TW Price, a very young and very talented knife designer, posed a series of questions on his IG feed about the knife market in a recent post.
His observations about the knife market not booming like it was are unquestionably correct. His comments about collecting and the secondary market are also, in my opinion, true. I agree with him about the market oversaturation. But there are a few things he mentions that aren’t, in my opinion, the cause of the knife market’s recent woes. He also asks about what fires people up. I wanted to offer my thoughts as these are issues that are percolating around the community and are also issues I think about a lot.
Oversaturation and Drops:
One problem in the knife market right now is there two fundamental problems with how knives are sold, both of which relate to that most primeval force in capitalism: supply and demand. The market is oversaturated with knife releases and the drop model is not sustainable by most over the long term.
When multiple companies have MONTHLY release schedules, that’s too many knives. In the middle part of the 20th Century companies went years without new releases. They made a number of knives for a number of different tasks and released new ones when designs or materials got better. Now we have a new knife because, well, gotta catch ‘em all.
A good one from Sculimbrene. I hope it spawns some conversation in the comments.
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