Tech v. Design—The Gear Development Dilemma
“He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Oh man did the gear world get hit by a hand grenade on Tuesday September 7, 2021. You might not remember it, but that was the day that Surefire announced is Micro Scout Pro Light, a mounted 1xAAA light that has a single mode, a runtime of 1.25 hours, a max and min output of 300 lumens, and a price tag of $289. Within 20 minutes of the IG post I had a DM box overflowing with memes and bad reactions. Part of this is because I am a well known defender of Surefire and I regularly carry one of their best lights. The reaction wasn’t “a fart in church” bad, it was “explosive diarrhea on your honeymoon” bad. IG howled with disapproval. Flashlight forums belly ached with bad feelings. Fanboys manned the ramparts with discussions of CQB drills and practical limitations on lumens. Suffice to say, the Micro Scout wasn’t well received.
This is not the first time an old guard gear company released a new product to thunderously bad reception. In fact, it has become something of a trend to see old guards releasing stuff and getting lambasted. Part of that is simply a side effect of the internet—when everyone gets a soapbox, there is a lot of needless shouting. But another part is a fundamental miscalculation by companies regarding the path to success.
Gear is, by its very nature, a technology-related business. Gear geeks like gear for performance reasons and performance is most easily improved by using technology. But that is a deal made with the devil. If you get ahead through sheer technological horsepower, your star, your market success, is forever hitched to technology. The minute someone leapfrogs you, you are left in the dust with other companies that failed to keep up.
Surefire is just the most recent gear company to get ridiculed for outmoded performance. The reception to the Sebenza 31, which, only recently has switched to S45VN, was pretty luke warm. Nick’s review summed it up best—the knife was the 21 without the indexing hole, hardly a good reason to pay $400 more for a new knife. There is more of a reason now that the blades are new steel, but that is really not enough. CRK got famous because it played the tech game in terms of machining. But Reate does the same quality work (at least) for less and in much greater variety, especially if you include their OEM work. They are CRK, but cheaper and more plentiful.
Similarly, ZT was bludgeoned by criticism when it released a Speedsafe folder a few years ago. ZT muscled to the front of the market by embracing trends, producing Hinderer designs, and technological might. Super steels! Bearing pivots! Fish gill inlays! Then ZT was out-ZTed by WE. Their knives are just as well made, sport the same materials, and aesthetic, but run significantly cheaper and come in much greater varieties. WE releases more new knife designs in a month than ZT does in a year. And it is not because WE’s designs are worse. There are a few stinkers in both lineups (the ZT0707 comes to mind—I had a review sample and didn’t even bother to write a review it was so bad), but not proportionally more in one company’s catalog compared to another. WE leap frogged ZT by playing the same technology-based game better than ZT did.
In the end, superior gear through tech is a losing plan. Tech will always get more efficient, better, cheaper. Eventually someone will always beat you in the tech game. That is the nature of that game.
Surefire’s offering, despite how good it could be in CQB, black ops, or CS:Go, just isn’t competitive in the marketplace. 300 lumens is fine. Output doesn’t really matter. But cost always matters. $300 for that light is just price tone deafness. Surefire was out-Surefired by Fenix, just like Surefire out-Magged Maglight.
What is the solution? Good design, of course. A good body tube or good reflector will make a light useful well after it loses its bleeding edge status. A clever design can never been outdated—it works because of its universal appeal. Look at something like the FourSevens Mini Mk. III. It is not the bleeding edge anymore. But its combination of size, output, runtime, and price is still hard to beat years after its debut. None of those things have changed at all in four or five years, but it doesn’t matter because the fundamental design is so solid.
And here is the other thing—good design is cheap. You can grind D2 pretty thin and make a decent handle out of G10 for $30. CJRB did with the Small Feldspar. But that knife was, is, and always will be at least kind of good because the design is rock solid.
Ah, so the solution is easy—design good stuff. Describing or identifying the solution is easy, implementing is daunting. Good design is about thoughtfulness, experience, and ultimately some irreducible amount of talent and craftsmanship. You can’t force someone to be a good designer, it, like all Aristotelean virtures, must be cultivated. It is a habit, a mental state, or a meditation on an idea. This is why Hinderer’s stuff is good almost irrespective of production company—Rick knows how to make good knives. Even his O1, wood handled XM-18 are well more than passable stuff.
Maybe the Micro Scout is a wonderful design. I don’t know. I haven’t handled the light and given the design and price I probably never will. But what I do know is that it is being sold as a technological achievement when it is clearly not. That kind of marketing will always get the hyena’s chuckling. Surefire still has the ability to make great lights. The Titan Plus (which has the same battery format and output on high, but cost 1/3 as much six years ago) is a good light. Similarly CRK can make good new stuff. But these old guard companies need to quit the tech game as a means of innovating. Technological advantage is fleeting; good design is eternal.
Maybe they can get to the top of the heap via tech innovations, but if they want to stay there they need to kick the ladder away and switch to making well-design tools. Spyderco has been doing this for 30 years. It seems to work.
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