3D Anvil
Check this out. It's time to lay down some logic.
ABOUT JAKE HOBACK Jake Hoback had a variety of jobs and experiences before turning to full-time knife making and becoming a prominent figure in the industry. He studied and worked as a fish and wildlife scientific technician, was a machinist at a turbine engine company, and fabricated...
jakehobackknives.com
"Occasionally, we are asked where our products are made… While everything is designed by me, personally, and everything we sell comes through or directly from our shop, not everything is 100% made in America. We seek to use the best the world has to offer to make some of the best tools on earth, and sometimes that means we must draw upon global sources – often because domestic sources are unavailable, of poor quality, or are cost prohibitive. We do not disclose the specific names of the companies we source from and/or work with or the countries in which they are located, but we will always commit to producing a superior-quality product at a good price – along with a great warranty and exceptional customer service!"
It's already been covered in previous pages that this current language was updated to this state in order to reflect more of the reality, since the discovery has been made that he does in fact make complete knives elsewhere (per his admission in his video). I think this makes it clear that he does indeed make some knives here, and again, he said as much when he said in his video
Kmikaz3
kindly posted, and I quote: "We make stuff in the United States, we make a lot of stuff in the United States..." at 3:26 in the vid. There it is, full stop. Some of his "stuff" is made here. So, that should put your earlier repeated attempts at playing some BS semantics game to rest.
Here's where I, and a bunch of others immediately have a problem, at 3:40 where he says "...I outsource. I've always done that...*" and "There are some times where we're making knives in our shop while simultaneously working outside of the US with the exact same parts..."
Hole up, bruh. If that's the case, Jake, did you think to put any indicator
at all of this on your packaging? You know, that thing you have total control of? How about the Birth Card? Just "couldn't figure it out"? I don't even work there, and I figured out how to sort this issue out in roughly a quarter of a second.
Further, watching back through this video, I'm not sure how you can really take his side for the "misunderstanding" because he basically tried to lay this all at the feet of the Dealers (as in, all of them). "Well, they put "Made in America" and I "tried to correct them", and then suddenly everyone else was saying it." Then he makes it seem like there was some huge inability to correct everyone and sort it all out, like he was just "unable" to do so. Really? If I were a maker, and my products were being misconstrued at all of the Internet Dealers**, immediately, I'd have been on the phone with them all to get that sorted out. At the very least, I'd have added a giant splash page (again, immediately) on my website saying something to the tune of "Ok guys, all the dealers are saying my knives are Made in the US, that's not completely true, here's a list of all my models that are made overseas. Sorry about that, but appreciate your continued business." Instead, what seems most likely to have happened is that all of a sudden, people were buying all the knives he could make (and have made), and huh, with all this money rolling in, suddenly, it didn't seem that important, so I guess he gets to take "extreme ownership" of that, kind of like he took "extreme ownership" of all the
money being generated by all the people who were happy to pay $600+ for knives they thought were made here.
BUT. Ok. Let's say that for some reason, this whole deception is the dealers' fault. They
wanted to put "Made in the US: in the description for his knives, and try as he might, he just could not get them to go back on that. Ok, let's take that at face value (LOL) for a second. Rut row, another bonus question:
who packages his knives? Is it DLT Trading? SMKW? BladeHQ? Does he just send them a big bag full of loose knives, and those dealers create those pretty wooden boxes for him? Do they print those birth cards for him? No? Odd. I mean, if HE and his company were responsible for shipping the orders to these dealer clients, that means he's got control of the packaging, which means he could have put the
country of origin on the damn boxes at
any time. Or, he could put it on the "Birth cards" they come with. "Proudly Made in China".
But he apparently hasn't. Why was that? Oh...oh, right. Because it was easier to just go along with it, once he started seeing the money rolling in from dealers and collectors who thought they were all buying an overbuilt, American made knife. Yeah, I know, I know, Chinese knives are reaching new heights of popularity these days, but the fact remains that things like country of origin start to matter to people spending what BlowBack knives cost. It's as simple as that. So, you and the other guy trying to make this out to be some double-standards nonsense are just wrong. Every time it's discovered that some other "maker" is selling knives made in China, but labeling them as US made, that maker gets outed and roasted into oblivion. Remember Jared West? Of QTRMSTR fame? That dude runs a
carwash these days, because literally everyone stopped buying his knives after the deception was made super public here and elsewhere.
So, for the last time, this isn't about where screws are made, it's where knives are being made, and people aren't told about them. Simple as that.
* Which means this is even more concerning, because he admits he's been doing this since the beginning. I wonder how many people are walking around with these outsourced knives, thinking all this time they were made here?
** I remind you that we're talking about the biggest dealers in the country, not a few Mom & Pop places that just accidentally added this descriptor.
