I have been in several of the larger FB slipjoint groups and Randy Bell is the only GEC employee that has a regular presence. I think I have seen at least one other person that worked at GEC in some capacity joined but they did not say much from what I saw.
I agree that FB is terrible. I don't believe that Mr Howard pays much attention to them either.
All he really needs to pay attention to is the sales figures and his own knife making desires.
Trying to cater to the whims of the various people commenting here and on FB would just lead to nothing much happening. Anything he does he'll have somebody shouting that it's terrible. Be it half stops or shields or no shields or choice of covers.
The knives he makes right now, driven by his own methods, sell like hot cakes. No reason for him to change.
This 100%. Before these knives dropped, the cringy, whiny comments about how GEC was going downhill, or that they were knives "most people can agree we don't want"*, or that GEC was going to be a "laughingstock", or that people who like these knives clearly must have some issue (or we're "hipsters"
) were numerous. That was despite many folks (like me) saying these were neat knives that we were excited for. Then, the knives dropped, all preorders vanished immediately, and the pics of knives in hand and positive comments started showing up here en masse. However, for some reason, this knife is still being blamed as some sort of sign that GEC is "out of touch" or that they aren't giving their customers what they want. I mean...like, a very small percentage of these knives have shown up on Ebay at vastly marked up prices (and the "completed auctions" tell the tale about how people are clearly willing to own these knives at that price). The
facts suggest that these are very
much knives that people wanted, and continue to try to chase down. Those that didn't go to Ebay are in the hands of appreciative owners (again, like me). Additionally, there's a LARGE number of these knives I've seen on Instagram's #GreatEasternCutlery feed along with all of the comments about how happy owners are, as well as how many comments these posts have from people who are sorry to have missed a drop.
And you ask why isn't Bill Howard in here listening to us, doing what the members of this board advise?
Heh, if he'd have listened to some of you, we wouldn't have these great knives. That tells the tale 100%, I think. If I were Mr. Howard, I wouldn't come in here either, to have a bunch of folks who don't own a knife company trying to tell me what I should be doing with my business. I wouldn't put up with that at all.
That said, for some of the naysayers, there's great news! I've seen a couple of different folks who are working on their own knife brands, and building their own knives. Perhaps you might consider starting up a company and showing us all (and GEC) how it "should" be done? I'd be more than glad to take a look!!
* False.
