Why the Low Prices in the Knifemakers For Sale Forum?

[bacustomknives]

Maybe so. But if a $200.00 knife sells, you will have $200.00, if a $500.00 knife sits in the sales forum for weeks you will have $0.00. Since trade shows are not held everyday, or at all depending on where you live, or only a few times a year, you may have to sell that knife for less than you think it is worth.

Any knifemaker can charge whatever he wants for any knife they make, ultimately it is the market that decides a products' "value". An expensive product left unsold is worth nothing in the big picture. You can choose to keep all of your expensive knives on a shelf, or list them for a price they will actually sell for. It sucks but often that is the decision a lot of us are faced with.

I second that!!Praise brother :thumbup:

 

[JMJones]

I completely understand that side of it and am not judging negatively anyone who finds themselves in that position, we all do what we have to do. I am just pointing out a cycle that many people get trapped in and I am sure they would like to get out of.

Maybe so. But if a $200.00 knife sells, you will have $200.00, if a $500.00 knife sits in the sales forum for weeks you will have $0.00. Since trade shows are not held everyday, or at all depending on where you live, or only a few times a year, you may have to sell that knife for less than you think it is worth.

Any knifemaker can charge whatever he wants for any knife they make, ultimately it is the market that decides a products' "value". An expensive product left unsold is worth nothing in the big picture. You can choose to keep all of your expensive knives on a shelf, or list them for a price they will actually sell for. It sucks but often that is the decision a lot of us are faced with.

 

[JMJones]

I have seen when full time makers complain about the hobbiest watering down the market. One thing to consider though is that they are paying their dues and getting their "knife making education". Often the fact that they spent forty hours making a knife and sell it for 150 bucks is irrelevant because their skill set does not command much value. I did not get paid to go to college, quite the opposite, why should we expect them to charge a fair value while they are learning?

 

[Dave Behrens]

I completely understand that side of it and am not judging negatively anyone who finds themselves in that position, we all do what we have to do. I am just pointing out a cycle that many people get trapped in and I am sure they would like to get out of.

I would love to find a way out, but here I am. I don't view a hobbyist selling his work at cost as "undercutting", it is just another level of market competition, and it exists in every industry and every business.

Consumers of all like are always ultimately going to go with the best (what they feel) quality for the absolute lowest price. I would love it if my knives sold for what I believe they are worth, but that is not the "real world".

I listed 7 blades in the last 2 weeks, some sold at the price I listed, some I had to lower, the two best of the bunch, did not sell at all despite lowering prices by 15%. I constantly see very high quality blades listed at more than reasonable (to me) prices, sit for weeks on the sales forum. Like wise, less elaborate blades sell quickly for unreasonably high prices all the time. The market is inconsistent, especially the disposable income markets.

Any products value is at the mercy of the consumer not the provider, especially if it something that is not a life necessity.

Hobbyists "watering down" the market is not an excuse (I am not accusing anyone of this) for your products not selling or selling for less, you may have redesign your business plan, that's life. If you are failing at making a living at your craft, blaming anyone else other than yourself will not fix that problem. To be qliche' adapt and overcome or find another career(guess what, this happens in other fields too).

 

[Mark Knapp]

Did you ever fish in a fairly small lake with a lot of fish in it? If there's too many fish they will all be stunted, you can catch a lot of them in a short amount of time but they are all the same size and all small.

That's the way it is in the knife for sale sub-forums here, a lot of makers and relatively few buyers. I love the forum but it is really a pretty small market, it's pretty cut-throat. That's also why the rules were changed a little bit ago, because there were so many makers trying to stay on the first page.

If this is the only pond you're swimming in then your prices are going to have to be very competitive to sell knives. There are a lot of guys willing to make knives for the shear joy of it. There's nothing wrong with that, but if you are one of the guys that also has to make some money at it, then you will have to compete with those other guys.

There are lots of other ways to sell knives and other places. When I started out I did it all, I got tables at gun shows, holiday bazaars, hung up flyers on bulletin boards at sporting goods stores, got some knives in sporting goods stores, put ad's in the classified section of news papers and set up a booth at our county fair. Ya gotta do the whole thing so you don't have a limited market.

 

[Travis Fry]

If this is the only pond you're swimming in then your prices are going to have to be very competitive to sell knives.

I think this may be the smartest thing said here. The For Sale forum on BF contains a very small slice of the overall customs market, and under no circumstances should it be considered normative in any way with respect to pricing. I see a lot of folks trying to start out selling here, and that accounts for the low pricing, I think. The guys who command very high prices will do so in the For Sale forum, at a show, or any other sales venue; high prices don't come from nowhere. If you're trying to make a name for yourself as a maker and are limiting yourself to the BF sales arena, you won't make a name for yourself.

I simply don't understand even a hobbyist doing this and disregarding money. I make knives for fun and personal satisfaction, but I still make decent money (for a hobby) at it because 1) I work hard to produce good work 2) I charge what I can get and, as much as possible, let the market dictate my pricing, and 3) I NEED to make money to fund my hobby. My financial goals are to be cash flow neutral with this hobby, which requires both good realized returns and very careful investment of those returns.

 

[sdemars]

First thing I should say, "I have never made a knife" I have bought a lot of knives in my 60+ years.
I have Randall combat style knives I bought from Randall for as little as $77.00. Randall Knives currently has a 4 YEAR waiting list. Over 20 people that happen to live in Orlando, FL work for Randall making knives 5 to 6 days a week.

My take on why custom hand made knives do not sell quickly today is simple, almost all the makers make or try to make beautiful knives.

The average guy is not going to pay $350.00+ for a knife that he will "actually use".

Most young guys today that know what a knife is and has a use for it are either a hunter, a cop or a soldier. The rest only see it as a digital image in a computer game.

A cop and a soldier see zero value in beautiful. His goal is to see how much abuse a knife can take.

So now we have hunters & collectors left for a market place for beautiful knives. Collectors want a known maker's name on a blade so that he can justify his spending as an investment to self and wife.

Now we have the hunter left. I live in Louisiana and I can assure you the average hunter will not carry and use a $350.00 knife unless he is a pretty well off soul that $350.00 is not a big deal.

This is my take & I may be really way off base . . . I watched my brother make beautiful custom knives for years in the late 60's & 70's. I was his main customer because no one would pay more than $75.00 for any knife locally.

If you have the skill and want to make beautiful knives that will make people ooh & aah that is great, but if you want to SELL knives today & you are a new maker, you need to be making utility & combat knives that are butt ugly and capable of penetrating a 55 gallon steel drum. For some reason the penetration of a steel drum seems to be the ultimate measure of how tough a knife is.

How I feel I know this, I STILL BUY KNIVES, the butt ugly ones ! ! !
Steve

 

[Nathan the Machinist]

First thing I should say, "I have never made a knife" I have bought a lot of knives in my 60+ years.
I have Randall combat style knives I bought from Randall for as little as $77.00. Randall Knives currently has a 4 YEAR waiting list. Over 20 people that happen to live in Orlando, FL work for Randall making knives 5 to 6 days a week.

My take on why custom hand made knives do not sell quickly today is simple, almost all the makers make or try to make beautiful knives.

The average guy is not going to pay $350.00+ for a knife that he will "actually use".

Most young guys today that know what a knife is and has a use for it are either a hunter, a cop or a soldier. The rest only see it as a digital image in a computer game.

A cop and a soldier see zero value in beautiful. His goal is to see how much abuse a knife can take.

So now we have hunters & collectors left for a market place for beautiful knives. Collectors want a known maker's name on a blade so that he can justify his spending as an investment to self and wife.

Now we have the hunter left. I live in Louisiana and I can assure you the average hunter will not carry and use a $350.00 knife unless he is a pretty well off soul that $350.00 is not a big deal.

This is my take & I may be really way off base . . . I watched my brother make beautiful custom knives for years in the late 60's & 70's. I was his main customer because no one would pay more than $75.00 for any knife locally.

If you have the skill and want to make beautiful knives that will make people ooh & aah that is great, but if you want to SELL knives today & you are a new maker, you need to be making utility & combat knives that are butt ugly and capable of penetrating a 55 gallon steel drum. For some reason the penetration of a steel drum seems to be the ultimate measure of how tough a knife is.

How I feel I know this, I STILL BUY KNIVES, the butt ugly ones ! ! !
Steve

Good post. I hadn't really thought about things in those terms exactly but I've had similar thoughts congealing in my head for a while now. When I see a brilliant ABS MS struggling to sell an ABS style damascus Bowie for a steal and I see a similar priced powder coated combat knife selling like hot cakes across the room I think there is a better buyer/maker ratio for heavy duty modern combat tactical knives than fancy pretty ABS style knives.

 

[Andy Johnston]

My take on why custom hand made knives do not sell quickly today is simple, almost all the makers make or try to make beautiful knives.

The average guy is not going to pay $350.00+ for a knife that he will "actually use".

Now we have the hunter left. I live in Louisiana and I can assure you the average hunter will not carry and use a $350.00 knife unless he is a pretty well off soul that $350.00 is not a big deal.

I agree and disagree with this. I agree that a lot of people are not going to spend that much on a beautiful knife and then ruin it on a deer. That being said I am a hunter myself and I WOULD pay 350 dollars, or more, for a good quality hunting knife, as long as it did not look like a piece of art. I know I have said this in another post recently but an example is Mark Knapp's knives. They are so beautiful that I would NEVER want to gut a deer with them. They are very capable of doing so, but I would not want to do it. If I found a nice handmade knife with a simple wood handle, drop point, medium sized belly, I would spend the extra money on it rather than get a crap production knife that I will need to re sharpen half way through skinning a deer. It is worth every penny. The difference there lies in the fact that I am starting to make knives and have researched, and used, hand made knives extensively.

I think the real problem is trying to get the average day knife consumer to want the same level of quality out of their knives. People who are willing to spend a hundred or more dollars on cold steel and think that they have the toughest, best edge retaining knives on the market would likely be blown away by a custom knife if they used the two side by side. The trick is getting them to realize that the quality really IS worth that much more than a conventional production knife.

 

[bodog]

I used to be one of those guys. Thought cold steel or whatever made the best knives to actually use. it wasn't until I started actually taking an interest in the making of knives that I learned that cold steel and most other production knives are terrible. It now pains me to see grown men proud of their collection of half assed knives that they didn't have to buy. They could've saved that money and gotten one or two really great knives that they could've used their entire lives and then their sons and grandsons would be proud to carry, too. Most guys that carry, though, carry folders. Most good folders cost 400 bucks plus. There's a large gap there. Crap knives for 50 bucks or great knives for 500. If someone could make really nice handmade folders for 200 bucks or so, they'd get business.

I agree and disagree with this. I agree that a lot of people are not going to spend that much on a beautiful knife and then ruin it on a deer. That being said I am a hunter myself and I WOULD pay 350 dollars, or more, for a good quality hunting knife, as long as it did not look like a piece of art. I know I have said this in another post recently but an example is Mark Knapp's knives. They are so beautiful that I would NEVER want to gut a deer with them. They are very capable of doing so, but I would not want to do it. If I found a nice handmade knife with a simple wood handle, drop point, medium sized belly, I would spend the extra money on it rather than get a crap production knife that I will need to re sharpen half way through skinning a deer. It is worth every penny. The difference there lies in the fact that I am starting to make knives and have researched, and used, hand made knives extensively.

I think the real problem is trying to get the average day knife consumer to want the same level of quality out of their knives. People who are willing to spend a hundred or more dollars on cold steel and think that they have the toughest, best edge retaining knives on the market would likely be blown away by a custom knife if they used the two side by side. The trick is getting them to realize that the quality really IS worth that much more than a conventional production knife.

 

[Andy Johnston]

Most guys that carry, though, carry folders. Most good folders cost 400 bucks plus. There's a large gap there. Crap knives for 50 bucks or great knives for 500. If someone could make really nice handmade folders for 200 bucks or so, they'd get business.

I agree with this 180%. I would like to eventually make folders because like you said it IS what people carry. That being said I completely understand why the average joe wouldn't buy a custom folder with that kind of a price gap. Hell I might not even be willing to pay those prices for a small folder.

 

[sdemars]

If someone could make really nice handmade folders for 200 bucks or so, they'd get business.

I agree, and I might add that my next knife purchase will more than likely be a Chris Reeves Sebenza. The knife is just so well made, no frills & very simple. Like Randall, he can not make them fast enough. And also like Randall everyone that buys one thinks of it as a custom knife made for him personally by Chris Reeves.

Both, Reeves & Randall have a production crew producing their knives . . . just looking at it from a realistic prospective. . . .

When you think about it, a Randall #14 Attack & a Sebenza was a lot simpler to make than most of the beautiful customs a lot of 2 year custom knife makers turn out. Do you think Randall & Reeves were both able to locate dozens of experienced knife makers to crew their shops. But it is what people want RIGHT NOW & it sells . . .

 

[night man]

I have not read every post but I think a HUGE part of the reason that knives sell for less here is due to the fact that the makers can edit the post after the sale to delete the sale price. If all makers had to have those prices archived so that potential customers could review previous sale prices, they may be less likely to lower prices. As it stands now you can drop prices to get the quick cash and not have to have that "black mark" potentially keeping your prices low in the future. I would bet anyone selling cheap is hoping to increase prices in the future but for whatever reason need or want the sale now.

I disagree somewhat. If I sold my knives on the cheap now, it wouldn't bother me not one bit to leave the prices for customers to see and I don't feel it would hurt my future business. As my skill improves and I get more orders my price gradually goes up. I have only been making and selling for a little under two years and my prices have went up about 15%-20%. Supply and demand thing.

I was in the construction business for about 15 years and the rule of thumb is, if you don't particularly want to do a job or if you really don't have the time for the job you bid it high. Sometimes you get it, sometimes you don't.

 

[Evan Miner]

In my case I sell my knives in the price range of $100 minimum to the highest of $160 but I do it based on knowledge and time spent. Yes in that range I'm not making much more then cost, but I look at it as I'm trying to build a name, and how do you do that other then getting your product out there. But out of respect for all the full time makers on here who have put there time in, and got there abs journeymen certificate or masters I don't sell here on bladeforums does it hurt my sells not posting them here probably. As for right now just word of mouth is selling knives and putting my name out there and once I get to a high level of knowledge and time put in I will take my journeymen test. Once I pass, and feel that skills and knowledge are worthy of comparing to the ones who have put there time in. Only then will I post knives on here to sell.

 

[Willie71]

First thing I should say, "I have never made a knife" I have bought a lot of knives in my 60+ years.
I have Randall combat style knives I bought from Randall for as little as $77.00. Randall Knives currently has a 4 YEAR waiting list. Over 20 people that happen to live in Orlando, FL work for Randall making knives 5 to 6 days a week.

My take on why custom hand made knives do not sell quickly today is simple, almost all the makers make or try to make beautiful knives.

The average guy is not going to pay $350.00+ for a knife that he will "actually use".

Most young guys today that know what a knife is and has a use for it are either a hunter, a cop or a soldier. The rest only see it as a digital image in a computer game.

A cop and a soldier see zero value in beautiful. His goal is to see how much abuse a knife can take.

So now we have hunters & collectors left for a market place for beautiful knives. Collectors want a known maker's name on a blade so that he can justify his spending as an investment to self and wife.

Now we have the hunter left. I live in Louisiana and I can assure you the average hunter will not carry and use a $350.00 knife unless he is a pretty well off soul that $350.00 is not a big deal.

This is my take & I may be really way off base . . . I watched my brother make beautiful custom knives for years in the late 60's & 70's. I was his main customer because no one would pay more than $75.00 for any knife locally.

If you have the skill and want to make beautiful knives that will make people ooh & aah that is great, but if you want to SELL knives today & you are a new maker, you need to be making utility & combat knives that are butt ugly and capable of penetrating a 55 gallon steel drum. For some reason the penetration of a steel drum seems to be the ultimate measure of how tough a knife is.

How I feel I know this, I STILL BUY KNIVES, the butt ugly ones ! ! !
Steve

I totally agree with this in my limited experience. The locals here seem to top out at $199.99. The $200.00 barrier is really real. What I have been focusing on is excellent heat treat, great geometry, and comfortable/durable handles in stable natural materials. The guys love them, and will pay the extra compared to a production knife and use them continuously. They see the knife as a tool, and if it makes their life easier, the investment pays off. To spend a hundred or more yet won't get them better performance, so that becomes a luxury. A couple guys have wanted a nice "show off" piece to compliment their users. Its developing the market. And as I said before throwing in a paring knife has resulted in a number of kitchen knife sales. Its been a bit weird listening to guys talk about their "Krywko Customs."

 

[Rick Marchand]

... There's a large gap there. Crap knives for 50 bucks or great knives for 500. If someone could make really nice handmade folders for 200 bucks or so, they'd get business.

This is why I started making leather goods and knives. To make a high quality "mid-priced" product for the common user. The first 4-5 months of sales was an eye opener ... Turns out, you can't make a quality blade for cheap and still turn a profit to feed your family... go figure.

 

[james terrio]

What Rick said :thumbup:

"Down-market" is always an option... but we have to determine how low we're willing to go. My absolute bare-bones neckers are still at least twice the cost of a "similar" factory knife. I couldn't get a foot in the door of the $30-knife market if I wanted to... which I don't. That's just not what I do.

I say again... competing with that stuff is a fool's errand.

Rather than following factory crap in a race to the bottom, perhaps we should consider rolling to the middle by offering handmade no-frills stuff with excellent craftsmanship, alloys/HT and designs.

 

[Marty Young]

Rather than following factory crap in a race to the bottom, perhaps we should consider rolling to the middle by offering handmade no-frills stuff with excellent craftsmanship, alloys/HT and designs.

I agree 100%!

 

[Rick Marchand]

Rather than following factory crap in a race to the bottom, perhaps we should consider rolling to the middle by offering handmade no-frills stuff with excellent craftsmanship, alloys/HT and designs.

Getting water jet cut blanks in large batches, simple grinds done with jigs, and expedient(but quality) handles sounds about right. That said, you are heading into "production" territory, where folks can draw an even closer similarity to the mass-produced market and wonder why you are so much more expensive. It is a double edged sword. Like some have already said, "education" is key... fact based, no hype education. There are makers on this site with what seems to be polar opposite ways of knife making, yet they all agree on the basic principles of metallurgy, design and function... you know... reality. I think that is awesome. There are also those who spread misinformation(or sometimes disinformation) in an attempt to separate themselves from the pack as "pioneers" or "keepers of secret formulas". This can have a negative impact on the public impression of custom knives... inconsistency, false claims and general hokus-pokus hurts us all.

 

[tryppyr]

But Rick, you can't make Elvish swords WITHOUT Elvish magic! You know that!