You are not paying X amount of dollars for the sum of the parts of the knife. You are buying a knife that is backed by a warranty and LifeSharp, need or want it or not it's all part of the deal. That cost something, and there is a value to a lot of their customers. Like all businesses they have machines to buy and maintain, lights to keep on, employees to pay, and marketing and other expenses. In my opinion BenchMade puts out a good quality knife with great backing at a reasonable price.
You bring valid points in there and I will speak to the manufacturing since you requested a break down earlier.
The knife materials are called "direct materials" in the cost equation.
"Indirect materials" are stuff like oil and shop supplies related to the product, but not technically part of it.
"Fixed over head" is the is the cost of the machines and buildings. They don't fluctuate and get standard set once a year.
"Variable overhead" is items related to making the parts like energy cost, SG&A (engineers, salesman, marketing, etc., etc.
You can have direct and indirect labor in there too.
The warranty money is a portion set aside out of profit margin
Life sharp is buried in projected warranty costs too.
The customer pays for all the costs the retailer & distributors (plus shipping sometimes) tack onto it.
Now for cost comparison, I'll go back to Buck because its a Pacific northwest manufacturer based in the USA that sells USA made products in the mix.
You can buy a brass & 420HC steel Buck 110 for $40 or less and it has a warranty & sharpening program attached to it. They make millions of them so they have the costs in line.
You will pay about $100 for a buck 110 with S30v steel and different materials so you are paying for premium materials and low production volumes. You are still paying a premium for the product and not really the materials . Go to bucks custom 110 website app and you can price what each material upgrade is for yourself.
S30V steel and heat treating will vary from shop to shop, but its still done to industry standards. Buck can probably do it cheaper because they can pay for their PM tooling and heat treating and may have proprietary processes.
So looking at similar labor standards in a region for one knife company to sell the buck 110 with premium materials for $100 and comparing to a benchmade smaller lighter (less material and steel weight) product for $200+ is why I feel they are overpriced.
We won't agree on it so my opinion is Benchmade puts out a good product with similar warranty backing & sharpening services at a PREMIUM price compared to other USA brands.
Will Benchmade cutting up guns from a "gun buy back" or "crime confiscated" guns hurt them... probably not.
If those guns were from "red flag" laws... that could piss off people depending on how their law is administrated. That's a problem for the people of Oregon.
I'm sure Benchmades customer base of non-shooters is quite large and people will forget about the police department facebook screw up soon enough. Benchmade will still make a pile of money on their products no matter what us shooters do.
