Concerns About Survive! Business and Misleading Lead Time Estimates

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Revolverrodger said:
Lets put all this in perspective:
Who really needs knives as work tool or to survive ?
For 99% of people here knives are a hobby and the vast majority of people who buy knives never really use them.

If you need instant gratification and can't wait a bit go buy cold steel knives
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On what planet or timescale is 18+ months "instant" gratification?
 
khukoo head said:
You know what I'm tired of waiting for......

the GSO 20!!!!

Oh wait. Wrong thread...

For real though, I'm not nearly as tired of waiting for my knives as I am of waiting for some of y'all to quit whining! I used to enjoy this subforum but quit hanging out because of the whiny baby complainer pants rants. I remain a huge S!K fan, and I won't give up on them. This subforum... well, I'll check back in a few months.

Keep up the good work Ellie and Guy (and new people I don't know yet)! Try not to let the criticism of those outside of the arena bring you down.
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I like the part about not coming back for several months. Good advice I hope you stick to it
 
You know, all you whiners should have your posts censored so no one can tell that there was ever a concern voiced here.

All you need is faith. If you have faith, you don't have to ask questions or require logic to explain the situation. You don't need an explanation at all, you can just buy whatever fictional knife is posted and never worry about anything!
 
khukoo head said:
You know what I'm tired of waiting for......

the GSO 20!!!!

Oh wait. Wrong thread...

For real though, I'm not nearly as tired of waiting for my knives as I am of waiting for some of y'all to quit whining! I used to enjoy this subforum but quit hanging out because of the whiny baby complainer pants rants. I remain a huge S!K fan, and I won't give up on them. This subforum... well, I'll check back in a few months.

Keep up the good work Ellie and Guy (and new people I don't know yet)! Try not to let the criticism of those outside of the arena bring you down.
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It just flares up like hemorrhoids sometimes, plenty of positive threads going on also. Hit me up if you want to check out the 2.7, there's a passaround going on and I'm getting my second one soon.

I cannot for the life of me understand why people don't just ask for a refund if they don't like the current way things are going. The OP made a good point about the problems with keeping steady cash flow but there are too many unknowns to really be able to assess it as a business model. If their accountant pops in here and says there's a problem I might get worried but it's so dependent on where the money from the preorders went it can't be legitimately evaluated from the outside. If the manufacturing of the blades has already been paid and contracted out they're operating with very little overhead. I've no idea if that is the case but if there was a cash flow issue I think it'd be very unlikely that they'd be taking on employees but it looks like they've hired two people in the last couple months.

I'm not a wealthy person by any standard but I'm confident the $1500'ish I have in preorders/presales is safe. I have almost twice that in Busse OP2Weeks and I'm not worried about them either. I've gotten 4 S!K's this year, higher quality than I would expect from anyone. Two more should be here Saturday or Monday. If you're not so confident, just ask for a refund and walk away. There's no shortage of fantastic knife makers out there who'll benefit from your hard earned money. If you've ordered a 4.5 or 8, I especially encourage you to ask for a refund, I want more than one of both of them:D
 
CapitalizedLiving said:
You know, all you whiners should have your posts censored so no one can tell that there was ever a concern voiced here.

All you need is faith. If you have faith, you don't have to ask questions or require logic to explain the situation. You don't need an explanation at all, you can just buy whatever fictional knife is posted and never worry about anything!
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Yea, the faith thing just flares up like chronic IBS (irrational blade syndrome), plenty of respectful pragmatic intelligent posts here going on also. I cannot for the life of me understand why people get hostile towards reasonable questions. (shrugs), I guess some only see the subs. as a place of worship. Thankfully Ellie/Sk! are more respectful towards everyone and don't think or treat it that way.
 
I wade through all the "thoughtful observations" because sometimes the inevitable digressions bring up worthwhile points.
Or, you can't judge a thread by its title?
Okay, yeah, sometimes you can. I have made the basic observation (and it holds up pretty well anywhere on BF) that just about any post that fills the screen, after bit of editing, could convey the same message with a quarter of the words.
 
Thank goodness the 2.7 was scheduled for production behind the 4.7. The faster they can get those suckers out the better. Even if people receive just one knife I think they will feel much better about their other orders with the company.
 
Poromenos said:
The long wait time doesnt bother me that much, I knew what I was getting into when I bought into presale. What has turned me off from Survive is these Monday Seconds sales. Nothing ticks me off more then coming home after a 14 hour shift and seeing a guy unbox a knife he bought two mondays ago while I wait months (most likely year +) for that same model I paid for in full long time ago. Every minute spent sharpening and preparing a seconds/ugly betty knife is a minute that could have been spent on a knife that someone paid for in full a year ago. That's not right. Full fill your obligations to the pre sale people, then move on to seconds.
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AMEN!! I've been trying to say something like this and you nailed it. Perfect.
 
Poromenos said:
The long wait time doesnt bother me that much, I knew what I was getting into when I bought into presale. What has turned me off from Survive is these Monday Seconds sales. Nothing ticks me off more then coming home after a 14 hour shift and seeing a guy unbox a knife he bought two mondays ago while I wait months (most likely year +) for that same model I paid for in full long time ago. Every minute spent sharpening and preparing a seconds/ugly betty knife is a minute that could have been spent on a knife that someone paid for in full a year ago. That's not right. Full fill your obligations to the pre sale people, then move on to seconds.
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Sorry, late response to this. First, I do understand where you're coming from, but (and someone correct me if things have changed), if you've read the posts from months ago when this first came up, they're not sharpening a second instead of your first. They've got a knife they're working on and discover something that makes it a second. So, instead of having a basically finished blade sitting around waiting, Ellie or Christian (or whomever else now) finish the process out. Guy is the bottleneck in this process - and I don't believe (in their workshop) the production processing of firsts is delayed by selling the seconds.

There's basically as many firsts going out either way - just now they can make some extra $ selling seconds using free resources.

Again, this is my understanding of the process and the way (as I remember) it was explained by Ellie.

If you feel the seconds should just sit from some first come, first serve perspective, well that's a different argument.
 
NEVER pay for a full price. I've only participated on one pre-order and honestly, I'd never do that again. What I also found is that, even if I don't participate on the pre-orders, I can still get new models by purchasing factory 2nds, dealers and pre-sales quicker than pre-orders. I don't know why but I've been lucky.
 
NEVER pay for a full price. I've only participated on one pre-order and honestly, I'd never do that again. What I also found is that, even if I don't participate on the pre-orders, I can still get new models by purchasing factory 2nds, dealers and pre-sales quicker than pre-orders. I don't know why but I've been lucky.
 
That is a great point regarding seconds not taking away from firsts. As I recall it explained was the blemish was found or it happened after sharpening. I always took that at face value because really how would you know either way? You either have to assume the claim is true or its not but don't think there is proof way. I would certainly like to believe it's true as it would be incredibly dishonest and screwing over pre-orders if wasn't true. I would give them the benefit of doubt.
 
SURVIVE! Ellie said:
"Everyone" is everyone involved in the process, from the people making the steel to me doing the final QC before packing orders.

The primary bevel is already done when we get the blades. We order the steel and have it sent between the various heavy machining steps. The Berger machine that does the bevel is really neat, but there aren't very many that do contract work in the US. They are very expensive and require tooling and a machine shop to run, not to mention qualified operators. Maybe someday we could have our own, but much larger fish in this pond have tried and failed so it is not something we are considering any time soon. Without that machine there is no way SURVIVE! blades could have the tolerances they do while producing the amount of knives we make. It allows us to do things like changeable handles and sheaths that fit the same on all of the knives.

When we get the blades they go through an initial QC and get put in one of five piles: good - could be made good - factory 2nds - could be made into something else - scrap. For the heavy machining we have sourced out who we believe are the best in the industry, but there are still variations in the final product no matter what. We try to work closely with each company to keep the good pile heavy and the scrap pile light. Then we work with what arrives to provide what we feel is the best product we can make.

This is the end result of years of research by Guy. He originally thought he could just design a knife and have it made by another knife company. After a few tries that provided results he wasn't happy with, Guy decided to do more research. When he realized that many companies use subcontractors for the heavy machining he decided to give that a try so he could have more oversight on the final product but still didn't need the millions required to get it all under one roof. It worked much better and now here we are.

In this picture, the middle knife is what we receive.
https://www.instagram.com/p/9JYlZ7JbhP/?taken-by=surviveknives
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It's pretty clear to me that they'd rather spend time on the other piles; Ugly Betty, Limited addition, Seconds...
 
I have a dear friend who designed a knife and is doing the same thing. I'm doing all of his kydex work. Sales were brisk. The hold up now is the company doing the blades. They were due last month. It will be interesting to see what happens and how it's handled by the company that is late on fulfilling the blades getting to my friend.
 
grogimus said:
.

I'm not a wealthy person by any standard but I'm confident the $1500'ish I have in preorders/presales is safe. I have almost twice that in Busse OP2Weeks and I'm not worried about them either.
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Apples and oranges. Busse bills your card $1 upon ordering, with the balance immediately before they finish your knife. It's usually 2 weeks or less from when they charge to when they ship.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
Hale Storm said:
I have a dear friend who designed a knife and is doing the same thing. I'm doing all of his kydex work. Sales were brisk. The hold up now is the company doing the blades. They were due last month. It will be interesting to see what happens and how it's handled by the company that is late on fulfilling the blades getting to my friend.
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I'm guessing I'm waiting for that one myself, only bought into the crowdfunding because it includes your sheath (as if I needed another knife)...will be my first experience with blade and sheath maker. Just proves all the great intentions can be destroyed by real life as quickly as the customer sales come in, although luck seems to be going their way recently........crossing fingers.

On the flip side, bought an early product called the Sphero years ago. Dumb little ball controlled by my iPhone, I thought it was neat, everyone else in my life called it stupid. Well they translated it in the a BB-8 droid based on the last Star Wars movie, designed in secret with scant details from the studio. On a wing and a prayer produced and made delivery by the movie....great story of small business success, just not in the knife business.
 
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ElConquistador said:
It's pretty clear to me that they'd rather spend time on the other piles; Ugly Betty, Limited addition, Seconds...
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I'm not sure how you draw such a conclusion from an initial QC check. I think it's pretty clear they're not pulling initially from these "other" piles based on the limited number of 2nds and UBs that have been made available. They have hundreds of firsts orders that have went out and no where near that number of 2nds or UBs.

If you think they're dishonest or people who don't care about honoring their word, again, that's a different argument. I'm just going off what they've said/posted.
 
AR-Trvlr said:
Apples and oranges. Busse bills your card $1 upon ordering, with the balance immediately before they finish your knife. It's usually 2 weeks or less from when they charge to when they ship.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
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+1 .. LOL, the irony is hillarious.
Not to mention if you can brag about how you casually have $4,500 outstanding in pre ordered knives without a care, this is not exactly someone with a lot of worries in knives or in life period. So it's a critique that is not going to be taken serious from people that consider 300$ a chunk of change. The guys bragging about how they have thousands to casually blow on back ordered shelf queens and how it's not a game for the little man that whines about his piddly 300$ prepaid item not coming after 18 months doesn't exactly represent the "working man" audience that SK! claims to target. And I am sure the "working man" that SK claims to target doesn't appreciate being belittled and lectured to from the "real" aficionado collectors calling them light weight whiners for wanting "instant" 18 month gratification for prepaid items. If those aficionados think that by attacking the "whining" working man and they are defending and helping SK!, I garuntee you it's exactly the opposite. Silly little whining working peon, you can't handle the wait of a true god sent perfection... begone with you and buy a Cold Steel peasants knife. LOL..
 
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