Exactly.
Online dealers are being penalized for having a better business model. They learn their territory, their stock, their customer needs. They put their money into shelves and shelves of product. Then they are told they aren't allowed to out-compete shopkeepers who put their money into a small storefront.
Online dealers have overhead too! They need to own or rent a building big enough to stock serious quantities of those knives we want. They have electric bills and taxes to pay even though they might not have a sales counter selling to you in person. They have employees to pay. They run computer systems and shipping departments.
Benchmade is now in the social responsibility business, propping up small dealers who don't sell their knives as well as the more advanced online entrepreneurs.
This is all true. It's a shame dealers with a better and modern business model are the ones getting penalized. I've never been to KW in LA, but would like to visit one day. From what I understand, they have a fairly large warehouse and employ probably as many people as my local shop, and KW is selling basically nothing but knives! No guns, no ammo, no fishing gear to help with overhead. There's plenty of overhead involved I'm certain at KW with utilities, taxes, wages, insurance, etc.
My local shop is one of the more well known outdoors shops in the state, and they have basically every brand of knife you can think of with multiple iterations of each one, and claim to have over 5000 knives on display. But they have NO online presence regarding an online shop and probably never will whether because of the Fudd mentality there or simply because they want to keep it local. Many Spydercos and BM's you can't find online, you can always find at this place, such as when PM2s were scarce, and Native5's. They have many hard to find LE and Gold Class BM's and basically every iteration of CRK imaginable. This shop has a reputation of being overpriced on many items by some of us plebeians, but they still sell gobs and gobs of expensive guns and vastly overpriced ammo and expensive rods, reels, and bows and arrows. They also have tons of expensive clothes, boots, sunglasses, very high quality gun safes, giant shooting houses, treestands, Yeti coolers, you name it...anything to do with the outdoors, they've got it. These guys have no problem combating their overhead. BUT look at their prices on knives pre-tax: Sage 1 - $150, Sage 2 - $200, Ti Military - $300, Delica - $80, BM 940 before MAP enforcement - $165, BM 710 before MAP enforcement - $145...and these prices aren't an exaggeration...I visit and window shop a good bit. The shop also happens to be located in the most affluent part of the state with the highest income per capita so I guess part of their business model is "We know you've got the cash and don't know any better, so buy this!" Though rich and poor come from all over to visit. If they sold nothing but knives and knife accessories, I'd understand and feel more ok with their pricing better.
My point is that they have a selection of knives similar to what KW offers, and have no online shop, but unlike KW who sells strictly knives with reasonably similar overhead, the local shop sells tons of varied very, very expensive items to help with these costs...why make the knives so damn expensive? And it's probably a reason why hard to find models can be found there. KW and all the other dealers sell nothing but knives, albeit many, many knives, but why should they be penalized because Joe Dirt's Guns only wants to carry 2 models of Griptilians and can't ever sell them? Joe Dirt is covering his costs elsewhere in other items so I don't think the knives are going to cause him to go out of business. It's gotta be coming from cutlery only stores like St. Nick's that have no online presence.
