Why Buy Benchmade?

jazub said:
Lets imagine this was your own business. So you make a product. You make a product and one or two retailers decide to sell your product at a major discount in order to attract attention to their business. Your product begins to sells major volume at a discounted price through one or two retailers and much, much more slowly everywhere else. All other retailers sell less and less volume -to the point that you become dependent upon one or two commercial (internet) outlet retailers. Their sales dominate your order capacity. At this point, they can begin to make demands and dictate business decisions, i.e., they become un-invested business partners. You have now made yourself very vulnerable and do not "own" your own decisions.

Who here would honestly do that?? Sounds dumb.

I hate paying more, too, but come on. Who of you would make yourself so vulnerable?
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But is that really the case here ? Besides, if that were the case, why did it take them so long to implement change ?

Granted, I don't buy as many knives as some do, but when I do, I always did my research to see who had the best price, and availability... I can't really remember seeing any of the bigger dealers, that were priced dramatically different. Enough to say that one or two companies were very dominate.
Maybe I just didn't notice it.
 
Maybe I'm off. I'm not an expert -and, again, I don't like the price increase. But my prior assessment does strike me as the situation.

Oh well, the good news is there are loads of other internet experts to fill the voids my speculation leaves. :D
 
jazub said:
Maybe I'm off. I'm not an expert -and, again, I don't like the price increase. But my prior assessment does strike me as the situation.

Oh well, the good news is there are loads of other internet experts to fill the voids my speculation leaves. :D
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I'm certainly no expert either. We all have a different take on this issue, and that is fine. In the end, determining whether this change was a positive thing or not, will be the numbers on the bottom line. Both for Benchmade, and the dealers...
 
Hah. Yeah, I don't know why I even get into these pricing discussions. I really don't know why they did it. Just have to beleive there was some reason. Oh well. Being an internet defender of a brand (in which I have no investment) is not who I want to be so I'll withdrawl and try not let myself fall into the trap of similar topic discussions anymore. Not my place. :o
 
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jazub said:
Lets imagine this was your own business. So you make a product. You make a product and one or two retailers decide to sell your product at a major discount in order to attract attention to their business. Your product begins to sells major volume at a discounted price through one or two retailers and much, much more slowly everywhere else. All other retailers sell less and less volume -to the point that you become dependent upon one or two commercial (internet) outlet retailers. Their sales dominate your order capacity. At this point, they can begin to make demands and dictate business decisions, i.e., they become un-invested business partners. You have now made yourself very vulnerable and do not "own" your own decisions.

Who here would honestly do that?? Sounds dumb.

I hate paying more, too, but come on. Who of you would make yourself so vulnerable?
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Based on the world around us, an awful lot of manufacturers of an awful lot of different types of products.
 
jazub said:
Hah. Yeah, I don't know why I even get into these pricing discussions. I really don't know why they did it. Just have to beleive there was some reason. Oh well. Being an internet defender of a brand (in which I have no investment) is not who I want to be so I'll withdrawl and try not let myself fall into the trap of similar topic discussions anymore. Not my place. :o
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Ya, I got to thinking after posting, this wasn't the topic that Derrick originally had in mind, so I'm dropping it, and will try and keep it in the other appropriate threads.
 
I can get 100 knives for $100 on late-night TV? Then I'm staying up late tonight!

Hahaha - JK, Derrick. But seriously, another reason to buy high-quality knives - BM or otherwise - is that they hold their value fairly well, and many even appreciate in value. So, if you do decide to seel, you're not going to take a bath... as a matter of fact, I've done better with my fine knives (and firearms) than I ever did in the stock market!
 
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I don't have a problem with benchmade doing the price fixing if it helps keep individually owned smaller shops in business. I only have one benchmade, the mini bone collector axis, and I freakin love it. The reason I only have 1? Because they are expensive for my budget. Spyderco got me into higher quality knives because while they have knives in the same price range as benchmades, they also have many more affordable options, while the only benchmades in my range currently are the grips and the one I have which is pretty much a grip. I think benchmade has an outstanding product as well and I plan on getting at least 1 or 2 more, but when I will be able to I am not sure. We all have different incomes and life situations. If I'd had the means I'd have bought myself some microtechs, striders and CRKs long ago. I still lust for them, but they are not an option for me now. "fine products" are great, but people often forget that such things are often out of people's budgets. I'd love to whip a beamer, but it aint gonna happen for me. At the same time, I won't condemn anyone as I would spend the money too if I had it. Just lemme ride with you in your beamer and lemme check out your awesome knives. Great video though.
 
For those of you on a budget, or feel the Benchmades are out of your price range - are you keeping an eye on the marketplace for sale forum here?

I see BMs sell for extremely cheap prices every day on here. I would never buy used unless absolutely had to.
 
d0nut said:
For those of you on a budget, or feel the Benchmades are out of your price range - are you keeping an eye on the marketplace for sale forum here?

I see BMs sell for extremely cheap prices every day on here. I would never buy used unless absolutely had to.
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Good point man, I saw a knife (used) on the Exchange the other day with a higher price than normal for being used. Not an LE or disco'd model either. I've bought some used knives, and they were exactly as described. I am not going to buy any knives that have been beaten to death either no matter how cheap. I have to say, I really love the Grip and Mini Grip, 710, 275, and a couple others. I don't get that "BUY IT!" feeling from much else in the line up these days. That may or may not change at some point, we never know.
 
RevDevil said:
Good point man, I saw a knife (used) on the Exchange the other day with a higher price than normal for being used. Not an LE or disco'd model either. I've bought some used knives, and they were exactly as described. I am not going to buy any knives that have been beaten to death either no matter how cheap. I have to say, I really love the Grip and Mini Grip, 710, 275, and a couple others. I don't get that "BUY IT!" feeling from much else in the line up these days. That may or may not change at some point, we never know.
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Ditto.

I bought an excellent Benchmade 940BK in December from the exchange forum for $105.
It sells for $195 on bladehq.com right now.

That's a huge savings, and money I can use towards other knife purchases. I check the exchange several times a day and see a lot of good sales.
 
I don't understand the dilemma when there are perfectly good knockoffs out there for $10 to $25. :P
 
Professor said:
I don't understand the dilemma when there are perfectly good knockoffs out there for $10 to $25. :P
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Yep. For 10-25 dollars, you can get a perfectly good knockoff. The only reason it is perfect is, because they perfected making a P.O.S
 
Come on, the knockoffs' mystery steel is perfectly capable of cutting tape and cleaning fingernails. Just needs a good sharpening afterward is all.
 
Professor said:
Come on, the knockoffs' mystery steel is perfectly capable of cutting tape and cleaning fingernails. Just needs a good sharpening afterward is all.
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If you don't care to have you knife be made from higher quality materials n steel then for you it is a perfectly good knockoff. If your a person who is somewhat knowledgeable about and interested in higher quality knives it's not the same at all. I do have $20 knives that I think are great...for $20. When they were all I had they were awesome. Then my dad gave me a kershaw ram, what I consider my first high quality knife. It ruined me. I never knew knives could work so well.

Still like my old ones but now I know the difference and I think its worth it. Eventually I'll know the difference in having a $300-400 knife, but for now I'll just assume there r all ripoffs. Lol


There is also the issue of integrity. I think there's nothing wrong with affordable cheap sturdy knives being made. However, when you use other use people's designs to purposefully make a knockoff, your wrong. They should use their own designs.
 
338375 said:
Yes BM is a business, and like all businesses, they have every right to dictate what price is charged for a product. The same holds true for the BM dealers.
They are an independent business. As long as they are paying BM, or any other company, the price that BM wants to charge dealers, it shouldn't be any of their business what the dealer wants to charge.

If the dealer wants to charge less, and make less profit per piece, that should be entirely up to them. If they want to charge more, and take the risk of selling fewer products, that too should be up to them.

According to BM, they aren't making any more money because of the pricing change. So really, what is gained, other than dealers "possibly" making more $$$ ?
That assumes that their sales don't drop off dramatically because of the price change. It isn't going to change peoples perception of BM's products.
Especially if the QC issues some have posted about, aren't rectified. It's hard to charge more for a product if the quality is going downhill...
There again, that is BM's choice.
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I understand you don't want to discuss this further, but I have two things to bring up.
Perceived value drops when you have internet retailers selling on eBay and Amazon at cut rates. By fixing the price you stop this practice and you keep your brick and mortars in business giving good customer service.
This relates directly to me if you happened to catch my thread that got deleted about receiving a 585s in a 586 box. That wouldn't have happened if it had been a brick and mortar store, or if I had dealt directly with the factory. It would have saved benchmade from having to hear from a pissed off customer(me) and if it hadn't been me, it might save benchmade from bad publicity from someone bad mouthing the company on a forum.
 
The warrenty is amazing. I had an old 3 yr rip and they fixed it without a hiccup. Love the company and the knives
 
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