mantis knives

[jim preston]

You say this like it's a bad thing. Everyone has motives for posting here. Most of us are big enough to accept or disregard information as we see fit.

Back in April I was given a warning for doing what is called "deal spotting" for another site. I thought I was just giving a link to a good deal, but it turned out what I was doing was considered "advertising." Now, I don't agree with this definition, but it's the rules, and it's kind of like having a ZT policy at schools- if I was allowed to carry a blade, than idiot wannabe gangstas would also be allowed to carry blades, and someone would end up being hurt. Any kind of advertising hurts this site. Why? Look around- do you see any banners, pop-ups, or the like. Cracking down on advertising keeps the site clean and running smoothly.
You say that we can never know the motives of anybody. However, somebody leaked information about Mantis' "secret op" or whatever it was called, and we knew that the people posting Mantis review were doing so so they could receive a free knife. They were simply being payed to advertise, and this site does not allow advertising. People who advertise are shut down as spammers, and the Mantis "reviews" were treated as spam. If you don't have a problem with spam, then you are a troll and can get the heck off this site.
Also, as I mentioned, their owner Jared West is a sycophant, a liar, and a jerk.

 

[phaserrifle]

the difference between what mantis did, and what others do is this:
mantis where persuing a large scale flood of reviews, all for payment by people proporting to be satisfied users. not only is this against the forum rules, but it is also dishonest. the "reviewers" are being paid to write a good review, while not admitting this. and there are a large number of them at the same time.

the dishonesty derives from the biased reviews, which fail to reveal the fact that they are being paid to write a good review. if an advertising company uses extracts from user reviews, all well and good, you know its advertising, you know that their only going to choose the best bits. equaly if the reviewer has designed or made the knife, they allways state this. the reader then knows that the review is from a biased positon (eg daywalker openly identifies that he designs a series of knives for boker, so we know that any of his posts relating to boker knives are from that slant). however by failing to state this, and deliberately using a tactic to disguise the advertising as honest reviews, they are misleading the public.

reviews of other comapanies products (spyderco, benchmade, cold steel ect ect) are written by honest users, some of them may like the knife, some may not. however they are not being biased by the company to review one way or the other.

 

[A. G. Russell]

When the Mantis Militia first surfaced in June of last year I thought that Couger handled it very very well.

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=563959 He established one thread for all of this to take place and it went on for 7 pages an then nobody posted after July the 7th.

I do not have a dog in this hunt, but I remember making a mistake and being excoriated by the moderators and a few others. If Jared is just young, and he is young then he will overcome this mistake. If he is also dishonest then he may be out of business before long. Let time take care of it.

I did not know that this subject existed until day before yesterday. I did know about Mantis knives.

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

Ah, that explains it.

Did they carry a fairly extensive selection of Mantis knives? Is it a chain? I've been curious what the company's distribution looks like.

We're a small business in Bar Harbor, ME that's been there for 40 years. We sell biker supplies, jewelry, tourist items, competition-grade airsoft, optics, cameras...you name it. But it's a small operation. The knife side is about 5 large cases at the moment, and it's being expanded this year. We typically have had about 900 different models in total in store, not including functional swords, straight razors, and other similar items, as well as being one of the only stores in the north-east that gets BM Gold Class pieces. I'm the assistant manager of the cutlery/optics side, but I am also the general knowledge geek there.

We picked up a few "trial" Mantis pieces when we first caught wind of them just to get a feel for the product (about five different models, only two of each)
and were not very impressed by any aspect of the knives, and in addition to the flaws that I mentioned earlier they were simply not very useful designs compared to everything else we already carried. We had difficulty getting them to go away, since any time someone had a need for a knife there were better knives in our cases for them to take home.

We were also disappointed that not only did Mr. West think it appropriate to advertise his knives using a pimped-out Hummer (insert snide remark here) with scantily clad women all over it...he only used one girl for the shoot! (Really. It's the same girl in a bunch of different poses. Lame and low-brow.) Oh, and he's a jerk. We actually saved our sales rep from having to go out to dinner with him at SHOT.

All in all, Mantis does not meet the needs and tastes of our business and as such Mr. West's knives will not be finding a home in our cases.

 

[knarfeng]

I don't see spam as some evil to be stamped out. There is really no substantive difference between recruiting an ad company to make up a full page layout for Blade magazine and paying customers to put out a good word on the internet. The only difference here is that the moderators have a policy against the latter, which is their right.

I think it's fair to criticize a company for making bad products or for doing things that are illegal. But the charges of unethical and possibly illegal practices have so far been hearsay. They remind me of the wild charges made against Cold Steel on a regular basis around here.

It's also fair to criticize Mantis for violating this forums policy. But that has nothing to do with their wares or ethics. That's the forum owner's problem, not Mantis', or mine. Which is why I'm note interested in evaluating Mantis knives on their merits, not for the company's breach of Bladeforums policy, which only tells me what I already know about Bladeforums, and nothing about Mantis or their knives.

It tells me a lot about a company that they pay their customers to misrepresent themselves on a forum.

It tells me a lot about a company that they imply that their knives are made in the US and the knives are not.