Bodog wrote:Reading this thread actually pained me a bit considering I'm such a fan of the mule team project and what it's trying to accomplish. For whatever it's worth, raising the prices just to combat flipping seems asinine. Adding serial numbers seems like a waste of time. Raising the number made would work but without knowing how well a steel will be viewed is hard to predict and could leave Spyderco with a large inventory of blades that won't sell.
My suggestion is an amalgamation of previous suggestions and I think totally feasible while still keeping the core purpose of the mule project intact, ie, test blades at the lowest cost possible. I'll give an example.
On today's date January 10, 2015, Spyderco announces the intention of releasing a Mule Team blade in X steel, say, Hap 72 at 65 HRC +/- 1 and it will be made in Japan and the estimated cost will be $100. The amount of time to preorder is two months. You can order as many as you want but you pay right now, up front. The only guarantee is that it will be sent to the buyers within the next 24 months. In addition to the $100 cost of the blade, another $15 dollars will be added to each blade and the name used to purchase the order will be engraved on each knife in that order. Since it's not supposed to be a collector's item, no guarantee will be made as to the accuracy of the engraved name. If the name is spelled wrong, too bad. Disclaimer agreed to when purchased. So the flippers buy ten, but the name on all of them is Bill Jenkins or whatever. They don't know how long their money will be tied up in a blade that people may not want to buy because it has someone else's name on it. Those seeking to utilize the mule team project for what it was intended for will have a cool blade with their name on it. If the name is slightly incorrect, who cares because it's meant to be used and abused, not sitting somewhere looking pristine. Spyderco knows exactly how many to produce. If it's a hot steel they know to make 3,000 or however many were preordered. If it's not a hot steel, they'll know to make 200 or however many preordered. If they decide to make extra and sell them without a name engraving, then those are free for anyone to buy and resell at whatever cost. Spyderco could also mark up the cost of the unengraved blades to the highest reasonable cost if they so choose in order to profit off of the flippers at the back end. Mule team unengraved blade = MSRP $200, 30 produced. People trying to flip them would have to charge more and people wouldn't want to pay more. If there are people that truly want that blade, they'll fork the money over to spyderco instead of the flippers. If no one buys them, that's only a loss of 30 blades which in the scheme of things is pretty low. If they sit there a year and no one buys them, they can lower the cost down to whatever they want. No harm, no foul.
I think that would almost completely stop the flippers in their tracks, it would serve to give spyderco an accurate count of how many should be produced, it would give a little personal touch to those using them, and it would protect the long term viability of such a great endeavor. I'd pay $15 bucks extra on each mule team blade if it meant stopping or severely curtailing the crappy practices involved in knife flipping. Given the long fairly indeterminate release dates, that would cover the amount of time to procure the steel and production schedule. If someone wouldn't want their name engraved so badly that they would refuse to buy the knife, they probably wouldn't use it to begin with. Those people that talk about exclusivity and all that are precisely the ones that don't understand what the mule team project is about anyway. Let those who cry about engraved names and lack of exclusivity cry. The people who just want to beat up and evaluate new steels at a modest price wouldn't mind, I don't think.
Quite a bit of work to stop the free market, no?
Besides, if the point is to provide new steels at affordable prices, how is a two year
production schedule and increased prices going along with that? Do you think Spyderco having people's money tied up for two years on what
was the newest steel isn't going to cause any problems?
It sounds like your suggesting adding extra cost for no
practical reason, useless features no one wants, and a longer time frame. Even if this would help curb flipping, it would probably make the Mule team project less popular for everyone, not just flippers. If the project isn't as popular, there is less of a need to curb flipping. See the cycle? It's pointless to try and fight the free market.
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