Knife companies are pretty small operations, comparatively speaking. KAI (which runs Kershaw and ZT), Victorinox, and Fiskars (which owns Gerber) are the biggest in the industry. Benchmade, Buck, and Case are a bit smaller. Then you have companies like Spyderco, CRKT, and TRM. They are quite small. Cold Steel and SOG are brands in a stable owned by a big company.

But all of these companies are small potatoes compared to Wal Mart. As of 2022 there are 10,586 stores. I don’t think any knife company has that many employees. Those stores are staffed by 2,100,000 people. Wal Mart would be 37th most populous state, pushing New Mexico out of that slot. It would have 3 electoral college votes, but be on the cusp of getting a 4th. If we equate revenue to GDP, Wal Mart is much higher on the list—14th, pushing Michigan down the list. Suffice to say Wal Mart is a titan of a company, perhaps unrivaled in human history.

Now what happens if Wal Mart, the gigacorp, decides to make a knife?

Hahahahaha…they are legit terrible (or at least they have been). Like feces-on-your-dinner-plate bad. The only Ozark Trail (Wal Mart’s store outdoor brand) knife I have reviewed was a piece of garbage. The steel was mystery meat. The handle was atrocious. The fit and finish was unfinished. To call it a knife-shaped object was to insult other knife-shaped objects. It was awful.

That was years ago. Since then the Ozark Trail brand has undergone some direction changes. The first place I noticed was their mountain bikes. I love Seth’s Bike Hacks and he has had some go rounds with Ozark Trail bikes. Recently they started using real parts from real companies (Shimano shifters!). And while they don’t rival great bikes, they are good enough and for the money they are amazing. Well, that same mentality has been applied to Ozark Trail knives. Get ready, because this thing will be a case study in business school one day. Because, for the first time, all that business power, all of that market leverage has been brought to bear on a knife and it is GOOD.

Now Ozark Trail doesn’t name their knives, unless you call “7.5 inch folder” a name. So I am going to call it the Ten Buckout. This knife has a 3 inch blade, a deep carry over the top pocket clip, a sliding bar lock, burnt orange injection molded handles, steel liners, a coated clip point D2 blade, and thumb studs. After a smidge of tweaking to the pivot, it is tight as drum with no blade play in any direction. It deploys smoothly and consistently. It is very, very light. And it costs $9.97. I got mine in tax free NH, so it was truly a knife under $10. I am going to review it, of course, but I will spare the agony of waiting—go buy one. It earns the name I gave it because in many ways that matter it is a $10 Bugout.

If that isn’t market disruption I don’t know what is. The Kershaw Iridium is a very, very similar knife and it costs $57. What is the other $47 being spent on? Aluminum handle scales, I guess. The Ten Buckout is going to reshape the market. And word is out, they are sold out everywhere except online (pro tip—get delivery to store, otherwise you are paying like $10 shipping on a $10 knife). My guess is when they come back in stock they might not be a Ten Buckout, but a Fifteen or Twenty Buckout. Even then they will be the best value folder available, by a large margin. If they remain $9.97, well then, I think there could be some real impacts on the knife market (BTW, sorry for two knife market articles in a row, I wanted to get the word out about this knife).

When I posted a picture on IG some readers speculated that this was going to hurt American made knives. The reality is that America doesn’t make budget folders anymore. All of the budget folders sold in the US by American companies are made in China for American brands. You have to go look at Case stuff to find truly inexpensive American knives and they aren’t $10. So I don’t think this is going to compete with US made knives. But the Ten Buckout will be a problem for US companies. That’s because I think it is going to crush the bottom end of knives made by US brands. Kershaw, CRKT, Cold Steel, Spyderco and a few others have pretty substantial line ups of cheap over seas made knives. But they aren’t as good or as cheap as the Ten Buckout. When you can buy the Ten Buckout or the aforementioned Iridium, which are you going to choose?

The big deal here for me is the steel and the fit and finish. D2 is the minimum acceptable steel for me. I like D2. Its pretty good. Slap a coating on it, like Wal Mart wisely did, and all of a sudden, you have a very good blade steel for very cheap. So that got me to buy one, but when I took it out of the package I was stunned. This isn’t just a knife with decent steel, its a decent knife. It carries well. It opens and closes well. It cuts well. My blade is noticeably off centered, but it doesn’t rub. And it is, after all a $9.97 knife. I can’t get a meal at Subway for that much money.

Here is the other problem—a lot of the American brands are still having knives made with 8Cr steel. Now, of course, competitive entry level knives are coming out of lots of different places with 14C28N or Nitro V but for the budget stuff, a lot folks are using 8Cr or less. In a field like that, where the prices are three or more times higher than this knife, it is hard to justify a purchase. Sure the brand might be American, but the knife made overseas. And so you have this very tough dilemma. Can you justify the purchase of a knife that is made overseas, has worse steel, AND is three times as much? Probably not.

Now, I don’t think this is going to syphon business away from a brand like Chris Reeve knives. No one, however low the price, is going to purchase or skip a Sebenza because of the existence of a $10 knife. I don’t think it will factor in to the purchase of a $180 knife either. The reasons to buy those knives are different than the reason a person purchases this knife. So some of the gloom and doom online regarding the Ten Buckout is probably misplaced. But for the bottom end of the range of many knife companies, this knife is a price apocalypse.

Love it or hate it, when Wal Mart makes a knife and pays attention, it crushes the competition. Rejoice at our new corporate overlords—for they have given us the Ten Buckout.