Japanese Knives Pricing heads up

[JBroida]

Hey guys... as I'm placing a bunch of orders after the holidays and also receiving invoices for items we ordered previously, I have been noticing pretty significant price increases from some makers. Increases ranged from 18%-nearly 50% in some cases. Just giving you a heads up, as we will need to adjust for some of this as new inventory rolls in through the year. Some of the biggest changes we noticed today were with our Gesshin Ittetsu series, though its not limited to that series. Anyways, the pricing is staying the same until those new things start to roll in later this year.

 

[Matus]

Thanks for the heads up. Any reason for this apparently rather significant price hike (other than demand outstripping the production)?

 

[JBroida]

for the fushuko series and the powdered steel series, part of it was a 20% increase in steel price. But that didnt account for the total increase. Some other parts were increased labor cost, as the craftsmen have been responding to issues that people have brought up to them and had to change the way they operated. For example, regardless of the price of the knife, one step added about $40-50 to the cost of the knife in just labor cost. Another part of it was that the last time I ordered, we got quite a few of the items in, and hadn't needed to order for a long time. That time gap saw a number of increases in terms of material cost, labor cost, etc.

 

[DitmasPork]

Thanks for the heads up! Got some of your knives on my to-buy, when my wallet feels better. BTW, wonder if we can expect increases from domestic makers using Japanese steel, due to the steel tariffs?

 

[JBroida]

being that i'm not importing steel, its hard for me to comment on that. But its abundantly clear that the price of steel in japan continues to go up, and the availability has become more scarce. I mostly made this post because some caught me off guard. Some are way less severe. For example, some gesshin uraku arrived and we are currently inspecting them and getting them ready for the website. The prices had to be raised by about $5 across the board. Not so bad. But some of the other things I ordered recently (and got quotes in response) were crazy high relative to where they were on our site. For example, I wanted to bring in some left handed Gesshin Ittetsu 180mm single bevel petties, but the price we would have had to sell them at was a bit too high for my taste (dont quote me on this, as its past midnight and I'm not at work, but i think they would have been $575).

 

[osakajoe]

If they are sourcing Japanese steel it will probably. However it depends on when they bought the steel or who they are getting it from. You usually have to order hundreds of kilos to get steel.

So depending on when they ordered and ran out. You may not see price increases just yet or will if they ran out and needed new orders.