Why doesn't anyone make knives that compete with Cold Steel?

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Planterz said:
Cold Steel is the knife equivalent of mentioning abortion or gay marriage or religion in a politics forum. Strong opinions are given, tempers flare, and battles rage. There's probably more closed threads on this forum with "Cold Steel" in the title than any other topic.
Threads like this can bring out the worst in us, myself included. I'm not proud of it. Welcome to the internet.
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Never could figure that one out myself..
 
Ankerson said:
A lot of companies make good knives so in the end people should just buy what they like.
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Ankerson, this statement contains too much common sense and is not polarizing enough for this thread. I am reporting you.
 
crom said:
Tim616, respectfully, of course. That gets me a David Farmer 4" clip point fixed blade in 1095 and beautiful maple. Sorry if you don't get it, but I certainly do.
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Respectfully, Looked at his website and you just potentially cost me 100-200 dollars in small fixed blades... and for that I curse you... lol
 
Tim616, no worris, it happens to the best of us. BTW, they are worth every penny and more. All the best.
 
Tim616 said:
Respectfully, Looked at his website and you just potentially cost me 100-200 dollars in small fixed blades... and for that I curse you... lol
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Yep, I was just taking a look myself. Although, Tim, if you want to save money, don't look at Fiddleback Forge either :). 1095 is a nice cheap steel fortunately. It's like $12-$35 for 4 feet of the stuff at Aldo's, depending on how thick/wide you want it. Most of the knives I've made have been out of 1095.

Which is actually worth remarking on topic. Cold Steel has a LOT of competition in the fixed blade category at a similar price point, from Becker to Condor or Tramontina. Maybe less in the folder category.
 
I think Cold Steel has its own thing going on, and thats great. I own a couple of their knives, and I'm not getting rid of them.

However, I'm not going to need a knife to cut a hole into the hood of my car so I don't need a knife thats built like a tank. Their lockback is an exceptionally strong, however it is also a little crude to open and close for 99% of the cuts I'm going to use it for.

This is why Cold Steel isn't the main brand I like.
 
Finarfin said:
The Manix 2 is often misrepresented as hard use, or even as a defensive weapon(I've seen that done repeatedly at the Spyderco forum)which it very definitely is not, yet it does incorporate that almost paper thin tip doesn't it? Spyderco clearly intended this knife to be percieved of as a weapon, the tip thin to facilitate piercing. I can also dredge up countless advertisments billboarding it's locking mechanism as hard use, which is dubious, at best! For light duty utility it's generally fine, though even there it can be of questionable utility as in my experience that too thin tip is often left behind somewhere along the cutting trail.
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A defensive weapon? Hardly. I've never seen it represented as such, but even than, what defines a "defensive weapon"? A butter knife can be a defensive weapon in the right context.
How much experience do you have with this lock? If used as it should be (as a knife, for cutting things, not poking holes in car doors...) the lock should be more than fine.
 
These Cold Steel threads never fail to provide me with good entertainment watching the food fly in both directions.

My opinion of Cold Steel remains the same. They provide some pretty basic and not so basic knives that often far outweigh their market price in terms of quality and value.

The steels they use in their cutlery may not be top of the line but they are certainly more than adequate for their design and even have some advantages over the so called super steels. ease of sharpening and less brittleness (more toughness) are a couple of examples.

I really like the fact that they pay attention to lock stregnth and reliability. They hit a home run with Demko's triad lock.

Throwing stars are probably not as effective without poison (poison not included with Cold Steel throwing stars) and hard learned skills not the least of which would be keeping yourself safe but they can be fun to throw at tree trunks and other stuff. I immagine an Iroquois war club could be a devastating weapon even in the hands of an amatuer but I would have to admit it is designed with a specific purpose in mind and that is not baseball. Open carry would be frowned upon by LEO and probably the general public. It does not look very concealable either.

That being said I would opt to advocate using a firearm to protect your life over any of the above.
 
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crimsonfalcon07 said:
Yep, Cold Steel threads are always good for some strong opinions. For my part, I wasn't even trying to make a strong opinion, or make tempers flare, or take the thread off-topic. I was just hoping to prove that the Manix 2 could stand with Cold Steel in terms of ability to take abuse. Didn't turn out the way I'd hoped, and now one of my favorite knives is broken. I'm kinda bummed about that, but I do have one of the Stag Arms Manix 2 knives, and I still love it. I just won't think that it's going to take heavy abuse like I had thought before this afternoon.

For my part, I think the comment that Cold Steel has good products and bad ones is probably the best way to sum it up. They do pride themselves on tough, overbuilt products. Durability is the name of the game, and a lot of other things take a back seat to that. Based on what they are trying to accomplish, I think they do a good job, particularly on their cheaper products, and in having a great variety of products. Granted, most of them cater to the mall ninja (I mean, seriously, who's gonna use a throwing star or an iroquois war club in real life). But I've been happy with all of my Cold Steel purchases, and I find their advertising entertaining, at least.

A word to the wise though. If you don't want to get strong opinions, you might phrase your thread title more on the lines of "what other companies make knives that can compete with Cold Steel in the toughness category," or something like that. Claiming that other companies can't compete is a great way to get a lively thread like this one going.
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Re-read the title, I don't say other companies can't compete, I asked why they didn't make products that compete with them. For example, if I say why doesn't Porsche make a truck that competes with the Toyota Tacoma, I'm not saying Porsche can't make a competitive truck, I'm asking why thy don't. An answer could be that they philosophically aren't interested in trucks or they don't think there would be a market for the kind of truck they would build. Or the market is too small to make it worth it for them to start bulding trucks. It's not a who's better question.
 
jedi391 said:
Re-read the title, I don't say other companies can't compete, I asked why they didn't make products that compete with them. For example, if I say why doesn't Porsche make a truck that competes with the Toyota Tacoma, I'm not saying Porsche can't make a competitive truck, I'm asking why thy don't. An answer could be that they philosophically aren't interested in trucks or they don't think there would be a market for the kind of truck they would build. Or the market is too small to make it worth it for them to start bulding trucks. It's not a who's better question.
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I can't answer this without some of my anti-CS bias leaking through, but I'll try my best.

Cold Steel practically invented the "hard use" or "tactical" concept of knives. Between the knives and their marketing (like the "Proof" videos), they carved out this niche for themselves, while all the other companies were simply making knives that cut well. I've described the Americanized tanto (a CS bastardization of Bob Lum's stylized tantos) as an answer to a question that nobody asked, and IMO the whole "hard use" concept is a solution looking for a problem.

It's my guess that companies like Buck, Spyderco, Kershaw, and others that make knives at the pricepoint you're looking at simply aren't interested in making knives to fit that niche. A knife designed to excel in stabbing through car hoods isn't going to excel at slicing or fine detail work. A Spyderco that doesn't cut well wouldn't be a Spyderco; it'd be contradictory to the company's philosophy. Other companies might feel the same. Maybe they don't want the association with "that" kind of knife. Maybe it's not a big enough market for them to try to enter. I really don't know.

Cold Steel does well in the niche they created. Partly due to the marketing, partly because they do make tough knives. The vast majority of people who buy a Tri-ad lock because they're so tough will probably never use it so hard where a "weaker" knife would fail. Personally I think it's foolish/pointless to have a knife so tough that regular performance suffers, but I do understand the assurance and confidence that having a tough knife gives people. Some people want an extremely tough knife. Few people actually need an extremely tough knife. I won't question what you want, but I might question why you think you need it.
 
CalBearTactical said:
if I had money to throw away I would do that but my $50 knife works fine for cutting things....I would rather use that $400 to stock up on ammo and get a new gun....in the real world people have priorities and are not in $1000 knife snobbery fantasy land.
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WOW. I'm a knife snob! Never knew it until now.
 
You never said you wanted to pound your knife into a steel drum with a hammer, so take a look at the Spyderco Endura. Affordable, 4" blade, good steel (better than CS's AUS-8), thin profile, and the lock is as strong as any reasonable person will ever need.
 
cutter17 said:
WOW. I'm a knife snob! Never knew it until now.
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I didn't say you were a knife snob, I meant to say that those people who have the most expensive knives and look down on other people who can't afford expensive knives is pretty snobbish.

Knife snobs remind me of those snobby high school rich girls that have to have the most expensive clothes and shoes and then laugh at the other kids with cheap clothes
 
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In short, cold steel fills a niche and fills it well. They have effective marketing for the mall ninja types(my younger self included), even though it turns off some of us knife nuts (my more experienced self included), very functional and durable knives at an affordable price point for users who are unwilling or unable to pay for more expensive knives, and a strong focus on self defense, which many other companies stay away from. From a purely financial and business standpoint it doesn't make much sense to go into direct competition with a well established company in that niche. Other companies open themselves up to the broader amount of the knife using population who like blades around the 3 to 3.5 inch mark (this seems to be the preferred length of many in the community). Or take over different niches, like kershaw and AO for example or microtech and OTF automatics.

Also each company tends to find their own area others cant compete with well, helped by proprietary technology. Kershaw has a large, albeit shrinking, majority on the assisted opening knives in the market with their speed-safe mechanism. Spyderco has their proprietary opening hole, although other companies such as Benchmade occasionally use it. Cold steel has their triad lock. Benchmade has the axis lock, similar locks have come out but IMO they just dont compare or come on cheaper knives that arent worth it IMHO. As far as ball bearing lock vs axis lock goes, I dont consider them very similar mechanisms. Emerson has the wave; they license it out to other companies and more wave like systems are beginning to emerge but at first competition was slim. You dont see competition with a lot of these because the technologies are proprietary and require licensing for use by another manufacturer.

On to the strong lock portion. From my experience and for my and many other people's uses it is not super relevant. For my uses a lock strength doesnt matter too much past "it stays open when it binds in a cutting medium and I pull it out" because I never apply more force than that to the spine of a knife. In a self defense situation I dont see much need for strength past 100-200lbs but I dont consider myself an expert. So making a super strong lock is not high on many maker's priority lists, they simply stay with what works or innovate with a new mechanism that is not always strength centered. Theres a reason liner locks and traditional back locks continue to go on knives when locks like the BBL, Triad, axis, compresion, and frame lock(some evidence says this is weaker than a liner lock though) exist, and that reason is simply that they work. And also if you want to baton with a folder do it with the lock disengaged and watch your fingers; this will prevent damage to the locking surface.

Another factor preventing competition is the place of manufacture. Cold steels are made in China and Taiwan allowing a cheaper price point. Many companies like Benchmade keep production in the US with higher quality materials which makes competition with cold steel difficult. Kershaw can produce affordable knives in the US but they fill a different niche than cold steel so they dont compete.

The real short answer is that it is merely not the other companies' style. Using your porsche:toyota analogy, it is not necessarily that they are incapable of making the competition it is just not in their style and its not what they do.

Thats what I think the answer to your question is. Most of it is just opinion and observation and inference and not direct fact. I am not an expert at the situation at hand but these seem like logical explanations. I tried to avoid the silliness of this thread, but for the record cold steel knives are no longer my cup of tea and do not have the qualities I look for, but I will not diss the overall quality/value of their knives, and the same goes for spyderco and emerson.
 
Planterz said:
You never said you wanted to pound your knife into a steel drum with a hammer, so take a look at the Spyderco Endura. Affordable, 4" blade, good steel (better than CS's AUS-8), thin profile, and the lock is as strong as any reasonable person will ever need.
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I 100% agree with this statement. I may not be a spydeco fan and the endura is not the knife for me, but I can recognize a quality knife when I see it. Unless you abuse the knife the endura should serve you as well as any cold steel, and, due to the steel upgrade and i'm sure slimmer carry profile, it may even serve you better. Plus put a ziptie through the spydie hole and keep the clip tip up and it will open out of your pocket like a wave if you are into that sort of thing.
 
Vanguard41xx said:
"Thanks for winning it for me, the descent into name calling identifies you as pure internet tough guy, we all know what thats worth, don't we?"


I suppose you're an internet tough guy, as well? Ya' know, for calling us middle schoolers. :rolleyes:
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No, I'm an adult, you, and a few of your compadres, are children, ill behaved children at that...
 
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