Just saw this.....Bark River is no more?

somber said:
This doesn’t make sense.

DLT orders steel.

The steel is sent to water jet and heat treat.

BRK receives blanks from heat treat in the steel that DLT ordered and cut in the profile they ordered.

BRK finishes and handles the blade.

DLT wasn’t shipping raw materials to BRK.
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Ah okay. So the stuff DLT ordered was being sent and processed by the usual third party, while the Chinese blanks went straight to BRK. I kept getting hung up on why the people doing the heat treat and water jetting didn’t notice something off. D,oh!
 
DMG said:
They made enough knives that I could easily see them using the steel from DLT and the chinese blanks
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Perhaps they could not afford to buy enough legit steel to fulfill their orders, so bought additional from China. Again, a center of the tootsie pop scenario.
 
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shinyedges said:
I don't think Mike would have told them (dealers he was using Chinese steel) when he falls on hard times he reverts to this tactic. The years and years of wrong steel issues now make sense, my issue is, if as a dealer you have consistent wrong steel issues why or how do you brush that under the rug and double down on investing into said company?
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I'm pretty sure it will turn out to be something like this. Whenever you heard about rumored sneaky business from Mike, it was usually along the lines of "salting" things (sprinkling bad or mislabeled stuff amongst the good). So maybe a few models out of dozens were made from kits or a few runs of knives would be mislabeled along with good ones.

As to the second part, money. the knives sell well and lots of people had hundreds of thousands in inventory. Hard to give that up.
 
tltt said:
I'm pretty sure it will turn out to be something like this. Whenever you heard about rumored sneaky business from Mike, it was usually along the lines of "salting" things (sprinkling bad or mislabeled stuff amongst the good). So maybe a few models out of dozens were made from kits or a few runs of knives would be mislabeled along with good ones.

As to the second part, money. the knives sell well and lots of people had hundreds of thousands in inventory. Hard to give that up.
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I agree. It's that sprinkling in the bad with the good that makes it very difficult to trust what dealers have in stock. I don't buy the dealers were out to help the people of brk company, it must have made money or they wouldn't do it.
 
Jack of All Blades said:
See attached photos. It was confirmed by Mike they did in fact use Chinese blanks for some models.

Photos are not mine.

One thing I will say is the community in that town is very close knit. Even if someone doesn’t work in the knife industry, they probably have an uncle whose cousin whose brother knows someone who probably worked there once. Everyone knows everyone. So I can understand it being challenging for employees to openly come forward.
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All though I take this very serious, I still can't not laugh about the double sided attitude of him. Online he is one, but in private something else. Id be lying if I said im not itching to read his "im coming clean" post. In the mean time im researching the availability of composition testing in Latvia, curiosity and all..
 
somber said:
When I worked with them, BRK represented about 20% of the net sales for KSF & DLT.
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That’s huge, when you consider the number of other brands out there. The risk of losing 20% of sales certainly explains why dealers would go out if their way to help keep BR afloat. Who knows what sob story Stewart was feeding them to explain his cash up front situation.
 
Jack of All Blades said:
See attached photos. It was confirmed by Mike they did in fact use Chinese blanks for some models.

Photos are not mine.

One thing I will say is the community in that town is very close knit. Even if someone doesn’t work in the knife industry, they probably have an uncle whose cousin whose brother knows someone who probably worked there once. Everyone knows everyone. So I can understand it being challenging for employees to openly come forward.
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Do we know who this exchange was with?
 
StrangeDaze said:
I just noticed a lot of the Bark River branding, even boxes, say “Bark River Knives, Escanaba MI, Powered by DLT Trading”

I know it is common when dealing with such high volume to have specialized packaging, but given the situation it just sounds different now.
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Certainly implies some stake sharing.
 
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kylemiller said:
Certainly implies some stake sharing.
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What’s the implication?

Speak words to power instead of trying to hide behind insinuations.

DLT bought steel to support a dealer who has zero financial acumen, someone with criminally bad financial ability.

If BRK was defrauding customers, they were defrauding Jason first - he’s their biggest customer.
 
Jack of All Blades said:
www.facebook.com

From Mr. Stewarts own forked tongue! | Facebook

From Mr. Stewarts own forked tongue! Since it’s still silence from him here is our conversation from last night and this morning! I was pissed last night but even more upset now! He openly has...
www.facebook.com www.facebook.com

Here’s a link to the Facebook post.
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Going by what I can see of the exchange on there, Jason from DLT is doing his due diligence as far as verifying what they have. Sounds like they'll otherwise be out hundreds of thousands of dollars.
 
StuntDouble said:
Going by what I can see of the exchange on there, Jason from DLT is doing his due diligence as far as verifying what they have. Sounds like they'll otherwise be out hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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Yep. Was just coming here to report the same thing. In my limited interactions with Jason, he always appeared to me to be a stand up honest person. Glad to see him answering some questions that were raised and appears to be on the right side of this currently.
 
StuntDouble said:
Going by what I can see of the exchange on there, Jason from DLT is doing his due diligence as far as verifying what they have. Sounds like they'll otherwise be out hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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Probably cheaper to buy the xrf tester and verify than take the loss.
J. Doyle said:
Yep. Was just coming here to report the same thing. In my limited interactions with Jason, he always appeared to me to be a stand up honest person. Glad to see him answering some questions that were raised and appears to be on the right side of this currently.
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I don't know Jason, and I'll trust your assessment, but Mike's history has been known for a LONG time. Play with fire and get burned.
 
shinyedges said:
Probably cheaper to buy the xrf tester and verify than take the loss.

I don't know Jason, and I'll trust your assessment, but Mike's history has been known for a LONG time. Play with fire and get burned.
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I don't disagree with that. I personally still have questions about DLT's involvement though they are now more on the practical/logical scale than the ethical one.

Can't say Jason and I would have made the same business decisions in regards to Bark River knowing that Mike couldn't purchase steel for various reasons, but that's above my paygrade and I'll leave that between DLT and Mike for now.
 
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