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elbanko

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recently bought a companion from greco at a knife show,79.00. I find out everyone has them for 50.00, 62.00, 65.00. etcetc , yeah my fault for not looking around but these custom makers need to remember we are the people that use them not the dealers. If a dealer can sell one for 50.00 how much did he buy it for ?? I enjoy buying fromthe maker and talking knife stuff but being ripped off on price is another thing. you would expect at least 60% of your money back in a trade, not so with greco. Watch for his big sales in the knife mags dont buy one at a knife show you will pay toooooo much. To bad he seemed like a cool guy.
jim
 
Jim,

John is a member here so hopefully he will get a chance to answer your concerns directly. My impression of John at this point is similar to yours. He is a really easy guy to work with, a well known and established knifemaker, and a he makes an excellent knife. Yet, somehow on the marketing end of things he seems to have ended up holding the wrong end of the stick. His prices are as shaky as his knives are solid. I have never seen anyone so uncompromisingly good at maintaining incredible levels of quality while doing their absolute best to undermine their own profitability while burning their customer's secondary market.

There are makers on this site producing knives at 5 to 10 times John's prices who have zero advantage over him on quality. I agree with you that if you decide to sell your knife today you wil probably get something less then the $79 you paid for it. But, I suspect that you would agree that even at $79, there is nothing out there that comes close to matching the knife you purchased from John. If I were John, I nor anyone else, would be selling that knife for less then $250.00. Taken from that perspective your knife was a bargan, so enjoy it.

Sometimes when a product's demand is dropping. The problem has nothing to do with quality, and dropping the price to meet the reduced demand will only make the situation worse. Instead John needs to focus on positioning. He needs to let people know that he is making a Cadillac, and that he is building a knife for the advance user, and not the dime store market. He needs to focus on features, on the type of steels he is using, on his quality sheaths, on his ergonomic and well executed handles, and he needs to get away from selling his knives solely on the basis of price.

n2s
 
I cant disagree totally with what you are saying, in fact I would agree 100% with your op;inion of the quality of the knife and I had no problem with that, is it under priced maybe, probably 250 is a stretch ,150 would be more like it. Ive been away from customs along time I remember buying charlie ochs and mike sanders and even fisk in the 300 range but they maintained their pricing level so if you traded or sold you could break even or recover 70%. Knocking em out and selling to dealers at a third of the market and then promote your product at a show to joe knife addict for triple seems a poor way to do business. I never expect to recover completely in a knife trade.When you dont have the money to buy all you want, your forced to trade to acquire new things as they come along. I guess we've bout worn this out
thanks jim
 
Originally posted by elbanko
To bad he seemed like a cool guy.
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Hey, at least you got to meet the maker instead of just looking for the lowest price you could find. If you end up using and enjoying the knife for a long time, you'll probably forget the additional cost.
 
Look on the bright side. You got to meet John. He probably had more than the one knife and discussed the advantages of each with you. You got to pick out the one you took home and to top it all off, no shipping charge. It seems kind of like buying from your local brick and mortar store to me with the bonus of meeting the maker. And remember, even cool knife makers need to make a living.
 
It seems I picked a maker everyone either knows personally or you are some of his dealers. Your simply missing the point. A FAIR PRICE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING A MAKER CAN HAVE AFTER A FAIR VALUE AND A GOOD PRODUCT. KEY WORD HERE IS FAIR. Nothing fair about jacking your price way up for a show. but you know what is said about opinions......
 
elbanko,



A FAIR PRICE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING A MAKER CAN HAVE AFTER A FAIR VALUE AND A GOOD PRODUCT. KEY WORD HERE IS FAIR.
Click to expand...

$79 is a very fair price and an incredible value! I am not a friend or a dealer for Greco knives. I don't know how the man has maintained his prices so low for so long.

Perhaps you are just experiencing a fair rise in price, for the quality of work. If he is now selling his knives a bit higher, the aftermarket will slowly rise to be comparable.

I am sorry you didn't research current aftermarket prices. You have a couple of choices: (1)Get rid of it now and count it a learning experience. (2) Keep it, use it and enjoy your perchase that is a good value. or (3) Keep it and see what the price does in the next couple of years.


Pam
 
Originally posted by elbanko
It seems I picked a maker everyone either knows personally or you are some of his dealers. Your simply missing the point. A FAIR PRICE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING A MAKER CAN HAVE AFTER A FAIR VALUE AND A GOOD PRODUCT. KEY WORD HERE IS FAIR. Nothing fair about jacking your price way up for a show. but you know what is said about opinions......
Click to expand...

You did get a fair price. I got a Greco fixed blade when they were available for fifty bucks and it would be a steal at double that.

Think about it this way. Lets say you got a $50,000 car for $35,000 because a particular manufacturer has remarkably low prices.

Then you find out that your neighbor bought the same car for $25,000 because he was willing to shop around.

Nothing has changed. You still got a screaming deal.

He is free to charge whatever he pleases for his products, it is the duty of the informed consumer to know what the going rate is.

Also, I'm not a dealer of any kind and have never met the man in my life but by all acounts he seems to be a good guy.
 
I'd like to ad that, it is common for manufacturers to sell their product for more $ than dealers of said product. If every manufacturer sold their product as cheap as possible, there would be no dealers and everything would be factory direct.
 
Not all knives are not the same.
Even though it may be the same model or style.

Their finish,handle material[even though it may be the same color],
type of blade steel, steel thickness and so on.
These things all reflect the cost and selling price of not only knives but every thing to some degree or another
If this were not the case then a Chevy would cost the same as a Cady

From time to time,in the past I've offered specials
Some time it has been on a model
Some time it's been on pricing

Keeping current on what going on in the custom knife industry,like the stock market,will often fetch you a better deal than not

These forums are a great place to do just that
So are the major cutlery magazines, we do advertize

Thank you
John Greco
 
The main point that was made was not that the value was low but the problems that would be induced on the secondary market. A lot of people on the forums (an in general I would expect) turn over a lot of their collection. Consider similar ratios applied to other customs, a knife bought from a maker for $500 that has a direct turn around trade value of $300. The secondary market value stability is very important to some.

-Cliff
 
my only prob w/grecos is its almost impossible to really get a clear picture of what they are worth now, and are gonna be worth in the future.

example - ya trade a guy, say a used (90%) spyderco lum folder for a 100% greco, that ya have seen advertised for , oh, say $99. a fair deal for all, right,?

next month ya see the same knife(the greco, actually ALL grecos) for sale for $50- now is it a fair deal?? no, i would have to say no, its not, a spyderco worth about $100 or so for a $50 knife, actually would have gotten several other models rather than the one i did if i woulda known they were all gonna be $50. (did this happen to yours truly???? take a guess..........sour grapes? no, great knives, but i wish i woulda had an inkling of WTF let me tell you)


makes it difficult to swap/buy grecos, imho, great knives by the way, but i must say very poorly marketed, very hard to put an actual price on. it would have to be one very cool greco for me to spend more than $50 to $75 tops on it, would have to really grab me and not let go lol, would have to have it. more than $100? no way.


greg
 
I really wasnt going to post anymore on this subject after realizing I was badly outnumbered. Finally two people who actually got my point, Cliff Stamp and SIFUIA. THANK YOU! I never mentioned anything about the quality, only the marketing. I received several emails from John Greco that I will share. One he was very concerned about this, which reinforces what I thought originally, he is a pretty cool guy. He does not have dealers anymore, which is good. He stated that some dealer may have been trying to unload over-bought inventory. Also that he does make the companion in many different materials that cost more or less, I feel they should be marked somehow. This would improve what is already a great knife, as I stated before I have no problem with the p;roduct. He also offered his p;hone number and some vip passes to Blade, this tells me he is very interested in the end user, great that he took the time when some makers would have completely blown you off especially over a 79.00 knife. I paid 1200.00 for one and couldnt get the maker to return a phone call. So John I'll leave it with this THANKS AND YOU ARE A PRETTY COOL GUY.
 
Elbanko,

I agree with you. John has a marketing problem. If you want to know how much I agree with you, just hit the "my stuff" link in my signature line. You will see plenty of older hand forged Greco knives made a few years back. The knives are fairly priced based on what they costs, and what I believe they are worth in comparison to other similar products on the market. But, they are not going to sell quickly for two reasons.

1) John has positioned himself to sell mass produced knives at around $100, and few people even know that he use to make stuff like this.

2) If you are only going to produce a model T in basic black, you shouldn't be surprised when collectors get bored and move on to bigger and better things.

n2s
 
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