Kershaw Lockbacks Made in China!!

Status
Not open for further replies.
James0723 said:
Are you being serious? Consider that the only Spyderco knives Wal-Mart used to carry were the ones made in China. And most of the other knives they carry are made in China. Don't take my word for it, you can go to your local Wal-Mart and take inventory of where the 30 or so knives they carry are made yourself, my guess is that except for the current Kershaws (which we now know will probably change soon) all the knives are made in China.

Wal-Mart is one step up from the dollar store, you think they're being picky about anything they carry? They are only picky about one thing, "is this product cheap enough?".
Click to expand...

:rolleyes:

I said walmart is picky about what KERSHAW knives they will sale, I'm pretty sure in their contract with kershaw that they have to be 95% made in American with American made parts.
 
James0723 said:
Yes but from what you've said it seems like Kershaw is trying to change that. Where will the Chinese made knives, to give you folders in "that $19-$39 category", be sold? Something tells me probably at Wal-Mart.
Click to expand...
This simply isn't true James. hpb is correct, Wal-Mart (unlike some) likes having us as a manufacturer that produces USA made products. I don't see a change in that direction.

These imports can in fact be built for big box business, no doubt, and I understand your concerns. About a year ago I posted this, seems appropriate in understanding the situation we face today.

Thomas W said:
You know, big business is strange. I’ve mentioned this before, but feel this insight again needs repeating.

I have come to the conclusion that the big retailers in this country are largely responsible for the influx of products made overseas. Big box retail is all about volume and price point. They themselves could care less about country of origin, and I’ll even go so far as to say they have little interest in performance. It’s not about offering the best to their consumers, it’s just not. The demographics data, consumer profiling, marketing strategies, same-store sales comparison, category productivity, sales per linear foot of shelf space, product shrink, retail traffic patterns, are just a handful of exhausting stats that are used to calculate generated sales.

Now to put this into perspective in terms of knives, this statistical matrix is then formulated and spits out a price point that is perceived by the retailer as the optimum place a knife needs to be to maximize sales. Now just to stay on this subject, I won’t broach the additional requirements put on manufacturer’s both prior and after placement is achieved (programs, pricing, margins, capacity, delivery, buy backs. turns, sell through percentages, to name just a few). Ahh that analyzed price point…throw in the margins the retailer is required to make, and it’s a recipe for a blade that has to be outsourced for most. It forces some manufacturer’s to go and make a product they really don’t want to make, at a place they don’t really know, in a location they’ve never been. This is not to say the products are all bad performers that fit into this criteria, but certainly the final offerings are not the best a manufacturer can bring to the consumer. It’s not that the manufacturer wants to build to this performance and quality level, but again with the real dollars that are available with this type of business, you do build to their wants and desires.You could say these knives are a virtual OEM for the big box stores

The Oso Sweet is one of those knives (except for the fact that Kai produces the knife). I don’t expect anyone here to be completely blown away by the knife. I’m not blown away by the knife. It’s a $20-$25 knife. It was built for a handful of big box retailers under the umbrella of their critical and stringent requirements. Not everyone that walks out of a retailer with an Oso Sweet will know and understand that our quality can and will vary based on the objective of the particular job. I do trust though that there will be a level of understanding with the ELU that this knife is not indicative of our capabilities. All of the big box retailers carry more than just the OSO Sweet, so there are choices, including a ton of Made in the USA Kershaw’s for not much more monies.

I guess I needed to say all these things so that there was some understanding with the forum members as to what goes into decision making on the economy based knives, hopefully it did that.
Click to expand...

I as a consumer I will not support a company that exploits workers to such a degree. I would rather pay more for my products instead of buying cheap ones that I know were built on human misery and tears.
Click to expand...
There are no tears or misery at the factories I've been to.
 
Last edited:
Esav Benyamin said:
Totally clueless ignorance. China is undergoing an industrial revolution. At the low end, it draws starving farmers into miserable sweatshops. This is the only way any known society has transformed weakness and misery into industrial, financial, and national power.

At the high end, Chinese factories are also capable of white-room electronic manufacturing. Slaves? Buying homes and cars and fashionable clothes? I doubt it.

Read, learn, think, then preach.
Click to expand...

And what percentage of the Chinese population has cars Esav? Furthermore what percentage of the car owners work in factories? It's only the small richer class that has the cars, like the factory owners, not the factory workers.

You call me ignorant but I'm telling it like it is, while you falsely try to paint Chinese factories as good places to work that pay living wages.
 
James0723 said:
And what percentage of the Chinese population has cars Esav? Furthermore what percentage of the car owners work in factories? It's only the small richer class that has the cars, like the factory owners, not the factory workers.

You call me ignorant but I'm telling it like it is, while you falsely try to paint Chinese factories as good places to work that pay living wages.
Click to expand...

How many people in Tokoyo have cars? How many people in New York City have cars?

edit: I better explain, highly populated areas you will find most people used mass public transits to avoid traffic jams.
 
Where these factory workers come from, there are no wages. Subsistence agriculture is a dead end career. Even low factory wages can allow for saving and upward mobility.

If only the upper class bought cars, the roads would be empty. Few people prospering in China today were born to money.
 
Esav Benyamin said:
Where these factory workers come from, there are no wages. Subsistence agriculture is a dead end career. Even low factory wages can allow for saving and upward mobility.

If only the upper class bought cars, the roads would be empty. Few people prospering in China today were born to money.
Click to expand...

I don't know how much saving can be done when a lot of the workers (as Sal Glesser has said of the Spyderco factories) have to pay for factory provided housing and food in a way that, to me, resembles indentured servitude.
 
James0723 said:
But might that be because they know you're going to be doing a factory tour and make the place seem much nicer than it is for that day?
Click to expand...
No, in many cases, it's because they are my fellow employees working for Kai Industries. I know our factories overseas, and it's not how you envision them.
 
James0723 said:
I don't know how much saving can be done when a lot of the workers (as Sal Glesser has said of the Spyderco factories) have to pay for factory provided housing and food in a way that, to me, resembles indentured servitude.
Click to expand...

Factory provided housing, factory provided stores, factory provided money. I grew up in a town whose economy was based on coal, because of the coal camps where there was company provided housing, company provided stores, and company provided money our town and many other small towns were eventually created, and back then in those coal camps it was either work and be able to provide for your family or you are screwed.
 
Sigh...I'm afraid this thread is heading to the same place most of these overseas threads go...:thumbdn::(
 
Since there is a clearing in the storm, this was a reply to your earlier statement about volt is 300, and speedform is 250.


hwpaintballer said:
:D That's even better news, over on the first page they were both 299.95 and I thought one was only 249.95, I like the one with the flipper better anyways.
Click to expand...
 
Bottom line is, Chinese factories are not good places to work. I don't know what the people running these factories have done to give you an impression otherwise, but it's a false one.

Why don't you go work over there for a few weeks in one of them and then tell us how good it is? If I was a higher up of a company I would do that just so I could really know. Are you up for that Thomas?
 
James0723 said:
Bottom line is, Chinese factories are not good places to work. I don't know what the people running these factories have done to give you an impression otherwise, but it's a false one.

Why don't you go work over there for a few weeks in one of them and then tell us how good it is? If I was a higher up of a company I would do that just so I could really know. Are you up for that Thomas?
Click to expand...
I've spent 2 weeks straight in China working at the factories. Does that count?
 
James0723 said:
Bottom line is, Chinese factories are not good places to work. I don't know what the people running these factories have done to give you an impression otherwise, but it's a false one.

Why don't you go work over there for a few weeks in one of them and then tell us how good it is? If I was a higher up of a company I would do that just so I could really know. Are you up for that Thomas?
Click to expand...

Dipstick, I worked 8-9 hours outside yesterday digging 20 wheel barrow loads to make a place for a 10x20 patio that we later had a concrete truck pour concrete in, the driver dumped almost the whole truck so me and another dude worked nonstop fighting it. I worked through several leg and hand cramps, and without stopping to eat. We had two breaks that day and at the end of the day i didn't get paid. I would have begged to work in a factory assembling knives.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top