Edited to add:
This is kind of a rant, but I don't mean any harm to GE. In fact, it is meant more for them to see than anybody else. It is not too late for them to establish themselves as a quality company with a quality product. First, though, it would require someone there waking up to the reality that they are blowing it big time. How could anybody there not monitor daily the forums and take the bull by the horns real quick to address the customer? I really do think we all want them to succeed, and the only reason I am compelled to write about this is out of disappointment, and to see if we can help them salvage (or create), a different image than what is being created.
It sounds like they could have avoided a lot of heartache simply by doing the QC and rejecting more knives. Several reviews rave about the fit and finish and the sharpness. I agree with Sierra. Most businesses are the same, mess up, especially at first, and see how quickly you lose your chance to win back the customer.
I also don't buy the "they're new, so messing up a little is to be expected." Yes, that is the average, but also, 9 out of 10 businesses don't last the first year, that is also an average. The ones that do understand that you only have one chance to make a first impression, and they are likely to have much more time to make better knives in the future, because they won't have the demand.
I think they should take these criticisms as very serious, in fact life threatening to their business. They should own up to it - the first round of these bad reviews hit just after they were released. Didn't they take notice and then make sure they tightened up the QC? I would have recalled every knife from the distributors and checked them...
I passed too on the first release, after being revved up enough about them to worry about getting a place in line and emailing Bill Horn. Then I read the reviews, and it was too much of a crap shoot for the money. They could even have still maybe won my business, but not now with the bad reviews still rolling in.
At this point, it is like their lack of attention to the customer has just soured the image of the company to me.
We all want this quality US company making premium quality knives. We all want the gap in the range between a Schatt and a Custom filled - $100 - $200, with no worries about fit and finish. No wobbles, no gaps, sharp, and steady and predictable. A company that would do that could clean up. It is obvious after i have been reading this forum that the one business opportunity was a company that had good QC. The variations in quality of production knives is rampant. This is what leads Jackknife to lament about how a Swiss company that makes a million knives a year can have such consistent quality, but a US company that is making far fewer and for more money can't do that. It is a little like national pride that makes me even care enough about this to write. What a great tradition the US had in production slipjoints that is now apparently holding on with only Queen and Canal.
The one response from GE that I saw was from someone at GE that mentioned how they had many untrained employees that would take time to become master craftsmen. That is a terrible bit of PR. It makes me think they are not a serious outfit.
Just as an exercise, how long do we think it would take to thoroughly check a knife? Visual inspection of f&f, 2 minutes (?), open each blade to check walk and talk and sharpness (2 minutes?). So say 5 minutes per knife, which is I think way conservative. Then, take 10,000 knives a year. I calculate about 3 hours a day for one person for a 5 day week and 50 weeks in a year. I don't know how many knives they are making, but my point is that even laboring for 5 minutes on each knife, it is still chicken feed in costs to do some QC.
Of course, it is not this that would cause a company to send out inferior product, it is the cost of rejecting and/or re-doing the inferior products. However, re-do the bad ones, calculate the cost to do that, and add it to the price. Maybe that would push it up to $90 instead of $80? Much smarter that way, since you will have repeat customers, and it really doesn't make a difference if its $90 or $80.
I wonder if they were under some real pressure to turn some cash flow, and so they just decided to dump whatever they had on the customer. If so, they just killed the sheep they needed to produce wool (every year).
This is meant to be constructive, in case any GE folks are tuning in (which one would hope they would be). We all want(ed) you to succeed! All that one can do now is to analyze the situation, so maybe GE can get on the road to recovery. Why don't they do what other companies do when they sell defective products? Take it seriously, perform a recall. Make a general announcement and apology and refund or replace any knife people want to send back. At least that would show that they are caring about the customer.
All of this may be moot. They could be in a financial condition bad enough so that they couldn't make good if they wanted to. Nothing else explains it to me.
