Bad Survive! Deserves A Permanent Post In The Hall Of Shame

Blues said:
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"I like long walks on the beach, extended coffee breaks,
and people that send me money accepting nothing in return..."
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šŸ˜‚
 
EngrSorenson said:
I can agree with that. Iā€™ve held one before and thought ā€œwell, this is nice, I guessā€. I think my point was that makers have their own perspective.

Iā€™m sure Creely and others arenā€™t mistaken when they say he wasnā€™t hitting the price point he should have. Iā€™m also sure thatā€™s why preorders were always coming in. S!K was going to undercut competitors with low prices. I think we see how that played out for him.
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Itā€™s amazing the number of people who express shock at the cost of US-made knives/tomahawks/etc. When you look across a competitive industry and see most makers of similar knives in a similar ballpark for pricing (RMJ, Busse, CPK, CRK, Spartan, etc) it should tell you thatā€™s probably about the right price point and if youā€™re going to come in way cheaper itā€™s going to be for a reason (lower tolerances, simpler designs, less warranty support or customer service, cheaper materials, or in the case of Survive! only delivering a fraction of ordersā€¦).
 
Thescrawnylumberjack said:
Carothers Knives are amazing and from his post they develop custom heat treatments to maximize performance. Thereā€™s a lot of time and money that goes into running coupons, making test knives, and breaking things.


Anyone else see the irony in his shirt?
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Not to mention, I've not ever met a guy working with metal in any capacity whose hands are that clean.
 
jbmonkey said:
true^

I work most days in an office nowadays and my hands are dirtier........
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It definitely pokes another hole in the "he wasn't taking showers" scenario.

Tree dirt washes off pretty easily, but on the not infrequent occasions we have to do fab/repair work it takes days to get the grime out of my calluses.
 
Blues said:
CPK has managed to offer large and small blades at very reasonable prices for years, especially considering the quality of the build and materials, and the extremely tight tolerances. When they've raised prices to confront the realities of the cost of materials and production, they did so reluctantly...and no one batted an eyelash because they could appreciate the product being offered for the excellence and value it represented.
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THE single most important difference is Nathan and Jo limit the orders they accept to the number they can actually deliver products.
 
On 50k outgoings, after rent, power etc itā€™s probably interest on loans. Given his profile there is no way in hell he was able to negotiate a reasonable interest rate. He may be paying ā€œVito at the Grocerā€ back the ā€œfamilyā€ $s he borrowed.
 
EngrSorenson said:
Being honest people?
Thatā€™s just wild.
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At both of the BLADE shows I've been to to meet them in person (2022, and then this year, respectively) I have stopped by their booth to see them and say hello, and the number of people who stop by just to shake their hands and maybe share a story or anecdote about the work their CPK knives have done or maybe some trouble the knives got them out of while out in the woods, it's night and day between them, and this complete fraud Guy. Two tremendously respected folks, and for all the best of reasons. Everything Guy never was and now, never will be. Nathan and Jo are a credit to this forum.
 
Quiet said:
At both of the BLADE shows I've been to to meet them in person (2022, and then this year, respectively) I have stopped by their booth to see them and say hello, and the number of people who stop by just to shake their hands and maybe share a story or anecdote about the work their CPK knives have done or maybe some trouble the knives got them out of while out in the woods, it's night and day between them, and this complete fraud Guy. Two tremendously respected folks, and for all the best of reasons. Everything Guy never was and now, never will be. Nathan and Jo are a credit to this forum.
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Haha I can see I forgot to use the sarcastic font. Iā€™m a big fan of Nathan and Jo.
 
Huntsman Knife Co. said:
Pure conjecture, but I think Guy started Survive with an idea that sounded great and some back of the envelope math that made sense on paper. However, the whole thing ended up being a fraud that took millions of dollars from knife customers.

I think very quickly, he realized that the blades were much harder to make than expected and there was basically no profit margin at his price point.

I don't think he properly estimated how much profit is lost due to scrapped blades, mistakes, factory seconds, or just how profoundly difficult it is to get a great finish on a supersteel.

To his credit, he did reach out to knowledgeable people in the industry to get production help. However, at this point, Survive was probably low on money and needed more cash to stay afloat and make the existing pre-orders. I do 100% believe Guy wanted to deliver on these orders and in his mind, he would get the production process fixed, complete the backlog, and then move forward. The problem is, the cost is so great and the margins so low, he probably got continually in the cycle of taking money from new pre-orders to pay past debts until he ended up with a backlog of 5,000 blades.

I'm sure he also had some legitimate problems with steel, HT, etc.. it happens to all of us. Its happened to me. Its part of the game. However, I think by 2024, he probably realized it would take another $200+K of debt and literal years of work to finish all of those blanks and it just wasn't possible. Things were not improving with his processes or finances, the blades were always fundamentally unprofitable because of low prices and I think the problems with steel and HT were the final straw that made him realize there was no coming back.

I do have pity for Guy and feel his plight. He started out wanting to make a great product at a great price. He probably didnt have any real business or knifemaking experienced and underestimated how difficult it is. When I started knifemaking, I definitely fell into some of the same patterns and completely understand the stress of getting so far in over your head and not knowing how to find the way forward. And then you have problems with steel or HT which happen in any industry all the time and its enough to break you.

I actually quit knifemaking in 2019 over 2 bad batches of steel that lead to me having to refund or replace 40+ blades. It was absolutely brutal BUT I had amazing customers that stood by me and were very patient and I replaced or refunded every single blade.

This is where Guy really went wrong. I don't think he was ever that honest with his customers and if he had been, I think they would have understood. Instead he dug himself into a hole until he hit rock bottom and took millions from unsuspecting customers.
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No offense but youā€™re absolutely wrong. The guy is nothing more than a con artist. He didnā€™t go wrong, he made a lot of money because people kept making excuses for him. He was and still isnā€™t a knife maker , heā€™s a thief, a liar and a con artist.
 
Quiet said:
I candidly feel you are giving Guy too much credit. There have been plenty of instances in the decade or so of this Scumbag!Knives debacle where it was clear that whenever he didn't want to work on a run of preordered knives, he'd head to the drawing table and come up with a new design to take a million plus in preorders against and make some of those instead. People were lefting waiting on knives he never had any intention of finishing, and as far as I can see, there's nothing to applaud. Perhaps years ago, back in his early days he actually made a sincere effort to try to make good knives, but I think the road to his ultimate downfall he's experiencing now happened the moment he still had unfinished knives on his bench but discovered that his idiot fanbase* would take him at his word and pony up hundreds of thousands more dollars for "preorders" just on his say so and some pics he put together.

Once he realized that all he REALLY had to do in order to keep the scam going was make some of the knives he owed people (so he could spend the huge majority of the cash he took in on his personal bills/purchases/etc.), while continuously running preorder after preorder, and even selling seconds which in actuality were knives that hadn't even been made yet (the purest example of fraud in this whole sordid mess, honestly), and when he realized how few people would actually challenge him for refunds, the grift became super easy for him. I do not feel bad for anyone who got rooked by the guy, sorry I just don't. The word was out about him years ago, and still a lot of people defended him right up until @shinyedges and a couple of others gathered all of the postings proving the fraud from their own sub here, presented it to Spark, the owner of the site, and got their sub shut down. Even then, in this very thread, we have had defenders still pop up to defend poor ole Guy who's just doing the best that he can, and if you'd just be patient, he's definitely going to get your kni....

LOL JAYKAY, his house of cards has finally burnt down since the fanbase of people he was able to scam effectively dried up. Guy is a fraudster and everything bad that happens to him from this point forward in his life is well deserved. Nothing he's done is worth applauding.

Also, as others have said, plenty of companies make great large fixed blades that can be used hard that don't have the issues Guy had. Guy's issues were because he doesn't know how to make knives. He never did. All he was good at was bolting parts together that were made by actual makers who were contracted to do that work. I mean, if he knew how to actually grind a blade, the whole Magnacut issue his dumb ass had been bleating about would never have been an issue! Hell, so many times he used the excuse of "We're still waiting for the sheathes for the GSO whatevers to come in, please be patient!". So really, Guy didn't have the issues that you describe having, because it sounds like you actually do the work. You're cooking at home, dude was Doordashing McDonalds, huge difference.



* Idiot too harsh a word? Not really sure what else can be said when from the beginning Guy made it clear that these knives were all being made by him personally (due to his incredibly high standards LAWL), and so even a moment of critical thinking being done when he released preorders for new knives would have had smart people wondering "Hmmmm....if dudebro is going to start work on those new model knives....who's making the knife he still owes me?". Folks missing this simple and glaring issue over and over and over again (which so many of his ardent defenders did)...whelp, if the shoe fits., you know?
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If I could post a ā€œlikeā€ I wouldā€¦you are absolutely correct.
 
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