Discontinued Knives: Reasons for it?

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KnifeMakeReplicate

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What are the main reasons that you all can think of as to why factories and manufacturers discontinue and stop producing certain models and designs of knives and cutting tools? I can understand if an obscure design does not get alot of sales, but, why are there designs that are very well made and very utilitarian and practical that end up discontinued? Is it all simply an issue of not enough customers purchasing that particular design, and the cost of sales vs cost of manufacturing being the main, underlying reason?

Let me throw a few examples out there:

1 The Benchmade Monarch Lightweight folders. Sandvik Steel, Kraton-inlaid Zytel handles, solid locks, and nylon belt pouches. All excellent materials and top-quality Benchmade manufacturing. Discontinued.

2 Cold Steel Scimitar: Superb design, super functional, beautiful, and now, discontinued.

3 Swiss Buck Knives.

The list can go on and on. Another one: Spyderco Caspian Salt. One of the best water-knives ever made. Discontinued.
 
Exactly as Marcinek says. Why do you think some knives go out of production, while others, like the Buck 110 or Spyderco Delica / Endura, or the Benchmade Griptillian, stick around for years?
 
Yep, slow sales == likely to be cut. Strong sales == likely to stick around.

So, sadly, being "good" or not has nothing to do with if it will remain in production. As ultimately, all of the companies are in this for the profit, and the best way to remain profitable is to sell what people want to buy.
 
Yup, just because all the knife knuts know, and admire a knife, and likely even own that knife, doesn't mean the general population buys enough to keep the model afloat. I'm just thankful that there are enough companies that cater to those of us who will buy a limited knife, because it is cool. The fact that we can find knives of less than 500 produced INTENTIONALLY speaks volumes as to our influence, but that's still not enough to keep a low-mid range production model going, if it's not selling the 500 units/month needed to make it profitable.
 
Also sometimes knives are discontinued so a new model can be released, or simply because the maker decided to end production for an internal reason.
 
Market preference is the reason. I have a couple of Gerber Paul knives made back around 1970. The craftsmanship is unique and outstanding. However, they discontinued this one handed opener because they didn't make enough profit over the cost of manufacturing to continue with it. Like you said their are many instances of this happening.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE2P3m_CYmk
 
I do wonder why Kershaw discontinued the Lahar. So far my only guess is that they charged too little for it (VG10 steel, G10 scales, all for $50-60) from the beginning and did not want to it to be a budget alternative to the ZTs.
 
Do you thing benchmade rukus, skirmish or 42 did not make money?
 
laurin said:
Do you thing benchmade rukus, skirmish or 42 did not make money?
Click to expand...

I bet they did, but I would also bet they didn't make enough money... at the time. Once they were discontinued and their popularity sky rocketed, the prices went way up on the secondary market. It's not wise to estimate a discontinued product's sales, based on the secondary market prices.
 
There's an concept called product life cycle management. Not only is there the profit margin per unit managed, the profit margin over the life cycle of the product is managed. To maintain one product SKU in a product portfolio costs money - space in the catalog, managing inventory, etc. - costs related to the fact that you are selling that one SKU regardless of volume.

At some point in a particular knife model's life, you've reached past the high point of the number of customers who will buy that particular model. You don't want to reach the point where the profit from that knife sales is only paying the cost of having that knife model in the portfolio. To get incremental volume sales on that model means you need to spend additional marketing dollars. Then the decision is: with the limited marketing dollars you have, do you wish to divert that money just to maintain an old model or do you want to add it to the marketing spend on the new models to get them to the high mark of customer purchases that much sooner? And with new models, understand that they have capital costs associated that have yet to be covered by sales, so it's imperative to get those capital costs paid off sooner rather than later. Another side effect of maintaining old models is that a portion of old model sales is cannibalizing new product sales; and more normally, companies see it vice versa - new model sales tend to cannibalize old model sales anyway.

Given the costs of maintaining an old model in the line up and the resource allocation decision between new models and old models, there is a natural decision to discontinue old models.
 
Naturally if a product isn't selling well a company will look to replace it with a different model. But there's more to it than that. Sometimes even popular models are discontinued. And the reason for that is "market projection".

You don't stay successful in business by just giving people what they want today, you also have to predict what they will want in the future.

For some people, their entire job is trying to predict what consumers will want next year. They use all kinds of research and data to make these predictions. Sometimes they are right, and sometimes they are wrong. It's always a gamble.

If this market analysis leads the CEO of a knife company to believe that people are getting tired of a particular model, or type of knife, they may decide that said model or type of knife will be discontinued next year. And if that CEO is convinced that a different model or type of knife will be the "next big thing" and a big seller, then that new design will go into production in place of the discontinued design.

I'm sure that many popular knives have been discontinued. Not because they weren't selling, but because the powers that be believed that something else would sell even better the following year.
 
People can be counted on to want novelty, and contrary to what many assume, their wants are inexorably tied, and thus mostly moulded, by what the market offers, while the market desperately tries to mould itself to some ficticious idea it conjures up of the demmand...

The truth is most people don't know what they want, until you show it to them... Then they are convinced they know...

So if makers anticipate a shift in trend, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and the public will usually bow and accept whatever next is offered, and then they will be absolutely convinced that this is what they wanted in the first place... I have seen this in countless markets, and the effect is particularly obvious in the miniature plastic model market...

Exceptions that clearly bow to actual market demmand, rather than a manufacturer perceived "trends" or "wants", are rare and glaring enough to be worth noting: Lamborghinis were something that was on its way out due to the 70's oil shock, but, somehow, the demmand for the one model they made, just at the right time, is what kept the entire company afloat... It took millionaires willing to basically write blank checks to achieve that...

How many times have I seen polls made among miniature modellers, most agreeing on very clear favourites, only to see all of them ignored completely by manufacturers?

This is straight out of the Dilbert cartoons, which defined what are the two essential steps to market research:

1-Pay for research that asks the market what it wants...

2-Ignore the results.

Now you can imagine how this applies to a market of fickle shapes of infinite variety and styles... Factor in, on top of that, the increasing difficulty of maintaining quality control over time on old models, with the turning over of trained workers, and when the older tooling wears out, plus the lack of urgency associated nowadays with what is less than all-new...

Gaston
 
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