How Covid-19 will Change the EDC Market
After six weeks of essentially quarantine, I have started to think about how this virus outbreak will change the gear hobby. Its inevitable that it will change it to some degree, as the scope of Covid-19’s impact is tremendous—greater than 9/11, the Gulf War, or the Vietnam War. Only the civil rights movement and World War II have had a similar impact. Shutting down most of the world’s discretionary spending for three months will have ripples for years, if not decades. PhD theses in economics will be written about this for years. Setting aside the fact that everyone becomes a Keyesian in a crisis (“WE NEED MORE GOVERNMENT SPENDING NOW!”), let’s look at the impacts this will have on EDC.
Culling of the Ranks of Custom Makers
Michael Walker and his ilk doesn’t have to worry. Extreme luxury products are notoriously impervious to economic downturns as those that purchase these products really don’t ride the same economic tides the rest of us do. Folks down a tier from him, folks like Todd Rexford and his ilk, will see a few blips but probably nothing serious. While a $100,000 folder is the very definition of a luxury product, so too is a $10,000 folder. Its the guys in the next tier, newer makers, less expensive makers that will take a hit. When you have $1,000 a year for knife purchases and that goes away, folks selling $500-$1,000 will not do well.
Add to this the fact that shows, such as Blade Show (which, oddly enough is not cancelled but just rescheduled until August), will have dramatically lower attendance, and we have perfect storm of dramatically lessened demand and fewer outlets.
Lastly, given the huge boom in custom knives over the past decade, there are a lot of people that are precarious positions economically. Here I am thinking about folks that quit their day jobs to full embrace the hobby and become knifemakers. They did so counting on demand remaining as high as it has been, without acknowleding that this level of demand was historically unprecedented. I have been predicting a bubble bursting in the custom maker for a while as we travel down the road of IG-inspired Tulip Mania in the form of the TFF. Covid-19 is likely the sharp needle that will end the bubble.
All of this doom and gloom will be even worse for those folks that have gone down the designer-produced blades. They have paid for a huge run of knives and now their market is either gone or dramatically smaller. Taking a discount will hurt them going forward and holding stock means they have no income at all.
I wish I had some solutions for these folks. You don’t get to be a Todd Rexford without passing through the middle tier echelon of custom makers. I am deeply concerned that a host of good makers with really good ideas will be lost, possibly forever. One thing that I hope comes out of this custom makers embrace financial tools to help them weather storms like this. Health insurance, life insurance, and money management skills are not well known in the custom world. But if you were a custom maker with a plan and a cushion right now, you would be in better standing. It might also help if custom makers organized into a pooled risk system (like insurance) that would help pay them during slow times. Specialized custom knife maker insurance would be great. It might also help if they had accountants and certified financial planners that could help them with money flow ideas.
Absolute Destruction of the High End Production Market
If things were bad for the middle tier of custom makers, the companies making $600 production knives are going to take a body blow. Its one thing to pay for a custom that is limited in number, handmade, and a quality design. Its an entirely different thing to pay the same amount for a knife that exists in comparatively huge numbers. A custom could be a collectible. A knife of which there is 600 examples is less likely to fall into that category.
And frankly a lot of these knives are just stupidly expenses. They don’t cut better. They don’t carry better. They use faux exotic material (like Moktu Ti). I have thought these knives were stupid for a while and now with less disposable income, I think the market will likely agree. When people can’t afford lilies, gilded ones will sell even worse.
A lot of these makers should be moving in the direction pioneered by folks like TRM anyway, but Covid-19 will seal the deal. Imagine if Reate made a thin, slicey knife shorn of baloney and focusing on specs? A good micarta handled flipper with a single liner on the lockside would be incredible—a Reate Skyline, if you will.
I also think these folks could retool pretty quickly and focus on hard use fixed blades, which I think will suffer the least in the production market as the knife buying public becomes more prepper conscious (we are already a pretty prepared group, but this will probably kill hipster knife ownership or, hopefully, introduce them to the joys of knives that work well as opposed to knives that look good on IG).
More Domestic Production
As the just-in-time chains of production are restarting or retooling, making folders is probably not a priority. I would love for this to mean that companies bring production back in house. Buck did this a while ago with a host of different knives and the results haven’t been all that bad, especially with knives like the Slim 110. It would be nice to see a domestically produced Dragonfly so that smaller orders with different materials could be made easier. It would also be nice to see some more domestically made lights. Other than Mag, Surefire, and Streamlight, pretty much every other sizable operation is getting stuff made in China. I’d love to see Malkoff or Prometheus ramp up to full-sized production with the enthusiast-grade designs. Benchmade and Surefire are both proof you can make stuff domestic, make in high numbers, and make it affordable. And yes, I love the Mini Bugout and the Titan Plus together.
Practical, Prepper Knives will be Huge
I have written quite a bit about knives on various websites, but one piece (which I was kindly given a co-author credit on by one of the most interesting people I know—Jon Stokes) dwarfs all others: The Prepared’s article on best survival knife. While it is obvious a site like the Prepared would be getting a lot of traffic now, I think this is the tip of the iceberg. With the drop off in discretionary funds, the blingtacular stuff will see a decline. But if you are going to spend good money on a knife, its likely to be something more practical than an 8 ounce folder with Mokuti accents and a 1/4” thick blade. I see stuff with practical, preparedness focused designs doing okay post Covid-19. Its easier to justify a knife that could be used in an emergency AND its nice, like an ESEE 4HM or the Kabar BK-16.
Rediscovering the Entry Level Part of the Market
With less disposable income, I think people might go back and dip their toes in the lower end of the market. This is a good thing. As is often the case a rising tide lifts all boats, and the recent knife boom has fundamentally altered the kinds of knives that are released. Civivi makes insanely great stuff for the money. Buck has been reinvigorating its classic models with smart upgrades and steels that outperform their chemistry thanks to Bos heat treating. Even SOG, long stalwart of the Big Box store, has pushed away from their dalliance with 5CR and upgraded many of its evergreen models, like the Aegis AT shown above. And then there is the excellent Gerber Fastball, now customizable (with blue G10 handles as a possibility, I confess that I visited the site more than once).
Door Hooks, Hanks, and Masks will be Big
While I think that masks will be big temporarily, I think that we will see a boom in the number of OPMTs that include door hooks/button pushers even after the immediate impact of Covid-19 has dissipated. It is hard to figure out which of these will stick around, but for now look for a boom economy around these three items. My guess is that the hooks will not make it into our EDC. I made a hook out of maple and coated it so I could clean it and it did not work well. It just focuses the contamination into one item that will, inevitably, come in contact with other items, spreading germs just as effectively but in a different way. Masks, on the other hand, I see sticking around for a while.
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