This is completely hypothetical and I could just plain be wrong so take this with a grain of salt.
It seems to me the Survive knives business model is closer that of Randall made knives than other knife companies and as such it is going to have the same complaints Randall does. Super high quality, super long waits. Randall doesn't charge the full price of their knives up front because they have enough capital to cover all knives in production but they do charge $50 non-refundable up front just to take an order to weed out people who are not serious. I think Randall wait is 5 years right now. It wouldn't surprise me if Survive adopts the same ordering system that Randall uses once they build up capital reserves.
I think the biggest question that Survive is going to have to face is "Where do they want to take Survive as a company?". If they want to follow Randall's lead then they need to be realistic on their production schedule. All knives are a year out from the time you order with factory seconds available only as they occur. If they want to go more mainstream than they are going to need more craftsmen and Guy is going to have micromanage less while still maintaining Survive's high quality control (which is doable if you have skilled craftsmen working for you but it takes time to develop talent like that).
Either way, I think we all can agree that Survive has some short term issues they need to resolve. They have a great product at a good price point and a wait that I feel isn't that excessive for what you get. Some people may disagree with the wait and the ordering interface on the website but looking at how Survive is making knives at this moment in time what they are doing is understandable. By having pre-order windows they are limiting the number of knife orders they will accept to keep from being overwhelmed by knife orders. Granted you could argue that they have already accepted to many orders already if they can't clear their sales by their production estimates, which is a problem don't get me wrong, but that's not really that bad of a problem when you think about it.
I think that this is 'spot on' :thumbup:
Randall has been around as a company since 1938, a LONG time. From the wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randall_Made_Knives
...20 craftsmen producing about 8,000 knives per year...
28 models of knives for different applications, each customizable at the factory based on customer specification.
From their website:
http://www.randallknives.com/shop/order-form/
NOTE: ORDERS ARE LIMITED TO ONE KNIFE PER HOUSEHOLD EVERY THREE MONTHS.
Orders received now are being scheduled for shipment in approximately 4.5 years, year 2021.
Deposit Due to Place Order
This deposit secures your place in line for knife delivery and locks in current year pricing. Visa, Mastercard and Discover NOTE: Deposits are non-transferable and non-refundable.
Price: $50.00
Randall's are not inexpensive, even their basic Model 10 is >$240. The company is dedicated to quality, NOT to meeting demand through ever increasing production. If you think about it, 20 craftsmen producing 8,000 knives per year is approximately
1 knife per craftsman per day. They seem to do all of the work on their knives in-house (working from pre-cut bar-stock rather than sheets) and have a
constant back-log of ~36,000 knives.
As was mentioned, they do not require full-payment up-front to pre-order, but from each $50 non-refundable deposit they have some
$1.8 Million of customer money in hand every year as they produce 8,000 knives, with each
household receiving no more than 4 knives per year (one knife per order, $50 deposit on every order).
Do any of us know how many knives S!K pumps out every year? If you haven't seen the photos of crates and crates full of knives, go back and check the threads.
Folk talk about all the work that they out-source, but that amounts to only the heavy-machining, HT, and handle and scales production. The rest ("peening", etching, sharpening, building, inspecting, packaging & shipping as well as all customer service is done in-house by
previously 3 people and now still just 5 people. That's a heavy workload.
Perspective in time:
It took approximately
6 months for the 5.1's to go from blanks being cut to knives in customers' hands. It seems like longer only because the pre-order started earlier - you may have bought-in earlier than that, but that was the production time-line.
The 4.7's just passed 1 year of production from blanks being cut (End of August, beginning of September 2015) to knives in customers' hands (I haven't received mine and am starting to get jealous of all you 4.7 20CV holders
)
The 2.7's were right behind the 4.7s and folk already have them in hand <1 year later.
The 4.1's - cutting started in December 2015, so if folk have them by Christmas
it will still have only been 1 year.
For the 7/7's, it was March 2016 when production began.
The production back-log for Survive! is currently sitting right around
1 year... compared to Randall's 4.5 years.
Now the ORDER back-log - given that the Starter Campaign ran March through April 2015 and included models WAY back in the production line - orders could be placed some 2-3 years before those customers will ever see their knives in hand, but again that is ONLY 2-3 years vs 4.5 for a Randall, and
the money remains fully refundable. And just how many knives will have passed through Survive! to customers by then?
A number of folk have suggested that Survive!'s business model cannot last. Well, the starter is done, pre-orders are done (wait, is the GSO-8 still up for order?), and website-orders on "in-stock" items seem to take 2-4 weeks on average for delivery. That's really not bad for a company producing and selling as many custom-built knives as they do with so few staff... actually, it's quite impressive.
Ordering complexity:
Again, Survive! is a small and
very young company - remember that Guy founded this business in
2010 with some early models, the EDC-4 came out in 2012...
Perspective: Busse has been making knives since the 80's and founded Busse Combat in
1992. When I ordered my first Swamp Rat in September 2010, I had a busy time figuring out which models were available where and when, how to participate in Ganzas, etc. A big help with that was the bussekin community :thumbup:
Survive! puts out a newsletter (as does Busse) informing customers when and how to order. If you need help figuring it out, you can call/contact them, and you have THIS COMMUNITY to aid you in finding the model you are looking for (and people here aren't INFI Hogs
, they won't deliberately lead you astray... maybe). It really is not that hard and not that complex. But no, it is not ebay nor is it a dealer website, and "in-stock" items may not remain so long, indeed that may not remain-so if you delay too long completing your order!
I haven't read the EDCommentary post yet, but I provide this confused typing for re-post and criticism as the author there sees fit.
And I echo the sentiments above - VERY CLASSY coming here to discuss the matter with civility and even asking persmission to use what is freely/publicly available to you :thumbup:
