Too many Sprint Runs, Dealer Exclusives and Limited Editions?

[WhiteShampoo]

I wonder if the opportunity to flip them (no pun intended) is why they sell out so fast?

I guess I will just stay subscribed to everything I can and hope another M390 edition 0452 shows up. I think one with both slabs being titanium would be slick, especially anodized. I know some people like the lightweight of CF very much but I love the solid feel of the titanium 0450.

Hell yes, I'd be all over this (minus anodizing).

 

[aleforme]

I think someone touched on this but Sprint Runs are very profitable for a knife company. Designing a new knife is very expensive when you look at design, prototyping, tooling, etc. With Sprints, the very expensive tooling essentially stays the same but they can switch our colors, steels, scales etc. And, they get to charge are higher price because it's a "Sprint Run". The PM2 is a great example. The standard PM2 is great seller but getting a bit dated and subject to increased competition. Spyderco switches up the steel and scale material/color and they've created an entirely new secondary, "thirdary, fourthary" market. I'm guessing the majority of the Sprint Run buyers already bought the standard version previously. A customer who would normally just buy the one standard knife is now buying 1, 2 or 3 more. That's pure bonus for the knife company and it's comes at a substantially lower cost.

Personally, I'be never really gotten into Sprint Runs. I think the only one I have it a Hap40 Stretch and I bought specifically for the updated steel. Not you're typical Sprint Run customer.

That being said, I have nothing against all the Sprint Runs. It's a huge profit maker for the knife companies and it's giving knife collectors some great and unique options on standard designs.

 

[gdwtvb]

The increase of sprint runs and limited edition knives is a result of companies trying to remain profitable in a world where year over year growth and sales is required in order to remain in business. It is a result of a common occurrence where manufacturing capacity has outproduced demand. As much as we like to believe that we are a large group (knife aficionados) We really aren't when compared to the general population. the majority of people might own only a single pocketknife and that one might be a Swiss army knife that they got as a gift. If we just take a single model, say the spyderco native, they could manufacture enough of them for every knife carrying person in the US to own a single copy in just a matter of a couple years if that is the only model that they made. What then? They would have essentially produced themselves out of business. The Spyderco native is a durable product and the number of sales after market saturation would be just for new owners coming of age , and replacements for ones that were lost or broken by abuse.

By offering options like limited edition sprint runs, you gain a whole new revenue stream, the collector. The collector often tries to have all the available varieties of a single model. face it, we can't all afford to collect things like classic cars, but even on a modest income assembling a collection of thirty or forty Spyderco Delicas over four or five years is easily accomplished.


By offering new models you are encouraging knife owners with the idea that they need to upgrade to the latest and greatest. If we are truly honest we would admit that we really don't need any more or different knives than the same models that grandpa carried. (Indeed there is an active community on the Traditionals forums) Indeed it is fun to try out new and different models to find ones that we like better.

new models and variations in sprint runs are business decisions designed to keep the factories running and the money flowing in. It's a great time to be a knife aficionado, so many great knives!!

Grizz

 

[red mag]

Interesting topic.
It is fun to follow the development, but it starts to be difficult.
Variety is cool, it also opens a slot for fakes.
Once I could name each and every model Spyderco offered and even most of the Benchmade models.
These days I feel like a newbie sometimes.
Dealer exclusives: I understand from a dealers point of view - then this is a global market.
Serving the US with cheap shipping and gaining new customers is fine.
Getting an dealer exclusive for a collector living oversea's is getting pretty expensive.

 

[skyhorse]

Too many sprint runs is not a problem. Feeling you need to buy all of them is.

Lol, how true !
An interesting topic for sure. When Spyderco did the S/B sprint it was was too tempting to pass up. I had wanted to try out the Stretch and have been wanting to try japanese super blue steel as well. It was priced very reasonable and I jumped on it. A happy camper. Dealer exclusives on the other the hand boil down to what the dealer wants built. Some of them sell out fast and others not so much. I'm really interested in the KW's upcoming Military in carbon fiber scales and s90v steel but it ain't cheap. I like having options, so the more the merrier.

 

[russianpolander]

Waiting for the Hap40 Meerkat. Really wish they would give a month of release for sprint runs instead of "upcoming".