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Honest opinion from a new Buck owner...without any bias one way or another

Buck_110 said:
Pricing also lends itself to the problems as well. Many manufacturers simply do not allow their products to be sold below a certain price by retailers...period. Buck should apply this policy. By selling knives for a higher price, their employees could earn more money.
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Allowing or not allowing discounting at the retail level really doesn't affect the wholesale cost, which is what Buck gets for a knife. If anything, allowing competitive pricing actually means they will sell more knives at the same wholesale price and collect more money for the employees.
 
Also, to all the people who have asked to see pics, I am sorry but I went out and exchanged the knife earlier today. I will open up the new one and tell you what I think. But I will be honest at this point...I looked very carefully at all the clamshells and noticed problems in all of them. Two out of five had the silver rivet too far up so that it actually seemed to be dangerously at the edge (partially on the curved portion of the handle) of the wood scales and caused bulging. Three out of five had ovoid and irregular shaped silver rivets (like they had been misshapen by a hammer or something). All of them had scuffed and scratched brass...and I mean ALL of them (a mix of bad polishing and bad packaging). I could see it through the package. A few had those black smudges I talked about...some on the brass and some on the spine of the knife.

I picked up the cleanest one I could find with a decent grain pattern that has the highest chance of being matched on the other side. "cross fingers"
 
As Buck is struggling to put together a quality workforce, consumers are continuing to purchase their products. These people don't want to hear excuses, and have got a bad taste in their mouth from their sub-par Buck purchase. Once people have gotten stung, it is rare they will return to get bit again. By the time Buck (hopefully) returns to producing high quality, these one time consumers have moved on to other brands. The longer the process takes, the higher and steeper the mountain they must turn around to climb to get back to the top...if at all possible.
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This is kind of interesting.

All Buck needs to do is return to producing "high quality?"

Easier said than done. What happened to Schrade and Camillus?

Where do the legendary Gerbers come from these days?

Remingtons?

Marble's?

What are the odds that Buck will somehow dodge the bullet and miraculously survive and continue making knives in America?

Oh yeah, just return to making "high quality."

Like it's so easy. Wave a magic wand.

I, for one, would like to hear some REALISTIC suggestions as to exactly HOW they could do that......or how they could produce a knife of yesteryear for $75, for that matter.
 
Rocinante,

you just asked this question, "I, for one, would like to hear some suggestions as to exactly HOW they could do that......or how they could produce a knife of yesteryear for $75, for that matter."

I think a good place to start is right here.

List off as many points as you can that in your view show the decline in quality of the yesteryear 110 and the modern day 110.

For example...

1. lower quality wood laminate...

2. lower quality steel...

3. fit and finish etc. etc.

The reason I ask is so that I can find out what exactly are the issues that you believe exist. And as an expert on the subject, I'm sure your comments would be echoed by many others.

At least this way we can start by seeing what is wrong and then maybe figure out what Buck can do about it. Maybe even someone can do a cost analysis on how much it would add to a per knife cost? :)
 
One being that the I can buy a "great quality" knife from the custom shoppe but never really admitting outright that in your eyes, it is a step down in quality from say a 1968 knife.

This is the type of info that is valuable to a new buyer like myself. Why not just tell us this info so that we can look into buying a used 1968 knife instead of just saying "be happy with this gift that Buck offers to you for forty dollars and don't worry about it".
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As I recall, I did tell you about the advantages of buying knives on e-Bay.....did you read that?

As to the custom knives of today, they offer advantages and exhibit some disadvantages, right? Bottom line is probably a wash, don't you think?
 
Rocinante,

you just asked this question, "I, for one, would like to hear some suggestions as to exactly HOW they could do that......or how they could produce a knife of yesteryear for $75, for that matter."
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It occurs to me that I didn't get an answer to that question.

:)
 
As far as how, by raising prices...that's how. Didn't YOU state something about that earlier? If Buck's wholesale price for a standard production 110 was $50.00, and their M.S.R.P. was $75.00, that still leaves a nice profit for a retailer.
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I have a feeling that if they raised prices, their sales would go down and they'd end up losing money.

Not a good idea.
 
What disadvantages do the custom knives of today exhibit? Please explain. A custom knife will certainly have a higher price point, as it is a custom, so that cannot be considered a disadvantage. Please elaborate and provide facts.

What do you mean by the bottom line is a wash?
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I mean that if advantages and disadvantages offset each other.....it's a wash.

The custom 110s of today offer choices that did not exist years ago.....but we hear a lot of complaints about mistakes and problems with fit and finish.
 
If raising prices is not a good idea, what would be a good idea?
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Idunno.......I'm the one that ASKED for ideas. Anybody else got an idea?

It is not beyond the realm of possibility that there ARE NO ideas that will work.
 
If you send it back you may find it returned finished better than any you could find in a store?
 
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