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The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is ready to order! See this thread for details: https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-2024-traditional-knife.2003187/
Price is$300$250 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
How is Gerber doing?
- Thread starter Lodd
- Start date
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- Oct 1, 2020
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- 22
Me too, actually...that's part of the reason I wish I hadn't bought it. I want to get back to quality over quantity and buying the Principle was a step in the wrong direction. On the plus side, I now have a dedicated camping knife and I won't be bothered much if it gets damaged or lost.
Impulse buys rarely work out for me...lol.
afishhunter
Gold Member
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- Oct 21, 2014
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- 14,354
With Bear Grylls on the payroll designing knives for them, they are worse than FROST, Tac-Force, and Mil Tec.
Gerber is not "bottom of the barrel" - they are under the barrel ... far, far, under ...
Gerber is not "bottom of the barrel" - they are under the barrel ... far, far, under ...
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the river shorty now is different from the one I had. I do still have a like new bolt action.
- Joined
- Jul 4, 2014
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- 6,155
True but, they won’t listen.
I have not paid very close attention to SOG. Have they dropped to the level of Gerber?
- Joined
- Dec 5, 2018
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- 1,437
Kershaw has a pretty solid distinction between their US-made stuff and their foreign-made stuff. They're pretty much separate product tiers.
SOG didn't change ownership, and I don't think they necessarily had a drop-off in quality, it's more that they stuck with the all-black tactical folder thing long after the industry had moved on, so they were kind of an outdated joke for a while. They've recently tried to pivot toward EDC, and have released some well-received knives, but they've been pretty marginalized by their time outside of the mainstream.
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- Dec 5, 2018
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Far from it. They're owned by Fiskars, a billion-dollar international conglomerate. They're most known for scissors/shears, since they've sold over a billion of them, but they make all sorts of tools for gardening, crafts, and general use.
Then they are doing fine.
Knife nuts don't like them? Sorry but they don't care. They are too busy counting cash.
Why should they care what a handful of extreme knife nerds want?
- Joined
- Dec 5, 2018
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They don't really care about us, but if Gerber can convince the corporate folks that there's money to be made off of the knife nerds, they'll probably give it a go. The Gerber Reserve line is probably supposed to be that attempt, but so far they've missed the mark with a $150 S30V sabre-ground bushcrafting knife. Their other Reserve model is basically their version of a Griptillian, which is not particularly exciting.
There's not. Our market share is nothing compared to the power of the clamshell, Bear Grylls, big box crowd that they have gone after.
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And even that market pales in comparison to what they make from supplying the US military with tools.
But they got the green light on the Reserve line for a reason. Maybe it’s for reputation, or to amuse their employees or just to see if they can actually do it. Somebody identified a benefit to justify it.
- Joined
- Mar 3, 2000
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- 4,798
Oh fine then, Marci... I'll appeal to your sense of style.
Wouldn't you rather have your restaurant patronized by well-to-do knife dilettantes like me than a bunch of slack-jawed Wal-Martians?
Yeah, we're a miniscule market sector, but what we lack in $Billion$ we make up for in panache, baby!
I have none, so that's a mistake!
But, if Gerber is "tooled for/built around" the clamshell crowd, like Rolls or Bugatti is for the "fancy shmancy rich folk" market, and it's working, pivoting to the other market is a risky and expensive move.
I think, though I don't know, the cost and time of design research, retooling, marketing etc etc that Gerber would need to incur to make a high end knife would be so drastic that they would just say "Hey, lets take all these old, unsold Paraframes, paint them orange and call them the Bear Grylls Ultimate Surviv-o-Frames or Randy Newberg Signature Backwoods Paraframes and make a boatload of money"
- Joined
- Jan 12, 2009
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- 3,198
Asked, and answered. I think it is most likely Fiskars looks at Gerber knives for the General Public as widgets moving through their system.
Looking at their knives it seems that they probably have a design team that looks to see what is out there selling, and they simply generate their version of that.
Outside of the old Gator and the Strongarm I personally don't see anything with any utility value, much less with innovative design.
Just units moving through the system...
Robert
We may not like it, but I'm sure the Fiskars stockholders do!
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- Jul 4, 2014
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[QUOTE="OrangeBlueOrangeBlue, post: 20190893, member: 508326”]
...Their other Reserve model is basically their version of a Griptillian, which is not particularly exciting.[/QUOTE]
It may not be exciting but, at least for me, it addresses the few things I don’t like about the Griptilian. Mainly scale ergonomics and lack of a FFG blade.
My problem is that I don’t have much faith in Gerber’s abilities to make a folder that is worth their asking price. Maybe in some other knife but, not with their Griptilian copy. Their price is so close to a Benchmade that I would just buy another 551.
Don’t get me wrong, Gerber can make a decent product. But, IMO,
they get 90% of the way and decide to cut corners.
The sad thing is that they have so much potential.
...Their other Reserve model is basically their version of a Griptillian, which is not particularly exciting.[/QUOTE]
It may not be exciting but, at least for me, it addresses the few things I don’t like about the Griptilian. Mainly scale ergonomics and lack of a FFG blade.
My problem is that I don’t have much faith in Gerber’s abilities to make a folder that is worth their asking price. Maybe in some other knife but, not with their Griptilian copy. Their price is so close to a Benchmade that I would just buy another 551.
Don’t get me wrong, Gerber can make a decent product. But, IMO,
they get 90% of the way and decide to cut corners.
The sad thing is that they have so much potential.
- Joined
- Mar 3, 2000
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- 4,798
Well
M
marcinek
I just don't know enough about the knife market to make a definite opinion, but here goes...
If a paraframe costs $3 to make and sells for $10, then they make $7 a unit. Sell a million of them, that's 7 million.
But make a Gerber Highbrow for $30 a unit and sell them for $100, that's $70 a pop. Only got to sell 100K to get the same $7 Mil.
Maybe, just maybe you could fleece the Wally World crowd and the BFC faithful and double your bottom line for the fiscal year.
But I'm making up numbers just to pitch a theory as to why you'd tool up for that fancy shmancy market. Nothing fact based.
I do like to think that I'm the fancy bastid that Gerber is courting though. Makes me feel wanted / important / pretty.
If a paraframe costs $3 to make and sells for $10, then they make $7 a unit. Sell a million of them, that's 7 million.
But make a Gerber Highbrow for $30 a unit and sell them for $100, that's $70 a pop. Only got to sell 100K to get the same $7 Mil.
Maybe, just maybe you could fleece the Wally World crowd and the BFC faithful and double your bottom line for the fiscal year.
But I'm making up numbers just to pitch a theory as to why you'd tool up for that fancy shmancy market. Nothing fact based.
I do like to think that I'm the fancy bastid that Gerber is courting though. Makes me feel wanted / important / pretty.
You're the pretty boy all the higher-end makers are courting! Their model is all about you, Gerber's isn't.
