Benchmade has long had what they are now calling "The Blue Line" and "The Black Line." There has always been and will remain some cross-over between them. Benchmade has also long had what they are now calling "The Gold Line," it's just been disorganized and sort of random. Now, they're adding "The Red Line," a line of lower-cost knives many of which will be made off-shore.
I'm no fan of off-shore manufacturing and I'm disappointed to see Benchmade going that route. But, I understand the economics of it.
What remains to be seen is how well Benchmade will maintain the quality and integrity of The Blue Line. Time will tell.
These lower-end products are often called, "entry-level products." The goal is to introduce new consumers who will, hopefully, like their entry-level experience and decide to move up to the higher-tier products for future purchases.
The risk is that low-quality entry-level products can spoil a brand name. The Cadillac Cimeron (sp?) was a good example of that. They took a crappy Chevy, put Cadillac badges on it, and hoped that consumers would buy it, like it, and upgrade to the more expensive Caddies. Consumers initally bought it, "Wow! I can get a Cadillac for that price?", but when they got it, they were bitterly disappointed and deserted the Cadillac line entirely, "This is NOT what I expected from a Cadillac!" Meanwhile, Cadillac's traditional customers were annoyed to have "their" name put on that POS car, they perceived a devaluation of the brand name, and so they deserted too. Add to that the timely introduction of Lexus, Infinity, and a couple of other new entries to that market, and Cadillac was seriously injured. The Cimeron was a monumental mistake. It's only in recent years that Cadillac has finally shaken off the Cimeron and started to reclaim the value of their brand name and, with it, their market share.
Benchmade has got to make sure that their Red Line truly does usher new consumers into the Blue and even Gold Lines and that it doesn't devalue the brand name for their traditional customers.
Let's face it, there are plenty of perfectly functional pocket knives for under $50. When a pocket knife crests $50 much less $100, we're often talking about a luxury good. With luxury goods, be they cars or knives, image, brandname, brand reputation, is part of the product, it's part of the value of the product.
It doesn't matter if you keep the high-end product exactly unchanged, if you apply the same brand name to a low-quality POS product, that will devalue the high-end product.
