the great md ff price hike experiment...

D

dirc

Joined
Jan 31, 2018
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As many of you may be aware, massdrop has now hiked the prices for the ff gent from $80 to $100, and the ff gent select from $100 to $120

This hike, combined with the numerous qc issues (no locktite, poor clips, generally poor qc) have already resulted in numerous complaints and many people saying they simply will not pay the inflated prices.

I'm just curious what the bf community thinks? My personal opinion is they will see at most only 30% of the sales volume as before the hikes.

So instead of moving a thousand units, they will be down around 300, I wonder if they will stick to this pricing scheme. What do you think?

Interesting 'experiment', I don't think md execs have really thought this through, as many md shoppers are feeling fairly alienated & angry.
 
It sucks but don't forget that lots of much more popular companies have done this recently. ZT, Spyderco, Benchmade.....

That's what we get for getting addicted to a Pay-to-play hobby :rolleyes:
 
I agree with the above sentiments, of course. Does anyone expect md will stick to this pricing or will it be rolled back? (Much will depend on what the sales volume turns out to be). If they have 60% or more of sales, I'm fairly sure they'll stick to the hikes. If they are down to only 10%, I'm fairly sure they'll either just stop the drops all together or drop prices. The interesting area is what's in between, and what the thresholds turn out to be.
 
dirc said:
As many of you may be aware, massdrop has now hiked the prices for the ff gent from $80 to $100, and the ff gent select from $100 to $120

This hike, combined with the numerous qc issues (no locktite, poor clips, generally poor qc) have already resulted in numerous complaints and many people saying they simply will not pay the inflated prices.

I'm just curious what the bf community thinks? My personal opinion is they will see at most only 30% of the sales volume as before the hikes.

So instead of moving a thousand units, they will be down around 300, I wonder if they will stick to this pricing scheme. What do you think?

Interesting 'experiment', I don't think md execs have really thought this through, as many md shoppers are feeling fairly alienated & angry.
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I'd like to know what you are you using to estimate those numbers.
 
I guess I would just say that for the collaboration pieces you get a good deal. Any other manufacturer (or most) with the names Laconico, Ferrum Forge, Terzuola, etc. attached to them charge considerably more. Never mind a custom piece. QC is a problem, but I think for access to these makers the price is pretty reasonable.
 
They have the right to raise the prices as time goes on. Steel goes up and down and skilled labor and such

I understand the frustration and have personally chose to stop doing business with companies because of price hikes. But in many situations it's a result of getting less and paying more. Like the pliar company I know where you use to get 4 of them for 45 and now its 3 of them for 50. Its sneaky
 
dirc said:
As many of you may be aware, massdrop has now hiked the prices for the ff gent from $80 to $100, and the ff gent select from $100 to $120

This hike, combined with the numerous qc issues (no locktite, poor clips, generally poor qc) have already resulted in numerous complaints and many people saying they simply will not pay the inflated prices.

I'm just curious what the bf community thinks? My personal opinion is they will see at most only 30% of the sales volume as before the hikes.

So instead of moving a thousand units, they will be down around 300, I wonder if they will stick to this pricing scheme. What do you think?

Interesting 'experiment', I don't think md execs have really thought this through, as many md shoppers are feeling fairly alienated & angry.
Click to expand...

Honestly, I’m not sure how you read through the reviews of the Gent on MassDrop and came away with the view that the knife has “numerous qc issues” and “numerous complaints”.

The clip sucks in my opinion, I’ll give you that. And a couple people made a stink about the knife not having loctite in the pivot. Um... Big deal? The vast, overwhelming majority of the reviews have been very good. I mean the success of the drop speaks for itself (about 7,500 Gents and Gent Selects sold).

When I look on MassDrop it seems almost every single person complaining about the price increase is someone who had originally planned on purchasing the knife and is just mad they have to pay more now. A lot of knife companies (and businesses in general) raised their prices at the New Year. Early bird gets the worm and all that.

A lot of people thought the Gent was underpriced at $80 and expected a price increase. I think MassDrop’s only issue was increasing their underpriced drops by a flat $10 - $20 which made the % increase on the lower priced drops too much. For instance, I have zero issue paying $170 for a purple Keen with portals instead of $150 (12% increase), but the Gent for $100 instead of $80 (25% increase) is a bit harder to swallow. I think the Gent needs to be lowered by about $10, but I think the market will quickly correct the price.
 
I agree with fixall,I have purchased quite a few folders thru MD including a cf gent for the mgr of the Lexus store I do PDR and all knives have been superb with no issues.I for one still think some of the collaberations are great deals when compared to what they would cost from said designer as a custom.Just my .02
 
I would’ve bought a Gent Select at $100, but won’t at $120. It’s not worth a 20% price hike. I have the original Gent, which was $80. Nicer scales and a stonewashed blade aren’t worth a 50% premium.

MD have stated in their forum that the initial pricing was to try to get as many knives into customers’ hands as possible, even if it meant selling at “non-economic” prices. The problem with that strategy is you create an unreasonable expectation in your customers. The Gent is a tremendous value at $80, but merely a good value at $100. It still doesn’t have much real competition at that price, but it’s much closer (Spyderco Native 5 LW is the only really similar knife in S35VN at or under $100).

I do think that the prices may come down a bit, but I could also see them keeping them high. It may even convince some people to hop on initial drops more often.
 
The MD Gent in either flavor is still a high value knife. The list of comparable knives at a better price is short...I can’t really think of one right now. There have NOT been numerous QC problems; I don’t know where evidence to back up that claim can be found. The knife with problematic clips is the Falcon/Crux; you may be confusing the Gent with them. The MD Gent is generally considered the most successful of the collaboration knives.

The price increases are fairly in line with what we’ve seen from other knife companies. Remember, the Gent was only the third knife in their collaborations, following the Falcon and the Crux. MD was still trying to validate themselves as a knife producer/collaborator to a fairly hostile knife community.

I consider the Gent to be originally priced as a bit of a loss-leader to help generate sales and get knives into the market. Those sales were critical to them being taken serious in the knife market. MD is such a target of uninformed and irrational criticism (i.e. this thread), I can’t imagine how much worse it could be if not for good knives at good prices.

There’s nothing out of line with the current price of the MD Gent. If you think there is, don’t buy it. It’s not like that opinion can be supported with facts.
 
Keep in mind that Massdrop is sort of unique as a company, but at the end of the day, they are still a lootbox company. Pay early for items later. The thing is, there is profit to be made in certain industries, but not really in knives with that business model. If a company wanted to do a batched pre-order and could, then they do. Its so common in the knife world that massdrop doesn't have any way to differentiate themselves. In other markets maybe they do. There are certain products that for a while where an alright deal, but given the markets and markups, I'm often better off buying direct on any of their other items anyway, so there is no real cost savings for me. That was the whole idea.
This also means that you can't really compare massdrop prices, even to themselves, because pricing was always going to be flexible, and I suspect that initially they were selling very near cost to enter the market (all markets) and bleeding cash from investors while they got stabilized. Overall, I don't see them continuing on in the form they are. It makes no sense for production level goods, and as I said, anyone who does batch runs, pretty much does. There may be room to set themselves up as a small batch production broker, sort of like a kickstarter, but for products already with a production pipeline, but I don't know if they can do that with an overhead that makes sense.

Ultimately MD was a way to save some money, so any increase will make their customers "angry", and for a little while they were grey exporting, which I believe they no longer do, that made people "angry" as well. They are an interesting way to buy stuff, but they are not a knife company, just like they are not a fidget spinner or vape company. I would chalk this up to teething pains and perhaps they made a mistake with initially pricing things too low. One way to improve your "QC" is to re-sort the product, sell the top 90% of production and move the pricepoint to take up the slack. I think the bigger mistake they made was taking responsibility for OEM products. That works in some cases with certain brands like darn tough, exxoficcio, zippo and some of the lights they have sold. But when it comes to knives, you are just asking for criticism and I don't think they expected that.
 
Hackenslash said:
The MD Gent in either flavor is still a high value knife. The list of comparable knives at a better price is short...I can’t really think of one right now. There have NOT been numerous QC problems; I don’t know where evidence to back up that claim can be found. The knife with problematic clips is the Falcon/Crux; you may be confusing the Gent with them. The MD Gent is generally considered the most successful of the collaboration knives.

The price increases are fairly in line with what we’ve seen from other knife companies. Remember, the Gent was only the third knife in their collaborations, following the Falcon and the Crux. MD was still trying to validate themselves as a knife producer/collaborator to a fairly hostile knife community.

I consider the Gent to be originally priced as a bit of a loss-leader to help generate sales and get knives into the market. Those sales were critical to them being taken serious in the knife market. MD is such a target of uninformed and irrational criticism (i.e. this thread), I can’t imagine how much worse it could be if not for good knives at good prices.

There’s nothing out of line with the current price of the MD Gent. If you think there is, don’t buy it. It’s not like that opinion can be supported with facts.
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So are you saying, unlike the OP, you don't think this price increase will decrease sales by 70%?

:rolleyes:
 
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