What sells?

Triton

Triton

Gold Member
Joined
Aug 8, 2000
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36,013
Okay, so I've been haunting the knife makers for sale forum for several months. The trends that I think I have identified are

1) There are a PILE of makers out there making fixed blade knives.
2) These knives often go for ridiculously low prices when compared to their equivalent production brethren.
3) Even at these ridiculously low prices they often do not sell thanks to the market glut.
4) There are far fewer makers turning out folding knives.
5) Nearly every folding knife sells for significantly higher prices than it's production equivalent

So I'm wondering why are so many makers only making fixed blades instead of moving into the folding blade market? Basic economics would seem to suggest that they are more likely to make it with folders. Is it a matter of skill? Tooling? Time spent on creating the project insuring a lower overall profit?

Am I generalizing too much from the behavior of one knife forum on the internet? :)
 
Production knife cost is a poor indicator of the amount of labor and the skill required to produce a hand-made/custom equivalent.
Ask yourself, what would it take to put together a hand-made version of Leatherman multitool and how that would compare to a fixed blade knife of an equivalent retail price, like ESEE 4?
Making quality hand-made folders requires a lot of skill and takes lots of man-hours. Certainly, there are fixed blade knives on a similar or even higher level of workmanship and effort put into them: so they do not come cheap either.
Another way to look at it: because of the disparity in the number of hand-made knives produced compared to mass-made manufacturing, hand-made knives have to compete with production models, while production knives only compete with other production knives.
 
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