Prices losing touch with reality?

[Cypress]

I'm usually a "the price is the price" kind of guy, but both of the new Spyderco knives that caught my eye are priced to an absurd level. The Drunken and the Paysan looked like winners in my book, but then I saw the prices... After the usual discount, it's $410 for the Drunken and $520(!!) for the Paysan.

I thought "well, maybe the Golden factory is putting extra love into these models" then I realized that these are both made in Taiwan.

What is it about these knives that justifies full-blown custom prices for non-sprint production knives made in Asia? I understand that the Paysan is an integral folder on bearings, but WE Knives does the same thing on ceramic bearings (better) and M390 (arguably better) for almost $230 less.

What gives? Other new Taiwan models aren't going for black-market-organs pricing, so tariffs aren't to blame for this.

 

[Rusty_shackelford]

Lots of factors in play.
Having established designers associated with each model maybe.
High end materials.
extra details like the milling on the drunken.
The warranty and the collectablity that comes with spyderco come at a cost I suppose.
It sucks, don’t get me wrong.
I’m pretty much numb to it now.
I just got an email for the m4/dlc military at $200.
Seemed crazy for a minute, but I just shrugged it off.
Toys cost money.
I mean I think WE have some near $450 Damascus intergal limited editions don’t they?
I’d love to have that drunken tho.
I bet I’d be able to justify that price once I held one.
I most likely won’t get one. Maybe when they discontinue the model.

 

[DrRollinstein]

Lots of factors in play.
Having established designers associated with each model maybe.
High end materials.
extra details like the milling on the drunken.
The warranty and the collectablity that comes with spyderco come at a cost I suppose.
It sucks, don’t get me wrong.
I’m pretty much numb to it now.
I just got an email for the m4/dlc military at $200.
Seemed crazy for a minute, but I just shrugged it off.
Toys cost money.
I mean I think WE have some near $450 Damascus intergal limited editions don’t they?
I’d love to have that drunken tho.
I bet I’d be able to justify that price once I held one.
I most likely won’t get one. Maybe when they discontinue the model.

Well having Damascus on those 450 dollar knives is a good excuse for WE. Most of their integrals are 250-300. Damascus always adds a few hundred bucks to the price.

Pretty sure i had the same reaction to the Drunken a few weeks back. Spydero must be trying to copy Benchmade and add a Spyder tax on to the higher end stuff.
The knife is gorgeous and looks like a ZT/Spyderco hybrid, but yeah that price is a bit of an issue. And im not much of a fan of S90V/S110V.

 

[Chariotz4]

If you think the MAP prices are exorbitant, than wait until you hear this. At a major Canadian retailer, the Subvert is listed at about $320 in USD after the conversion from CAD. Not what it's going for South of the border, but not too far off either. It gets better though; the retailer charges for shipping, usually around $5US (again, after the conversion) ON TOP of the 12% tax rate I pay in my province. So that's about another $50CAD or ~$40US. So when it's all said and done, it comes out close to $365USD. And my understanding is that places like Australia and countries in the EU have it even worse off.

I'll hedge myself here and echo what Rusty_shackelford said, I realize there are a lot of factors at play, so while I sympathize with the OP, I'd like to point out that it can always be worse.

 

[Wowbagger]

Prices losing touch with reality?

I don't have anything intelligent to say but I think it is interesting that I bought a Syderco HAP40 special run for ~$170 and didn't bat an eye but the $20 Kershaw that I had my eye on went up by two dollars so I am hesitating to pull the trigger.

It's the principle of the thing. I don't know what that actually means but . . . I'm just saying.


PS: I suppose if the Kershaw was HAP40 I wouldn't be looking at the price and since it is 8Cr13MoV I'm questioning whether or not I want another knife in boring squishy steel even though I would carry it and use it.

 

[sgt1372]

Supply and demand.

If you think things cost too much, don't pay for them. If they go unsold, they won't make any more of them and may blow the unsold stock out at a discount.

Set a limit on what you are willing to spend and stick with it.

$400 (including tax/shipping) is my ABSOLUTE limit on any knife and I've come close but haven't paid that much for one yet. My "I don't need to think about it, if I want it" limit is anything up to $100. My "do I really need/want it?" limit is $100-250. My "I've gotta have it and I'll worry about the cost later" limit is $250-400.

The $300 Drunken isn't a knife that "I've gotta have" and the $500 Paysan is priced over my limit.

So, I'm not going to buy them, unless they're discontinued and sold at substantial discounts from MAP pricing later. If that doesn't happen, I can live w/o them.

 

[gadgetgeek]

Are we really doing this again?

The song got old a long time ago, making up new verses doesn't make listening anymore enjoyable.
If you can afford it, groovy. If not, there is plenty of other things to buy, or not. You do You Boo. I'll get upset when Sal has a Bently parked out front of the shop in Golden, because that is a bit gauche. Otherwise, I'll let Eric and the team run the company.

 

[Wowbagger]

I'll get upset when Sal has a Bently parked out front of the shop in Golden, because that is a bit gauche.

Sal would go with a Spider Bentley so even that might be worth supporting.

 

[Gurdygurds]

The best thing to do when you start having these thoughts is to stop buying knives.

 

[Sal Glesser]

We operate on relatively fixed margins. If the knife cost X to make, then the pr ice is X+Y. We don't charge as mich as the market will bear. We think that's biting the hand that feeds you.

And FYI sal drives a 2013 Acura.

sal

 

[Lapedog]

I'm usually a "the price is the price" kind of guy, but both of the new Spyderco knives that caught my eye are priced to an absurd level. The Drunken and the Paysan looked like winners in my book, but then I saw the prices... After the usual discount, it's $410 for the Drunken and $520(!!) for the Paysan.

I thought "well, maybe the Golden factory is putting extra love into these models" then I realized that these are both made in Taiwan.

What is it about these knives that justifies full-blown custom prices for non-sprint production knives made in Asia? I understand that the Paysan is an integral folder on bearings, but WE Knives does the same thing on ceramic bearings (better) and M390 (arguably better) for almost $230 less.

What gives? Other new Taiwan models aren't going for black-market-organs pricing, so tariffs aren't to blame for this.

Not that I’m disagreeing with you that Spydero and Benchmades too have become overpriced (200 for a g10 folder with steel liners in s30v); but Taiwanese production is not the same as Chinese production. China has much cheaper labour and WE has the largest knife factory on earth.

Taiwan had already upped its reputation for producing quality items like Japan and South Korea did. China still has to entice customers with lower prices because of their reputation for low quality cheap products. (Though we see more and more that China has no issue making high quality stuff) Once China has upgraded its reputation following its Asian neighbours they likely won’t want to sell for lower prices than the market will bear.

So part of the reason right now is they probably aren’t completely confident that the market will pay those higher prices for Chinese knives.

That is unless they are shipped to Russia first and stamped with a CKF logo.

 

[lieferung]

Peter Rassenti and Dmitry Sinkevich, the designers of these knives, are both two established high-end knife makers. I imagine part of the price goes to paying for their excellent design skills, or atleast licensing/royalties.

 

[Cypress]

Peter Rassenti and Dmitry Sinkevich, the designers of these knives, are both two established high-end knife makers. I imagine part of the price goes to paying for their excellent design skills, or atleast licensing/royalties.

I’m no ZT expert, but all of the Sinkevich designs I’ve seen sold by ZT are sub-$300.

 

[Rusty_shackelford]

If you think the MAP prices are exorbitant, than wait until you hear this. At a major Canadian retailer, the Subvert is listed at about $320 in USD after the conversion from CAD. Not what it's going for South of the border, but not too far either. It gets better though; the retailer charges for shipping, usually around $5US (again, after the conversion) ON TOP of the 12% tax rate I pay in my province. So that's about another $50CAD or ~$40US. So when it's all said and done, it comes out close to $365USD. And my understanding is that places like Australia and countries in the EU have it even worse off.

I'll hedge myself here and echo what Rusty_shackelford said, I realize there are a lot of factors at play, so while I sympathize with the OP, I'd like to point out that it can always be worse.

Ya the prices up here are stupid.
My rex45 military was $317cad/$240usd from w&w, including taxes n shipping.

That’s a $50usd hit.

That’s nothing to do with spyderco really.
Our retailers charging more, plus higher taxes and shipping.

Still a kick in the old pills tho.

 

[Cypress]

Not that I’m disagreeing with you that Spydero and Benchmades too have become overpriced (200 for a g10 folder with steel liners in s30v); but Taiwanese production is not the same as Chinese production. China has much cheaper labour and WE has the largest knife factory on earth.

Taiwan had already upped its reputation for producing quality items like Japan and South Korea did. China still has to entice customers with lower prices because of their reputation for low quality cheap products. (Though we see more and more that China has no issue making high quality stuff) Once China has upgraded its reputation following its Asian neighbours they likely won’t want to sell for lower prices than the market will bear.

So part of the reason right now is they probably aren’t completely confident that the market will pay those higher prices for Chinese knives.

That is unless they are shipped to Russia first and stamped with a CKF logo.

I totally get that the Spyderco factory in Taiwan puts out great work. The prices I’m seeing for these knives is higher than comparable knives made here in the US like the Benchmade Anthem (QC issues aside), and that’s just mind boggling. I can’t imagine how much Spyderco thinks the Paysan would sell for if it was made in Colorado

 

[Danke42]

I totally get that the Spyderco factory in Taiwan puts out great work. The prices I’m seeing for these knives is higher than comparable knives made here in the US like the Benchmade Anthem (QC issues aside), and that’s just mind boggling. I can’t imagine how much Spyderco thinks the Paysan would sell for if it was made in Colorado

It'd cost Y+X.

 

[Chariotz4]

Ya the prices up here are stupid.
My rex45 military was $317cad/$240usd from w&w, including taxes n shipping.

That’s a $50usd hit.

That’s nothing to do with spyderco really.
Our retailers charging more, plus higher taxes and shipping.

Still a kick in the old pills tho.

Wasn't saying it had anything to do with them; was speaking more to the fact that if the OP thought what the bare minimum Spyderco was charging in the States was bad, the additional charges/taxes/etc those of us have to pay in our respective countries (that aren't the US) have - like you mentioned - an even larger pill to swallow. I can easily see the Paysan clearing $600/$650USD after mark-up, taxes, and shipping up here.

Less "Spyderco can't justify these high prices for their showcase knives" and more "expensive knives are usually even more expensive outside the US (most of the time)."

 

[Stang Bladeworks]

I think the scale of a models production has a lot to do woth the cost to the manufacturer and the end user. The manufacturing cost per unit is higher when fewer units are produced. I would assume that much fewer of these models are produced than pm2s or delicas. Just my opinion.

 

[Danke42]

Ya the prices up here are stupid.
My rex45 military was $317cad/$240usd from w&w, including taxes n shipping.

That’s a $50usd hit.

That’s nothing to do with spyderco really.
Our retailers charging more, plus higher taxes and shipping.

Still a kick in the old pills tho.

Weird; they were just about par with BHQ on the VTOKU Stretch. BHQ just got theirs a few weeks earlier.

 

[Fmont]

I got the same sticker shock when I looked at the Paysan, which was the one I was interested in. Then I looked at the price - that's a solid nope.

If it's put together impeccably it's like a $300 knife, imo. I'm just thinking of something like a ZT 0804 @$200 with Ti/cf/BBs/204p/Rexford type specs and can't figure out how Spyderco needs $300 more to meet "x+y" in a similar spec bracket made overseas. They have the manufacturing relationships, sources, etc., but are charging small economy of scale, USA made prices. Seems like x+y³.