Mule Team quantity discussion

[sal]

Does anyone know the Rockwell hardness on the magnacut mule?

Hi ClanLeslie,

Welcome to our forum.

I'm checking RC now, won't know until next week. I'm not in the office.

sal

[Cadenno]

Hi Sal.
First of all I want to thank you and the team for the efforts you guys do for us knife lovers.

I don't take the responsibility to give advice on how to manage the promotion and sale of Mules, also because I don't know the background that Spyderco has in the design, manufacture and sale of Mules.

As an amateur blacksmith I can only suggest to create some Mule to make permanent stock, in the steels you normally use, or that you have available in large quantities, in order to have an effective comparison with the new Mule you release in more exotic steels.
This would allow you to test knives with the same geometry and configuration, which is very important to evaluate all aspects of the various steels.
It would also allow anyone to be able to approach the Mules without having to struggle at release time.

These Mule to have in stock could have a higher cost than the release price, to justify any number of knives stopped on the shelves. And at the same time rewarding those who struggled to get a Mule on release.

I hope I didn't make too many grammatical errors, and in case I apologize (I'm Swiss and speak Italian)

[Nate]

One thing to note with the MC drop is that we were also competing with FB and IG knife collector groups, a relatively recent phenomenon (2 years), but it looks like its going to be the trend going forward, for better or for worse. These folks can drive up demand and hype like there's no tomorrow with FOMO.

This is why 2k units still seemed unable to cope up with the demand.

I guess people are unable to contain their enthusiasm, which is what it is, but from a strategic perspective I don’t get why individuals who want in on this would be so eager to “spread the word,” creating even more competition for a limited realease. In addition to FB, Instagram, etc, I did a search on Reddit yesterday and found posts announcing the drop in r/Knifedeals and r/bladesinstock…

[nerdlock]

One thing to note with the MC drop is that we were also competing with FB and IG knife collector groups, a relatively recent phenomenon (2 years), but it looks like its going to be the trend going forward, for better or for worse. These folks can drive up demand and hype like there's no tomorrow with FOMO.

This is why 2k units still seemed unable to cope up with the demand.

I guess people are unable to contain their enthusiasm, which is what it is, but from a strategic perspective I don’t get why individuals who want in on this would be so eager to “spread the word,” creating even more competition for a limited realease. In addition to FB, Instagram, etc, I did a search on Reddit yesterday and found posts announcing the drop in r/Knifedeals and r/bladesinstock…

Some (not all) of those folks are social media influencers and they make some sort of profit, whether in terms of sponsorships, freebies, discounts or money from traffic and interactivity generated by their content, either on FB, YouTube or Instagram. They don't necessarily directly make money per se from sales of this or any knife that they promote on their social media platforms, they just need the traffic and hype generated by their posts.

[Clanleslie]

Cool, thanks.

[wes]

Hi Sal.
First of all I want to thank you and the team for the efforts you guys do for us knife lovers.

I don't take the responsibility to give advice on how to manage the promotion and sale of Mules, also because I don't know the background that Spyderco has in the design, manufacture and sale of Mules.

As an amateur blacksmith I can only suggest to create some Mule to make permanent stock, in the steels you normally use, or that you have available in large quantities, in order to have an effective comparison with the new Mule you release in more exotic steels.
This would allow you to test knives with the same geometry and configuration, which is very important to evaluate all aspects of the various steels.
It would also allow anyone to be able to approach the Mules without having to struggle at release time.

These Mule to have in stock could have a higher cost than the release price, to justify any number of knives stopped on the shelves. And at the same time rewarding those who struggled to get a Mule on release.

I hope I didn't make too many grammatical errors, and in case I apologize (I'm Swiss and speak Italian)

I would be interested in having a couple "base" S30V or something similar mules to test all my other ones against as well.

[yablanowitz]

It will be interesting to me to see if there is a huge increase in traffic here. That would be an indicator as to whether interest in the Mule Team project has actually increased or the demand is being fueled by social media induced fear of missing out.

[JRinFL]

There was talk of a similar SPY27 mule-like blade being offered as a sort of kit knife. Not sure when, or even if, it will happen.

Recent hyped releases may have been driven by social media FOMO, but they were also pretty popular steels as well. Especially MagnaCut which was going to draw a much larger audience than the normal mule crowd. I'd be willing to bet that upcoming release popularity declines with each upcoming release. Unless some of the next ones are REX121 and Vanax SC. <--both are unlikely so don't pester Spyderco about them.