I have this strange feeling that the folders aren't by any stretch of the imagination the lion's share of Cold Steel's "bread and butter." And trying to make marginal distinctions between "niche knife" and "market niche" doesn't change the fact that niche is not an appropriate term for Cold Steel. That's the point philwar and hardheart and myself have been trying to make. It doesn't fit the definition, and all of your verbal wiggling, trying to pretend you said something different than you did, doesn't change facts. Here's what you did say, and the spark for this particular discussion:
Leaving aside the incorrect punctuation, the main point here is that you're trying to shove Cold Steel into a "market niche," which, as evidently we've now agreed, indicates a specialized market. The knives, particularly in the range you mention, are not specialized. Their only specialty is that they cut. That doesn't indicate a market niche. The price range that they happen to sell to doesn't speak at ALL to the potential customers, which includes ANYONE who might want a knife. Not just a folding knife, a knife. More on this in a moment. There are plenty of CRK owners on here who are perfectly happy to own and use a CS Voyager. Sure, it's a 10th the price of a CRK. But it's still a knife, without any particular appeal to any subset of the knife-using market. There's no niche.
Let's add to that the fact that you are only now trying to refocus the discussion on Cold Steel's folders. That's also inappropriate, especially because you didn't reference specifically Cold Steel's folding knives, and fixed blades, tomahawks, and other specialty items are also included in the $30-$80 range you did specify.
There's no evidence to suggest that folders are Cold Steel's bread and butter, and honestly, given that they're clearly astute marketers in the sense that they've built a successful company, if your most recent statement about folders being so important to their market share were true, they would have more variety, much like Kershaw. As I pointed out earlier, Kershaw might qualify as pursuing a market niche because they're clearly focused on folders. Cold Steel, well, not so much.
So, let's get back to the basics of the discussion. You've provided an arbitrary price range for Cold Steel products that you think comprise the majority of their sales, and you're trying to call that a "niche." But within this price range, we include folders, clubs, training swords, machetes, combat knives, kitchen knives, hunting knives, throwing stars, tomahawks, pepper spray... the list goes on. Each of those different types of products might be correctly classified as a "market niche." If you take all of these different products, and lump them together, as you've done by specifying the price range you did, the target audience for product consumption is pretty much everyone. Not even just knife owners, but anyone that might want pepper spray, or a kitchen knife, or a club. There's no subset whatsoever that you can point to.
And it's particularly foolish to think that just because someone may be able to afford an expensive knife means that they will somehow no longer like a well-made, well-designed INEXPENSIVE folder. Price only really dictates market niche in the upward direction. It's demonstrably true that a person without much money is not likely to go for a CRK. Thus CRK might be said to appeal to the "rich" market niche. But the converse isn't true, and in fact there are several people who have mentioned that they own expensive knives, and yet have pre-ordered a Voyager. Nor is it necessarily true that Cold Steel focuses on their less expensive products. They put a great deal of energy into marketing their more expensive products, and if they sell one sword, that's the equivalent of 10 Voyagers. Sure, the majority of their sales in context of knives is probably the less expensive ones. But they don't need to sell that many expensive products to make it worth their while.
