ESEE-3F Folder with Lion Steel is Canceled!

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R.A.T.

R.A.T.

Randall's Adventure & Training
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All, the ESEE-3F Folder project is no longer going forward. We received this email from Gianni this morning. This is after we made a deal with Gianni at SHOT show in the ESEE booth, shook hands on the deal with Gianni, agreed to a production timeline, agreed to all changes and told all of our customers at SHOT the projected delivery times on the new folder. We wer going to send him the purchase order in February and he agreed to that. What can I say? This is the very reason we are tired of dealing with overseas production of any items. You simply can’t count on a deal being a deal, you can’t count on delivery times and most everything that is agreed on seems to change. As we have explained numerous times to our customer base and to Lion Steel, we do indeed want our products built in the USA. The ESEE-3F was going to be the first Italian made folder and the Izula was going to be American made. As Gianni well knows the ESEE-3F project has been in the pipeline for a long time. Tom has been working with Gianni for quite a while fine tuning the project.

Oh well, we wish Lion Steel and Gianni the best. He obviously has more business than he needs and no longer has time for ESEE knives. Gianni’s quality is excellent but if he had reservations about doing the project he should have told us this at SHOT when he met with us, and not waited until after he had bigger and better orders. Obviously $$ and profit mean much more than keeping a deal. I hope this business model serves him well in the future, but this business model is the exact opposite of ESEE Knives. So, it is what it is. We apologize to all of you for getting you excited about this and having the maker back out on us. But we refuse to allow the negative to drag us down, we will simply turn our attention and focus to pushing harder to have this folder made in the USA.

From: Lion Steel [email address removed]
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2011 2:39 AM
To: ESEE Michael Perrin; jungle@jungletraining.com
Subject: LionSteel - Esee

Dear Jeff and Mike,
It was a great pleasure to meet you in Las Vegas, our meeting let me
understand better the situation of our possible collaborations.

I have to say you that LionSteel in this moment is having a strange and
wonderful time. We have collected for existing knives many orders, a lot of,
more than we expected. We do not know in this moment how to respect all the
orders that we have got. We have a backlog of orders for a year.

As I do not want make any mistake in delivery time I have to properly
evaluate witch PO I can accept. I do not want cause problems to any company.

Reading your sub-forum in the past weeks I have understood that you are not
in a hurry and you would like have the production of your items made in US.
I understand and I accept your position, you are a US company that want have
US items, but I do not deny that this is for me a situation of insecurity.

For these reason I have no power to accept any new item this year and I let
you looking for a US company that can produce your nice folding knife.

I hope that you understand my production problems,

Best regards
Gianni Pauletta
www.lionsteel.it
 
Early April Fools? I wish.

I guess I will just wait for the stainless 4. That is still in the works right?
 
seems as though he may be been slightly offended at you wanting the folder made in the U.S. none the less a deal is a deal and that'll come back to them in the future
 
Booooo....oh well. Like I said before, try giving Buck or Kershaw a ring. They might be open to making a collaborative piece, as I know they both have high manufacturing capacity and often take special factory orders.
 
freedoom said:
Ah well. it's a shame but what can you do?
Click to expand...

Nothing and we're not going to cry over spilled milk. It's a nice folder project and we had it all nailed down...we thought :) We will simply go forward and dig even deeper on USA production. No big deal. Just wanted to bring everyone up to speed here.
 
R.A.T. said:
This is after we made a deal with Gianni at SHOT show in the ESEE booth, shook hands on the deal with Gianni, agreed to a production timeline, agreed to all changes and told all of our customers at SHOT the projected delivery times on the new folder.
Click to expand...

Unacceptable.
To waste your precious time and effort at SHOT when you could have been negotiating with others is unacceptable and disgusting business practice.:thumbdn:

He should be ashamed of himself. He will never see a Dollar of my money.

The ESEE-3F is a winner Jeff. I hope you find another reputable US manufacturer to make it.
 
Should have signed the deal in blood coz handshake just mean squat these days. Oh well.......I prefer to have it made in US of A anyways.
 
Damn, having too much work. I bet there are lots of people who'd like to have that problem right now.

Going to be a lot of bummed customers out there. Good luck to Gianni and Lion Steel.

What a kick in the beans.
 
Probably for the better Jeff! Hopefully some US company will step up to the plate and produce this knife where it should be made anyways. Thanks for the update and I'm still pumped up about the Lazer Strike, at least we still have ROWEN!
 
Disappointing, for sure, but it's just all the more reason to move along with US production. Looks like my EDC folder will see some more mileage.

Jeff, if you haven't seen Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds, after watching the SHOT interview, I can totally see you pulling off Brad Pitt's "Bonjourno!" line from the movie.

Keep your heads up folks. Nothing like a little setback to make the finished product all the better.
 
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