any value they ever had. That is why I said there is a collusion between the manufacturer, flippers and collectors.

Somebody above said that there were between 1-5000 knives made in the runs. NO, that is not right. Spyderco gets contacted by a retailer who wants to do a special run of knives that they design. Spyderco can run around 750 knives in one run, and if they do two runs that is approx 1,500 knives.

Spyderco by doing this is LEAVING hundreds of thousands on the table yearly to prop up their prices through a hard to access product, by creating a a rare product 10 times per year. I don't get it. It does not satisfy the user base. Sal has seen my comments on Spyderco Forums. He's never commented, and as I have said hundreds of others have seen my comments but avoid replying.
Click to expand...

I don't understand your complaint here. They make a limited supply of knives that sell quickly and completely and hold value at least for a short while (at least as long as the interest is there). They must think that it's worth it over a custom shop option, otherwise they would do that instead.

I have to imagine that the guaranteed sales of an exclusive sprint run are attractive to a company like Spyderco, which takes a lot of risks with their product portfolio.
 
Cult? No, the fans of Spyderco do not, in my opinion meet the definition of a cult. There is another knife company that had a forum here, got its initial funding through crowdfunding and had a fanbase that did act like a cult. Do not question the leader, devotion based on the charisma of the leader or the ideal object of the group (in this case knives that rarely if ever shipped) rejection of any former followers who began to drift or ask too many questions, often in a vitriolic and "you were never a real follower anyway" way, blind devotion in the face of evidence against the brand, etc.

As for Sal "Leaving money on the table" as far as I know the Golden factory runs at pretty well full capacity all the time, and unadvised expansions are the death of many companies, he cannot control the secondary market, and thus blaming him for not doing more is a little shortsighted. Who buys sprints? mostly collectors I'd guess. For something to be collected it needs to be collectable, which means some level of scarcity either artificial from point of origin or through attrition over time. So doubling the number in a production run might push them past where the collectors want them, but you still have a product priced higher than the user market may want (it would be case-by-case I'm sure). Also knives cost money on the shelf, so lets say they double all production, can they actually sell twice as many knives? I wouldn't think so. Since we don't have the numbers on these knives and we don't have total sales numbers from spyderco, how can we decide we know more than the guy who does? And of course asking to be told is a bit out of line. I've said before, an aspirational product is a long and time tried sales strategy, and in the way spyderco does it, they do it at a low risk. That seems to me like a win win for them.

What it starts to sound like is sour grapes, and getting grumpy that a thing you want costs more than you think it should. Keep in mind that popular steels to get rolled out into wider production, but they have to feel that there is a demand for it, and these things all take time.

Reitwagen said:
Barnum said, " Give the people what they want."
Click to expand...
and Ed Bernays said "tell the people what they want"
 
I think there's been a couple mentions about missing out on sprints from Spyderco as part of a collection.

I would say if the object is as a serious collector to collect all the knives then you have to join the collector club. No brainer really.
 
Tommy-Chi said:
I do follow some of them, not directly but through the forums. And I agree that they temporarily go up in value. They act like stock IPOs...they go up initially and then 90% of them lose over time any value they ever had. That is why I said there is a collusion between the manufacturer, flippers and collectors.

Somebody above said that there were between 1-5000 knives made in the runs. NO, that is not right. Spyderco gets contacted by a retailer who wants to do a special run of knives that they design. Spyderco can run around 750 knives in one run, and if they do two runs that is approx 1,500 knives.

Spyderco by doing this is LEAVING hundreds of thousands on the table yearly to prop up their prices through a hard to access product, by creating a a rare product 10 times per year. I don't get it. It does not satisfy the user base. Sal has seen my comments on Spyderco Forums. He's never commented, and as I have said hundreds of others have seen my comments but avoid replying.
Click to expand...

That was a generic example of how and why sprint runs come to be and the numbers are purely figurative. There's no bearing on how an actually company runs their sprints, hence the fictitious example of Company A.

I'm a little lost when you say there's a collusion between manufacturers, flippers, and collectors. Could you elaborate?

I disagree and think that Sprint/Limited editions are made specifically for their fan base. Whether or not they are leaving $100k's on the table (if that is the case, I don't know the economics behind all this*) by making sprints, they seem to be doing well enough that they can produce enough of the base models to fill the new, casual, and veteran user's needs while also making upgraded models for the die hard fans and still make a profit. Where's the bad in all that?



*Plus, as long as a company makes good knives and stand behind their products, their bottom line is their business and not any of ours.
 
Last edited:
Tommy-Chi said:
I do follow some of them, not directly but through the forums. And I agree that they temporarily go up in value. They act like stock IPOs...they go up initially and then 90% of them lose over time any value they ever had. That is why I said there is a collusion between the manufacturer, flippers and collectors.

Somebody above said that there were between 1-5000 knives made in the runs. NO, that is not right. Spyderco gets contacted by a retailer who wants to do a special run of knives that they design. Spyderco can run around 750 knives in one run, and if they do two runs that is approx 1,500 knives.

Spyderco by doing this is LEAVING hundreds of thousands on the table yearly to prop up their prices through a hard to access product, by creating a a rare product 10 times per year. I don't get it. It does not satisfy the user base. Sal has seen my comments on Spyderco Forums. He's never commented, and as I have said hundreds of others have seen my comments but avoid replying.
Click to expand...
I think you are correct.
 
benchwarmer380 said:
That was a generic example of how and why sprint runs come to be and the numbers are purely figurative. There's no bearing on how an actually company runs their sprints, hence the fictitious example of Company A.

I'm a little lost when you say there's a collusion between manufacturers, flippers, and collectors. Could you elaborate?

I disagree and think that Sprint/Limited editions are made specifically for their fan base. Whether or not they are leaving $100k's on the table (if that is the case, I don't know the economics behind all this*) by making sprints, they seem to be doing well enough that they can produce enough of the base models to fill the new, casual, and veteran user's needs while also making upgraded models for the die hard fans and still make a profit. Where's the bad in all that?

*Plus, as long as a company makes good knives and stand behind their products, their bottom line is their business and not any of ours.
Click to expand...

The collusion lay merely in the fact that they do not want the "Sprint Run" knives sold in larger quantities over a longer period of time, creating a temporary reward system, which raises the prices for those able/capable of getting the knives. If you go to the forums in question, the more established board members call the retailers by personal name - they live near the retailers - they visit the manufacturers - they go to the meets here and abroad, etc.

I AGREE. The Sprint/Limited Ed are for a very small segment of the fan base ONLY, and they are not allowing others to get in on these offers.

Example: They had a 204P Spyderco....not sure of the specifics(cannot recall) but lets say it had a tan blade and dark green g-10. The forum was lit for weeks over these 500 knives! Then the retailers server crashed on sale day due to the numbers trying to get the knife. The retailer then went back to a LIST that they had for pre-orders of the knife, and sold them to those who were in the forum and knew to preorder. It's all hogwash. Nobody from outside the forum can get in on these sales and they are more or less privatized.

You are saying that the knives are for "the fan base" but it is far far far more restrictive than that. THAT is how they are driving the overall value for the valuation of the entire brand. Now, is this good or bad? I just analyzed it. To me it's bad because I can never get my hands on any of the knives that I'd like, but is it bad? That would depend on what your opinion of all of this is. There is no right or wrong. It is what it is.
 
Last edited:
Besides burnley knucjles are pure value compared to this guy.

IMG_2272.jpg
 
Sprint runs are done as sprint runs because they'll sell that way, but wouldn't sell as well if kept around as a permanent item. It gives them a chance to do something different without running up against what's known as "opportunity cost" where they're losing out on profits they could be making producing something else instead. As a rule of thumb, in nearly any industry, 20% of the customer base buys 80% of the product. The sprint run model is working well for Spyderco, and I doubt they'll abandon it. What would the alternative be? The demand for the product doesn't warrant making them a permanent item, so it's either stick with what they're doing now, or not do them at all?
 
FortyTwoBlades said:
Sprint runs are done as sprint runs because they'll sell that way, but wouldn't sell as well if kept around as a permanent item. It gives them a chance to do something different without running up against what's known as "opportunity cost" where they're losing out on profits they could be making producing something else instead. As a rule of thumb, in nearly any industry, 20% of the customer base buys 80% of the product. The sprint run model is working well for Spyderco, and I doubt they'll abandon it. What would the alternative be? The demand for the product doesn't warrant making them a permanent item, so it's either stick with what they're doing now, or not do them at all?
Click to expand...

Nope. An online "Custom Shop" that hosts these knives for six, nine or twelve months supplies and closes 100% of the orders needed. Nothing else suffices.
 
snapshot2017 said:
I find some knife Mfg.s have a cult following of their knives, for example Spyderco, have many of the same type knives that they change handle color and Material they change the blade Material, they make a "sprint Run" and the prices go from the $140 to $225 as an example.
And people are begging for new sprint runs of the same knives, it seems to be working well i feel are they using these sprint runs to just boost their profits?
Click to expand...
Have you emailed Sal of Spyderco to tell him of your disappointment? —————It’s called giving your customers what they want! If you don’t like it? Don’t buy any! Whining here about your frustrations isn’t going to harm Spyderco or help you, in the least! Have a nice evening!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top