Spyderco and CRK. Industry Giants?

Eliteone2383

Eliteone2383

Joined
Jun 26, 2015
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Are spyderco and CRK responsible for the boom in the industry? I personally think so. After much research no other company sells as many knives as they do with the exception of crkt but thats due to how cheap crkt knives are I believe. My point in posting this? My point is this and is no way malicious. How do other companies stay in business when spyderco alone dwarfs everyone else's sales?
 
I think Böker, Victorinox and KAI are all much, much bigger. edit: also Opinel.
 
Offhand, Victorinox was/is the biggest pocket knife maker in the world a few years ago based on volume. Spyderco and CRK are actually small to medium sized compared to many other cutlery companies, they are just over represented in the high end market.
 
By far the biggest knife company is Victorinox, with over $500m of annual revenue (this was reported in 2014 and has grown since then) vs. Reports of Spyderco annual revenue is about $10m. KAI annual revenue is over $100m/year, buck is about $80m, Gerber is around $100m and both Benchmade and Boker have over $30m in annual revenue. These are just a few of the companies that came to the top of my mind that are larger than Spyderco and CRK.
 
There is a difference in both price, quality and quantity. Different business models with different target demographics.
 
Eliteone2383 said:
Ok so how do companies like Olamic, hinderer, CKF stay in business?
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Eliteone2383 said:
I mean there is overhead employees machining costs etc...
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I'd wager that is one of the reasons Hinderer sold knives for a decade or two but didn't increase his production capacity until during the production of the 4th Gen XM-18 to the point where retailers could get XM-18's in stock regularly. I mean, I'd think Hinderer sales are similar to Chris Reeve knives now.
 
Eliteone2383 said:
Are spyderco and CRK responsible for the boom in the industry? I personally think so. After much research no other company sells as many knives as they do with the exception of crkt but thats due to how cheap crkt knives are I believe. My point in posting this? My point is this and is no way malicious. How do other companies stay in business when spyderco alone dwarfs everyone else's sales?
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The misinformation here is amusing. Also, the tone of your question is off. "How do other companies stay in business...?" I mean, really? That's simple: by offering things that Spyderco or CRK don't.

Also, other knife companies sell FAR more knives than these two. Hell, CRK wouldn't even be in the top five.
 
Eliteone2383 said:
Ok so how do companies like Olamic, hinderer, CKF stay in business?
Click to expand...

Eliteone2383 said:
I mean there is overhead employees machining costs etc...
Click to expand...

Just because you aren't making tens of millions of dollars in revenue, it doesn't mean you aren't a profitable business. It's not really relevant to compare revenue of a small, boutique brand to a huge multinational corporation like KAI, Victorniox or Gerber. Olamic, Hinderer and CKF stay in business by offering products toward the higher end of the production spectrum, with a limited number of models helping keep costs down. CRK is helped by their location in Idaho, which means lower overhead.

Their business models are very different. KAI makes a huge chunk of its money off of product lines that aren't pocket knives (Shun and KAI Housewares); I'd speculate that they actually make more money off of the culinary side than they do the pocket knives. Victorinox is by far the volume leader in the cutlery industry; they were making 35,000 Swiss Army Knives a day after they bought out Wenger in 2005, dwarfing other brands. Gerber is owned by Fiskars, which started with scissors and branched out into all sorts of household goods.
 
Eliteone2383 said:
Ok so how do companies like Olamic, hinderer, CKF stay in business?
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By having a product that they can sell at a profit and a business model that works. When CRK was formed they realized they could not compete directly with the likes of Buck, so they found their own niche(closer to custom). They made knives people liked and were willing to pay the price for and the company grew. If you have something you can sell at a profit you can prosper, if not you fail. You don't have to make the most money.
 
There are industries that tend to move towards monopolies, or at least to a small number of large players. This happens when there are strong network effects (like in social media), or high development and regulatory costs (like the automotive industry). (There are other things that can drive this, too, but I'm not trying to give an exhaustive list here.)

None of that applies to knives. If my friends all have different knives than me, mine still works fine. If some small shop wants to start making knives, there aren't millions in setup costs and regulatory fees before they can sell anything. So it makes economic sense for there to be a wide range of knife makers, from behemoths like Victorinox all the way down to some of the part-time makers here on BF. It's a big enough market, with a wide range of customer interests, and low barriers to entry.

-Tyson
 
Quiet said:
The misinformation here is amusing. Also, the tone of your question is off. "How do other companies stay in business...?" I mean, really? That's simple: by offering things that Spyderco or CRK don't.

Also, other knife companies sell FAR more knives than these two. Hell, CRK wouldn't even be in the top five.
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I look at this differently. It's not all about money and profit. It's about what they've done to shape the industry.

It would be pretty easy to say that if Spyderco didn't make the Worker and Chris Reeve didn't make the Sebenza some one else would have. But no one else did. The ripple effect of those 2 knives has shaped the current folding knife market.

Now I don't know if that's what the OP meant. But for me those 2 companies are giants in the industry because of what they've done and are still doing vs. just reading numbers off quarterly sales reports.
 
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