Custom shop Special....the Battle Guard

Eric Isaacson

Eric Isaacson

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Dec 19, 1999
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This is a Special offer from the Swamp Rat Custom Shop....the Swamp Rat Battle Guard. Same size as the Battle Rat, but with a custom Guard attached. These will be available to Pre-order from the Swamp Rat Company Store this weekend.
The price will be $228.95, because of the high level of custom work done. (regular shipping charges apply, no sheath included)

They will stay on the site for several days for pre-order, you will not be charged until the knife is ready to ship in approx 8-12 weeks. However, just because you get your order in there is no guarantee that you will get a knife, first come, first served, and you will be notified approx 10 days after the offer ends whether you got in on the special.

Battle_Guard_2.jpg
 
If you want one better get it this weekend. A week after they stop selling i'm sure someone will be trying to sell for $400.00.

:grumpy:
 
Cool. I don't know if I'll pull the trigger but I do love the "Busse-style" ordering process.

Thanks, Eric.
 
So like about how many will be made? will these sell out in minutes again! Or will this be like the desert jacks where there was a time frame to order?
 
Eric Isaacson said:
This is a Special offer from the Swamp Rat Custom Shop....the Swamp Rat Battle Guard. Same size as the Battle Rat, but with a custom Guard attached. These will be available to Pre-order from the Swamp Rat Company Store this weekend. www.shop.ratknives.com
The price will be $228.95, because of the high level of custom work done. (regular shipping charges apply, no sheath included)

They will stay on the site for several days for pre-order, you will not be charged until the knife is ready to ship in approx 8-12 weeks. However, just because you get your order in there is no guarantee that you will get a knife, first come, first served, and you will be notified approx 10 days after the offer ends whether you got in on the special.

Battle_Guard_2.jpg
Click to expand...

Come one Eric, these are going to go like crazy. Don't tell me if you intend on making 100 and get an order for 400, you guys aren't going to fill all 400 orders. You'd shoot yourself in the foot.
 
Sorry, all these limited production order it in 14 seconds or you are sol offers are starting to iritate me. What happened to just making knives that you could go on the website and order? Special offers are nice and all, but make your standard product available please. Just get the regular line up in a reasonable amount of time, not string everyone along for months with the empty promises routine that is becoming popular from ohio. No more cloak and dagger, i get enough of that from jerry. :(

:jerkit:
 
tyuio said:
Sorry, all these limited production order it in 14 seconds or you are sol offers are starting to iritate me. What happened to just making knives that you could go on the website and order? Special offers are nice and all, but make your standard product available please. Just get the regular line up in a reasonable amount of time, not string everyone along for months with the empty promises routine that is becoming popular from ohio. No more cloak and dagger, i get enough of that from jerry. :(

:jerkit:
Click to expand...

Scott,
I think you missed the part of my post that said Pre-order and the part where I said they would be on the site for several days to accept pre-orders. They won't be removed in 14 seconds.

I've explained this several times before, we are still making and shipping the regular line. We continue to fill orders on a regular basis, just because everyone isn't posting that they received their knife doesn't mean we aren't shipping them. If you don't want to buy the special runs that is fine, some people do....many people do. We continue to make the regular production pieces as well, and the short runs are done during "down time" when we can't do anything on the regular line (ie heat treat, etc) The special runs are not delaying the regular production pieces.

In addition, if you want a Swamp Rat knife I guarantee that you can find one. If you can't you haven't tried to hard, I have found about every Busse that I have set out to find(almost all variants) which are much more rare than any of the knives Swamp Rat has produced. And it isn't because of any connections, it is just because I have looked and asked in the right places.
 
tyuio said:
Sorry, all these limited production order it in 14 seconds or you are sol offers are starting to iritate me. What happened to just making knives that you could go on the website and order?
Click to expand...
(in my best Fred Rogers (Mr Rogers) voice)

"Hi boys and girls. Can you say 'Vaporware Marketing'???












See........................................ I knew you could." ;)
 
This sure looks like a great knife that I would like to get my hands on.
I am sorry to learn that I might be a long shoot to abtain one.:grumpy:
Well maybe I will be one of the lucky ones. I sure like the black green combo. And the guard is just what the doctor orderen for a safe ppig sticker.

How is the Swamp rat grip compared to the grip of the Cold Steel trailmaster. It looks great.:)

Cheers,

André
 
So Eric, are production numbers somehow going to be connected to the number of orders you recieve? If so, that gives folks a little better shot.

However, if you only have (let's just say) 100 knives available... and if you put the knife up on the order page and get 100 orders within five minutes... and if it's "first come, first served" as you say... Then, how is this "pre-order" system any different from the normal shotgun-start, rat race?

The only other option I could think of is to leave the knife up on the site for a few days, get all the orders, and then conduct some sort of lottery to dole out the knives to lucky "winners."
 
500jefferyDK, I've had both the CS Trailmaster and the original Battle Rat. IMHO the Rat handle is **HUGE** magnitudes more comfortable and secure than the TM handle due to the contoured shape of the Rat handles.

IME the CS TM handle is a tacky feeling kraton slab-sided stick covered with unnecessarily aggressive checkering that chews at your hand as you use it.

I found the Rat handle to spread the pressure of holding the knife over a larger area of my more-filled hand (i.e. no hot spots from corners on the handle or folds of skin to rub into blisters). To me, the Resiprene-C material used by the Swamp is a very good combination of solidity and grippiness.

That's my $0.02 worth on it.
 
I think a good couse of action would be to limit orders to one knife per person. Now, I dont know if anyone is buy five or six at a time, but if people were, that would make it hard to get one.
 
lottery? drawing? Well that screws me. I have never won anything in my life that I can remember.
 
It's not a lottery, it's not a drawing. We are accepting pre-orders, but if we receive orders for 101 knives, and we have 100 blanks we aren't running another batch for 1 knife. (numbers are hypothetical, I think we'll receive pre-orders for more than 100 ;) )

Also, an update, there have been some changes to the order process. It will probably be an email pre-order, however wait for the instructions to be posted later.
 
Eric Isaacson said:
It's not a lottery, it's not a drawing. We are accepting pre-orders, but if we receive orders for 101 knives, and we have 100 blanks we aren't running another batch for 1 knife. (numbers are hypothetical, I think we'll receive pre-orders for more than 100 ;) )

Also, an update, there have been some changes to the order process. It will probably be an email pre-order, however wait for the instructions to be posted later.
Click to expand...

That's all well and good, but instead of your scenario of 101 emails and 100 knives available what if it was 100 knives available and 400 orders in the first hour? Then email or online, it makes no diffrence how you order them. You are generating lots of interest from these limited run special offers which is fine, but if you are saying you can get any swamp rat knife you want that is also true, but all this interest is causing HUGE markup in the secondary market which is the only way to get some of these knives now. Swamp rats are getting marked up at higher % than busse knives, or just about anything else i can think of in the way of production knives. Usually on busses it's around %20-30 after they are discontinued, but on swamp rats for some reason in the last few months it's more like %50-100 and i think that's ridiculous. When you limit supply like you have been doing with limited runs and cancelling a popular standard line before the new line is ready you are sure generating interest, and also some ill will. I'm sure i'll be ignored and/or shot down or personally attacked since that's how it usually goes to those that speak out but that's life. I like swamp rat knives, it's just too bad they are changing into a similar selling strategy as their parent company. They used to be diffrent, now there is little diffrence at all. Good luck with all the special runs, with any luck the standard line will be out on a better timetable than the "two weeks" that i grew to dislike so much.

:rolleyes:
 
tyuio said:
That's all well and good, but instead of your scenario of 101 emails and 100 knives available what if it was 100 knives available and 400 orders in the first hour?
Click to expand...

Hi tyuio,

This is a different system, one that will have it's own set of complications, I'm sure.

But reading Erics post, I understood it to mean that they are making as many batches as they need to fill most of the orders. Say they receive 405 orders in those three days -- they will make four batches, but they would not make a whole batch of 100 knives just to fill the last 5 orders. Therefore, five people who placed orders would not receive knives -- thus, placing an order does not guarantee that you will get one.

Eric, please let me know if I am wrong about this.

As far as the special runs and current lack of a standard offering...please understand that nobody knows what the big changes that are happening are going to be. Eric did say that it involved going back to their Mission Statement. Take that for what you will, but please be patient. There will be plenty of time for judgement once all the facts are in. ;)

Hope this helps some. :thumbup:
 
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