Shaman Cru-Wear Sprint Run release ?

[Freediver]

Had one in my cart but didn’t check out fast enough.

[Leader2light]

Yeah, I'm done as well. This is beyond frustrating. There must be a better way to do this. Until Spyderco figures a better way out, I'm done chasing. I love the knife and have the money, I just don't want to waste my time anymore. And I refuse to overpay on the secondary market.

[Eric*the*Red]

Ahhhhhh!!!!!

[camvdcs]

Unbelievable.

[curlyhairedboy]

Less than 10 seconds between add to cart and place order, and still gone....

[TkoK83Spy]

Same here, just missed in under a minute. Grateful to at least have the St Nick's model. But man, this one has worn on me lately since seeing members pics and reviews of it.

[W7H2O]

I did not get it. I did everything under 15 seconds.

[Mr. Pick]

I know it took me less than 10 seconds to hit "place order" at Cutlery Shoppe, but the inventory was gone. Guess I am done chasing this one. Hopefully they will produce another similar batch.

[W7H2O]

This is not fun any more. I already slowed down buying the GEC knives because of the same theatrics.
I might just take a long break and save my money.

[Tdog]

I'm about done with this one. Been to 3 sites today within moments of release.....results 0. Won't have time to mess with this tomorrow, will be helping my wife get set up for the art show. Guess I'll buy a nice custom instead.

[bts327]

Up at BBS for those willing to pay full price plus shipping.

[SLOSpyder]

If I didn’t get this one. I was gonna suck it up and pay the BBS tax. I’d rather pay them than EBay resellers.

[wrdwrght]

I fail to understand how an item in a cart and in the process of being paid for can be taken by someone else. Cutlery Shoppe needs to up its ethics.

In defense of my statement now crossed out, the interception I suffered with Cutlery Shoppe is a first-of-its-kind in my online shopping experience which dates back to the beginning of Internet commerce.

I’m now persuaded that the issue is not on Cutlery Shoppe or other online [Spyderco] retailers we know. Instead, it’s a design flaw not of these retailers (and others online) but of back-office services they have contracted. Such services evidently don’t know how (or think it worthwhile?) to warn buyers when their numbers far exceed inventory such that their transactions may fail.

Sprints and exclusives have recently been exposing this flaw and making a lie of what most us think a shopping cart to be.

Lest we think no one is listening, here’s what Sal said to the displeased on BF yesterday (25 October):

“Hi,

My apologies for the frustration. 1) employees are limited and most don't buy small runs and certainly not for resale. That is a fire-able offense.
2) We really had no idea that the Sprint would be in such high demand. Early complaints on the intro model has us in doubt. 3) we working on a follow up in Micarta, Green and Denim Blue, With Cruwear and another steel. We plan on larger numbers.

sal”

ETA: My corrected understanding and Sal’s customary touch of class.

[SLOSpyder]

I fail to understand how an item in a cart and in the process of being paid for can be taken by someone else. Cutlery Shoppe needs to up its ethics.

DLT did that to me earlier today. Entered my card then poof.

[ferider]

This is getting silly. And no, this is not how Sprint runs used to be.

Spyderco: you are p*ssing a lot of faithful users and collectors off, with your new release/marketing/reveal strategy, me included. And you are actively encouraging what basically is scalping.

Bye.

[elduderino04]

I fail to understand how an item in a cart and in the process of being paid for can be taken by someone else. Cutlery Shoppe needs to up its ethics.

This is an honest question, does any retailer count items in a cart against the available inventory? Most that I know of seem to only reduce the available inventory when a sale is completed (which causes this problem of people who take a bit longer to check out missing out on a sale). Some sites like ticketmaster do hold items in the cart and give you a countdown to complete the sale, but I don't think I've seen normal retailers do the same.

[Mzen]

I'm out folks. Guess this still isn't the time where I'll finally give Cru-Wear a go haha... My curse will never end!

But to be honest, I pretty much saw it coming as soon as the first images started rolling out. This one was always going to be a highly sought after sprint, pretty much the combination that makes the most sense for a user like the Shaman. If anything, I would only change the satin finish to a stonewash instead to go for that full-user style, but I don't know if that would affect the rust resistance in any way, which would explain the satin.

Sal, it would be ridiculous for me to tell you how to run your business (which you've pretty much mastered at this point), but one thing has me very curious. From all the coverage the Shaman got, all the good reviews and general love that it received, I pretty much considered the chances of this sprint to sell a silly amount of units kind of a no-brainer. I know that sprints of "niche" models always run the risk of not selling out, which is obviously something you don't want to happen, but in my opinion, this one had home-run written all over it...

With that said, could you share some thoughts on what kind of metrics you (or probably Eric) used to decide how many units to produce for this one? My personal theory is that the micarta part of this wasn't a walk in the park to get realized, since you've mentioned before that you were getting testing done for it not break under different temperatures and so on (paraphrasing here), so that would explain why you couldn't just push out a million of these out there. Any knowledge bombs you might want to throw at us?

Either way, congratulations on selling all of those Shamans! Well done :p :spyder:

[Evil D]

Being in the cart doesn't count as sold until the sale is final. There can be a million people on the site at the same time all with knives in their carts but it's only the first X amount of people who finalize the sale who get them and then all the others are out of luck. This is probably true for literally anything you can buy online that has a quantity, it's even possible with standard production knives if enough people all decided to buy the same model all at the same time.

[elduderino04]

This one was always going to be a highly sought after sprint, pretty much the combination that makes the most sense for a user like the Shaman.

I really, really hope Sal and co revisit the Shaman in cru-wear in the future in another sprint (but perhaps with a different handle color/material to satisfy those who need scarcity in sprint runs to be happy), given that this really does seem like the perfect iteration of the Shaman. While we're hoping, I would give an appendage if Spyderco would make cru-wear an evergreen option (a la S110V) so we don't have to deal with the sprint madness to use it.

[wrdwrght]

I fail to understand how an item in a cart and in the process of being paid for can be taken by someone else. Cutlery Shoppe needs to up its ethics.

This is an honest question, does any retailer count items in a cart against the available inventory? Most that I know of seem to only reduce the available inventory when a sale is completed (which causes this problem of people who take a bit longer to check out missing out on a sale). Some sites like ticketmaster do hold items in the cart and give you a countdown to complete the sale, but I don't think I've seen normal retailers do the same.

You may be right. If so, the “cart” metaphor is an outright deception...