Why does GEC limit production on some of their best designs?

[tomsch]

I'm thinking outloud while I search the internet for two amazing new knife designs from GEC. The Boys knife an the new Tom Sawyer Barlow. GEC has hit a homerun with these knives and now they are near impossible to find in the US. Does GEC typically come around and produce another batch of the best designs such as these?

 

[CoffeeCat2112]

As it turns out, they are working on another batch, although slightly different. Instead of a spear point, the next ones will have a clip point main blade.

 

[dannyp]

I think part of it also has to do with the amount of patterns they have released in a short span. For a small company like GEC to come out with the Boy's Knife, Indian Girl Canoe, Pemberton, and now the Farmer Lock, that's seems like quite a lot to me. Then there's also the Cotton Sampler, the Eureka, the new Muskrat, and the Northwoods knives they've been working on. I'm sure there are others that I've forgotten about.

They have always done relatively short runs of knives. Some just tend to sell out faster than others. It doesn't surprise me that the Barlows went fast because there haven't been many carbon steel versions available recently aside from the Bokers. I think even those may have been discontinued.

 

[mnblade]

They need to just drop everything else and whip up a batch of 72 lockbacks!

-- Mark

 

[knifeswapper]

Per the Huckleberry / Sawyer runs:

GEC does many SFO runs for people that can't justify 500 knives. But small runs cost too much in setup to just do 100 - 200 knives then tear down and start another pattern. So many times you will see and SFO come out, followed immediately by a very similar GEC distributed pattern. Since our own waynorth had the Sawyer line produced with the spear pattern, GEC filled the production numbers with the Huckleberry. Even though it looked much different, it was very similar going thru the line.

You will see something very similar with the Champlin / Eureka; and most smaller SFO's in the future.

But in general, especially on newer patterns, GEC has learned it is impossible to gauge collector interest. Thus they very rarely make monster runs, and never on new patterns. 250-500 will be about the limit on most runs; and this is across several slab variants.

The Sawyer / Huckleberry will be coming soon with a clip, as bwperdue mentioned. But the spear model success caught most people off guard...

 

[2Dead]

The barlows went pretty fast but I've spotted some 2 blade boy's knives still out there. Mike has them in nifebright and red bone.