Makers using the 'drop' marketing strategy

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Mannlicher

Mannlicher

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Announcing a 'drop' at a specific time and date for a knife model or style to be available seems to becoming more prevalent. I find it to be off putting and simply won't participate. The strategy appears to create a cult following and the little Pavlovians line up to buy an unknown knife. Most of the time the offered knife has not been reviewed, tested or handled before. The fan boys just gobble 'em up and go right on line to brag.
 
If you think that's bad, head on over to FerrariChat and check in.

This happens at every level. There's someone showing there new Labubu doll on IG right now for likes.
 
Actually, a lot of those you call the "fanboys" are probably flippers hoping to get in on the release and subsequently jack up the price when they sell to those who would have liked to purchase a knife from the maker whose work they enjoy.
 
Devil's advocate... tho I do agree with the sentiments expressed, it does give advanced notice for those of us who are not super closely following the knife world. There has been a handful of times where I was able to grab a grail or something I was looking for simply by having advanced notice that they were coming and being able to budget/plan for it.

Do I think it gets abused? Absolutely.
 
Mannlicher said:
Announcing a 'drop' at a specific time and date for a knife model or style to be available seems to becoming more prevalent. I find it to be off putting and simply won't participate. The strategy appears to create a cult following and the little Pavlovians line up to buy an unknown knife. Most of the time the offered knife has not been reviewed, tested or handled before. The fan boys just gobble 'em up and go right on line to brag.
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You forgot: some vendors even drop "blind bags", i.e., unknown knives for a certain amount of money at a certain date. Hard to understand ... speak about cult following ....
 
ferider said:
You forgot: some vendors even drop "blind bags", i.e., unknown knives for a certain amount of money at a certain date. Hard to understand ... speak about cult following ....
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I can see blind bag marketing working on women, but I've been surprised how well it works on men. Supposedly it's a part of our gambling culture now and the shopping itself is part of the experience.

Spyderco did a very successful mystery box recently, but that's just not the way I want to buy a Spyderco or any knife.
 
I enjoy them. I don't participate if I don't like the knife, and I don't invest inappropriate amounts of emotional energy when I'm unable to get a limited release knife, so I don't get salty about it. I recognize that some people there are there in the hopes to flip for profit, and some of the satisfaction I get when I do win on a drop is that it might mean a flipper missed out. Flipping has also diminished substantially because of tax law changes (many people now pay sales tax on a lot of dealer-sold drops), increases in overhead for reselling knives (cost of shipping continues to creep up), and mostly the weakened state of the resale market. I consider myself very fortunate right now if I'm able to resell something I scrambled successfully to get and get my net cost covered completely. I've sold many knives in the last year where the original drop had many more people try than succeed and resale was still at a loss. Just how things are now.

I am bemused by the complaints about drops because fundamentally there's only so many ways to allocate any resource for which demand exceeds supply, and this is the one that's generally easiest for knifemakers to do. Lotteries require admin work and have the risk of nonpayment from nonserious entrants. Announced drops are probably the best of the worst. Raffles are the worst of the worse, and unannounced drops are probably second worst.
 
I can see why this is frustrating for the collector, and I personally avoid hype knives for that reason. But from a production standpoint there are a lot of benefits to this model, and I don't think people realize the difficulties makers contend with on that front.

It's time consuming and expensive to schedule production runs, and all the more complicated when you need to coordinate processes that a smaller shop is unlikely to have in-house (e.g. Blanchard grinding raw stock, waterjet cutting blanks, double disc grinding, Swiss lathe hardware, heat treat, coatings). Outside processes have additional lead times that need to be coordinated, and they don't always hold to the schedule. You can't produce scale on demand, so you have to allocate runs and see how they do. Keeping inventory is also expensive for a small brand, so you don't want to make more than the market can support. If you see something sell out fast, you can slot in more runs of that model in the future.

The kind of collector-friendly model people are asking for would massively increase the cost of the product, or necessitate massive quantities to offset the inefficiencies. The brands that do this tend to be smaller. So if you want your niche high end knife that not everyone else has, drops are kind of a necessary evil.
 
I think it's Oz where people are using bots on their drops and lottos, so the same people get the knives every time. Oz does nothing about it because a sale is a sale to them.

It's just a matter of knowing some code and you can get whatever piece you want.
 
marcus aurelius said:
I think it's Oz where people are using bots on their drops and lottos, so the same people get the knives every time. Oz does nothing about it because a sale is a sale to them.

It's just a matter of knowing some code and you can get whatever piece you want.
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I got an Oz on a first-come, first-served drop once and once on a lotto, which is maybe 1 in 7 on FCFS attempts and 1 in maybe 35 on lottos? I have wondered if people are using multiple e-mails or having all their friends and family enter or something. No harm to me, really, though. I've gotten to try a Roosevelt and an XL Roosevelt, and they're great, but if I can't get one I want, there are always other knives.

... so, so many other knives.
 
I saw a knife I liked in a knife store 2 years ago…fast forward to now and I ordered it on eBay new in box for a lot cheaper. And yes it’s the real thing. Just not marked up like in that store (that regularly marks up knives).
 
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