On hold until expansion

[DavidNM]

Thank you Sal and Eric just for the possibility of a custom shop at Spyderco.

[Evil D]

Does the expansion mean there will be a Custom Spyderco Shop?

I don't think this forum goes a full year between requests for custom shop knives, but so far it's never happened. I think there's way too much money to be made in sprints and exclusives. If I could have any combo I want, it would take away all of the uniqueness from limited runs.

Not that there is direct equivalence, but Buck offers sprints, web exclusives, and a custom shop. They all seem to sell well enough for Buck to continue with all three. They did drop SFO exclusives, however. Spyderco chooses not to offer a custom shop for their own reasons which I respect. But, who knows what the future holds?

I don't really follow Buck much, do they also do sprints and dealer exclusives? That may be the biggest difference. I would say also that if a company makes mostly the same basic knife but "in different shapes" while having essentially the same lock and pivot designs, things are far easier to make Lego-like and to be able to custom cobble them together. It seems like most Spydercos have some kind of extra tweaking during assembly to get them right, hence the reason for needing to swap lock bars along with blades during blade swaps. Of course I guess all of that could still happen on a knife per knife basis. For the record I am all for this idea, I think at some point early in my days on this forum I probably posted a thread about it too. It seems like most people have the lightbulb idea moment and don't realize it's been lit up many times before.

[RustyIron]

I don't really follow Buck much, do they also do sprints and dealer exclusives?

After reading the comment about Buck's custom shop, I had to google on over and see what they're all about. Indeed, you can order several of their models with different options. Neither the options nor their base models got me excited. I'll just continue to carry my boring old off-the-shelf Spyderco knives.

[Xformer]

Eric has discussed the possibility of a custom shop with the Golden Knife-Makers and they seem to like the idea. We'll see what the future holds.

sal

Does that mean we should all start selling our sprint runs ? Just as I started getting some of them I love.

[JRinFL]

I would not rush to sell off your Sprints. Spyderco is not deliberately going to destroy the secondary market by making repeats of prior sprints or exclusives. If the custom shop comes to be, it will likely offer something new.

[bob-atlatl]

Thanks Spyderco, for more quality USA jobs.
Best of luck & prosperity to Sal, Eric, Kristi, SFO, and the Spyderco Golden community.

[ChrisinHove]

I would not rush to sell off your Sprints. Spyderco is not deliberately going to destroy the secondary market by making repeats of prior sprints or exclusives. If the custom shop comes to be, it will likely offer something new.

That’s an interesting one … presumably if a custom combo is seen to work well, then there’s nothing to stop that from becoming a sprint, exclusive or even production model.

[Evil D]

I would not rush to sell off your Sprints. Spyderco is not deliberately going to destroy the secondary market by making repeats of prior sprints or exclusives. If the custom shop comes to be, it will likely offer something new.

That’s an interesting one … presumably if a custom combo is seen to work well, then there’s nothing to stop that from becoming a sprint, exclusive or even production model.

I can't remember exactly but I think it was Netflix who were using pirated movies information to choose what movies they offer for rental or whatever. If Spyderco saw a pattern forming from custom combos being ordered, it would definitely be something to look into. But, they could probably make more money on customs than on sprints, and there would be no risk of making too many and having money tied up in dead stock.

[RamZar]

When is the grand opening of the new plant?

If I recall correctly, the last manufacturing expansion at Golden opened in May 2015.

I hope some time is spent on replenishing inventory of US-Made regular production knives, release all US-Made new regular production knives in the pipeline (Reveals and shown at shows or meets) and then new Exclusives & Sprints.

Perhaps one day move production of some knives made overseas to the US plants.