- The vast majority of people are ignorant when it comes to knives.
- When an ignorant person hears on a mainstream media outlet about Benchmade or Spyderco then goes to ebay or a similar marketplace, sees a “Benchmade” or “Spyderco” for let’s say 30% the price, for a knife person a pretty obvious fake but for them indistinguishable. Then get’s disappointed by the quality or, worse yet, hurt because the lock failed, guess what he’ll think and tell his friends? If he went on a knife forum he’d probably be told what actualy happened. But if he speaks only with “normal people” then he’ll say that Spyderco/Benchmade failed him
- And what about the really hard to spot knock-offs? There are more and more situations where those are passed as the genuine item directly taking away customers from Spyderco.
- Plus the Amazon return scam where original knives are replaced by fakes and returned to Amazon.
I could go on. And price whining is mostly on knife forums where people bemoan they have to spend more money on their 50th knife (I’m among those
) not with people who have to spend more every couple years as they get their ROI by the way of quality and customer support
@gravelmonkey @horzuff all points you guys mentioned are valid but now we are getting into the topic of cloning/counterfeiting as a whole. The points you guys are making are not only valid for knives, but all products. And as we have seen it is something that cannot be avoided and I think the world as a whole is now more aware of the fact.
But one thing I am noticing is that not all popular companies have been cloned. Such as Civivi. I havent seen many Civivi model clones so they must be doing something right
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There are quite a few things I can imagine that might be why they aren’t cloned:
- They don’t have similarly popular evergreen models
- They aren’t expensive enough to be able to be undercut on price that much
- They are made by a chinese company which probably has chinese trademarks/patents and has a much easier job enforcing their rights in case of infringements
- I’d imagine some kind of code of honor plays a part here as well, though that’s pure conjecture (code of honor as in supporting chinese companies and competing against western ones more ruthlessly)
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I agree, especially in regards to pricing. If Civivi were to make knives in the $150+ range, I’m sure they would be cloned as well. Since they are a popular brand and do make a nice product for their price range, probably one of the best brands in that range in my opinion. So I’m glad to see counterfeiting not happening to them!
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Hi everyone, the conversation in this thread has been pretty civil so far, so please keep it that way. If anybody is concerned about the direction that a thread is heading, it’s always best to simply flag the problematic thread or post(s) and let me handle it instead of trying to moderate or reprimand other users. And personal attacks and insults never help, so they should be strictly avoided.
1. Please don’t be rude. Rude people will have their accounts deleted.
5. Please do not try to intervene, moderate, or rebuke others. Please report inappropriate posts via the flag button.
Please don’t continue discussing this tangent, and feel free to return to the previous civil conversation.
I like cheap, but good things. I review a lot of flashlights that are cheap and expensive. To be frank, I’d never buy 70% of the lights I review because they’re too expensive. Why buy a $70 Hank light when Wurkkos makes one for 1/3 the price that does what I need it to? I own some knives, and they’re all cheap, except for the Protech TR3 i got almost 23 years ago off eBay,or the Ka-Bar USMC knife, or the Cold Steel Recon Tanto I’ve had for probably 26 years? If you can’t afford or refuse to splurge on a expensive custom or big name (Benchmade, Microtec, etc) knife, then it’s your choice. If you want something with a similar form factor, blade shape, size, handle scales, or lockup, and there’s a “clone” that might not have exotic blade steel or titanium or other fanciness, then go for it. If it gets you in thebhibby or you just get what you want. Choice is good! No shame. The cloners are going to keep making them whether you buy or not.
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Civivi has a winning strategy. They clone their own knives!
I understand that WE Knives owns Civivi and Sencut. That’s three different price points. Some of their basic designs actually exist across price points but with different materials used.
Civivi does have a design or two that got super popular. The Elementum in particular has been going strong for a while. But if you google Elementum clone, one of the results is a Sencut knife. My conclusion: The person running that company is a genius.
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So if you owned a business and were selling your product that you spent many hours, even years working on, designing multiple prototypes, various revisions, trademarking and finally came out with your final product and were selling it at $100, just to find some overseas company producing something that appears similar to yours, even going as far as put your company name and logo on it, and selling it for $20…you wouldn’t be upset with that, or see a problem with that?? That’s EXACTLY what goes on with these clones. Too put it bluntly, I think some people are flat out CHEAP!
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This is a good point. I’m pretty sure that most of us here don’t condone counterfeit branded items, regardless of our personal preference for name brands or cheaper international alternatives.
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Well, that’s the issue that sparked the whole argument … [edited by @sb56637]
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I personally deleted the comments that included personal insults, as well as attempts by others to moderate the conversation and/or reprimand other users.
I’m not sure if everyone here understands this, but there are no other moderators or users with special permissions here on BLF. User-flagged posts sometimes get hidden automatically, but ultimately I have to make the final call. Of course my judgement isn’t infallible, and I often don’t notice when an argument breaks out unless somebody flags the offending posts. But arguing about any topic and publicly calling out or shaming other users is prohibited, full stop. However, it should be noted that ad-hoc moderation by users is also not allowed. So there were definitely mistakes made on both sides of this spat. I tried to clean up this thread in the most fair way possible, and now I request:
Please respect this directive from this point forward.
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Valid point and the isauebia these companies get away with it. Sad really. I actually do not like or approve the blatant counterfeit stuff coming out of the Orient these days. Some is sketchy, some is downright junk. I’ve bought cheap stuff before that’s worjed, but failed or started performing poorly after a short time. Knives? Yes, since locks can fail, blades can break and cause a serious injury!
Michael Kors by Michael Kors is not Michael Kors LOL.
I believe there was some conspiracy exposé about luxury brands going “after” “knockoffs” to drum up interest and sales of those “knockoffs”, because they owned the “knockoff” brands anyway…
Such a messy business. If you’re capable of attempting to replicate someone elses product, why not just make your own brand and do your own thing?? I get it, that their brand obviously wouldn’t be as popular. But everyone starts somewhere!
They allegedly WERE factory seconds, but the main brand was making the motions of “going after” the “counterfeiters” but not actually doing so, because the owners of the brand actually owned both “brands”. They were making money on bith fronts while downplaying that both products were in fact coming out of the same factory, lol
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I’m thinking about buying a Kershaw Avert 1432.
I usually avoid Kershaw’s 1300 and 1400 series because they’re typically not that great.
I like the look of the wood handle, but I don’t like the fact that most websites don’t say what the knife steel is.
I prefer properly heat-treated 8Cr13MoV (or better steel) for pocketknives, and I tend to avoid mystery steel.
Any thoughts on this knife?
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Get the Bel Air, in any variety. Better lock and better steel. Looks similarish to this knife but better in every way.
The Bel Air looks nice, but I only get assisted-openers (and 3.1 inches is borderline too short for me.) 
Assisted opening has been relegated (IMO rightfully so) to the very bottom of the budget barrel. Why do You insist on it? It’s not a good solution anymore, ball bearings and better tolerances have basically fixed the issue of knives not opening fully and the torsion spring makes one hand operation unnecessarily complicated (on closing of course) plus is an additional mode of failure which often completely disables the knife, because assisted knives usually lack a conventional detent
As for size, there is the BelAir XL 
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I like assisted openers, and I don’t like any pocketknife that isn’t an A/O.
A/O’s are the easiest to open of any type of knife that I have owned and liked.
The main reason that I like them is because they are so easy to open.
(I have one Kershaw automatic knife, but I don’t like it.)
I don’t have any trouble closing A/O knives.
I have owned scores of them, and none of them have ever failed.
Different people like different things, and trying to change someone’s mind on something that they clearly like is a complete waste of time.
I have made my opinion on pocketknives crystal clear many times on BLF for those that haven’t been paying attention.
Even if one doesn’t know what type of knives I like, in recent years I have gone out of my way not to ask for knife recommendations (like I did today) because I know best what knives I like.
It’s pretty counterproduction to offer knife recommendations to someone that doesn’t straight-up ask for them.
I even created a thread about my favorite knives that I update every time I get a new knife that I really like. 
But, yeah, keep on trying to convince me to get a Bel Air or Bel Air XL.
See how far that gets you. 
EDIT:
By the way, Gemini disagrees with your assertion…
https://gemini.google.com/share/1020d19821ca
So does Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Claude.
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/1488cced-d111-4edf-82ec-76ab71d08a71
https://chatgpt.com/share/6a0465f4-9a00-83e8-901c-a847af092f0b
Those are some very popular online LLMs, and they generally summarize what’s on the internet. 
…
I tend to get high-quality low-priced assisted-openers.
I try to avoid garbage knives, of which there are many of every category of knife. 