Is Benchmade as a company not profitable?

Lapedog said:
They definitely have a very good distribution network. I know that they are a huge company. Every company has peaks and valleys in their performance.

I wonder how much of their customers is knife collectors and aficionados vs people who walk into a brick and mortar store and decide they are going to splurge on one of the high end knives there. The kind of “average guy customer.” I’d be interested to know those numbers for any business.

They say that a company’s customers follow a Pareto distribution like anything else in nature. 20% of the customers are 80% of the sales. A really interesting law that comes up in all kinds of places.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution
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Frito-Lay has a very good distribution network too.
 
jill jackson said:
They came out with the very popular Bugout and now have another variation of it. If they weren't profitable I doubt they'd be introducing another Bugout model so quickly.
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The Proper is another lower cost Benchmade that seems to be another decent seller. It’s fairly new to the market and is available in G10 or Micarta scales and different blade styles.
 
Mecha said:
Someone should just call Mr. Benchmade and ask him if he's making any money.
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IMO, BenchMade, like any other company looks over their portfolio from time to time to determine strategic changes to keep them profitable in an ever changing market. The powers that be, either use an outside marketing source or follow the market of demand and adjust their products so that it will be successful for their business. In order to achieve synergy, some hard decisions have to be made. If that means dropping a line of products in order to keep up with the market, then it’s the right choice to make.
From the outside, it looks grim, but looking at their new offerings, I’d think they are doing well.
 
I make a living as an accountant that provides services for privately held companies for the most part.

If a private company no way to know.
 
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Bladefourms is not a good indicator of a large companies overall health and profitability. The fourm represents how much of the knife buying public, less than 1%?.. Bladefourms is a good indicator of what is trending or might be an issue but not a company overview.

Look at Buck, they get little to some love on the fourm but are guesstimated to be a $60 million dollar business. I'm guessing Leatherman and even Gerber are doing fine too, even if we dont like everything they do.
 
In my opinion, Benchmade is probably quite profitable. My local Ace Hardware carries their whole line, and when I go in and see like eight or nine different new knives I hadn't seen before, that just doesn't seem like the output of a company looking to shrink costs. Also, at least in my personal experience, I see a LOT of people in various service industries that carry them. I would say that I've almost never seen any "higher" end brand clips in pockets, but I tend to see a lot of Benchmades around. More than I see Spydercos, really. I think Benchmade has positioned themselves as the "better than cheap Chinese 8cr and made here" brand. Want space age materials? Get a ZT. Want a quality knife made out of what's actually a decent steel? Get a Benchmade.

By the way? I'm not even a Benchmade fan. I have two or three of them, and one of the Ritter Grips before they all vanished. The other Benchmades are in a box somewhere, and the Grip is in my knife chest. I WILL say, that the Benchmade Proper is a great knife, I have two of them. It's allowed me to still have a nice knife on me that disappears in the pocket when I'm at my knife-unfriendly-environment place of employment.
 
Quiet said:
In my opinion, Benchmade is probably quite profitable. My local Ace Hardware carries their whole line, and when I go in and see like eight or nine different new knives I hadn't seen before, that just doesn't seem like the output of a company looking to shrink costs. Also, at least in my personal experience, I see a LOT of people in various service industries that carry them. I would say that I've almost never seen any "higher" end brand clips in pockets, but I tend to see a lot of Benchmades around. More than I see Spydercos, really. I think Benchmade has positioned themselves as the "better than cheap Chinese 8cr and made here" brand. Want space age materials? Get a ZT. Want a quality knife made out of what's actually a decent steel? Get a Benchmade.

By the way? I'm not even a Benchmade fan. I have two or three of them, and one of the Ritter Grips before they all vanished. The other Benchmades are in a box somewhere, and the Grip is in my knife chest. I WILL say, that the Benchmade Proper is a great knife, I have two of them. It's allowed me to still have a nice knife on me that disappears in the pocket when I'm at my knife-unfriendly-environment place of employment.
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Whatever the case is I don’t think sales is an issue for them. Remember individual customers aren’t really who Benchmade’s serious customers are. Their real customers are their distributors.

But revenue is only one side of the equation. There is also expenses too.
 
That is an interesting question. I personally don't think what you've posted is a sign of them not doing well, but I'm not educated enough in the financial sector to really say with any conviction. If I had to guess, I'd imagine that Benchmade is doing quite well at the moment, and that some of that might come from them not exactly pushing the envelope recently in terms of knife design and value in the last few years and possibly relying on the cache of their name to sell knives for them. Only my opinion, of course.

That being said, I am finding some of the responses to your question to be depressing. Whether you like the company or not, I don't know why such a question would be met with hostile responses. To me, this is much more interesting to think about than a lot of the topics that keep showing up on the general section.
 
Benchmade could crush their profit margins if they would just do a collab with Buck for an Axis 110.
 
I think Benchmade is doing OK. They can always do better. I think if they had sprint runs for knives with special accents or special steels...and I think they may be moving in that direction with a permanent ongoing sprint run. I ordered a Benchmade Barrage with M4 and I think that it came in 20CV too. If they keep pushing the envelope with their online ordering, and increase the knives that can be custom ordered in various steels and fittings, I think they will be way ahead of most competitors. They may be untouchable.

Flexibility is key because it allows them to allow the user to define their needs and what they are willing to spend to meet those needs.
 
I should own a portion of the company since I have almost 50 of their knives. Here’s another consideration for BM....their design is built around Being both right and left hand friendly. Being a lefty their knives work great, one of the only companies that almost everything they make can be left handed configured.
 
JBoone said:
I make a living as an accountant that provides services for privately held companies for the most part.

If a private company no way to know.
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If you spied on them and watched their steel deliveries, and the number of retailers that sell their knives, and try and figure out how many are moving, I'd bet you could come up with an idea of their gross and net.
 
marrenmiller said:
That is an interesting question. I personally don't think what you've posted is a sign of them not doing well, but I'm not educated enough in the financial sector to really say with any conviction. If I had to guess, I'd imagine that Benchmade is doing quite well at the moment, and that some of that might come from them not exactly pushing the envelope recently in terms of knife design and value in the last few years and possibly relying on the cache of their name to sell knives for them. Only my opinion, of course.

That being said, I am finding some of the responses to your question to be depressing. Whether you like the company or not, I don't know why such a question would be met with hostile responses. To me, this is much more interesting to think about than a lot of the topics that keep showing up on the general section.
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I think alot of people believe that it is spreading rumours or I am trying to state something as a fact.

All I’m saying is that if I saw a company I wanted to invest in doing similar things I would be curious as to why. It seems like moves to maximize profits but not through a growth strategy.

If I saw GM close down Buick and Chevy, start using the lower grade industrial standard materials to build their vehicles and slash their line up of vehicles I would also be curious what was going on.
 
I just looked at my wish list and I'm down for a Benchmade 200 Puukko in 3V, and two Benchmade Altitudes in S90V.

If they would allow for customized Adamas, I'd gladly take one in S35VN, or M390.
 
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