Mule Team quantity discussion

[edlaffoon]

In direct response and echoing all of the praise and sentiments of the others I (if you read my first forum post, Sal to which you replied welcoming me, I, along with others, predicted this... for what it is worth) will respond to each in my opinion:

1) Do not limit quantities, that is a bandaid that will turn septic.
2) This is the solution, build more. How is really up to you.
2a - My suggestion is look at the sprint and exclusive demand in the last two years. Make YouTube videos and watch the response and view count. Watch the views and post count here. Poll and pre-order, or all of the above.
2b - Look at the demand for Bark River. They take a long time to deliver and are in a similar boat to you. DLT charges $25 to pre-order, others charge nothing. The sellers deal with the left over stock. Obviously this is not a 1 for 1 becuase the mules MUST be sold factory direct. The point is look at how they are doing it.
3) I will speak for myself; take my money. I don't care if these things take two years. I want the knives.
4) I would use the same reasoning as number 1, more restrictions is not the answer.
5) This is a great idea. Not all steels will sell the same, leaving you holding the bag. Thats not good for any of us. You have to gauge interest on a per steel basis.
6) This is awesome. This is what I wanted when I made that first post. This is what I meant by demand is a wierd thing. This is a product of our modern age, but with a bright outlook unlike nearly every other thing these days.

-Eric

[sal]

Hi Eric,

Thanx much for your input. I'm working on it.

sal

[austrian_spyder_fan]

Unfortunately the shipping costs from the SFO in USA to Europe make buying individual mules rather unattractive. So I think that this discussion should rather be held within the US and I will not participate in it.

I sincerely hope that Spyderco will set up a branch in the EU in the foreseeable future, on the one hand for service and warranty cases and on the other hand for factory sales.

Hi Peter,

a Spyderco branch in the EU whould be really awesome!
But in which country?
Maybe in Austria? Because of the best knife laws in Europe? :D

ASF

[edlaffoon]

Hi Eric,

Thanx much for your input. I'm working on it.

sal

Sal,

Again I have to say that this is so awesome. Thanks to you and your whole organization. This is why over 50% of my collection came from you. So much respect.

- Eric

[izzoyournizzo]

Hi Sal,

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to be heard on this subject. Ever since I got my hands on my first Spyderco knife, I was in love. I think you have something very special with the Mule program. I was luckily able to get one, which is currently on it's way to me. When trying to snag one, I had much trepidation that I would not get one because the site's slow load times due to the traffic influx.

1. As many have stated and to echo their response, I think a preorder is great for a few different reasons. It allows you to gain insight to the demand. It also allows for people to get one should they want it. To my dismay, there are already folks who are selling the SPY27 Mule on third-party markets for 3x the price. I wanted one, not to make a profit but to start exploring different steels and understand their characteristics. At 3x or more the price, this puts my (and probably others) goal out of reach and I think harms the intention of the program.
2. If you do decided to allow for people to purchase more than one knife, consider implementing some sort of deterrent for bots scooping up the stock. If not, you will see even more knives on the third-party markets with ridiculous markups.
3. I also like the idea of the Collectors Club. People who are willing to pay a fee to be part of this very special program. This way, people who really want to collect Mules, can be guaranteed one. This can also give you insight to the demand.

Again, thank you so much for making such amazing products. I am thankful to be a part of this family and look forward to many more mules in the future. This might be my first one, but it certainly won't be the last. I am giddy like a kid again knowing I have one coming my way.

Kindly,
Evan

[mrtramplefoot]

I would be down to preorder them however far in advance is needed, but would like the option to buy multiple. This time around I purchased 2, one for myself and one for my father in law that introduced me to Spyderco knives.

I'd be open to the idea of a subscription as well, but that sounds more complicated. Do you make all the subscribers buy all the knives? Do you make more models and let people pick what they want?

Could be cool if when you signed up for the subscription, you paid for a year up front then had a couple options:
1. For first timers, you could get a "production" mule right away, something like the spy27 + pick a scale + pick a sheath
2. then every 3-6 months, you just got a random mule. Don't announce them a head of time, don't let people pick, you just get a knife. If the price range is usually $50-90. Charge the average or a little higher upfront per knife at the beginning of the year (I as the consumer would then hope you managed steel choices for the year to meet these expectations, otherwise, people wouldn't renew their subscriptions). You could also do like a random colored scale set people could opt into along with the mule.

This would get you the funds to setup production up front and we get surprise knives. You could even do super limited runs every say 5 years for just the people who held their subscription that long or a special knife upfront for people who signup at inception and pay for a couple years upfront. You could do a discount program for subscription holders for scales and sheaths.

The more I type this the subscription sounds like it could be a really cool program, but definitely more of a commitment on your end. You could still sell some number outside the subscription program, but I would expected a markup on those since they didn't prepay to make the production run happen.

[Bolster]

I’ll throw my support behind keeping the current format.

Ditto.

[TomAiello]

You could do a pre-order 'team' PLUS the current format.

Then you'd have the pre-orders to judge from, to help the guessing on how many 'sell at drop' mules to build.

[JRinFL]

Simply: I'd be in favor of pre-orders with a partial down payment (but not 100%!) and with keeping the limit to two blades. If the price needs to be bumped up a bit to cover added overhead, so be it. Pre-order period should not be open ended, 30 days would be more than sufficient. Also, please keep it an SFO exclusive.

Thank you Sal & Spydie Crew.

[Mini2white]

I would prefer to get them over time during the year so please increase production numbers. One isn't economical for me to order with post, two jumps the price with freight. No complaints it just means I need to look at the site, and maybe I can add to the order. If no sheaths or handles available, what else can I add.

I was doing this when someone bought the last one Oh well next model.

I could also manage to buy more during the year while getting gifts and managing custom work. These are awesome for that, but as a one off buy it just becomes too hard.

Sorry lots of rambling. The only one that works for me is more knives made.

I would not join a club or pre order to buy 2 of every one. This Spy27 I wanted 4 of but could only order 2 and ended up with none.

[Tucson Tom]

You could do a pre-order 'team' PLUS the current format.

Then you'd have the pre-orders to judge from, to help the guessing on how many 'sell at drop' mules to build.

Yes.

If it just continues in the current format, I'll be a happy camper.

I think pre-orders would be a nice addition. You have to subtract the pre-orders from the expected demand for the "extras" you would make to sell at the drop date, while still using them to "test the waters" to measure expected demand.

I think the mule club would be a fantastic thing to add along with the pre-orders. Spyderco already knows how to run a collectors club (so I hear), so they know exactly how to do this and how much hassle is involved and whether it would be a manageable and worthwhile thing from their end.

I am OK with prepaying, waiting a year, and as needed paying some extra on delivery. Works for me.

And absolutely keep it at the SFO. And I don't think spacing out availability is a good thing. It works well for sprints, but I don't think it would work well here.

I decided maybe a year ago that I would order 4 of the spy27 if I could, so as to start working on my handle/knife making skills. I was fortunate enough to get two and am very happy.

I am excited to hear Sal say they are willing to consider reruns of popular steels. Maybe I'll get the other 2 of my four if they do another SPY27 run, but I'll hold off an hour or two to give the people who missed out a chance first.

[DSH007]

I have a bit of a "hot take" here.. I think you made enough.

I wanted a MT28. I made sure to pay attention to the availability and release date notices here on the forum. Kristi announced the release date in the forum, and I had weeks to take note of it. I set a reminder in my phone and made myself available at the drop time to log in to my account. The site lagged a little bit right at the onset, but I was able add the knife to my cart and complete the purchase.

I assume the majority of people who obtained this knife got one by a similar process, and by all accounts the knife was available for about one hour. This is an eternity compared with the mere minutes that other exclusives and sprints sell out in.

One thing that I noticed (or maybe that I didn't notice) with this release is that the number of OPMs (Oh Poor Me's - my silly term for entitled complainers) seemed very low.. here on the forum, on the facebook groups, in instagram posts, etc. I follow some of the social media knife groups out there and I can usually get a read on how popular a knife is based on the number of people talking about it, posting pictures of it, or complaining about not getting one, on the internet.. i.e. BHQ m4 Tanto, ZWear Shaman.. many many comments, pics, complaints = very popular. Chatter about the MT28 has been very limited in general and I don't recall seeing a single OPM comment on the facebook this weekend from disgruntled people not being able to get a Mule. Even on the forum, there seem to be only a handful of complaints.. by and large, it seems (to me) that most of the members that wanted one of these got one.

It's a tough question.. I can certainly appreciate the desire to put a Mule in the hands of every person who wants one. And I get the desire as a customer to want to be able to buy the Mule, in stock, at any time. But I think a strange truth of this hobby.. and I think the MT premise is pretty niche, even within the hobby.. is that social media/internet use (forum) has led to this type of "limited-window-of-availability" style of buying knives. Having such a limited availability timeframe is, unfortunately, par for the course if you want to buy a popular knife in 2021. The MT28 being available for one hour is pretty fair given how fast other popular knives have sold out recently.. Again, that's just my opinion.

Idk.. it's tough. Make too few and you're going to get a lot of complaints.. too many, you're sitting on stock that doesn't make good business sense. From what I can tell, this MT28 release falls right in the middle someplace. Thus my opinion that you made enough.

Unfortunately, you're never going to appease everybody. I really appreciate that Spyderco tries to! :)

[edlaffoon]

If I could, hopefully without starting a fire, respond to the folks saying 'people should not complain or 'its fine the way is' or 'you can't please everybody'.

It is simple. There are more people into knives in 2021 than there were in 2004.

The reasons they can't "get in line on time" don't matter. The point is there are valid reasons why the supply is less than the demand.

The ONLY people that DONT benefit from more knives being made available are the flippers and scalpers. They are the ones that would normally not want this type of knife to be made available to everyone.

If that is not a correct assement please help me understand otherwise. I genuinely want to understand.

Spyderco has openly acknowledged they want to address this. So please, for those that can't be first in line, why can't we just help them addres it?

Again, it seems simple enough. Make more knives. Sell more knives. We just gotta help figure out the best way to do that, and I think there are a lot of great ideas here.

To the mod(s) if this is out of line for this thread please let me know and or delete it. :)

[sal]

Hi All,

The steel for the next 6 Mule Teams is already made so this problem is likely to persist for a while.

sal

[Tucson Tom]

If I could, hopefully without starting a fire, respond to the folks saying 'people should not complain or 'its fine the way is' or 'you can't please everybody'.

It is simple. There are more people into knives in 2021 than there were in 2004.

The reasons they can't "get in line on time" don't matter. The point is there are valid reasons why the supply is less than the demand.

The ONLY people that DONT benefit from more knives being made available are the flippers and scalpers. They are the ones that would normally not want this type of knife to be made available to everyone.

If that is not a correct assement please help me understand otherwise. I genuinely want to understand.

Spyderco has openly acknowledged they want to address this. So please, for those that can't be first in line, why can't we just help them addres it?

Again, it seems simple enough. Make more knives. Sell more knives. We just gotta help figure out the best way to do that, and I think there are a lot of great ideas here.

To the mod(s) if this is out of line for this thread please let me know and or delete it. :)

There are at least 3 different perspectives to look at this from -- and I think I can sit in each seat and see the point of view.

1 - the people who missed out. I have missed out on a few things that I wanted (in the knife world) but not many. In this case I marked my calendar, got online shortly after the launch time, and after a few minutes of nail-biting when the website was clearly heavily loaded, placed my order. But I have tried on a few of these sold out in minutes releases (not mule team mind you) and after loading my "cart" by the time I entered my payment info, I was out of luck. Life goes on, it is just a knife. I actually think it is good to miss out once in a while to give you an appreciation for the scarce things you manage to get. As one dentist I used to go to liked to say, "a little pain never hurt anyone."

2 - Spydercos perspective. Are they making money on this, or is it just fun and good will and they sort of break even? I suspect it is breaking even for the sake of good will and making the world a better place. If so, asking them to make greater quantities, take a bigger risk and take time on their already heavily scheduled production facilities to make even more mule teams is questionable. Don't forget they sat on the PD1 mule for years until it sold out. Maybe they increased numbers on that run and got burned, we don't know.

3 - the people who got one. They are happy. They set their alarms, got online, had almost an hour to get an order in. No problem, easy peasy. They look at those who missed out and think, "you snooze, you lose!". Kind of hard to argue with that. Some people perhaps expected this to be something that would be available for days, weeks, months, even years. I expected it to be a race and a quick sell out, especially given all the publicity and anticipation.

[edlaffoon]

There are at least 3 different perspectives to look at this from -- and I think I can sit in each seat and see the point of view.

Exactly, I agree almost completely, except that my point was there is no NEED to argue about snoozing and losing. Its not a question of why or if it should be addressed. It's a question if it is addressed, then how.

FWIW I got mine. I just don't really understand the third perspective. More knives is better for everyone (provided a reasonable profit is made by spyderco and the foundry). If I could buy 4 of each I would. I'm a user-collector, so more knives on the market is in my best interest too. I wish I had every mule made. If more of the previous mules had been made the resale market would not be as nuts as it is for those knives right now.

I guess if I'm honest that is the biggest reason I'm concerned. This trend of poor supply, big demand, and third party marked up "drops" could easily work its way into the mule team knives (if it hasn't already). The only real solution to that is more supply, hopefully a "goldilocks" amount so that the purpose of this project can be fully achieved, just like Sal commented in the opening post. This is a special thing. This supply and demand issue killed it before, and could easily kill it again, just the other way around.

[standy99]

There has to be a way to reward the people that buy mules test them and give feedback to the forum.

A mule team subscriber is more likely to do this.

We don’t want to miss out on every second mule and miss being able to compare.

SPY27 make this Spyderco’s constant mule so the scale makers always have a product to put scales on.

[Tucson Tom]

SPY27 make this Spyderco’s constant mule so the scale makers always have a product to put scales on.

Yes, please.

[Bolster]

More knives is better for everyone (provided a reasonable profit is made by spyderco and the foundry).

I don't think 'profit made' is a parenthetic qualifier. I think 'profit made' is the main point. Spyderco staying financially healthy is incomparably more important than whether I get another limited-run knife or not.

In addition, once the pent-up demand for Mules passes (as it has before), unsold knives sitting on shelves in a warehouse is worse for everyone.

Supply and demand issues are typically solved by raising price to meet demand. I would rather see more money go to Spyderco and less money to scalpers. The moral difference is huge: Spyderco creates. Scalpers are parasitic. If Spyderco raised the price of mules to $100 each, you'd have more product available to people who were sufficiently motivated to obtain it.

Yeah, I'll say it: The belly-aching comes from the price of Mules being too low. Then mass entitlement kicks in. If the mule team is going to continue, then it needs to pull its weight, profit-wise, for the company.

[macatac]

I think the Spy27 Mule would make a great regular production 'kit knife'. It's not some crazy carbide monster, it's stainless, it would work as a general knife for most people, and (perhaps most importantly) it's proprietary to Spyderco.

I think this makes sense to me. Having a Spyderco "kit" knife more commonly available could satisfy that itch to make a knife a little more custom, while also having the "it" factor of using a proprietary steel like SPY27. Then, the true steel nerds should be able to do their thing and tear stuff up.

macatac