BF Matriarch Price

T

Titan

Joined
Jan 21, 1999
Messages
984
Sal -- I've gotten over the sticker shock on the BF Native. $99.95 does seem reasonable for a really customized Native. It's just that when I reserved one I thought the price was going to be between $45-$70 as you earlier estimated. Yes, I understand that this was just an estimate, and now Spark said $130 would've been the price for the final production of the BF Native.

With a heavy heart, I will pass on the BF Native and hope instead to get the BF Matriarch.

Would it be possible for us (Spyderco and co-forumites) to agree first on the features and price of the BF Matriarch (and succeeding BF Spydies for that matter) before any production and reservations take place?
 
Would it be possible for us (Spyderco and co-forumites) to agree first on the features and price of the BF Matriarch (and succeeding BF Spydies for that matter) before any production and reservations take place?
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I think it's an excellent idea, Titan, and one which could help avoid future disappointment all around (i.e., higher-than-anticipated price causing some folks to not order causing lower-than-anticipated sales). Although it may not be possible to quote an exact price, is a +/- 10% variance reasonable?

FWIW, I went ahead with my order but won't be buying a second to "put away" as I had hoped.

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--+Brian+--
 
The BF Native is just the beginning of a trend wherein ELUs, thanks to the internet, will tell manufacturers what they need and want in terms of feauture and, when a critical mass of forumites is achieved, price.

Right now the BF Native is a limited edition, but I foresee a future wherein production version of knives (and other consumer products) will be dictated by ELUs.

Later, even forumite-readers will tell TK, KI and Blade what articles to write!

And I believe that Spyderco, with their dynamic presence on this forum, is adjusting to this trend.

Truly, the net is an empowering process.

[This message has been edited by Titan (edited 23 April 1999).]
 
I know I'm getting somewhat off-topic, but I think your futurist view is an accurate one, Titan. As we know from earlier posts, Spyderco is struggling with the issue of too many SKUs. They are certainly not alone.

Although inventory does add the value of availability, it can also bring substantial ownership costs along with it. Throughout the supply chain, across all industries, everyone wants the value of availability w/o inventory's associated ownership costs.

ELUs are ordering only what they need NOW and expect their suppliers to be able to deliver "just-in-time". Suppliers/dealers want to provide this availability w/o undue investment in slow-moving inventory. This brings pressure to bear on distributors and, ultimately, upstream on the manufacturers to be able to provide product availability at competitive costs.

Putting on my own futurist's cap, I think we're likely to see a combination of two outcomes: a shortening of the supply chain (i.e., ELU closer to manufacturer) and a move to more agile production methodologies on the part of manufacturers. Dell and Gateway are just two current examples of companies who have successfully made the transition.

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--+Brian+--
 
Guys, we're not even sure if we're going to do the Matriarch. We have to see how the 1999 Official BladeForums.com Native sale goes first, because if that doesn't fly, we're not going to commit to other knives like that.

If we do go forward with the BF Matriarch, it's looking like it is going to have a retail cost of $49.95, however that price has not been set in stone yet. It could be higher, it could be lower, we are not sure yet.

Just FYI, when they said the cost estimate was going to be between $45-70, that was supposed to be *our* cost, not the final retail cost. If we had left the price there we'd be *losing* money by selling these knives. Our cost was a lot higher than it could have been, primarily due to the features that were requested by you guys: CPM 440V steel, G10 scales, etc etc etc. Remember, these were the features that you all agreed on.

The final retail cost was estimated to be between $85 to $100, and fortunately we were able to still keep it in that range, even though it should have been around $130.

We only just got the price on this knife this week, and this project has been in the works for three months now. Sorry, but sometimes you can't acurrately set a price in stone, you can't find out all of the variables before you get the ball rolling.

In the future, we're going to try to avoid confusing you guys by strictly not discussing the prices of any knives we arrange for you guys until we are relatively sure of our final cost. That way we will not have as many cancellations, or dissappointments. We also have to make sure that we don't sabotage one project by announcing 4-5 ones down the line, and thereby dooming them all.

Spark

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Kevin Jon Schlossberg
SysOp and Administrator for BladeForums.com

Insert witty quip here

[This message has been edited by Spark (edited 23 April 1999).]
 
Actually, based on mfg costs, the BF Native would retail for a little over $150 without the engraving (lazer). Assuming we were going to make thousands of them. We did not include in our mfg costs, the additional engineering required to adapt the model to G10. There is one piece spring/backspacer that alone required a bit of engineering time.

Spark, we would like to know how many are actually sold. We would prefer not to make any extras (except for the Spyderco collectors with numbers). Unfortunately, this means that once production is underway, the quantity cannot change.
sal
 
Sal, I'll give you an exact number next Friday, and from there we can do some projections on total numbers to make. We just opened the sales to the rest of the forum (those who reserved theirs in advance got first shot), and we'll see what rolls in now.

Spark

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Kevin Jon Schlossberg
SysOp and Administrator for BladeForums.com

Insert witty quip here
 
I have already put in my order (a day or two ago) for one of "our" Natives. If the sales are not what was hoped for, I will definitely buy a second, that way I'll be helping out and I can have a user and a keeper. I'm sure there are quite a few of us who'll do the same. I just have to push out the payment for the second into late June or so. I remember quite a few fellow members wanting to order two, so maybe they'll do the same.
 
I will be happy to order a second if I can push the payment out into June - like Brian said. This would work for me!
 
If they don't sell well, I'll _probably_ buy a second one. I know I'd definitely like to _have_ 2 or 3.
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O_D
 
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