Here's my take:
I've had a few conversations with a brick and mortar knife retailer about Spyderco knives, specifically, why they carry pretty much every single Benchmade model, but only a handful of Spyderco models. I was told basically that their margins on Spydercos are too low. They don't make enough on the sale of a Spyderco, so they push Benchmades and carry very few Spydercos.
My observation has been that the Spydercos they DO stock, they sell very, very quickly... Presumably taking sales away from their higher-margin Benchmades.
MAP has nothing to do with the wholesale/dealer cost, and everything to do with the health and distribution network of the brand. It's about Spyderco fighting for retail shelf space in order to expose new customers to the brand and increase in-person sales. MAP hurts high volume and low margin online retailers who can compete on price, but only to the extent they lose sales at a higher relative rate than the price increase. MAP helps brick and mortar retailers, but even more so, it helps Spyderco push more volume out to retailers, and in turn helps Spyderco's market share, since the retailers can now make more money on a Spyderco.
On one hand I disagree very firmly with the concept of MAP since I think it is non-competitive. But you can't argue with the results MAP can bring. Kinda backwards how raising prices helps you compete, eh?
Does anyone remember how this started??? As I recall, a large online knife retailer, famous for offering free shipping, stopped selling Spyderco knives altogether because the margins were too low. Very soon thereafter, Spyderco implemented MAP.
Will I buy fewer Spyderco knives starting 1/1/2018? Sure. But it doesn't matter. They don't want me buying 50 more knives online, they want 50 brand new retail customers. They really want more B&M retailers, more inventory on display. No problem, I'll still buy and sell couple Spydies a year, and maybe with the leftover cash I can move up to CRK territory.