Don't worry about not knowing the story Paul. Had I not been searching for a couple of replacement knives last year, I would never have known the story, except that Wal-Mart no longer carries fine American made knives.
Stewert Taylor (aka Taylor Cutlery) bought all of the Schrade intellectual property during the liquidation of Schrade assets last fall. That includes the copyrights (names, slogans, logos), design patents, and even the old website. In remarkable time, he changed his company name to Taylor Brands LLC and began importing chinee copies of Schrade knives. A couple of former Schrade employees miraculously showed up in his employ, at least one of which had been sent by Schrade to China to explore component manufacturing there. He hired the Schrade commercial artist to design his boxes and through no fault of his own, the American flag was printed on the boxes containing his new chinee knives. Dang, you have to watch leaving packaging design and procurement entirely to an artist's discretion. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we are inundated with copies of Schrade designs from both home and abroad. Some of them were produced by American companies as contract pieces for Taylor Brands LLC, and some are revamped designs on patterns with expired design patents. Others still were produced by companies who purchases license agreements from Taylor to use a name, or a design to which Taylor owns the rights.
Arrowhead Cutlery/ United Cutlery owner Hall bought much of the machinery. Smokey Mountain Knife Works owner Kevin Pipes bought most of the knives remaining in the factory during the auction, even the famous Schrade Office collection. These seven tractor-trailer loads are what you have been seeing on ebay, including all of the rejects and samples scarfed from the sample and engineering offices.
Incompetant hired marketing consultants, industrial espionage, banking shenanigans, Wal-Mart predatory practices, market trends, bloated overhead, inflated material and energy costs, uninterested owners and more played in the game and the craftspersons and longtime management, and the American public lost. Bejing and their American proxies won.
There is more, much, much more to the story, but this brief synopsis will have to do for now. As an aside, the same forces, many of the same players did the same thing to Colonial Knife Company a few years back, but a new, stronger downsized Colonial Knife Company emerged from the ashes.
Codger
