Impact of forums on knife sales

Like everything else, it depends. The Bladeforums has a strong influence with English speaking collectors on the types of knives that we frequently discuss. It has much less of an impact on many other knives, such as swords, bayonets, ethnographic, and most antiques, and virtually zero impact on the types of knives that the average person buys in the real world. Knives are a vast subject.

n2s
 
Yes, forums absolutely have an impact on knife sales. How much of an impact I don’t know.

Anyone who has bought a knife they saw or heard about on here is firsthand testimony. I’ve always been a knife knut, and I had nice knives before the Internet was even around. However, my tastes have changed to include more expensive stuff...

The main reason I lurked on here for two years before joining is that I didn’t want to “get all addicted to knives like you poor saps”. Lol, look what y’all done did! :(:D
 
just based on personal experience, I think knife forums have a big impact on sales, particularly the sales of custom, hand made knives.
 
Social media in general (of which forums are one format) definitely influence buying patterns.
I still am not entirely sure what instagram is or why I should care about it ( :D ), but I do know that many people's buying habits are influenced by it.
 
It influences sales a lot, where those of us who are addicted can see and indulge the various makers, sort of like enabling each other. Resistance is futile.
 
Truth be told, and I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit, prior to 2017 I only ever heard of Schrade, Buck, Gerber and Swiss Army. Benchmade, Spyderco, ZT and everyone else was brought to my attention from this, as well as a couple other forums (I've been a forum junky since 1994 and BBS's).

So quite frankly, yes you all are responsible for me spending too much money on stuff that I never knew I needed. So I will go back upstairs and fondle all my "precious" babies...
 
I think it definitely has impact on knife sales, especially for the smaller custom brands which give them more exposure where most of their potential buyers may dwell.
 
Bladeforums has always driven my purchases. What fellow enthusiasts were talking about made me excited to buy certain knives and as I got more experience I figured out what I liked and started contributing more. Prior to 2011 my purchases were driven by Blade magazine, Knives Illustrated, the Spyderco forum and Bladeforums. The first two fell by the wayside as I lost my local bookstore and didn't have anywhere to buy the magazines and look at others. Nowadays I look at forums a few times a week and mostly buy items for nostalgia reasons or that I missed out on when they were in production.

The past 3 years I purchased 31 knives, 22 of which were second-hand from this forum with 25 of them being long out of production models or variants. So the forum definitely influenced my purchases both in what I found interesting and literally where I bought my knives. Without the BST area I'd probably have a collection 1/4 the size.
 
Don’t forget about the “butterfly effect”.

I don’t think any of my immediate friends or family have ever set up a BladeForums account, but I do know several people that would consider themselves “into knives” and don’t mind spending a chunk of change on them occasionally.

These people don’t spend much time researching knives, because they just ask me about what they’re interested in. Same goes with guns for some of them (although I can’t claim to have the same depth of knowledge about firearms as I do about cutlery).

So, although they aren’t directly using forums, their choices (and maybe the choices of THEIR friends and families) will nonetheless be affected by this forum because it has an influence on me. Butterfly effect.
 
Majority of people will either buy gas station stuff or order some junk online. Especially mall ninjas.

Less percentage of people will buy one or 2 decent quality knives for stuff they need and just forget about it. Eventually leave a review on place where they bought it at most.

And now, the biggest rarity - us. People on this forum.
But, do we have influence?
I'd say yes. Since any googling about knives or steels will put up this place first. So that previous guy up there who'll just buy 1 user knife and forget about it as he keeps beating snot out of it will likley google first. And upon googling he'll stumble into one of numerous threads here and see our opinions, experiences and reccomendations.
 
This place has definitely emptied my wallet.

With a few exceptions, I'm not a brand loyal person. Spyderco is my exception. The spider hole is superior to the thumb stud by leaps and bounds in my opinion.
 
It's kinda like asking if the internet has an impact on sales of goods. There's quite a few brick & mortar stores going away because of internet sales. So there's that.
 
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