Has Enlan ceased production?

[Etna]

Was having a chat with a distributor of Enlan and SRM knives in my country while picking up an order for 2 more SRM non-locking knives today. He mentioned that they have not been able to get any stocks for Enlan knives over the past few months. I had some trouble believing him because there are still so many online resellers in 'those' sites putting up Enlan models for sale, so I shot off an email to Enlan only for the mail to be returned with a 'recipient not found' error.

Anyone mainland Chinese enthusiast or collector here able to shed some light on this? It'd be a pity if Enlan decides to shelve production; I have always felt that their knives (especially the M-series) were superior to Sanrenmu in both quality and design, and it'd be sad to only have SRM left in the game (Real Steel, Reate and Kizer are all too pricey and have nothing that appeals to me or meets my requirements).

 

[Hackenslash]

I wouldn't be surprised if Enlan as a brand is no longer in production. I've had a couple of EL-01's and they're a serviceable knife for $20, but I can't remember when I last saw a new model from them. The $20-$40 knife market is flooded right now with lots of valid options. Are you looking also under the "Bee" brand? Joben at LazyLizardGear might have some insight.

It's entirely possible that the facility used to formerly produce Enlans/Bees has been retooled and is producing knives with a higher profilt margin or contracted to produce under another brand.

 

[Etna]

I wouldn't be surprised if Enlan as a brand is no longer in production. I've had a couple of EL-01's and they're a serviceable knife for $20, but I can't remember when I last saw a new model from them. The $20-$40 knife market is flooded right now with lots of valid options. Are you looking also under the "Bee" brand? Joben at LazyLizardGear might have some insight.

It's entirely possible that the facility used to formerly produce Enlans/Bees has been retooled and is producing knives with a higher profilt margin or contracted to produce under another brand.

My thoughts exactly. That searching on T**B** returns chock full of results for SRM models and yet only a handful for Enlan (mostly the M024 and M028) speaks a lot.

Oddly enough, i have also posed the same question to sellers on a certain China-based ecommerce site and no one seems to have a definite answer. One claims to still be getting stock from Enlan's factories and therefore cannot have ceased production, while another says that he has completely no idea about Enlan's status.